The West Shouldn’t Be Losing So Many Hearts and Minds
A refusal to face up to its own imperialist past is giving Vladimir Putin and other demagogues a free pass.
Russia is making inroads in Africa.
Photographer: Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty Images
Last fortnight, as stocks in India’s Adani Group tanked in response to an American short-seller’s report, a popular ex-cricketer with 23 million Twitter followers tweeted, “India’s progress is not tolerated by whites.” The conglomerate’s own spokesperson invoked the notorious 1919 massacre of nearly 400 unarmed civilians by British forces. Only a few days earlier, India’s Hindu nationalist government had banned a two-part documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged role in anti-Muslim riots in 2002 and accused its makers, the BBC, of a “continuing colonial mindset” — a charge quickly echoed across India’s public sphere.
The Indian elite is hardly alone in opportunistically raising the old banner of anti-colonialism against Western critics. Last year, while announcing his illegal annexation of four Ukrainian provinces, Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced at length the West’s historical depredations in India, China, and other parts of Asia and Africa, and cast Russia as the leader of a global anti-colonial alliance against a “racist” and “neo-colonial” West.