The Brown Sahibs

Lord Macaulay could not have imagined that his Minute on Education, written for the British Colonial Administration in 1835, would still be valid 190 years later. His idea to create “Brown Englishmen” in India is alive and well, but with an important difference: the brown sahibs have now arrived in Europe and North America as well, and are hard at work to please their masters. In addition to the Brown Englishman, there is also now the Brown Frenchman, Brown Dutchman, Brown American, and so on. Macaulay’s Brown Englishmen were so thoroughly westernised that, nearly 80 years after the departure of the colonialists, their descendants are still implementing their agendas. It is simply impossible for them to think or act independently; the instinct for subservience runs too strongly in their blood. Without the patronage of the white man, they cannot survive.

Almost all colonized people display two characteristics: total subservience to the colonial master, and utter contempt for their own peoples.The brown sahibs were selected from among those groups that offered the least resistance to the colonial administration. They came mainly from two classes: the physically and psychologically battered pre-colonial ruling elites, who had been transformed into feudal landlords during the colonial era; and middle-class traitors who had been rewarded for their efforts with junior positions in the colonial administration.

The Pakistani brown sahibs are a typical example of the phenomenon. They are products of institutions created and bequeathed by the British, but there is one area in which they have excelled even their colonial masters: over-indulgence and profligacy. Pakistani officials in and outside the country lead a lifestyle that is the envy of most people in the West: expensive chauffeur-driven cars, huge mansions to live in that they could never afford on their own salaries, and so on. Western officials have often wondered, not very softly, why the Pakistanis come begging, bowl-in-hand, for aid when they are live so extravagantly.

One might have hoped that the brown sahibs occupying the posts that come with such perks might at least be competent. This is a concept totally alien to them. They have not only made matters worse in their own societies but, in a massive vote of no-confidence in their own systems, they send their children to study in Britain and America. Upon retirement, they themselves go and live there. Perhaps this is not surprising; after all, physically they may be Pakistani but mentally they live in the West. Their lifestyle, mannerisms and tastes are all Western; in short, they are Macaulay’s

perfect brown Englishmen.