Cultural Imperialism In Chacko's The God Of Small Things

In The God of Small Things, Chacko portrays cultural imperialism as “a war that has made us adore our conquerors and despise ourselves”. Through wars and economic dominance imperialists have been able to take over physical lands, but another type of imperialism that comes along with the others silently “captures dreams and re-dreams them”. Cultural imperialism is the hegemony of industrialized nations over cultural values, identity, standards, beliefs, and ideas. In the past and continuing today we see the cultural superiority of the West and their projection of their values onto others. Cultural imperialism is justified when a people believe their superior culture needs to be shared with the world and the first, most pivotal shift is dominance …show more content…

Before the war, the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) made a list of 16 crucial sites to protect. Second on the list was the National Museum and the bottom was the Ministry of Oil, however the museum was looted and desecrated, while the Ministry of Oil had soldiers protecting it. As Arundhati Roy discussed in her speech, “It was a repository of an ancient cultural heritage. Iraq as we know it today was part of Mesopotamia. The civilization that grew…. and produced the world's first writing, first calendar, first library, first city, and the world's first democracy…. The Hammurabi code is acknowledged not just as the birth of legality, but the beginning of an understanding of the concept of social justice. The U.S. government could not have chosen a more inappropriate land in which to stage its illegal war and display its grotesque disregard for justice.” To destroy a museum is to deface a culture and devalue a history. The fact that the museum was a casualty of a war waged on flimsy claims and in the name of protecting democracy proves not only that democracy is the “Free World's whore”, but also the new White Man’s …show more content…

In 2014, it was estimated that 25 percent of the world's population has some understanding of English and that there are 335 million people who speak English as a first language and 505 million people worldwide who speak it as a second language. Out of 195 countries in the world, 67 nations have English as an official language. English is still the language of aristocrats in all countries and is a sign of being educated and wealthy. In most countries English is taught as a standard class, but it is not the same vice versa. It could definitely be said that because of America’s importance in the world, the culture is also know throughout the