Decolonization Quotes

“At this juncture, the 'world' is no longer confined to just one or two places; it has spread worldwide.”
― Suman Pokhrel

“Do you know why people like me are shy about being capitalists? Well, its because we, for as long as we have known you, were capital, like bales of cotton and sacks of sugar, and you were commanding, cruel capitalists, and the memory of this so strong, the experience so recent, that we can't quite bring ourselves to embrace this idea that you think so much of. As for hat we were like before we met you, I no longer care. No periods of time over which my ancestors held sway, no documentation of complex civilisations, is any comfort to me. Even if I really came from people who were living like monkeys in trees, it was better to be that than what happened to me, what I became after I met you.”
― Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place

“Always remember that the people are not fighting for ideas, nor for what is in men’s minds. The people fight and accept the sacrifices demanded by the struggle in order to gain material advantages, to live better and in peace, to benefit from progress, and for the better future of their children. National liberation, the struggle against colonialism, the construction of peace, progress and independence are hollow words devoid of any significance unless they can be translated into a real improvement of living conditions.”
― Amílcar Cabral, Return to the Source: Selected Speeches of Amílcar Cabral

“The act of writing, it seems to me, makes up a shelter, allows space to what would otherwise be hidden, crossed out, mutilated. Sometimes writing can work toward a reparation, making a sheltering space for the mind. Yet it feeds off ruptures, tears in what might otherwise seem a seamless, oppressive fabric.”
― Meena Alexander, The Shock of Arrival: Reflections on Postcolonial Experience

“A trip to a Central American jungle to watch how Indians behave near a bridge won't make you see either the jungle or the bridge or the Indians if you believe that the civilization you were born into is the only one that counts. Go and look around with the idea that everything you learned in school and college is wrong.”
― B. Traven, The Bridge in the Jungle

“Our minds must be as ready to move as capital is, to trace its paths and to imagine alternative destinations.”
― Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity

“When I criticize a system, they think I criticize them—and that is of course because they accept the system and identify themselves with it.”
― Thomas Merton

“Yes, the European spirit is built on strange foundations. The whole of European thought developed in places that were increasingly arid and increasingly inaccessible. Consequently, it was natural that the chances of encountering man became less and less frequent.
A permanent dialogue with itself, an increasingly obnoxious narcissism inevitably paved the way for a virtual delirium where intellectual thought turns into agony since the reality of man as a living, working, self-made being is replaced by words, an assemblage of words and the tensions generated by their meanings. There were Europeans, however, who urged the European workers to smash this narcissism and break with this denial of reality.
Generally speaking, the European workers did not respond to the call. The fact was that the workers believed they too were part of the prodigious adventure of the European Spirit.”
― Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

“The partition of India was not simply the result of an internal feud between Muslims and Hindus. Nor was it an isolated event. Indonesia's numerous secessionists movements, the bloody border disputes between Morocco and Algeria, the fifty-year civil war in Sudan between Arab northerners and Black African southerners, the partitioning of Palestine and the resulting cycle of violence, the warring ethnic factions in Iraq, and the genocide of nearly a million Tutsis at the hands of the Hutus in Rwanda, to name but a handful of cases, have all been in considerable measure a result of the decolonization process.”
― Reza Aslan, No God but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam

“Arabs & Garbage"
Strange is the Arab story with garbage!
Who told them
who taught them
to toss garbage randomly
wherever and however they please?
When will the Arabs understand
that placing garbage in its right place
will solve half of their environmental and societal problems?
And the other half of their problems
will be solved, too, as soon as they stop
tossing out their human gems
forcing out their most talented and qualified human capital
to serve foreigners in foreign lands?
When will the Arabs stop getting rid of their best minds,
replacing them with foreign garbage they glorify
simply because the foreign individuals have white skin and blue eyes
and claim to possess skills and expertise
the Arabs can’t survive without…
When will the Arabs understand
that placing garbage in its right place
-be it the garbage that govern their countries
or the foreign garbage they import –
will solve all their problems?

[Original poem published in Arabic on February 20, 2024 at ahewar.org]”
― Louis Yako

“Happiness is not lame sex with diseased dickheads from the internet with no social or sexual charisma, whose entire personality is PureGym, and then finding yourself constantly dashing off to 56 Dean Street to make sure you haven't contracted chlamydia or worse. Happiness is not the School of Oriental and African Studies, or the Royal African Society, or any Africanists and Orientalists who schlep to cities like Kolkata and Kampala, and find endlessly inventive ways to weaponise their whiteness by explaining decolonisation to folks their own ancestors are still fucking over from beyond the grave.”
― Diriye Osman

“Duran argues for the need for healing institutions to retain culturally competent staff and that the adherence to strictly Western models of treatment maintains the colonization process. Hodge, Limb, and Cross claim that the Western therapeutic project is inconsistent with many Indigenous cultures and often serves as a form of Western colonization.”
― Renee Linklater, Decolonizing Trauma Work: Indigenous Stories and Strategies

“It is widely recognized that Indigenous peoples are often not well served by Western treatment styles and those seeking help are often confronted with more alienation and traumatization.

Sones et al. point out that data regarding the mental health and wellness of Indigenous peoples is lacking "partly because of the challenges in the identification of indigenous clients, mistrust of mainstream health, frequent absence of culturally competent care, and lack of access to indigenous healing options and care.

Furthermore, culturally influenced Indigenous behaviour is often misinterpreted by Western-oriented clinicians as evidence of psychopathy.”
― Renee Linklater, Decolonizing Trauma Work: Indigenous Stories and Strategies

“The further north the bus moved, the more drab became the buildings, the streets and the people. Cheap stores selling clothes, furniture, kitchen utensils: “Easy terms, ten months to pay!” Cafés became dimmer, the streets narrower and noisier, more and more children filled the sidewalks. Men out of work, with nothing to do and no place to go, stood in sullen, futile groups on street corners. Arab music blared from the dark cafés or from the open windows of bleak hotels. Then suddenly, police were everywhere, stalking the streets, eyes moving insolently from face to face, submachine guns strung from their shoulders. It was like Harlem, Simeon thought, except that there were fewer cops in Harlem.”
― William Gardner Smith, The Stone Face

“A notable quote from this chapter could be:

"By embracing the term 'bulan,' we are reclaiming our true identity as the descendants of the 'mother of mankind,' acknowledging the rich history and cultural heritage of the African continent, and letting go of the colonial labels and language imposed upon us.”
― Reuel-Azriel

“As did most of the white leading cadre, Bunting exhibited a paternalism with respect to the Natives. This paternalism was rooted in an abiding lack of faith in the revolutionary potential of the Native movement. They saw the South African revolution in terms of the direct struggle for socialism. This white leadership, brought up in the old socialist traditions and comprised mainly of European immigrants, had not yet absorbed Lenin's teachings on the national and colonial questions.”
― Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an African American Communist

“The result was the resolution on the South African question which La Guma, Nasanov and I had worked on the previous winter. It recommended that the Party put forward and work for an independent Native South African Republic with full and equal rights for all races as a stage toward a Workers and Peasants Republic. This was to be accompanied by the slogan "Return the land to the Natives." The resolution was not only rejected by the Party leadership, but they had now sent a lily-white delegation to the congress to fight for its repeal.”
― Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an African American Communist

“The West broke the world, now the human race gotta resurrect the world, offspring of the terrorists and terrorized alike - but we can do nothing at all, till we decolonize our mind.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper

“(Donor Countries)
When are we going to understand that donor countries never give anything for free?

When are we going to realize that only those with the largest role in destruction offer themselves as benefactors?

They donate merely to reshape societies and ravaged lands according to their whims and desires…

Their sole aim is to keep the defeated, the marginalized, the disempowered, and the impoverished in that state for as long as possible…

When are we going to see that the quickest way to name the world’s greatest criminals is simply to scan the list of donor countries?

November 12, 2022”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“White people can be mediocre, and still respected, glorified even, but rest of us have to be Ramanujans, Rumis, Naskars, just to be regarded as human.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper

“Education that doesn’t reflect plural humanity, raises only goodlooking jungle rubbish.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“When Whiteness Collapses (Sonnet)

When the whites benefit from privilege,
it's part and parcel of colonial heritage,
but when a giant rises from the marginals,
it eclipses the shallow heights of whiteness.

I'm colored, I'm scientist,
I'm poet, I'm polyglot -
coming from zero money,
I won the world with words.

Try and get your puny white brains
around this existence enigma -
compile your white canons of a century,
and they turn bleak next to just one year
of multicultural, multidisciplinary Naskar.

I never grovelled to be included,
I let my vastness out,
and the world queues for my grace.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“Earth Belongs to The Natives (Sonnet 2401)

We cannot abolish systemic persecution
without dismantling systemic privilege.
You cannot wipe the slate clean, but you can
take the responsibility and stand to heal.

Colonizers are the second class citizens,
every land first belongs to the indigenous.
Landback is the mother of all movements,
it contains the plight of all First Humans.

Women are indigenous to their own body,
Palestinians are indigenous to palestine;
uncultured crowns and criminal uncles
have no jurisdiction over our Earthright.

Earth belongs to the Natives, settlers are
welcome, but as participant, not head of state.
Somos indígenas, somos indomables -
you can make us houseless, but never homeless.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“Earth belongs to the Natives.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“Earth belongs to the Natives, settlers are welcome, but as participant, not head of state.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“Somos indígenas, somos indomables - you can make us houseless, but never homeless.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“Landback is the mother of all movements, it contains the plight of all First Humans.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“Colonizers are the second class citizens, every land first belongs to the indigenous.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“Colonizers are the second class citizens,
every land first belongs to the indigenous.
Landback is the mother of all movements,
it contains the plight of all First Humans.

Women are indigenous to their own body,
Palestinians are indigenous to palestine;
uncultured crowns and criminal uncles
have no jurisdiction over our Earthright.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“Earth belongs to the Natives, settlers are welcome, but as participant, not head of state. Somos indígenas, somos indomables - you can make us houseless, but never homeless.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop