Is Violence Justified in Fighting Against Colonial Rule?
When asked if violence is justified in fighting against colonial rule, many people may say no. They would side with the better nature in humans that says non-violence is always better than violence. However, most of these same people, if they thought back to the history of their own nation—and for some it might not even be distant history—there was at least one violent overthrow of a colonial government in the past. They would surely think violence was justified because it ended the oppressive control. Yet, today, war weary people do not want violence. No one really ever has wanted violence, but they wanted to be free. Based on the collection of violent revolutions that have occurred in which people have overthrown oppressive imperialist governments, it seems violence is necessary and justified to accomplish that. This then leads one to question why violence is necessary. The answer may simply be because humans struggling against other humans to be free are violent, but so are humans conquering humans that want to be free.
Why do humans need to be violent? Why, when there is a threat of violence, does the oppressing nation not just leave, give back the land, give back the power, the resources, the infrastructure, and the institutions it has established and wish the country well? Of course, that sounds absurd. No nation would invade another, create a functioning government and methods to extract resources and then just return it to the people from whom they stole it when they realized that the conquered were unhappy. Even if that would be the morally right thing to do, it would not happen. It is a preposterous notion, and that is why there must be violence. The people from whom these things were taken, who have not benefited from these things in the same way their oppressor has see no other way to recover what is theirs than to forcefully oust those who stole it from them in the same way it was taken from them, and so there is violence.
When the American Revolutionary War occurred, Great Britain was the leading power in the world. It had control of most of North America and other regions as well. The eighteenth century was the beginning of their power. The nineteenth century saw India come under British rule, and by the early twentieth century, Great Britain had peaked. After two world wars in which Great Britain fought and lost many people, they began to relinquish their control and return countries, often seemingly without a great deal of violence, to the people they had ruled for so long. However, there was violence.
At the time Americans revolted against colonial rule, they were revolting against oppressive powers that demanded from them what they did not want to give. Of course, the Americans who lead the revolt were not natives. They were part of the colonization, so one could say that the Revolutionary War was violence between two colonizing powers. The American power won and for over 200 years now, they have oppressed the natives and the slaves and the descendants of slaves they kidnapped as laborers to build their country. One only needs to look as far as the reservations and the ghettos to see the truth in that. The Native Americans fought against the American colonial rule too. Framed as savages, they were made out to be the instigators of violence, and they often were, but they were fighting for decolonization.
White Americans made Native Americans out to be savages, nothing more than animals who would violently murder men, women and children who ventured into their land. Franz Fanon says, “The native knows all this and laughs to himself every time he spots an allusion to the animal world in the other’s words. For he knows that he is not an animal; and it is precisely at the moment he realizes his humanity that he begins to sharpen the weapons with which he will secure its victory” (Fanon 43). The native knows that he will be slaughtered like an animal if he asserts his autonomy, so he prepares to defend himself. Unfortunately for Native Americans, they did not win their freedom from colonial rule. Instead the fighting between the two opposing forces turned into near genocide. The colonized people under British rule who successfully and violently fought the British for independence, wiped out the Natives when they sought to do the same against them. In the latter case, there could have been compromise, but violence was easier and gave the oppressors what they wanted without compromise.
In other situations, the Natives have successfully won back their nation from the British. India is a good example. Some would say that decolonization was not violent in India thanks to Gandhi’s non-violent methods, but the people of India fought for many years for independence under British colonization before Gandhi came along. Decolonization does not always take place rapidly. Fanon says,
The violence which has ruled over the ordering of the colonial world, which has ceaselessly drummed the rhythm for the destruction of native social forms and broken up without reserve the systems of reference of the economy, the customs of dress and external life, that same violence will be claimed and taken over by the native at the moment when, deciding to embody history in his own person, he surges into the forbidden quarters. (Fanon 40)
Throughout the eighteenth century, Great Britain invaded areas of India, and the people fought back. They had to. They did not want to be under British control, but eventually the entire nation was.
While Gandhi’s non-violent methods should be championed, one cannot help but remember that he died violently, assassinated by a person who did not like Gandhi’s peaceful tactics, a person who was also fighting for freedom from colonial rule, but in a much more violent way. David Motadel, writing in The American Historical Review says, “Around the world, nationalist anticolonial movements were influenced by ideals of strong leadership, militarism, physical discipline, and collectivism, by authoritarian principles of governance, and by the veneration of violence, which appeared to be superior to the liberal values of individualism, parliamentarism, and democracy” (Motadel 846). While violence may not be “superior” to these liberal values, it is more deadly, and so more effective.
The assassinations of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. can attest to the strength of violence over non-violence. Both men fought for freedom for oppressed peoples using non-violent methods and both were killed by violence. So, one could say the reason that violence is justified in decolonization is that it is the strongest method, and perhaps the most successful. Quỳnh N. Pham and Maria Jose Menendez writing in Alternatives cite Jose Martí who they say “de-historicized and depoliticized entrenched violence against the formerly enslaved” (Phạm and Méndez 166). Marti said that when a person of African descent claimed their race he was mistakenly claiming the independence of all races and
“‘justifying and provoking the white racists.’ In promoting ‘mutual love and forgiveness on the part of both races,’ his rhetoric equalized the positionalities of whites and blacks, as if both groups were evenly accountable for the racism rooted in slavery, and liberally assumed that noble sentiments could procure political equality and social harmony’” (Phạm and Méndez 166). Of course, that is not the case. More than 150 years after slavery ended in the United States, there are still racist institutions designed to keep African Americans oppressed. One of them goes by the name of the American justice system.
The oppression of African peoples around the world results from invented hierarchical rankings based on skin color by colonizers trying to justify their treatment of the conquered natives. It still occurs in the United States and in many places around the world including the Africa. In a speech titled, “Decolonizing the University,” Surren Pallay talks about the types of violence that is perpetuated against Africans by the colonizing population. “The first is political violence, the second economic violence, and the third epistemic violence. Each of these violences — political, economic, and epistemic — carries with them demands for justice” (Pallay). Violence, based on Pallay’s designations, may not be directly the cause of the oppression, but indirectly it is. Currently in South Africa, students of African descent are protesting the high cost of a university degree. Professor Kai Thaler explains that there is a South African student movement called Rhodes must Fall or RMF. The movement is against proposed large tuition increases and the deeper issues of university access and transformation. The protesting students were nonviolent, but they were suppressed violently repressed, despite student nonviolence (Thaler 21). This epistemic violence lends to the other two types because without education, there is little chance of political or economic equality.
Violence is necessary for decolonization because the colonizers are violent. Violence is more efficient. The violence perpetuated by colonizers never ends if their power is at stake. The colonized must fight back on equal terms.
Works Cited
Fanon, Frantz. "Concerning Violence." The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Press, 1961. 35-106. Print. 12 November 2019.
Motadel, David. "The Global Authoritarian Moment and the Revolt against Empire." The American Historical Review 124.3 (2019): 843-877. Print. 12 November 2019.
Pallay, Surren. "Decolonizing the University." 7 June 2015. Africa's a Country. Web. 12 November 2019. < https://africasacountry.com/20... >.
Phạm, Quỳnh N. and María José Méndez. "Decolonial Designs: José Martí, Hồ Chí Minh, and Global Entanglements." Alternatives 40.2 (2015): 156-173. Print. 12 November 2019.
Thaler, Kai M. "Fanonian Decolonization: Violent Systems and How to Fight Them." 31 October 2019. 1-21. Powerpoint. 12 November 2019.
