Decolonisation of the mind: Lessons from 21st century Britain

Shehan Karunatilaka. Photo by Deshan Tennekoon. CC BY-SA 4.0

The need to de-colonise — and by implication, de-racialise — is increasing on Britain’s mind these days.

At the end of November, a Buckingham Palace reception had an honorary royal staffer insistently question a black Britain-born-and-bred woman where she really came from. The behaviour of the royal aide — daughter to an earl, sister to another earl, widow to a life peer of the realm, a close companion of the late Queen and godmother to a future king — is seen to show the British establishment as still stuck in the imperious mindset of the colonial era.

And yet, just the month before, Britain’s highest literary prize, the Booker, went to The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, a novel that takes pride of place on the de-colonised bookshelf.

The dissonance of these two events — just weeks apart — is jarring but Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka’s storytelling may be the more solid indicator of the way the world is changing. The boo…