Masters of Selective Blindness
The pattern is everywhere once you start looking. Indian "progressives" erupt over century old colonial atrocities in Canada. Land acknowledgments get retweeted. Cultural genocide gets named and shamed. The civilizing mission gets exposed for what it was—systematic destruction dressed up as salvation.
Then silence. Complete radio silence when the same dynamics play out in their own backyard. Such is the architecture of intellectual colonization of the Indian progressive elite.
And that is the thing about intellectual colonization: it's not about what you think. It's about what you're allowed to think matters.
Western progressives spent the last decade doing something remarkable. They started naming their own history honestly. Exposing the civilizing mission became what it always was—imperialism with better branding.
Academic departments got renamed. Land acknowledgments became standard. Reparations entered mainstream conversation. The same people who once celebrated Columbus started calling it Indigenous Peoples Day. And the Indian "progressives" applauded and followed them blindfolded.
But watch what happens when you mention missionary activity in India at your next dinner party in Delhi. The temperature drops instantly. The same frameworks that illuminate Western injustices suddenly develop convenient blind spots.
These borrowed frameworks come with invisible disclaimers. Valid only for Western contexts. Not applicable to Indian situations.
Indian "progressives" are the world's most diligent students. They memorize every Western social justice framework. They tweet about Ferguson and Charlottesville. They know the names of murdered Black activists in America better than disappeared tribal leaders in Chhattisgarh.
In this economy of ideas, Indians are always consumers, never producers. Always students, never teachers.
Ask any Indian "liberal" about missionary schools and watch the mental gymnastics begin. "But education is good." "But they help the poor." "But choice is important." When Indian intellectuals write extensively about cultural imperialism in American schools but praise missionary education in Northeast India as 'progressive intervention,' the contradiction is stark.
Prominent Indian academics love giving lectures on "decolonizing knowledge systems." Brilliant stuff about how Western epistemology marginalizes indigenous ways of knowing.
But ask them about Hindu knowledge traditions being displaced by colonial Christian education and the same academic will suddenly discover the virtues of religious neutrality and secular education.
The selective application isn't a bug—it's a feature. It signals membership in the right intellectual circles. Each contradiction follows the same logic: if Western progressives haven't critiqued it yet, it doesn't exist. The pattern isn't subtle once you see it.
Indian "progressives" don't just borrow Western frameworks—they need Western approval to feel legitimate. A cause isn't real until The Guardian covers it. An injustice doesn't count until American academics validate it. They can only see what their masters have already seen.
The most colonized mind isn't the one that accepts foreign rule—it's the one that can't imagine thinking without foreign permission.
Every Indian progressive can tell you about Native American boarding schools. Forced cultural assimilation. Identity erasure. The systematic destruction of indigenous communities through education.
But mention missionary schools in India and suddenly "context" matters. "Nuance" is important. It's "complicated".
Ask them about indigenous resistance to covert missionary activity in India and watch the uncomfortable shuffling begin. Those movements get different labels. "Fundamentalist." "Extremist." "Communal."
The vocabulary shifts because the validation hasn't arrived yet. Western progressives haven't blessed these narratives, so they remain illegitimate.
Intellectual honesty requires intellectual courage. And courage, when it comes to Indian 'eminent intellectuals' circles, is the thing most in short supply.
Indian "progressives" are frozen in place. Waiting for permission. Checking for approval. Making sure their analysis won't offend their intellectual superiors. They've mistaken intellectual sophistication for intellectual submission.
Want to know if you're intellectually colonized? Simple test:
Can you see missionary activity with the same clarity you see corporate exploitation?
When Coca-Cola targets tribal communities with marketing promising prosperity, progressive intellectuals shout corporate manipulation. But when evangelical organizations use identical tactics—targeting the same vulnerable populations with false promises of education and healthcare in exchange for conversion—these same intellectuals invoke 'religious freedom' and 'choice.'
The methods are identical: identify vulnerable populations, offer immediate material benefits, gradually reshape worldview, create dependency. Only the product being sold differs.
If you can see one but not the other, you're still living in the colony. The borders are just in your mind now. The colonizers don't even have to be present anymore. You police yourself.
Intellectual independence is not about rejecting everything Western. It's about developing the capacity to think for yourself about your own context. Analysis should serve truth, not approval.
Indian progressives have the frameworks. They've memorized them perfectly. They just need one thing: the courage to use them.
The moment you realize you don't need permission to see clearly is the moment you stop being a colony.
But first, you have to want to stop being one.
