There seems to be some confusion regarding what does and does not constitute as “authentic” history. The history we read on paper, in published books is what we accept as the Truth. At the end of the day, avenues that we deem “official” are the ones that retain unequivocal authority and the right to establish what is truth and what is myth.

By quantifying history through the written word we assume that the events of the past have been left in the past. The plight of entire civilizations is acknowledged in a paragraph, or maybe two, then we move on to whatever came next. A nod to the past is all that is deemed necessary- why brood over something that no longer exists?

The content of History as penned down by The White Man caters to a perspective that effectively eradicates a cacophony of local voices- voices that survived the brutality perpetrated by the colonizer, voices that bore the brunt of  “civilizing” expeditions. The physical, human evidence of colonial brutality has long faded in many parts of the world- not many people remain who can testify against the White Man; the brutality He committed dies with the people He brutalized. But there is so much more to the violence than just human bodies.

 The damage that persists today exists in the perception of the colonized- the way they are represented in the modern world. Dadabhai Naoroji, a product of his time, referred to the “humane influence” that the British would have on what one would consequently assume, was an inhumane society. The effect of language on cognition is driven by the use of very specific words that paint a vivid picture of two societies: one being an “advanced humanitarian civilization” and the other, by default, being the exact opposite. This is Imperialism in its ability to infiltrate the minds of the people, making them believe that they are, in fact, inherently less than The White Man. 

 Gandhi’s take on the matter provides a radically different perspective; he sends the reader reeling out of the trance they have been coaxed into. It is by contextualizing history, done beautifully by Gandhi, that we begin to realize the deeply pervading impact of colonialism that extends far beyond the lifetime of the first colonized generation. It alienates one from their own culture, their own traditions and most importantly: their own history. By condemning civilization, one might automatically assume that Gandhi supports an ‘uncivil’ way of life; in doing so, the reader is imposing a binary on a society: European and the Other. It is in multiple ways that Gandhi exposes the artificial, arbitrary nature of these constructed realities, these myths that are paraded as accurate representations of an entire people.

Gandhi romanticizes spirituality, religiosity and celebrates the simplicity of his people- embracing a way of life that is no longer deemed acceptable. In doing so he is actively recognizing his way of life- the Indian way of life- as equally legitimate to the modern. It takes an exceptionally self-aware individual to acknowledge that one way of being, of existing, is not inherently superior to another. One of the most infuriating aspects of this fictitious representation is that it is completely one-sided; the people accused of being savages have no say, no way to argue otherwise, because their version of history dies with them, while The White Man’s word is revered as the only ‘accurate’ History.  

 How, then, does one seek representation and recognition for something that does not exist? It is in the perseverance of one, dominant perspective wherein lies the true victory of colonialism: intellectual subjugation of the (de)colonized. The White Man’s books, His written word, ensures that the entire world will perceive of an entire people the way He wills it. More important than that, however, are the future generations of the colonized that will be convinced of their ancestors’ “savagery”, perhaps even leading them to feel a debt of gratitude towards The White Man for His benevolence upon their people. The memory of brutalized ancestors fades, the word of the colonizer remains; “the word ‘gone’ is equivalent to ‘remained’.”

In the context of Hind Swaraj, representation refers to an untainted existence. Colonialism directly impacted the cognitive abilities of the colonized which meant that it became difficult to reconcile with the ideas of progress that modernity brought. Amidst this cognitive dissonance, to be represented is to perhaps believe with conviction that if the developmental trajectory of the colonized was not altered at the behest of the colonizer, this alternate reality would not have been inferior in any form. Gandhi’s critique of modern civilization revolves around the idea of progress being stimulated by avarice. He alluded to the innate ability human beings have to introspect that has been stripped by the machinations of modern civilization. A crisis of representation occurs with the enforcement of modernity which results in people losing their individuality. The disruption of organic progress separated those who were subjugated from their essence. A coping mechanism in response to this is clinging onto spirituality, as promulgated by Gandhi.

The epistemic framework which began to dominate our thinking subconsciously was that of the colonizer. We replaced those who subjugated us, but the subjugation still persists. With every passing generation, the possibility of being represented is becoming increasingly lost as it is difficult to regain our essence and coexist in a system which values modernity instead of highlighting the devastation it has caused. A lack of representation is highlighted by the kind of discourse we as students are exposed to. Certain paradigms of knowledge are valued more than others which do not originate from the perspective of the oppressed. Even history as a discipline is marred by all that has been lost and not been documented. With the passage of time, representation will continue to become obscured to an even greater extent. We now exist in a time in which it is difficult to fathom what could have been had we been allowed to exist.

A few months ago, as I was searching for potential courses to take in spring semester, I came across one named Explorations in Urdu Language and Literature. As someone who regrets the fact that they don’t have nearly as good a command on the Urdu language as they would like to have, this course seemed like a perfect fit for me. One thing about it particularly stood out – the fact that name of the instructor seemed European, not Pakistani.

Some further research revealed that said instructor was American and very well qualified, with a PhD in Linguistic Anthropology and advanced proficiency in multiple South Asian languages (including Urdu). There is no doubt in the fact that such a scholar has a much greater command over and expertise of Urdu language and literature than I (someone who hasn’t formally studied these disciplines past the eleventh grade) do. However, perhaps her prowess does not match that of native scholars of Urdu – those that have not only studied the language extensively from an academic perspective but have also been born and bred into it. 

Ever since the colonization of India by the British, we have privileged Western knowledge over our own. Dadabhai Naoroji, in his book titled Poverty and un-British rule in India, writes of English education’s “great, noble, elevating, and civilizing literature and advanced science”. Even when the discipline in question was intrinsically Indian, the idea of a white man teaching it has always seemed very intriguing. An example of this is Alfred Woolner, a professor of Sanskrit at Punjab University in the early 20th century. It is not an unreasonable assumption to make that there existed Indians scholars at the time who could have filled this role, but it was obviously the ‘white man’ and his knowledge that was given preference.

The issue isn’t that someone from the West learns (and in turn, teaches) Urdu. In fact, doing so would lead to a spread of language and culture that most people would consider favourable. However, to be a non-native, regardless of your command over the language, and teach native speakers their own language speaks volumes about the intellectual superiority (hegemony even) we have given to the West. To put things into perspective, to me at least, the idea that a Pakistan or an Indian could teach undergraduate courses in English at Oxford or Princeton (or any university in the UK or the US, for that matter) seems unfathomable.

Issues pertaining to language are rightly considered one of the more important remnants of colonialism. An example would be the widely held idea that proficiency in English serves as a measure of intelligence and social standing in Pakistan. However, the fact that we still give our ‘colonial masters’ an influence even over our own languages proves that there is still much left to decolonize.

Note: This piece does not intend to criticize or disrespect the instructor in question, but instead aims to serve as a commentary on the agency over the languages, history, and cultures of states that are going through the process of decolonization.

The Road to El Dorado is a disney film written by two white men and was released in 2000. Film is a mode of representation and this film, like other forms of discourse constructs an image of the indigenous. This indigenous other is set apart from the rational, humane, scientific, white man, as opposed to an irrational, emotional, ritualistic, backward, animal like, savage. Accounts of explorers and missionaries that “discovered” the new world have portrayed indigenous people as exotic beings. These tropes are well alive and perpetuated further through various means. Anthropology as a discipline is guilty of contributing to them. Edward Said argues that these depictions of the Occident are exoticised and serve the interests of the Orient. Underlying these representations are racist ideals and an agenda that posits them as superior, and allows them to valorise themselves as saviours.

The film’s protagonists, Tulio and Miguel are from Spain and are mistaken for gods in El Dorado.Since they are the protagonists, El Dorado is depicted through their eyes. It is a magical, mysterious exotic land where there is endless wealth that they seem to be entitled to. They can go in and collect hoards of gold and escape, without being portrayed as being greedy or having misguided intentions. The inhabitants of El Dorado are indigenous population who welcome Tulio and Miguel as their gods by bowing down to them, therefore driving in the idea that the indigenous are ritualistic as opposed to rational white men. Tulio and Miguel also go on to fool the indigenous in numerous instances by pretending to prevent a volcanic eruption and by defeating the trained men at ball, as if the indigenous are gullible and foolish.

There is acknowledgement of Cortez as the villain but his wickedness is overshadowed by the native negative character, high priest Tzekel-Kan who possesses certain powers. He also advocates sacrificing other indigenous as a tribute to the “gods” and predictably, Tulio and Miguel step in to save the indigenous from committing the brutal act. This scene is supposed to reflect the ‘backwardness’ of the indigenous and their savagery and hence, establishes the moral superiority of the white man. Numerous eyewitness accounts of the colonisers claim the existence of cannibalism in indigenous societies such as the Aztecs, however there has been no evidence and the likelihood that the numbers are exaggerated is high. These moralistic humane representations of themselves and brutal representations of the other further their agenda. These representations are linked to power since they commit epistemic violence against the other. Who the indigenous are, their culture, the values they espouse and their voices are all thus silenced through these representations. They also do not acknowledge the violence, the histories of exploitation, the extraction of wealth that colonialism brought with it. The long lasting damages of these representations are such that also seep into the minds of those who are colonised, the intergenerational trauma that the indigenous people carry forward goes unaddressed.

This tyranny of representation also normalises violence and racism against indigenous people to this day. In January 2019, at an Indigenous people’s march, a number of high school students harassed an indigenous man by chanting “build that wall” amongst other insulting remarks. These representations  allow people like Donald Trump to get away with calling Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas and mocking the Wounded Knee massacre.

The idea that that it is the white man’s burden to save humanity  is further driven in by scene where the indigenous are chasing Chel, a native woman with spears. It is emblematic of this white man’s saviour complex that he, the white man must save the native woman from native men. The native man is portrayed as being cruel as opposed to the good hearted white man. A common trope in films such as Pocahontas where the native woman falls in love with the white man was also present in The Road to El Dorado.

There are a few scenes where there seems to be an erasure of difference where Miguel and Tulio collaborate with the indigenous to defeat Cortes and when Miguel plays ball with the natives but these representations do not undo the harm caused by the non divergent representations that are predicated on this very difference. The problem of the indigenous being represented as a mass without much difference is what allows myths regarding the indigenous to persist. These dominant representations that portray the other as a depersonalised static person do not allow changing or challenging the way the past is conceived.

Other implications of these representations are that they allowed the evolutionary theory to have a strong hold over academia, and apart from justification of colonisation and the extraction of wealth, there was other kinds of violence inflicted on people based on these ideas such as sterilisation of black people. Ideas of social darwinism were used to deny people rights for not being as civilised as the white man. These representations normalised a discourse where what constitutes the other remains unchallenged and the white man has the authority to comment on the other.

An alternate representation such as Obseyesekere’s or Rigoberta’s is crucial because it challenges the stereotypes associated with a group of people, but also one that recognises their history, their voices, and deconstructs this other. It overturns the frameworks that have shaped reality for people and thus is necessary.

“There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man; there is only one world to the spirit of our race.”  

Only one. As I read Death and the Kings Horseman, I can’t help but focus on these words. The Praise Singer’s speech has a stilted, almost other-worldly quality— a world which Soyinka purposely shrouds in a certain mystery. It is a world to which the reader (or audience, if you are lucky enough to be watching this on stage) cannot gain access, however much they may want to. It is a private world, made public only through necessity. And it is the Praise Singer who presents us with the wisdoms of this world. 

Why do we tell stories the way we do? Whether consciously or not, as story tellers we continuously make choices to represent things the way we see them, or rather, the way we believe them to be. Representation is a loaded word. And Soyinka himself, in his decision to portray his characters the way he does, commits a certain violence against them. Although each character has been written with care and detail, none of them can claim for themselves the status of being complete— they are representations of Soyinka’s view of the world, and in turn they too, bring their own stories of representation to the table.  

The Praise Singer is the thread connecting the dead king to Elesin. Through him the community is prevented from going astray. The human equivalent of an alarm clock, the Praise Singer’s words hearken back to pre-colonial times when matters of life and death were in the control of Elesin and his contemporaries. He is the voice of history— of what Soyinka portrays as a timeless past which cannot wholly be erased. The words of the Praise Singer are heavy— they bear the weight of representation of a world. I have used the word ‘a’ deliberately here, for this is not the world you and I know. It is one of seeming contradictions, where death is the pathway to life, and the “soul of man” is a fact and not a philosophic debate. 

But what makes this world important enough for me to neglect all other aspects of the play and focus merely on this one line? After all, the Praise Singer is not the character driving the plot forward. He is a mere spotlight through whose light Elesin is made visible. The answer to the question above does not lie in the nature of the world itself, but in the words “only one”. The Praise Singer speaks of a world saturated with “the spirit of our race”. It exists in singularity and is not just specific to his people but has remained despite the “white slavers” attempts to wrench it of its “heart”, “mind”, and “muscle”. The world that the Praise Singer represents is alive— death is merely a method of affirming the vitality of this life. This representation of the world does not only conflict with that of the colonizers but in a way confirms it as well. There is a clear agreement that there exists “only one world”. The struggle arises over what that world should look like.  

However, if we analyze the words of the Praise Singer a little further, it soon becomes clear that perhaps he is arguing something else entirely. To him, the struggle may not be one of claiming the world through ousting the other. It almost seems as if his words hold the potential of the presence of multiple worlds coexisting side by side. If one is to focus on the spatial layout of the play this theory holds. Pilkings house is near enough to the market place for him to hear the beating of the drums, yet to the space he occupies may as well be another world for all its similarity to the one outside. What makes Pilkings’ world different from the Praise Singer’s is the fact that he does acknowledge the presence of the latter in it. This presence exists in his shadow, and Pilkings’ purpose in this world is to fashion men like the Praise Singer in his own image— a white image. The Praise Singer’s world on the other hand does not preclude the existence of the other. His words are simple— there is “only one” world in which the “soul of man” can be free, in which the “spirit” of his people can be. And this world, if nothing else, is safe from Pilkings through his sheer inability to understand it.  

 

I have been slaving over these lines for weeks. Have made failed attempts, day in and day out, to figure out why I feel such a block. The dialogues make sense, my delivery is sound, my movement precise yet it seems that my years of experience in the conservatory have failed me. 

Only today I realized how truly unaware I was. It took Soyinka’s overwhelming, physical presence and his piercing words reeked in disappointed to open me up to this truth. 

“You are just as ignorant of African culture, African politics, African rhythms as everyone else,” he said. I was shocked, how could he have said this? If anything I’ve been trained in one of the most selective conservatories in NewYork, I have performed countless times on the very stage the play is to be performed on, and even worked under the tutelage and instruction of a choreographer well versed in Yoruba dance and culture.

Yet, his words pierce because they are true. Of course, I cannot recreate the essence of the dance he harkens to from Yoruba’s colonial past. My attempts of pretending to be connected to ancestors I don’t know, to a language I don’t speak, to a world I don’t inhabit are in vain. 

I understand the play well enough to perform it. To my surprise, however, the problem lay not in the script but in the author’s note. Soyinka emphatically cautioned against reducing his work down to the theme of a “Clash of Cultures”. To my mind, this obviously meant that the Yoruba cosmology was far more important in the action of the play than anything that Pilkings and his colonial administration could do to intervene. The ritual, that is deemed barbaric, illegal and the denial of which warrants admiration in Pilking’s mind still reaches fruition. If it isn’t Elisin, the King’s horseman, sacrificing his life to make sure the Yoruba world does not collapse and that the King’s soul safely reaches to the beyond, it is his son that tragically sacrifices his own life for the future of his people. 

The play is not to be read as a “Clash of Cultures” because it implies that the two cultures in question have an equal chance at the outcome of the play. Close reading revealed that this was not the case. The colonial administration is but a mere bystander in the action of the play, they ultimately can’t do much because they simply don’t understand how their subjects feel, why they do the things they do and why this event for Yoruba is so important and thus they have no bearing on what ensues. Or so I thought. 

The framework within which my interpretation of the play operated was sound but I had missed the point entirely. The “clash” was unequal, yes, but it was not how I had imagined. My interpretation suggested the complete opposite of the truth. It is their position that is stronger than my ancestors, not because the ritual gains fruition and the world is saved, but because I can’t, for the life of me, get to the essence of the dance the way Soyinka wants me to.“Clash of Cultures” implies that we have a chance, we do not. 

He recalled a story today of how he was at Churchill College, Cambridge, while he was exiled from his country, and how every day he’d see a statue of Churchill’s face as he descended down his college staircase and how he’d want to see it fall and crash. I didn’t have it in me to ask him why he didn’t do it, just as Maxwelle had done for Rhode’s statue on his university campus in South Africa, but I think I know what he would have said. 

The impact and legacy of our colonial past are too pervasive. I too don’t understand the symbolic importance of the clothes I wear and the way I live. I am just as oblivious as Pilkings and his wife are to the traditional dress they shamelessly clad on their bodies.

In the introduction of his award winning play Death and the King’s Horseman, Wole Soyinka warns the reader of misinterpreting his play as an exploration of a clash between two cultures because the word “clash” would imply an equal and fair fight which as we all are aware of was not the case in colonial Nigeria.

Soyinka, instead, steers away from this conflict entirely and devotes his skills towards providing an honest and accurate portrayal of Yoruba culture and the threats it is exposed to with the arrival of the British. It is through this honest portrayal that we truly get to realize the perils of misrepresentation and how it contributed to the epistemic violence colonialism unfurled upon the colonized minds and their identities.

Soyinka based his play on a real life event which took place in 1946 when a district official attempted to stop the horseman of a Yoruba king from committing ritualized suicide. If this event is viewed as an isolated one and is bogged down with the biases and stereotypes perpetuated through the colonial gaze, it is not difficult to imagine how this event might have been reported and presented to the masses. Words like “savages”, “primitive” and “backwards” might have been thrown around and received with gasps of horror and disgust. To counter these reactions, Soyinka offers a closers view of how this event unfolded but from the perspective of the Yoruban people.

He gives Elesin Oba, the tragic hero of the play, the center stage who is armed with his powerful language that is littered with Yoruban proverbs. Burdened with the heroic task of sacrificing himself in order to keep the “world adrift”, Elesin exhibits hesitation towards his suicide. Throughout this looming threat, the European presence in this play is quite muted and serves as mere background noise at some points. Jane and Simon are seen preparing for a ball, dressing up in costumes as the entire world’s fate hangs in the balance. Their concerns are revealed to be almost childish and insignificant when placed with the knowledge that the world is under threat. By shedding light on these complexities, Soyinka inverts the narrative of the white savior employed by colonizers throughout history. For example in India the practice of sati was abolished framed within that narrative. However, in this case the natives are the ones that are attempting to rescue the colonizers from their own ignorance. Soyinka goes further in depth to reveal the turmoil and hesitance behind such a decision. Elesin does not mindlessly march towards his death, his doubts are constantly holding him back. Soyinka also embeds a mock-conversation between the Girls in the play to show how one’s individuality can be misconstrued and limited when it is presented in a reductive way. The conversation attempts to reduce a British individual to a babbling fool who goes on and on about the weather thus illustrating the consequences the misrepresentation of an unfamiliar subject can have.

Although our world is still adrift in the vast cosmic arena, Soyinka has managed to keep this particular moment in history from falling prey to misrepresentation.

Upon reading Gandhi’s views relating to civilisation and Englishmen for the first time; it is hard not to be confused and uneasy in the face of his somewhat radical interpretations relating to the English being in India. However, putting these views into the broader discourse regarding colonialism, it can be argued that Gandhi is struggling to reconcile his own spirituality with the commerce driven British rule. The underlying motivation to his opposition to all things British is the simple reason that those things lack the representation of the Indian culture and spirituality and he would much rather prefer the flawed aspects of the Indian way of life than live with the convenient lifestyle the British have introduced. His opinions that include him pitying the English as being slaves to consumerism and capitalism, allows him to create a discourse in which he aims to reverse the roles of ‘the savage’ and ‘the other.’

His beliefs are created in the face of the epistemic violence propagated by the British which has permitted them to take India, this is evident when he states that Britain did not take India by the sword and nor does she keep it by the sword. The coloniser created a domain of knowledge which is limited to how they represent the natives and themselves. It is Gandhi’s way to reject this form of knowledge and opinions and to create a representation of what he believes is truly ‘Indian’ which in his view is untainted by the evil and sinful ways that the British and the West live.

Hence, even though Gandhi’s views seem drastically anti-Western, but in order to understand where he is coming from, it is essential to deconstruct his argument and understand his want to see India being represented in its own terms rather than those of the West, thus, his argument to let go of machinery and his belief in how doctors and railways contaminate the soul. He believes that India is its own entity without the need to be ‘reformed’ and ‘civilised’ and has its own sense of self which can only be realised by self-rule or ‘Hind Swaraj.’

It should be noted that he does not see India as being perfect or Utopian, what he stands for instead is that although India has defects such as religious superstition and the ground level differences between different nations and religions, but a coloniser who is essentially an outsider is not the solution. What he stands for is proper representation of India which is only possible by self-rule.

What lies at the heart of Gandhi’s conversation in Hind Swaraj is the individual experience and struggle of an ordinary Indian in a territory colonized by the British- the bearers of the plague of modern civilization. It is in this very territory that the Indians are told that they must watch and learn, and that they must emulate and transform to rise above their stubborn, stagnant state of being uncivilized. Yet, they are also shown that they will never truly be at par with the white man and his nation simply because they were never gifted with his virtues of whiteness, intelligence and ambition. An entire nation is told that it is not good enough, that it might never be, and that it has no choice but to still keep trying. One can imagine some Indians aimlessly moving around their own land, working harder and harder to prove themselves to the white man. Some would become privileged slaves to him, and some would profess anger and emotion, dreaming about ousting the English or gaining the power to represent themselves. However, true Swaraj, as Gandhi explains, goes beyond just the presence of Indians in the place of the English as rulers and representatives of power- it is the journey of every Indian man, woman and child to recognize their true selves and cure themselves of the disease of delusion. In essence, the tyranny of representation, constantly afflicting the Indians, lies in the continuous inability to recognize the true Indian experience because of the deeply ingrained disregard of feelings and respect, and simply, infliction of pain. The only thing that the Indians must learn is to rule their own minds and souls, to realize that their perceived backwardness is their very asset. Representation, therefore, must not be only be gained or won- it must be felt and experienced by the Indian mind and soul, in order for its body to free itself from the tyranny.

Therefore, the crisis of representation exists because Indians look for replacement or recognition from the colonizers, rather than from themselves, and embody it in protests rather than understand it as a process. The Indian population’s “own navy” or “army” will not come to represent its “own splendor” as the conversation suggests. The physical English symbols of power and progress- of parliaments and courts, of navies and armies- in purely Indian hands seem to promise freedom but will only cloud the Indian identity even more. The crisis of representation will continue because despite power in darker hands, Indians will now be represented by the legacy of the colonized instead of the colonizers. It is these very symbols and adoptions that would ensure that the English disease spreads in such a way that the Indian mind accepts it and thus the body never heals. It is because “happiness is largely a mental condition” that true home rule will always be dependent on the strength of the Indian mind, a strength that must lie “in the absence of fear”. A strength that would become indestructible by the mere symbols of English power, by railways and telegraphs, and by doctors and lawyers. It is the Indian experience itself that would render “Manchester cloth” as irrelevant to the Indian way of life, despite the continuation of their trade, the production of their factories, and their physical presence on Indian soil. In effect, the conversation shows that because the injury of the Indian self-worth was a process that began from the mind, its healing shall also be one. The tyranny of the phenomenon of representation lies in the delusion that one nation is and will remain enslaved to another nation. This delusion impairs not only the mind, but the eyes as well, which see peace in endeavors of becoming a part of the diseased modern civilization. The tyranny is further rooted in the Indians’ refusal to look within themselves and face their hurt, degraded and battered, individual souls.  It lies in a fear of discovering what injuries they will find within or whether they will find anything left at all.  It lies in the suffering of an amnesia, to be wronged and told to forget all about it, to be perpetually lost and delude oneself to be on the path to freedom- a way perhaps, of never really healing.

In essence, symbols and representation, though only suggestive in nature themselves, yield immense power due to the meanings that they suggest. While Gandhi sees “machinery” as a “chief symbol of modern civilization” and representative of “a great sin”, he does not deny that the Indian village and community has its own sins. Therefore, the entire meaning of the journey of Swaraj and freedom from the tyranny of representation is to rule one’s own mind first and recognize all that is Indian- the virtues and the sins, the strong and the weak, and the diversity of people and religions. It does not do to simply go back in time, to remember where it all began from, but to come back to the present time, recognize what has been done to them, and who they truly are.

The notion of the ‘Other’ has always subjected the conquered to unprecedented challenges. It is not just marked with subjugation but also a repression of their culture. Hence, the natives are left with little choice but to cling onto preserving their culture

Rigoberta, in her testimony, highlights her struggles; a struggle towards life. Becoming a voice for the voiceless, Rigoberta narrates how native Indians in Gautemala are subjugated, exploited and discriminated. This reality is instilled in them from the very beginning of their lives when at several instances they are exposed to the truth of ‘white men’ dishonoring their ancestors. These white men are the reason why children die of hunger and why they must not reveal their secrets because in a world dominated by White men, Indians will always be misunderstood.

A classic example of this is when they organize themselves to retrieve their lands back. They are labeled as guerrillas, working as communist agents. Rigoberta’s father is burnt alive along with other protestors who only wished to protest peacefully with orphans by their side outside the Embassy. Any form of representation is misunderstood by these White men. It goes unrecognized primarily because the conquerors wish to understand and evaluate them using their own tools, painting them all with the same brush. Hence if anything exists then it is a dichotomy between us vs them.   

This dichotomy forces native Indians to be seen as filthy and dirty. Worked as a maid, Rigoberta narrates how she is treated worse than a dog during her work in the capital.  Their culture is automatically considered inferior and hence anything coming out of them is subjected to scrutiny. They are bound to become passive recipients of the injustices that are imposed on them by the conquerors. These conquerors inevitable know better than them. These injustices, as recounted by Rigoberta, range from their people dying from malnutrition to their houses being forcefully taken away. The biggest injustice remains a rejection of their identity and their culture.

The Native Indians are then left with no choice but to use the very tools of colonialism to get their message across. Bible serves as a tool to help unite their people. Weapons are employed for their own protection. And Lastly Spanish, the language of white men, is used to get their voice heard. However the dilemma remains that the mere sight of these Indians dressed in their unique clothes which is a testament to their simple way of life and hard work are viewed as a creature, incapable of thinking and working for their future. These natives, thus, remain an alien being for the white men and for the world that is run by these people.