Mexico and India are two countries on opposite sides of the world, and with notable differences in terms of their culture, geographical features, religion, and politics. Although these two countries appear to be worlds apart, they share a past of European colonization. Inevitably, both India and Mexico ended up having major influences of European colonization, some of which have lasted to date. These nations are shaped by elements of nationalism, economic status, and political orientations that can be traced back to the impacts of European colonization. As a colonial power, Spain was mostly interested in populous and highly-developed areas while Britain preferred uncharted and underdeveloped lands. Notably, Mexico and India gained independence after their colonizers found it unsustainable to maintain their influence. Nevertheless, the period after the two countries gained independence is characterized by an era of decolonization, whereby both countries have gone through a shift in their sense of nationalism, historical quagmires, warped bureaucracy, and power vacuums. Although India and Mexico had both positive and negative post-colonization experiences, the two countries experienced a substantial post-independence reversal of fortunes.
There is a disconnect between India’s pre-colonial and postcolonial elements of nationalism. First, it is important to note that the pre-colonial Indian nationalism was as per the specifications of Gandhi’s nonviolent and non-cooperative independence movement[1]. This movement was at the center of India’s fight for independence, but its shift to postcolonial nationalism was the problematic aspect. When the British ventured into India, their main priority was to build infrastructure to connect all parts of India. Prior to this unity, India existed as fragmented regions that were characterized by differences in religions, languages, and cultures. The building of the Indian railway system was particularly instrumental in unifying what is now the modern Indian nation. The grand element of the Indian railway system also meant that citizens from various nations ended up being united by the labor requirements of these projects. The pre-colonial independence movement ended up relying a lot on this infrastructure network to rally the citizens behind Gandhi’s push for an independent India[2]. The interconnected India proved to be a fertile ground for the India’s independence movement. Prior to British’s entry into India, it would have been almost impossible to sustain an independence movement with the divided Indian nations. Britain played an important role in enabling the postcolonial nationalism in India. On the other hand, this nationalism is the key to most of the political and social dynamics in postcolonial India.
Prior to colonization, Mexico was also a disintegrated region with multiple tribes and diverse ecosystems. Colonialism was responsible for introducing nationalism into Mexico. Subsequently, the postcolonial nationalism problems that Mexico had to deal with came from the novelty element of this idea. Just like in India, the tribes in Mexico only became unified as a result of colonization agenda. However, in Mexico there was no colonial infrastructure system that could unify the various regions within this country. The unifying factor in pre-colonial Mexico was a mutual disdain for Spanish oppression. The Spanish colonizers made this situation worse by perpetuating unequal treatment of native Mexicans and turning to racist-policies to suppress the independence movement. For instance, one infamous law in the course of Spain’s colonization of Mexico is the sistemas de castas laws that proposed that people be treated in accordance with the amount of white blood that people had[3]. Consequently, these laws accorded individuals of European descent a higher status as compared to native Mexicans. (***photo-dark skinned Mexican lynching) In the course of Spanish colonization in Mexico, it was not unusual for individuals to be subjected to various forms of abuses on the basis of their skin color**. The oppressive nature and brutality of Spanish colonization was at the center of Mexico’s pre-independence nationalism. This factor would later inform the sustainability of Mexican nationalism in the postcolonial Mexico.
The sustainability of a country’s postcolonial independence is closely connected to the state of the economy. Postcolonial India had all the necessary economic pillars that were needed to sustain the country’s newly-found independence. The British left a sustainable economic foundation in India in the form of well-developed infrastructure and well-defined financial systems. Therefore, the burden of independence did not weigh heavily on India because the country had a solid economic foundation. Previous to the country’s foundation, Britain had also fully immersed India into international trade arena. For instance, India was now free to trade with other countries in different continents in what would later be known as the Commonwealth umbrella[4]. Independent India would grow its raw materials, process them, and use a well-developed infrastructure to deliver the finished goods to different places around the world. India’s ability to transform from colony to country was solely based on its positioning within the emerging global economy. For example, India was a lucrative market for British-made goods, and also a reliable source of raw materials[5]. Furthermore, India could trade freely with most of the other British colonies in Africa and Asia. The British did a good job in charting the economic path of independent India, a factor that has contributed towards the country’s sustainability to date.
Spanish colonialism in Mexico had a mostly negative impact on the country’s postcolonial economy. As a colonial power, Spain’s power had been on a constant decline even before the Mexican War of Independence. Therefore, unlike Britain Spain did not leave any significant infrastructural impact in Mexico. Also missing was a comprehensive network of financial institutions and structures. For example, Mexico’s lack of international connectedness through trade and politics was one of the reasons behind the country’s constant conflicts with the United States. Lack of postcolonial infrastructure to connect the heavily populated central regions with the sparsely inhabited north meant that Mexico was not in a position to distribute its citizens around the country[6]. This lack of infrastructure gave the US a chance to annex Texas because Mexico could not sustain an armed conflict from this front. Mexico’s shaky postcolonial economy is also responsible for the country’s decision to give some of its territories in the north for thirty-million dollars[7]. It is likely that the postcolonial nationalism was too expensive to sustain in Mexico. Nevertheless, the subsequent loss of a big land mass is responsible for far-reaching and lasting economic consequences. When independent Mexico finally developed comprehensive infrastructure networks, it became clear that having this element of the economy was highly beneficial to the country’s economic progress[8]. Unlike in India where the British had set up infrastructure-supported production, some sectors of the Mexican economy such as agriculture and mining only recorded a significant growth after the development of a railway infrastructure. Today, Mexico’s economy is more developed than that of India, but the impact of colonization on the two countries is quite different.
Another impact of colonization in postcolonial India is that the homogeneity that was envisioned by British colonialists ended up being unsustainable. Although the entire region fought for independence as a united front, the postcolonial period witnessed rising cases of religious intolerance between Hindus and Muslims, resulting into the split between India and Pakistan[9]. The breakup of the former Indian nation was precipitated by the fact that British colonial powers divided regions on the bases of ease of administration, and without the consideration of cultural and religious boundaries. This form of colonialism is solely meant to serve socioeconomic developments. The assumption is that if all regions speak the same language and share economic interests, then it is likely that they will co-exist. However, such assumptions are in disregard of the situation in pre-colonial India where autonomy of different regions was more social than it was economic.
In India, Britain’s attempts to control the nation through juridical, police institutions, and administrative tools could not accommodate the existing social cultural boundaries between the two regions. Ignorance of these existing differences between ethnic groups and religions was only sustainable in the pre-colonial period, but in postcolonial India issues of political representation could not accommodate unity with Pakistan. Lack of ethnic homogeneity within the independent India was also triggered by the colonial masters’ tendency to favor the local groups that they considered indigenous elites. For example, educated individuals were mostly from Hindu origins and their close connections with British led them to be considered elites. In the absence of a colonial power, these hierarchies become unsustainable, leading to internal strife within the country. For example, some elements of Indian politics are still shaped by a hierarchy that has its roots in British colonial powers. The British Empire stretched its reach into the modern-day countries of Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. Nevertheless, some regions within these jurisdictions were under Indian monarchs who were also known as native princes[10]. In such arrangements, the colonial masters worked under the arrangement of shared sovereignty, and the British were often in charge of defense and foreign policies of these regions. The internal administrative functions of this region could also be left up to the regional rulers. The changes in identity that resulted from this method of British colonialism was that in postcolonial India, all native autonomous states were incorporated into the new nation. This merging of administrative monarchies into a democratic nation has often been a major cause of political tensions between regions and tribes in India.
Mexico also suffered its own version of identity crisis as a result of colonialism. Britain colonized India for a comparatively shorter time than Spain’s three-hundred-years of colonization in Mexico. However, the impact of this lengthy colonization in Mexico is a sustained identity crisis, where most citizens cannot tell is they are of Indio or European heritage[11]. Furthermore, for a long time Mexicans do not know if they fall into the perpetrator or victim side of the historical-injustices catalog. Mexico became independent in 1821, and this period coincided with an increasing pride in Mestizo heritage[12]. This early post-independence period also coincided with a rise in the intellectual rhetoric that touted Mexicans’ position as one of the major world races because it shared the best traits of leading global ethnic groups. This view served the interests of mixed-descent postcolonial Mexico, and it is responsible for most of the surviving Mexican cultures. The next wave of Mexico’s identity crisis happened when the European model of education became the accepted mode of learning, thereby making Spanish the official language in Mexico. The return of Spanish dominance triggered a new wave of nationalism, and most creative arts began confronting the dark past of Spanish colonialism. This new wave of national identity crisis was also accompanied by a coinciding brand of literature. The true Mexican sense of identity was mostly achieved in the 1990s, when most indigenous people had their cultures recognized. In addition, cultures and languages outside the Spanish colonialism sphere of influence began to be preserved. One area of contention in the consideration of Mexican indigenous identity is the benefits that European colonizers often deny getting from the natives. This discourse often stands in opposition with the notion that Europeans discovered America.
Colonization had various direct impacts on countries such as India and Mexico, and irrespective of whether these effects were positive or negative, the postcolonial nation ended up being different from the pre-colonial one. Colonialism as a catalyst for a nation’s independent development is seen in the manner that it shaped the fundamentals of the current economy in India. On the other hand, bad colonial policies are most-likely responsible for Mexico losing a large part of its land to the US, and having a non-starter economy even though it was rich in natural resources and arable lands. Each of the two countries in this analysis emerged from colonialism with its own brand of nationalism. The fact that Spain colonized Mexico for over three-hundred years made it for most of the country’s indigenous cultures to survive. In India colonialization was responsible for creating social hierarchies that made it impossible for Bangladesh and Pakistan to remain united as part of the greater country of India. In addition, imposed postcolonial democracy did not appeal to all the regions that formed the new nation of India. Most of the elements that are lost through colonization do not spell doom for a country, and they are most likely to end up being just influencing factors.
[1] Thomas Metcalf, Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860-1920 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007), 4.
[2] Michael Greenberg, “India’s Independence and the War,” Pacific Affairs 15, no. 2 (1942): 172.
[3] Ellen Yvonne Simms, “Miscegenation and Racism: Afro-Mexicans in Colonial New Spain,” Journal of Pan African Studies 2, no. 3 (2008), 225.
[4] Peter James Marshall, Problems of Empire: Britain and India 1757-1813 (London: Allen and Unwin; New York: Barnes & Noble, 1968),162.
[5] Peter James Marshall, Problems of Empire, 325.
[6] Rosemary King, “Border Crossings in the Mexican American War,” Bilingual Review 25, no. 1 (2000): 63.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Russell K. Skowronek, James Blackman, and Ronald L. Bishop, Ceramic Production in Early Hispanic California: Craft, Economy, and Trade on the Frontier of New Spain (Miami, FL: University Press of Florida, 2014), 19.
[9] Michael Greenberg, “India’s Independence and the War,” 175.
[10] Thomas Metcalf, Imperial Connections 32.
[11] Timothy Parrish, “Class Structure and Social Reproduction in New Spain/Mexico,” Dialectical Anthropology 7, no. 2 (1982): 137.
[12] Jeffrey M. Pilcher, “Tamales or Timbales: Cuisine and the Formation of Mexican National Identity, 1821–1911,” The Americas 53, no. 2 (1996): 195.