by Muhammad Bilal Iftikhar Khan
Pakistan won independence in 1947, nearly 78 years ago. The Muslim political struggle, which initially began as a demand for constitutional and communal rights, particularly during the Congress ministries, gradually transformed into a full-fledged struggle for freedom in the 1940s. However, the decolonization achieved in 1947, which should have progressed towards a genuine benchmark of decoloniality, unfortunately never took place. Structural coloniality persisted, and with it came the continued enforcement of epistemic coloniality.The greatest victims of this coloniality have been our national and regional languages, as well as identity-oriented subjects such as Islamiat and Pakistan Studies. These subjects are meant to introduce cultural, civilizational, and historical paradigms into the minds of our youth. My observations are not abstract; they come from my personal experience as a student, a father, and now as a teacher in one of Lahore’s leading universities.
It is deeply painful to witness how many students consistently fail these two subjects, and how Islamiat and Pakistan Studies have become “bogeyman subjects” for today’s students, just as they were during my own student years. In every class, I ask students a simple question: Who is more educated, an MA in English or a PhD in Urdu? Their expressions immediately reveal their thinking. For them, an MA in English is considered superior to a PhD in Urdu. This is epistemic coloniality in its purest form.
We converse in Urdu, yet the dominant vocabulary in our speech is English. When we want to emphasize a point, we instinctively switch to English, because somewhere in our subconscious, English signifies authority and domination.
Similarly, despite studying Pakistan Studies from Grade 8 onward, many students still find it difficult to pass this subject at the BS or ADP level. During a discussion, one of my students asked, “Sir, what is the need for Pakistan Studies when I am studying to become a cyber security expert?” I responded that Pakistan Studies is more important than any technical subject he is studying. Without grounding in one’s language, history, and culture, a cyber security expert only becomes another individual aligned with instrumental rationality, a mode of thinking that privileges Western paradigms and sidelines one’s own civilizational identity. With cultural and historical consciousness, however, society moves one step closer to true decoloniality and intellectual independence.
We need to reorient our priorities and break free from the intoxication of Western modernity. Pakistan urgently needs decoloniality, because our post-1947 decolonization process has ironically, strengthened coloniality instead of dismantling it. Today, we are more detached from our roots, more alienated from our languages, and more ignorant of our own heritage than our forefathers who struggled for independence. Their struggle was grounded in a clear ideology, shaped by faith, culture, and a distinct civilizational worldview.
To be frank, if we forget who we are, the independence we cherish will gradually transform into psychological slavery, a return to the very mindset we once struggled to escape.