Who Speaks for Former Colonies in Britain — and Why?

London Letter

By Shyam Bhatia

In contemporary Britain, criticism of former colonies increasingly comes not from former colonial officials or white commentators, but from people whose origins lie in those countries themselves. Journalists, academics, policy advisers and public intellectuals — often members of overseas diasporas — are routinely given prominent platforms to denounce bureaucracy, infrastructure, political culture and democratic health in the countries from which their families once came.

“Any visitor to the museum from a colonised country is aware of their own past the minute they step into the museum: history, jewels and finery ripped away from their country to be held in Britain, a colonial cultural massacre of sorts in itself…” — Shazia Awan. Pic – The Times

At first glance, this appears to be pluralism at work. Insiders are speaking frankly, unburdened by the paternalism and racial hierarchy that once characterised imperial commentary. On closer inspection, however, it reveals something more troubling: a structural asymmetry in who is encouraged to criticise whom — and to what end.

Critics of Indian, African or Caribbean origin lend a particular authority to these narratives. When they speak, the critique is insulated from accusations of colonial condescension. It is not Britain passing judgement on others; it is “one of their own” doing so. The effect is subtle but powerful. It authenticates an image of post-colonial societies as perpetually failing states, while Britain’s own historical and contemporary failures remain largely unscrutinised.

George Orwell once observed that “the most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” In modern Britain, history is rarely denied outright. Instead, it is acknowledged briefly, then quietly bracketed. Empire becomes background texture rather than an organising system whose political, economic and moral consequences continue to shape the present.

This asymmetry matters because it determines how power continues to operate long after formal empire has ended. Britain’s public conversation is most comfortable when criticism travels in one direction. Corruption, institutional weakness and democratic backsliding in former colonies are examined with forensic zeal. The conditions under which those weaknesses were created — extraction, racial hierarchy and coercive governance — are treated as settled history, no longer requiring sustained attention.

What is rarely acknowledged is that this pattern does not operate in reverse. Britons living abroad — whether journalists, academics, consultants or policy advisers — are not routinely encouraged to act as moral emissaries, publicly cataloguing Britain’s own institutional failures for foreign audiences. There is no comparable expectation that expatriate Britons will foreground the deterioration of the National Health Service, the chronic shortage of affordable housing, the normalisation of political misconduct, or the weak accountability of institutions such as the BBC and the monarchy. These are treated as internal matters, discussed domestically with irony or resignation, not as systemic failures requiring explanation abroad.

The same holds true for Americans overseas. American-origin commentators are not habitually elevated in foreign capitals to denounce mass incarceration, gun violence, decaying infrastructure, or the corrosive influence of money on politics as evidence of civilisational decline. When such critiques do appear, they are framed as dissent within a powerful state, not as confirmation of a deeper moral or institutional deficiency. Criticism of Western societies, when it travels, does so cautiously and conditionally. Criticism of former colonies, by contrast, is encouraged to circulate freely, often with the added legitimacy of diaspora voices.

Mauritius will recognise this pattern instinctively. A society shaped by successive empires — Dutch, French and British — it achieved political independence without ever receiving a full moral reckoning for what preceded it. There was no sustained apology, no comprehensive accounting of extraction or hierarchy, and no shared understanding of how colonial power reshaped land ownership, labour systems, language and elite formation. What followed was not closure, but silence — polite, managed, and often mistaken for resolution.

The dynamic is most visible in Britain’s conversation about India, where Indian-origin critics are frequently elevated as authoritative witnesses to decline. Yet the pattern is not confined to India. Across the post-colonial world — including societies such as Mauritius — moral authority is often filtered through selected voices deemed safe, articulate and reassuring, while deeper questions about responsibility, apology and repair remain carefully untouched.

Frantz Fanon warned of precisely this danger. In The Wretched of the Earth, he argued that post-colonial societies risk inheriting not only colonial structures, but colonial habits of thought — including the internalisation of external judgement. “The colonial world,” Fanon wrote, “is a world cut in two.” Long after independence, that division often survives in discourse, determining who speaks with authority and who is spoken about.

This reluctance to confront moral responsibility has deep historical roots. British rule in India relied not only on force, but on indigenous intermediaries whose cooperation legitimised repression.

Two figures are emblematic. Sobha Singh, a Delhi contractor, identified and informed on revolutionaries after the assassination of the British officer J. P. Saunders. Hans Raj Vohra provided testimony that helped secure the conviction and execution of Bhagat Singh. These men were not marginal collaborators; they were integral to how colonial justice functioned.

Crucially, they were also rewarded. Sobha Singh prospered under British patronage, accumulating wealth, property and official favour, and remained a respected figure within elite Delhi society. Hans Raj Vohra received protection and leniency from the colonial authorities, his cooperation treated not as betrayal but as civic assistance. The imperial state exercised violence, but it distributed incentives locally — money, security, status — ensuring that responsibility was shared while accountability remained diffuse.

After Indian independence, such figures slipped quietly out of public reckoning, while the colonial system that empowered and rewarded them was rarely subjected to sustained moral scrutiny. As Chinua Achebe observed, “until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” Empire rarely ruled alone; it ruled through others and then allowed the record to forget how that arrangement worked.

A similar selectivity shapes Britain’s contemporary remembrance of empire. Families across the former imperial world still take pride in ancestors awarded Victoria Crosses, medals and honours for service in Britain’s wars. These stories are often recalled sincerely, with genuine dignity. Yet they sit uneasily alongside Britain’s refusal to confront the broader violence, extraction and coercion that framed imperial rule itself.

Individual bravery is celebrated; structural injustice is bracketed off. Loyalty is honoured; accountability is deferred. Empire is remembered as a collection of personal stories rather than a political system whose consequences continue to shape lives and institutions.

The absence of apology is central to this moral evasion. Britain has perfected the language of regret without responsibility, sympathy without repair. Museums debate “shared heritage” while retaining control. Cultural diplomacy substitutes for restitution. Loans replace returns. Independence is invoked as proof that the moral conversation is over. Yet for societies shaped by empire — Mauritius among them — the past has never been so neatly sealed.

Mauritius is often described, approvingly, as a model post-colonial society: stable, plural, orderly. The description is not false, but it is incomplete. It risks obscuring how deeply colonial arrangements shaped economic distribution and political culture, and how silence about those arrangements became a condition of post-independence stability. In such contexts, the absence of grievance does not necessarily indicate reconciliation; it may reflect the success of forgetting.

None of this is an argument against criticism, whether from within or outside former colonies. Scrutiny is essential, and self-critique is a mark of political maturity. Diaspora voices have every right to speak and often do so with insight and courage. The issue is not speech, but structure: who is invited to speak, whose critique travels furthest, and which histories are quietly placed beyond discussion.

When criticism of former colonies circulates freely in Britain, while critique of empire itself remains hedged, symbolic or conditional, an imbalance persists. It allows Britain to retain moral authority without confronting moral responsibility. It transforms the descendants of empire into validators of a narrative in which failure is always elsewhere and accountability always deferred.

For Mauritius, as for India and other post-colonial societies, the question is not whether criticism is legitimate — it always is. The question is who sets the terms of that criticism, whose authority is amplified, and which histories are allowed to remain politely unresolved. Until Britain can confront its imperial past without outsourcing moral judgement to selected post-colonial voices, that asymmetry will endure.

Independence ended empire. It did not close the moral ledger.

London, December 20, 2025

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 24 December 2025