Thread by @ruchirsharma_1

"अरे, मेमसाहिब, आप ज़रा इधर तशरीफ़ तो लाइए, ताकि हम आपको बीबीघर में हुई मशहूर, लाजवाब, बेनज़ीर और ज़बरदस्त खातिरदारी दिखा सकें! पश्चिमी वामपंथियों को छोड़िए, आप सीधे हमारे बेगम हुसैनी ख़ानुम और सर्वर ख़ां से आकर 'decolonisation agenda' सीखिए।"

- Tour guide in Kanpur, probably.

https://twitter.com/myraemacdonald/status/1484957722508505094

"National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people, commonwealth:

whatever may be the headings used or the new formulas introduced, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon."

- Frantz Fanon

hyle.mobi/Reading_Groups…

"The naked truth of decolonization evokes for us the searing bullets and bloodstained knives which emanate from it.

For if the last shall be first, this will only come to pass after a murderous and decisive struggle between the two protagonists."

"The starving peasant, outside the class system, is the first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays.

For him there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms; colonization and decolonization are simply a question of relative strength."

"The exploited man sees that his liberation implies...force first and foremost.

[I]n Algeria, the Front de Libération Nationale, in a famous leaflet, stated that colonialism only loosens its hold when the knife is at its throat, no Algerian really found these terms too violent."

"The leaflet only expressed what every Algerian felt at heart: colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties.

It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence."

"At the decisive moment, the colonialist bourgeoisie, which up till then has remained inactive, comes into the field.

It introduces that new idea which is in proper parlance a creation of the colonial situation: non-violence."

"In its simplest form, this non-violence signifies to the intellectual and economic elite of the colonized country that the bourgeoisie has the same interests as they and that it is therefore urgent and indispensable to come to terms for the public good."

"Non-violence is an attempt to settle the colonial problem around a green baize table, before any regrettable act has been performed or irreparable gesture made, before any blood has been shed."

"But if the masses listen to their own voice and begin committing outrages and setting fire to buildings, the elite ...will be seen rushing to the colonialists to exclaim, 'This is very serious! We do not know how it will end; we must find a solution - some sort of compromise.'"

"Compromise is equally attractive to the nationalist bourgeoisie, who since they are not clearly aware of the possible consequences of the rising storm, are genuinely afraid of being swept away by this huge hurricane ..."

"[They] never stop saying to the settlers,

'We are still capable of stopping the slaughter; the masses still have confidence in us; act quickly if you do not want to put everything in jeopardy.'"

"The uprising of the new nation and the breaking down of colonial structures are the result of one of two causes: either of a violent struggle of the people in their own right, or of action on the part of surrounding colonized peoples which acts as a brake on the colonial regime"

"A colonized people is not alone...It discovers that violence is in the atmosphere, that it here and there bursts out, and here and there sweeps away the colonial regime - that same violence which fulfills for the native a role that is not simply informatory, but also operative."

"The violence of the masses is vigorously pitted against the military forces of the occupying power, and the situation deteriorates and comes to a head.

Those leaders who are free remain, therefore, on the touchline. They have suddenly become useless, with their bureaucracy ..."

"... yet we see them, far removed from events, "speaking in the name of the silenced nation."

Colonialism welcomes this godsend with open arms, tranforms these "blind mouths" into spokesmen, and in two minutes endows them with independence, on condition that they restore order."

"The violence of the colonial regime and the counter-violence of the native balance each other and respond to each other in an extraordinary reciprocal homogeneity."

"This reign of violence will be the more terrible in proportion to the size of the implantation from the mother country.

The development of violence among the colonized people will be proportionate to the violence exercised by the threatened colonial regime."

"[F]or the colonized people this violence, because it constitutes their only work, invests their characters with positive and creative qualities.

The practice of violence binds them together as a whole, since each individual forms a violent link in the great chain ..."

" ... which has surged upward in reaction to the settler's violence in the beginning.

The groups recognize each other and the future nation is already indivisible.

The armed struggle mobilizes the people, that is to say, it throws them in one way and in one direction."

"The mobilization of the masses, when it arises out of the war of liberation, introduces into each man's consciousness the ideas of a common cause, of a national destiny, and of a collective history."

"During the colonial period the people are called upon to fight against oppression; after national liberation, they are called upon to fight against poverty, illiteracy, and underdevelopment.

The struggle, they say, goes on.

The people realize that life is an unending contest."

"By its very structure, colonialism is separatist and regionalist.

Colonialism does not simply state the existence of tribes; it also reinforces it and separates them.

Violence is in action all-inclusive & national...involved in the liquidation of regionalism and of tribalism."

"At the level of individuals, violence is a cleansing force.

It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect."

"Even if the armed struggle has been symbolic and the nation is demobilized through a rapid movement of decolonization, the people have the time to see that the liberation has been the business of each and all and that the leader has no special merit."

"When the people have taken violent part in the national liberation they will allow no one to set themselves up as 'liberators'.

They show themselves to ... take good care not to place their future, their destiny, or the fate of their country in the hands of a living god."