كذب «المستعمرون» ولو صدقوا!

The first problem I face as an important introduction to my article is with the word "colonizer" itself!

In Arabic, it comes from the root عَمَرَ; and "عمران" (development) is the opposite of destruction, and the colonizer — in the connotation of the word — is one who develops and revives the land.

But the problem is that the colonizers, when they entered our lands, destroyed more than they developed, and then left us with the task of interpreting destruction as development, looting as growth, and control as modernization!

Perhaps this is one of the most astonishing aspects of the story of colonization: not only did it occupy the land, plunder wealth, and interfere in politics, but it sometimes succeeded in making the language of the colonized itself testify for the colonizer!

Therefore, before we ask: What did the colonizer build?

We must first ask: Why did he build? For whom was what he built? Who paid for it? Who benefited from it?

Here, the experience of India is sufficient to debunk many of the myths of the "white man" about himself.

In the famous debate delivered by the brilliant Indian politician and writer Shashi Tharoor at the Oxford Union in 2015, the man did not stand in a British hall to insult Britain; rather, he did something more embarrassing when he redefined colonial achievements with its own tools and figures.

When he was told, "But the British built the railways and roads in India," his devastating response was: "These railways were not built primarily to meet the needs of Indians, but to serve British interests; to transport raw materials from the interior to the ports, and then ship them to Britain. More importantly, their establishment was done under a system that guaranteed British investors returns from Indian taxes, while the technology, equipment, and profits remained in British hands."

Then Tharoor placed the question in its true context: Does a people need to be colonized for railways to be built for them?

Of course not.

The road is not good in itself if it was built to extract your wealth from your country, and the railways are not a gift if the biggest beneficiary is the one who occupies your land.

Then the numbers came to be more devastating than rhetoric.

According to the figures Tharoor relies on in his book "An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India," India's share of the global economy was about 23% when the British began to control it, then it became just over 3% at the time of their departure. He summarizes the issue by saying that the reason is simple: "India was ruled for the benefit of Britain."

This does not mean that everything created during the colonial era was worthless, or that India did not later benefit from some of the institutions left by colonization; rather, it means that turning the effects of the colonial project into a certificate of innocence for colonization itself is a historical fallacy.

And this is precisely what Tharoor did in the heart of the colonizer's domain.. He did not deny the existence of railways, institutions, and the English language; rather, he asked the question that the colonizer does not want to be asked:

Did you build them for us or for yourself?

Here, I recall Professor Sami Abdul-Latif's recent remarks about "Sykes-Picot"; especially when the discourse shifted from criticizing the effects of colonization to approaching absolving the colonizer of his historical responsibility.

I am not here to discuss the man in everything he said, but rather to compare the position from which he speaks with the position Tharoor stood in.

That man is Indian, standing in the heart of the British institution, and he had no qualms about telling the British: You talk about your achievements, and I ask you about the cost of those achievements and who paid it.

As for us — as Gulf Arabs, how many times have we looked at the history of the colonizer through the eyes of the colonizer himself?

What if Professor Al-Nasf, a former minister and Gulf Arab politician, were in that British hall instead of the Indian politician Tharoor?

I fear he would have described King Charles in the same way a Kuwaiti poet and MP once described President George H.W. Bush during his visit to the Kuwaiti National Assembly after the Gulf War, when he referred to him as "Kahilaan"!

And I do not mean, of course, to mock Al-Nasf or to hold a grudge against him — he has all my respect and appreciation — as much as I mean the irony.. Would we have seen the colonizer as a colonizer if we were in his position?

Perhaps Andalusia provides us with both an answer and a standard; for our civilizational experience there predates the British experience and is capable — in its bright aspects — of telling us that coexistence with the other does not require uprooting his identity, and that development does not need to be preceded by destruction.

Rudyard Kipling — the foremost poet of colonialism, born in Tharoor's India! — was smarter than many contemporary defenders of colonization; for he did not deny control, but gave it a moral name: "The White Man's Burden."

In his famous poem "The White Man's Burden" in 1899, he called on the white man to bear his "burden," speaking of colonized peoples in a language of guardianship and childhood, and about imperial wars as part of the mission to "civilize" others.

Thus, the poem transformed, in the imperial colonial consciousness, into something resembling a literary certificate of innocence: We do not occupy them because we want their land and its riches, but because we want good for them!

And there is nothing more dangerous than the colonization of land except the colonization of meaning.

Now let us shift the lens of history to my homeland, Bahrain..

If we want to know what the British did in my homeland — and more broadly in the Arab homeland — we should not start from the image of the "British advisor" carrying the papers of reform, but we should return to a simpler question: Did Bahrain wait for the British to understand the meaning of education, administration, and participation?

The answer is: No.

In 1919, the journey of modern formal education began in Bahrain with the opening of Al-Hidaya Al-Khalifiya School in Muharraq, which is considered the first modern formal school in Bahrain and the Arabian Gulf. It was not a British project brought by the political resident to Bahrain, but rather arose from official and community Bahraini efforts, an education administration was formed, donations were opened, and the people contributed their money to build the school.

In other words, the first formal school in the Gulf was not a gift from the colonizer!

Here, we must also be fair.

This does not mean that everything that came after that in terms of administrative development in Bahrain was evil, or that every British figure necessarily worked according to a single colonial agenda.

Take Charles Belgrave, the most famous foreign figure in contemporary Bahraini history, as an example.

He indeed had tangible contributions to the development of Bahraini government administration, and this is something that should not be denied simply because the man is British.

But even here, there is an important historical detail that sometimes gets lost in the narrative: Belgrave did not come to Bahrain as the "British resident" or as a representative of the British government.

He was a personal advisor to the ruler, and his position was announced in The Times newspaper in 1925, then he came to Bahrain to begin his work in 1926.

This detail does not diminish his impact; rather, it places him in the correct context.

But the story becomes more significant when we reach politics.

If colonization came "to teach us democracy," then why was it disturbed when Bahrainis practiced some politics and demanded a little democracy?

In the 1920s, Bahraini demands emerged for the formation of advisory and legislative councils, and Abdul Wahab Al-Zayani and Ahmed bin Lahij were among the most prominent opponents of British intervention in Bahrain's affairs.

In 1923, the Bahraini National Congress was formed, and among its demands was the establishment of an advisory council, and there was even a call for a legislative council. When members of the congress were summoned to the British political agency in November of the same year, Al-Zayani and bin Lahij were arrested and deported to India.

The British documents themselves, preserved today in the Qatar Digital Library from the records of the India Office, contain details of the deportation of the two men to Bombay and their detention there. In fact, the file of Al-Zayani and bin Lahij includes petitions and documents related to their case.

And the most ironic aspect of the paradox is that Al-Zayani, after his exile to India, continued to resist British intervention, enlisting the help of the Indian lawyer and politician Muhammad Ali Jinnah — who would later become the founder of Pakistan — to appeal in the Indian courts and authorities against his deportation and the related objections to British intervention in Bahrain's affairs.

In other words, a Bahraini demanded consultation in his country, and was exiled by the British to India; then an Indian man, who would later become the founder of Pakistan, defended the Bahraini's right before the colonial institution itself!

Isn't this alone enough to make us rethink the phrase "the colonizer who came to teach us democracy"?

Even stranger is that some narratives lead us to imagine that the British in Bahrain — and wherever they tread as occupiers — were merely neutral observers or employees who came to grant us modern administration.

But the history of Bahrain during that period reveals deep British intervention in internal affairs, and a struggle over the limits of the ruler's authority, councils, administration, and reforms.

Here, history cannot be reduced to a simplistic binary: "The British are evil, and the Bahrainis are good."

History is more complex than that.

But complexity does not mean absolving the colonizer.

It means we should ask: Who was the decision-maker? Who held the power? Who had the right to object?

If Britain truly believed that representative and democratic institutions were an absolute good, then why was it sensitive to them when the people of Bahrain demanded them?

There is another, more bitter dimension.

Colonialism in many areas of our Arab world did not merely manage existing differences; rather, its policies were sometimes linked to classifying groups and managing social and sectarian divisions in a way that served the stability of its influence.

Bahrain is not an exception to a long history of British intervention in internal balances.

Thus, the most dangerous thing colonialism does is not to place a soldier at your door, but to make you quarrel with your brother over the definition of the homeland, while it stands above the dispute as the judge, mediator, and protector.. or as Al-Mutanabbi poetically phrased the idea.. "In you is the dispute, and you are the adversary and the judge!"

Therefore, I return to the first word:

"Colonizer"...

A beautiful Arabic word in its origin, but in our historical experience, it is almost sarcastic and oppressive.

For what we called "colonizer" was not always a builder.

And the one who claimed to have come with education was not the first to teach us.

And the one who said he came with democracy was not always happy when we demanded it.

And the one who claimed to have come to protect our interests should first have proven that our interests were the intended ones, not those of his empire.

Here, I find that the best we can do is not to erase the chapter of "colonialism" from our history, nor to deny every institution it left behind, but rather to strip it of its "innocent" narrative about itself.

The road built by the colonizer does not become a virtue merely because it is a road.

The school established by the colonizer does not become a gift merely because it is a school.

The institution introduced by the colonizer does not become evidence of his good intentions merely because it is an institution.

The question should always be when we return to that chapter: Who built it? Why? For whom? Who paid for it?

And if we want to conclude the story in a few lines, let us say:

The "colonizers" lie even when they speak the truth; because the biggest lies of colonialism were not in what it said about itself, but in what it convinced us to say about it.

And perhaps the most beautiful paradox that I conclude with is that the Indian Shashi Tharoor did not need to destroy statues of the British, nor to insult Britain, to defeat its narrative.

He stood in Oxford, in the house of the colonizer, and returned to him the bill of "civilization."

And this is the lesson we also need:

We do not need to hate the West; rather, we need to stop viewing our history through its eyes.

And thanks to God for publishing this article in a platform from a homeland that has never been trodden by an occupier; so that no one comes to attribute a favor to the colonizer in establishing "Okaz"!