Mohanty in her article on feminist scholarship and colonial discourse talks about the production and construction of the “Third World Woman”. The central idea that shines through is that the identity of the first world woman is relational in nature; it exists because there exists a third world woman, and is essentially founded on and structured on binaries. The complexity lies in the fact that the construction of the third world woman is also carried out with this unconscious attempt to define them. She talks about the process of self-presentation that is carried out through the representation of these women by first world feminists; this binary logic can be seen as parallel to the logic of the colonizer in the construction of his identity: the colonized were savage, barbaric, backwards. This was essentially to say that they, the colonizers, were therefore not – not barbaric, not savage, not backwards. They stood as the other, the other that could then deem people as such, that could fit people into these created categorizations and moulds.

There are several exemplifications of this process employed by first world feminist scholarship, whereby they attempt to superimpose their existing structure onto the third world and its people, its women. Husten’s studies in Egypt fail to take into account the multitude of other factors that go into decisions regarding a woman’s place or role in the economic sphere – she boils the problem down to women’s absence in work outside of home. However, the studies are negligent of the complete lack of social freedoms and choice that form an integral part of these women’s realities. These studies of the third world also do not take into account how developmental and economic processes will have different effects and consequences on different women. The idea of “sisterhood” effectively attempts to eradicate the spectrum within which women, their histories, their identities and the forms of oppression they are subjected to exist. Blanket terms such as “economic emancipation” are not of much use without proper operational definitions that define and explain the underlying historical/socio-economic reasons within which women’s struggles are founded, instead of merely providing descriptive accounts of these issues.

Finally, there are certain pre-existing moulds and structures within which first world feminism operates, and these extend into their scholarship of the third world. These are evident in their fixation with abstractions such as development and progress: but what is it that constitutes as progress? Is progress to be understood as an emulation of everything that the West represents and embodies? Or does it carry meaning that transcends the structure within which they are operating? These are evident, too, in their attachment of value judgments and presupposed connotations to the veil, and their generalizations in understanding sexual relationships and the dynamics prevalent within societies that are structured on kinship ties. Any sort of choice or thought is denied to the third world woman; she is a product of the society she lives in and nothing more. Her contribution to that society is also decided for her by others: whether is it a sexual one if she is unmarried, or a socio-economic one if she becomes a part of the family structure, becoming a wife or a mother. Her existence is studied as an external fact and that only. The third world woman is essentially studied as an object: passive, without agency and without voice. It then becomes the job of the first world feminist to grant them this agency, this voice. It is through this granting and this definitional process that the first world woman defines herself. It then becomes the moral duty of the white feminist to uplift, to inform and to engage. It becomes her burden.

The age of Empire saw the establishment of a new moral and social order. An understanding of the sort of violence that comes with colonization and imperialism is incomplete without an understanding of the epistemic conquest that took place, resulting in the colonizer gaining a monopoly over knowledge, and its varying forms, and the development of a constructed framework within which our understanding of what constitutes as superior and inferior knowledge is grounded. This construction is the reason that Naraoji can make his confident claim to gratitude with regard to the implementation of English education in India, because he too operates within this created universe.

Naraoji’s text is a perfect illustration of the sort of violence that has been referred to, and the corresponding crisis of representation that emerges from it. He talks about the many benefits that British rule has brought to India, mentioning its “humane influence” and the “civilizing” quality that English education carries. These assumptions stem from constructed notions of a non-European other, one that is essentially stuck in ritual, stuck in the past; stagnant, and without the ability to evolve. It is an Other that requires this “elevating, civilizing” power that the colonizer has claimed for himself. It is therefore an other that is in need of outside intervention, and here rests a justification for non-divergent representation.

Naraoji also speaks about the establishment of law and order as another one of the benefits of British rule. He does not expound upon how this system of law and order sought simply to solidify colonial rule  It changed conceptions of space by making it more rigid and fixed. Less fluid conceptions of space meant stricter control and supervision. The Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 was one of the measures taken in order to otherize and ostracize a specific type of lifestyle – the nomadic peasant was difficult to monitor and control and therefore was to be “criminalized”. The number of people that fell under the umbrella of criminal increasingly rose; effectively anyone who divulged from the existing order became criminal, while the Others were the Civilized. This civilizing trait attached to colonial rule, therefore, can better be understood as the enforcement of an entire framework that centers on the West, with the rest of the world seen only in relation to it.

There is a very clear acceptance to the claim and legitimacy of Empire, which shines through in Naraoji’s text. This is logic that argues that the primary issue is that of intention; were the aims of Empire “faithfully and conscientiously fulfilled”, the issue would be resolved. It ignores, however, the fundamental and inevitable problem of representation that unfolds within such a system. This problem cannot be solved through changes in approach or through new figureheads. It is a problem that is rooted in the imposition of a constructed reality onto the “non-civilized”, a problem that stems from that very construction and the unquestioned assumptions that are inherent within it.