Freedom From Colonization

Modernity is shown to be essentially a western Christian (as distinct from Catholic) product, and that it is based on individuality, abstract theorizing, going after sensual pleasure with as much as freedom from society, change from society to individual as the dominant part of the binary opposition individual - society, among others. In order to understand modernity another concept called "chinthanaya" that binds the human products of a given society, such as arts and crafts, science, music, attitudes, knowledge in general etc., is also formulated.
_________________________________

by Prof. Nalin de Silva

(February 17, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) In order to understand Sri Lanka, or for that matter any country, after colonization that began in the sixteenth century, one should first have an understanding of what modernity is. Modernity has been defined as a phenomenon that began with the renaissance by some authours, while some others are of the opinion that modernity is a product of reformation. Similarly there are different opinions with respect to the end of Modernity. The Postmodernists claim that Modernity has ended, and that humanity has entered a new phase that could be identified as postmodernity. Lyotard in his "Postmodern Condition" give certain criteria that, in his opinion, could be found in the society today, which were absent a few decades ago. However, Habermas and others are of the view that Modernity is an unfinished project.

In this paper it is argued that Colonization, with components in political, cultural and economic fields, among others such as western science, is a product of modernity that began around the fifteenth century in Europe, especially in the south, and then spread to the west. Modernity is shown to be essentially a western Christian (as distinct from Catholic) product, and that it is based on individuality, abstract theorizing, going after sensual pleasure with as much as freedom from society, change from society to individual as the dominant part of the binary opposition individual - society, among others. In order to understand modernity another concept called "chinthanaya" that binds the human products of a given society, such as arts and crafts, science, music, attitudes, knowledge in general etc., is also formulated. It is also shown that western Christian modernity is based on what could be called the Greek Judaic Christian (GJC) Chinthanaya. In the context of the present paper, capitalism could be considered as a product as well as the economic mode of the western modernity, and colonialism as bound with modernity. One of the most important objectives of western modernity is shown to be Christianizing the whole world in culture if not in religion, adopting the mission of the Jews in the Old Testament. Hence it follows that as part of the project of Christianization (in culture), the western knowledge produced after the fifteenth century, which is based on the GJC Chinthanaya, is spread throughout the whole world. As a corollary it is argued that in the non western world people are forced to look at the world through the eyes of western modernity, which is shown to be the most dangerous part of colonization. It is concluded that the non western world cannot think of freeing themselves of western Christian colonization unless they produce their own systems of knowledge, not depending on western knowledge which is Christian in culture and GJC in Chinthanaya, and hence that there cannot be freedom in the economic or political fields either, unless the freedom of knowledge is attained.

(Professor Nalin de Silva is a Sri Lankan theoretical physicist, philosopher and a political analyst. He is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka.)