Self-righteousness : The Ailment of Humanity

The beginning of the new millennium brought along with it some drastic changes on the world scenario. Most important of them being the war on terror under the leadership of the US, the allies raided Afghanistan on the accusations of terrorism but underlying were several other serious charges being imposed on Talibans, most important being their barbarism, their violation of human rights and their uncivilized ways of running Afghanistan. The excuse for similar intervention in Iraq, initially, was the alleged production of the weapons of mass destruction by the dictator, Saddan Hussain. Later on, when this bubble got busted, new alibis surfaced, elevating them all, again, was the agenda for the promotion of democracy in Iraq and freeing the innocent people of Iraq from a cruel dictatorship.

This scenario is not new at all. Through out the history of mankind, the marauder has presented, more or less, similar kind of excuses for paving the way of plundering the weaker nations. Discussion of ancient and middle ages is out of the scope of this article, for the wagers of those religious wars and crusades are already not considered too civilized and their brutality is openly condemned. However, from the recent past, the colonizing of the third-world countries by the Western imperial powers can be considered a classic case of this ‘self-righteous’ psychology. The declared reasons for colonizing these nations were not because they were the enemies, or because they had any political or economic clashes with the civilized western nations. In fact, according to the perpetrators and their ideological defenders, the nations being invaded, were too backwards, uncivilized, illiterate and intellectually so unstable that they were unable to formulate any firm basis on which to run the political and economic arrangements of the people. Hence, for the sake of their own well being and hefty survival, civilized nations of the West should colonize them. When Napoleon invaded the Oriental Egypt, the reasons being presented were accurately the same that were used by other imperial powers like United Kingdom, Portugal and the Dutch to invade the near and far East. They could not even imagine that the colonized masses would not appreciate their presence on their soil, or that their being the master of their destinies would be a cause of trouble for the local populace. Huge describes Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition in his famous poem “Lui”:

“Victor, enthusiast, bursting with achievements,

Prodigious, he stunned the land of prodigies.

The old sheikhs venerated the young and prudent emir.

The people dreaded his unprecedented arms;

Sublime, he appeared to the dazzled tribes

Like a Mohamet of the Occident. “

-Huge, Les Orientals, in Oeuvres Poetigues, 1:684.

Napoleon, actually, did have some support from the local tribal leaders due to his policies of ruling people by appealing their religious sentiments. However, in the case of British rule, the most effective policies remained those of ‘carrot and stick’ and ‘divide and conquer’. On June 13, 1910, Arthur James Balfour, while lecturing the House of Commons about the problems that the British rule had to deal in Egypt specifically and East generally, commented:

“Is it a good thing for these great nations – I admit their greatness – that this absolute government should be exercised by us? I think it is a good thing. I think that experience shows that they have got under a far better government than in the whole history of the world they ever had before, and which not only is a benefit to them, but is undoubtedly a benefit to the whole of the civilized West….We are in Egypt not merely for the sake of the Egyptians, though we are there for their sake; we are there also for the sake of Europe at large.”

In other words, Britain was the leader and representative of the civilized world and their intervention and colonization of the uncivilized third world countries was a duty to be performed for the sake of the entire civilized world. It doesn’t really matter if you kill a few thousand innocent people during this imperialistic process or if you damage the local civilization and culture, for that is worth it. Almost similar, if not worse, attitude was depicted by the civilized immigrants of the Europe towards the barbaric and savage natives of the North America and Australia. During the process of imposing civilization upon them, millions of them were brutally wiped out off their homeland, for the sake of the sacred duty cultured nations had to perform.

Even the proponents of equality of the masses and severe opposes of imperialism confined their intellectual and ideological pursuits within the civilized nations and when it came to the destiny of the poor nations of backward areas of the world, they supported, if not willingly and openly, the intentions of the imperial powers. Karl Marx, in his ‘Surveys from Exile” suggests:

“England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive and other regenerating – the annihilation of the Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundations of Western society in India”.

-Karl Marx, Surveys from Exile, ed. David Fernbach (London: Pelican Books, 1973), pp. 306-7.

Sounds quite similar to the price ‘Red Indians’ had to pay for their ‘civilization’ process.

After World War II, Britain and France lost their role as the leading imperialists and America stepped forward to play this role efficiently. America invaded several third-world countries and the principle allegation was their transgression of the principles of democracy (in this case, Capitalism). Invasion of Vietnam proved to be the worst nightmare for both the preacher and the preached. Russian encroachment in Afghanistan was, more or less, due to the refusal of the masses to accept what the Soviet Union decreed as the right path i.e Communism. Thus, by rejecting the doctrinal instructions of the mighty, the Afghans actually were themselves responsible for the havoc that wrecked upon them.

Hence because of the right given to them by the virtue of their superiority, they may question the entire civilizations and cultures, modify them and if they find it appropriate, eradicate them. Annihilation of the colonized civilization and replacing it with that of the imperial lords is what has been and even today is the mission of the imperialist powers. This has always been the actual bone of contention. The self-righteousness of nations is what ails humanity and what propels them to thrust upon the ‘inferior’ nations and bring them under the humane wings of what they consider is civilization. During this process, no matter if a few thousands are killed or an entire civilization is wiped off, it’s simply worth it!