Colonialism at Its Highest | Teen Ink

Colonialism at Its Highest

January 26, 2016
By BloomingRaine15 PLATINUM, Cebu, Other
BloomingRaine15 PLATINUM, Cebu, Other
27 articles 0 photos 3 comments

Favorite Quote:
And suddenly, all the love songs were about you.


Colonialism is defined as the policy or practice of acquiring full control of over another country and exploiting it economically. You say it is beneficial, and can result to great economy of the country. But I say it’s not.
Has your country ever been colonized? Have you ever questioned yourself what good could colonizing do if your country is the one being colonized? Sure, new technology, schools, and even contact to other places are provided, but lost within it is also the country we’ve once known.


Look at India, for example. British involvement of Indian subcontinent began early 17th century through British East India Company’s business ventures and dealings through economic exploitations. And also through coincidence that education, sanitation, and modernization was applied to India. Take note it was coincidence, and it wasn’t planned at all.  But most Indians are not that much of a fan about this. Swami Vivekananda had earlier said much the same thing in his own forthright style:“The child is taken to school, and the first thing he learns is that his father is a fool, the second thing that his grandfather is a lunatic, the third thing that all his teachers are hypocrites, the fourth, that all the sacred books are lies! By the time he is sixteen he is a mass of negation, lifeless and boneless. And the result is that fifty years of such education has not produced one original man in the three presidencies…. We have learnt only weakness.”


It is viewed clearly that the British only wanted India for India’s economy. They even suppressed India’s rights to manufacture a small industry, let alone its own wealth, because they wanted all the wealth to themselves while they do nothing and the Indians do everything. Indians became their slaves, which is clearly we, as a free people, don’t want to be. We fought for our independence, but because we only have knives while they have guns, we end up being inferior to them.


This isn’t what we should be doing. A country is a country with people in it. We, as the people of our country, would do any lengths to protect it, but there are times when there is also a group of people who takes it too far. We should be proud of our country and do something to benefit from it! We shouldn’t take others’ country just because we want to be wealthy. Human rights have been opposed. Violence and chaos takes place. Racism starts. Inequality spreads. Famine is rampant. Forced labor and overworking is now a common sight. Death is everywhere.
Is this the country we want to see? Is this who we are as a country’s people? Shouldn’t we be more aggressive? Yes, we are. We form revolutions, we become rebels, and we fight for our country, and for our freedom. But as I said before, we can’t succeed because we only have our burning hope and knives. We don’t have their guns or their wide number of military men, or their trained horses. No, we don’t have that, unless we steal it, which is really impossible because they keep and patrol it. It is all under their control. Their country, their economy, their products, our soil, our trees, our lands, our seas, our economy, our wealth, our country, us, we are all theirs.
But then suddenly, they tire of us. Too many forces reunited as one and drove them away. And they also left willingly and too suddenly, leaving us with one major problem that could affect and will affect every single person in this country. Who will be the leader of a country whose been colonized for centuries that the country doesn’t even have any more sense- let’s be blunt here- of government for all those years being under a certain country made us more dependent and too trusting that we can’t really stand on our ground, on our two feet, when they give us the freedom we fought for?

 
Being colonized is not that wonderful as you think it is. We can search for other ways to fulfill our economy, our modernization, and our connections to other country. But we are people of our country. We should die for it.



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