Elite Communities Under Colonialism--The Problem

Dr Philip Holden, University Scholars Programme, National University of Singapore

The colonial middle classes are often educated by the colonial power. Having gone through such an educational system, they adopt an Enlightenment world view, the "bourgeois-rationalist conception of knowledge" (Nationalist Thought 11) of the colonizer. Their world picture is one of progress from superstition to ignorance, which they see as a universal feature of all human existence.

The colonial middle classes thus face a problem. How can they become modern, but modern in a different way from the colonizer? How can one progress, but not become "Westernized"?

Last Modified: 19 April, 2002