Vijay Prashad shares read Why India is still trapped in British Colonialism

my name is Vijay Prasad I'm a historian I'm also a [Music] journalist we are very interested in uh communicating with people across boundaries and borders I came to China first 40 years ago I was a 16-year-old boy came to rural China um went on a tour saw you know the countryside I was impressed by the fact that the peasantry in China the farmers and so on were not people who were embarrassed they looked you straight in the eye when they spoke this is what the Chinese Revolution did you know um before 1949 the Chinese peasantry in the countryside was embarrassed to look at people they would look down when they walked you know they were scared of landlords they'd get beaten you know people had to bind their feet the Chinese Revolution changed that attitude in the countryside um you know this attitude still exists in many parts of the world hierarchies landlordism and so on that's what the global South is it's it's the condition of countries that had been in a position of um relative uh colonialism one way or the other well um these countries simply were not able to develop because they didn't have investment so they had to borrow money from the countries that used to colonize them but look let's be quite Frank when colonialism ended um all the wealth that had been taken from these societies like India many African countries and so on um had gone to enrich the countries of the north so in England for instance English industry was financed by the Indian peasantry you know all the profits were taken from India and invested in England so in India there was no industry when the British were thrown out of India 1947 the literacy rate was merely 133% British had ruled India 300 years so they left the country with no finances no infrastructure really no wealth no education system uh everything was pretty much destroyed and the economy was still geared to exporting primary Goods to the West so India you know went to the Western countries and said lent lend us money you took all our wealth now lend us money to develop they borrowed money but they went into debt and into catastrophic debt crisis after debt crisis um many countries they continue to pay um the debt you know till today for decades of of of having borrowed money um so why did neoliberalism fail why why did any development project failed Well because most of these countries simply don't have Capital um they don't have the human resources they didn't make a revolution you know people in China should never forget that what the Chinese Revolution gave this country uh was it gave the people of this country a sense of dignity you know that that's a key thing gave the people a sense of dignity the dignified people and so on this is not something that the rest of the global South was able to do you know Cuba did it Cuba fought off um you know us colonialism got rid of the mafias and the casinos and the people are dignified you know this is not the case in most of of of the world so you you can try any Economic Policy you want um it's going to be hard to succeed if you don't have sufficient Capital if the people aren't dignified if they're not educated if they don't have health care and so on so what's the global South well it's that and then why hasn't it succeeded well it's still suffering from the legacy of [Music] colonialism this is a photograph of um the five principal founders of the non-aligned movement they were meeting in Belgrade in Yugoslavia in 1961 Yugoslavia no longer exists but it existed then um there's Marshall Tito uh Tito was the head of government Head of State in Yugoslavia there was sukarno President of Indonesia very interesting man Gamal Abdul Nasser president of Egypt Guam Kum the president of Ghana and the prime minister of India javal Neu now what's interesting about the picture is that the five of them uh came out of now Tito and in kruma were not at uh bandong the conference in Indonesia 1955 but the Asian and African countries had a conference in 1955 in bandong Indonesia where they talked about the importance of uh creating a project of the South a third world project Chen Li came from China to that conference and he was a star of the conference very interesting history uh so 6 years later they met in um in Belgrade and they created the non- Align movement now the non- Align movement is very important because they were making the argument that the West United States mainly but Western Europe and the Soviet Union had to cut back on the arms race and uh not waste all this money on weapons and also threaten the destruction of the world but use that wealth to effectively create a um development project for the South uh so they wanted to move guns um into Bridges uh you know guns into school books guns into hospitals and so on and that was a part of their message uh but they United almost the entire South into this project so soon after these countries won their independence from Colonial Powers after World War II these are young States coming together to say you know what we want to stand on our own feet we want you to look at us with respect plus we're not fooled the Old Colonial system continues the concept Global South you know like many Concepts is misleading because you think it has something to do with the South you know the southern hemisphere um the north being the Richer countries and so on it was a little bit like in an earlier period you divided things by East and West you know the West is Europe and the United States the East is the Soviet Union or China or whatever the South really refers to countries that came out of colonialism that had been colonized and came out of colonialism

Channel: Pan African Television

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Id: 41HQ0YWn-cc

Length: 6min 56sec (416 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 14 2024