Decolonising the Mind is Ngugi Thiong o’s contribution to the debate on the choice of language in a

post-colonial country. In this book he argues that Africa will be able to break free from the clutches
of Western control over its resources and culture only when the use of European languages is
replaced by native languages. In the section ‘The Language of African Literature’, Ngugi discusses the
way language is a carrier of culture and how the use of a foreign language alienates an individual
from his/her own culture. Ngugi explores how alienation from one’s native culture is accompanied
with a hatred for it, and a reverence for the coloniser’s culture. Decolonising the Mind is an attempt
to free the natives’ minds from the coloniser’s control by rejecting his language and adopting one’s
native language.

Ngugi establishes the relation between language and culture by approaching the “aspects of
language” from a Marxist perspective. As language is understood to arise from the economic
activities people engage in, language gradually defines a community’s “way of life”. Over time a
particular “way of life” gets codified as customs of a specific culture, and hence language is the
medium through which one experiences the culture it is a product of. Ngugi argues that the
coloniser introduced his language in the colonies with an aim to make the natives’ perception of his
own culture as inferior and to be forsaken for the superior culture of the coloniser’s. Ngugi uses the
case of a child’s learning of the coloniser’s language in order to analyse its role in the process of
alienating the native from his culture. The coloniser’s language is forced upon the native child
because it is the medium in which education institutions are run. The spoken language however
remains the native tongue, which causes a “break in harmony between the written and spoken
word”. Due to the close relation between language and culture, not only the coloniser’s language
but his culture also is forced upon the child. This displacing of the power that native language held in
the child’s understanding of the world is not only detrimental to his performance capabilities but is
also “disastrous” in the way it sows hatred for one’s own cultural roots. Lord Macaulay’s address to
the British Parliament in February 1835 illustrates Ngugi’s point about how the coloniser dominated
the colonies by dominating cultures:

“I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a
beggar. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such moral values, that I do not think we would ever
conquer this country unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and
cultural heritage. Therefore I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her
culture, for if the Indians think that all is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they
will lose their self-esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them to be, a
truly dominated nation.”

Macaulay’s plan for dominance over the natives’ minds seems to be running successfully when one
sees the presence of institutions like the Malawi academy, where British not Malawi teachers train
children for entry into Western institutions. Ngugi takes this as a sign of “ultimate success” of the
coloniser as the colonised themselves “sing praises” of those who emptied Africa of its material as
well as cultural wealth.

Ngugi also examines the adverse impact of the coloniser’s language on the political functioning of
the country. The essay informs us how “patriotic bourgeoisie” has only the support of the bourgeois
class but in choosing the coloniser’s language, it excludes the working class (the majority of the
masses) from actively participating in the political sphere. He also criticises the literature of this
bourgeois class which is removed from cultural realities due to its construction of characters like
peasants speaking in European languages. According to Ngugi, African literature in European
language only exemplifies rather than offers solutions to the problem of cultural identity. The African
man torn between two worlds has become a defining feature of this “neo-African literature”. Ngugi
critiques the way such literature fails to address identity crisis as it “avoids the issue of language.”
Ngugi therefore foregrounds his argument that as long as there is not a strong rejection of European
languages from Africa’s educational, cultural and political sphere, colonisers will continue to control
resources and the minds of African “independent” nations.

Ngugi highlights the importance of cultural independence from years of colonial control in order to
pave the way for independence in other spheres of economic functioning, politics, and also
knowledge creation. He argues that Africa will be able to make advancements in various academic
fields only when they will be able to express themselves in a language that is of their own culture. He
holds dependence on foreign languages as the reason why latest technologies seem foreign. In order
to break the trend of everything advanced being foreign, Ngugi suggests that native languages
should be allowed to grow so that they can replace foreign languages in all spheres. He considers it
the duty of a writer to partake in the creation a literature for the native languages which will help
them evolve and replace the “unassailable” position that the coloniser’s language holds. Ngugi
directly addresses the community of African writers –

“We African writers are bound by our calling to do for our languages what all writers have done for
their languages... by meeting the challenge of creating a literature in them, which process later
opens the language for philosophy, science, technology, and all other areas of human creative
endeavours.”

Decolonising the Mind makes compelling arguments for the elimination of the use of European
languages. The work is Ngugi’s struggle against colonial control over the natives’ minds and their
production. By making the minds decolonised, Ngugi means making African languages the medium
of thought and expression in all spheres of life.