E.5. Challenges Associated With Decolonisation

delete UPSC Sample Notes [English]

E.5. Challenges Associated With Decolonisation

State-building	After independence, the new states needed to establish or strengthen the institutions of a sovereign state – governments, laws, a military, schools, administrative systems, etc. The amount of self-rule granted prior to independence, and assistance from the colonial power and/or international organisations after independence, varied greatly between colonial powers, and between individual colonies Except for a few absolute monarchies, most post-colonial states are either republics or constitutional monarchies. These new states had to devise constitutions, electoral systems, and other institutions of representative democracy
Language policy	“Linguistic decolonization” entails the replacement of a colonizing (imperial) power’s language with a given colony’s indigenous language in the function of official language With the exception of colonies in Eurasia, linguistic decolonization did not take place in the former colonies-turned-independent states on the other continents
Nation-building	Nation-building is the process of creating a sense of identification with, and loyalty to, the state Nation-building projects seek to replace loyalty to the old colonial power, and/or tribal or regional loyalties, with loyalty to the new state Elements of nation-building include creating and promoting symbols of the state like a flag and an anthem, monuments, official histories, national sports teams, codifying one or more Indigenous official languages, and replacing colonial place-names with local ones
Settled populations	Decolonization is not an easy matter in colonies where a large population of settlers lives, particularly if they have been there for several generations. These population, in general, had to be repatriated, often losing considerable property Example: A large Indian community lived in Uganda – as in most of East Africa – as a result of Britain colonizing both India and East Africa
Economic development	Newly independent states also had to develop independent economic institutions – a national currency, banks, companies, regulation, tax systems, etc. Many colonies were serving as resource colonies which produced raw materials and agricultural products, and as a captive market for goods manufactured in the colonizing country. Many decolonized countries created programs to promote industrialization Some nationalized industries and infrastructure, had to engage themselves in land reform to redistribute land to individual farmers or create collective farms