Cultural Imperialism: A Cold War between Developed and Developing Country

The present age is the age of globalization. Imagine this era of globalization as an umbrella; the whole world is now under that umbrella. The main and one of the features of this age is to bring the whole world into a certain culture. In that context, the developed countries have started the practice of cultural imperialism in the underdeveloped countries through trickery and technique. It has gradually taken place in underdeveloped countries. For example, the children of a minority group are admitted to a school where they are taught in English instead of their local language. In doing so, cultural imperialism was not established among them overnight. It takes almost a generation from one generation to dominate a culture here. In other words, it takes a long time for a foreigner to understand the importance of English to that minority society. Now, this cultural imperialism is not practiced only in schools, colleges, offices, and courts. This imperialism is being practiced in every aspect of our lives and even in every decision. For example, in the case of buying clothes, we buy some foreign clothes by choosing some checks. In our society, lungi, pajamas, punjabi are what men wear at special festivals. And just wear pants, and shirts to go to work or destination every day. In the same way women also now wear a sari for special occasions and wear foreign clothes forever. Note that our native clothes are now losing their institutional form. Now let's look at the festival. The importance of one's own festivals is being lost due to the influence of foreign festivals.

We are more worried about Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, and Chocolate Day. The most surprising thing is that Pahela Baishakh is a festival of our own. Even today, DJ parties can be seen starting in the evening. In this way, the foreign festivals are turning the stick on the local festivals. Even when the TV remote is in the hands of a small child, the child turns around and watches foreign channels, and when the remote is in the hands of the child's mother, the Indian channel's series goes to their house. The influence of this cultural imperialism is no less in the case of religion. Underdeveloped countries are now becoming believers in the religious values and philosophy of developed countries. The majority of the population of Bangladesh is Muslim. People of Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian religions also live here. At one time it was seen that one could practice one's religion freely and according to one's own choice. But it is also slowly becoming harder under the influence of Western countries. Even our own beliefs, and thoughts have a mirage in our consciousness, which is only pushing us towards destruction. For example, when we were young, we used to wake up in the morning and go to Maktab to recite Qur'an after praying. That image has now become a world of imagination. Now the first thing the young generation does when they wake up in the middle of the night is to log in to Facebook and look at the newsfeed for hours. Let's analyze the kinship relations a little. Family ties seem to be wrapped around the internet. As social beings, we have a number of responsibilities towards our own family, relatives, and even our neighbors. We left out the responsibility. Better a poor horse than no horse at all. This is the thinking consciousness of today's generation.

In this age of globalization, language, culture, festivals, religion, and dress have all come under the influence of western countries. In the same way, we are accepting those effects. We are giving them the opportunity to control everything based on their own consent. Starbucks and McDonald's are two American food companies. McDonald's was established in 1940 and its location was 36,000 in 2015. Its food items of it are now the main food of many countries around the world. Even the developed countries, how much nutritious food a person should eat is measured by the Big Mac Index. On the other hand, Starbucks was established in 1971. Now its location is 33295. Note that, there are not as many people in a country as there are customers of these two companies. So it is understood that both are bigger and more powerful than many countries and both have changed the food culture of many countries. Also, both are the determinants of measuring nutrition. In this way, the Western world continues to spread its influence all over the world with the consent of the people of the world which we do not even understand. Rather than think their ideology is good, we gladly follow their ideology. This process was described by the Italian Scholar Gramsci in his Prison Notebook hundreds of years ago. And he called this process hegemony. We are now in that hegemonic society, as Scholarly spoke of society hundreds of years ago.

Jon Tomlinson criticized this cultural imperialism and said that it is not dominance. It is one kind of share of cultural goods. Now if the developing countries hold the values of the western country it is understood that the values of the western are better than theirs because developing countries are adopting them for good. That means, people always follow what is good. Developed countries are completely destroying the language, values, education, etc. of underdeveloped countries like ours. It is very easy to destroy the identity of a country only with the weapon of cultural imperialism. It is a terrible weapon. During World War II, the West crippled the whole of Japan with two bomb blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But they have overcome that paralysis. The cultural imperialism of the West is more dangerous than those two terrible bombs. If these bombs explode in the younger generation, they will be destroyed without realizing it. It is a hundred times more severe than that of two bombs. In this way, developed countries destroy the intellectually of the developing country which indicates a severe cold war between them.  
 

Md Alamgir Hossain is a Senior Lecturer, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Prime University, Dhaka.