Rushdie Haunted by his unholy Ghosts — Page 24
24 Mohamed Arshad Ahmedi assert their power over the Asian and African continents at first through trade, and then gradually through political assertion and finally, through economic colonialism. Going hand-in-hand with these changes was the pressure applied by their missionaries who imposed Christianity on the indigenous people. The European colonisation proved extremely unpleasant for the subjects and the rulers openly displayed an attitude of superiority over them. The Western historians readily admit to this. An exam- ple is in the speeches and writings of A. J. Balfour and Lord Cromer around 1910 dealing with British control of Egypt. They assumed British superiority without question and spoke of the ‘oriental’ as having all sorts of weaknesses: incapacity for self-government, social and moral degradation; inability to think logically, and so forth. The colonialists certainly treated their subjects with less compas- sion than would be expected from a people whose religion advo- cates respect for human dignity. It is true that the Europeans were superior materially, and that the rest of the world benefited from their superior education and governing systems, but the sad part has been that they confused this type of superiority with moral su- periority and this led them to regard the oriental and the African as a morally inferior being who was badly in need of guidance to the ‘true’ light through Christianity. But even this was up to a certain point, and not beyond. Thomas Merton honestly analyses the relationship between white colonial administrators and the subjects that they ruled over in an article entitled ‘Cargo Cults of the South Pacific’ in his book Love and Living (New York: Bantam Books 1980; p 77) : ‘. . . of course we are willing to help our black brother, but the help is offered in arrogant, vain, self-complacent terms. We will only help him to be exactly like us, while at the same time making it impossible for him to be like us. So we put him in an impossible bind and then wonder why he feels anguished. . . . . of course, we pretend we want to share our secret with everybody. We want to bring everybody else into