This August, the people of Pakistan celebrated 78 years of independence from colonial rule. For most of these years, the country has struggled to navigate stormy seas, replacing one captain after another in the hope of reaching peaceful waters. Is it the captain or the manual itself that needs to be replaced?

In South Asia, approximately 20,000 British officials and troops were able to rule over 300 million people by employing local people encouraged to educate themselves in British legal, administrative and military systems. These people took over the administration of the new states formed after Independence, several generations removed from the systems of the Empires and many kingdoms of South Asia.

While in the initial years it was only practical to adopt the administrative structure of colonial rule, almost eight decades later, colonial laws remain firmly in place, such as The Penal Code of 1860. Some strange-sounding laws, such as The Murderous Outrages Regulation of 1867 (aimed to address perceived threats to colonial authority and European individuals), were only repealed in 2018. Sedition under Section 124-A of the Pakistan Penal Code, an 1860 law to prosecute those who, by words or actions, brought hatred, contempt or disaffection towards the federal or provincial government, was only struck down in 2023.

Colonial laws, administrative systems, the police and military were designed to protect the interests of the rulers and not benefit the ordinary people. Is the retention of these laws and institutions an intellectual laziness, the internalising of colonialism, or a more conscious strategy by the new rulers to remain in control?

Old Imperial strategies have morphed into today’s systems of control, often still dictated by the global North

Author Asaf Hussain, writing in 1979, identified six elite groups: bureaucratic, military, religious, landowning, industrialist and professional elites. The first two were directly trained by the colonialists but soon all became deeply politicised, circulating power within themselves, protecting their own interests and staying aloof from society — in effect, creating a new colonialism. Today, we can add subtler forms of elitism — in education, art and even cinema, as cineplexes take away the joy of cinema from the general public.

Tala Kaddoura, a multimedia journalist, lays out a five-step process describing the colonial strategy. Step One requires a mission — to spread religion, ‘civilise’ an ‘inferior race’ or gain control over resources. Step Two is to create organised chaos through violence, famine, disease and displacement. Step Three is to develop ways to keep it that way. Ensure the colonised feel subdued and participate in your mission. Step Four prevents people from coming together to overthrow colonisers — divide and conquer, create artificial borders, pit one community against another. Step Five is to erase the story people tell themselves. Replace it with another story.

These five steps, which she elaborates with compelling examples, do not seem only strategies of an inglorious past, but could well describe something a bit more contemporary.

The main task of the colonial administration was the extraction of taxes and resources of the country, managing finance and creating endless laws to justify the plunder. The colonial army was essential for suppressing constant internal revolts and maintaining control, ever since the Indian ‘Mutiny’ of 1857.

Colonial police forces served the political interests of the ruling colonial power, acting as the coercive arm of the state to maintain order, gather intelligence and suppress dissent, rather than protect the general population. It all sounds familiar. The 1848 Doctrine of Lapse becomes the rampant land-grabbing of today, from huge swathes of land to the streets of Karachi.

Colonisers were proud of having left the gift of democracy, a gift that remains unopened, as disguised colonial policies thrive in the world, happy to let ‘independent’ countries go round in circles. Instead of physical occupation it wields diplomatic and financial occupation through the IMF, World Bank, INGOs, and the media — including the ‘casual colonialism’ of the entertainment media, from cinema to computer games, to control the narrative.

As Tala Kaddoura puts it, instead of ‘Christianising the savage’, we have ‘developing the global South.’ Instead of direct rule, there is debt diplomacy and foreign aid. A 2023 Oxfam report states, “The richest one percent in the global north were paid $263 billion by the global south through the financial system — over $30 million an hour.”

Many countries, such as Pakistan, serve America’s ‘Long War’ policy, formulated in 2000 to protect US interests. Richard David Hames, founder of the Centre for the Future, says, “The colonial playbook is open again — its pages bloodstained, its logic unchanged… cloaked in the language of democracy, security and civilisation. It leaves behind a trail of shattered sovereignties.”

A new generation across the world — from the streets of North America, Europe and Africa, to the hearts of those who are prevented from public protest — no longer supports the colonial playbook. Will those in power remove their sound-cancelling devices and pay heed to their calls?

Durriya Kazi is a Karachi-based artist.
She may be reached at
durriyakazi1918@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, September 14th, 2025