The onset of the Western colonial enterprise that was started by the Spaniards and the Portuguese at the end of the 15th century, continued by the French, the Germans, the British and the Italians, and cemented by the Americans, witnessed the beginning of Western hegemony not only in the military and economic spheres, but the cultural and intellectual spheres as well.
When World War 2 came to an end, the West decided that it was no longer fashionable to hold on to its colonies, and many states in Africa and Asia were granted their independence.
While it is true that the West no longer occupies these territories physically, the same cannot be said about the West’s hold over the minds of the peoples in its former colonies.
This is due to the fact that the Western colonial enterprise was essentially about subjugating the peoples in its colonies — their development, progress and happiness, and the ways of their attainment of knowledge, education and governance, which are now globally infused into the consciousness and institutions of most educated peoples, reflect the worldview, experiences and dreams of Western civilisation.
Doing away with physical occupation was only the beginning of a long and arduous journey of freeing the minds of the subjugated peoples in the former colonies from the tentacles of Western imperialism.
We ignore the West’s influence in shaping the minds of the peoples in its former colonies at our own peril. The failure to come to terms with Western dominance in shaping the intellectual discourse and knowledge production in its former colonies and the rest of the world has led to the creation of a servile mind.
A servile mind is very much similar to a captive mind. The late Professor Datuk Syed Hussein Alatas, one of Asia’s leading intellectuals, conceptualised the captive mind as an extension of the colonial mentality or categories by the recipient country, in relation to the application of social sciences from developed states or the West, without adaptation or critique of the adopted concepts and methodologies, suggesting the continued domination of Western ideas.
Syed Hussein, however, asserted that the captive mind of the subjects was not necessarily intentionally imposed by the colonial or Western discourse, but the subjects themselves submitted unconsciously or were unaware of their own captivity.
Technological and scientific advancement by the West has further perpetuated the idea that Western knowledge is the only knowledge that is desirable.
The downgrading of non-Western epistemologies by the West has created the impression that the Western system of knowledge is inevitable or scriptural to societies living outside the borders of Europe, and over which the West is hegemonic.
The Western intrusion into non-European societies has inevitably created an environment that places little or no value on knowledge that does not fall into the Western knowledge system. This acceptance is made much easier within the framework of globalisation, and a new relationship between the dominant West and servile East.
We are constantly reminded that we must accept modern science because it is factual and universal. We are also told that Western sociology, history and psychology hold assumptions that are valid the world over because they are based on the values of the Enlightenment period. Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that epistemologies — the theories of knowledge — are profoundly limited by culture.
Many intellectuals in the former colonies have written and spoken on the need to delink our knowledge system from the West because indoctrination through Western education enables colonisation through the capturing of the mind.
There is, therefore, an urgent need for intellectuals in the developing world to make a firm commitment to reorientate their knowledge system to the cultures they are rooted in. This can be done by, first and foremost, decolonising our universities.
At the International Conference on Decolonising Our Universities held in Penang in 2011, S.M. Idris, one of Malaysia’s leading public intellectuals, said we had failed to understand that colonialism had struck deep roots in our societies. Put in another way, we need to uproot ourselves and liberate our minds from Eurocentric paradigms.
The conference, the first on decolonising universities, paved the way for like-minded intellectuals across the globe to reflect critically on the hegemony of knowledge that comes from the West.
One of the most important outcomes of the conference was that it pointed out that scholars could no longer be a passive recipient of a research agenda. Alternatively, scholars should expose the writings of thinkers, like Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Syed Hussein, Ibn Khaldun, Mahatma Gandhi, Syed Sheikh Al-Hadi and Ali Shariati, to students.
The challenge is for scholars to create an environment where the thoughts and writings of these alternative thinkers are discussed and debated. Last, but not least, by delinking our worldview from the West, we can build our own paradigm that gives meanings to our existence that are devoid of Eurocentric influence. By so doing, we can proudly say that we are truly liberated.
Dr Azeem Fazwan Ahmad Farouk is director of the Centre for Policy Research and International Studies (CenPRIS), Universiti Sains Malaysia