There’s something that has troubled me for years, particularly when I observe certain people of Indian and other Asian backgrounds navigating Western power structures.

It’s the possibility that colonialism didn’t simply leave behind political and economic consequences. It left behind a way of thinking.

A belief, sometimes subtle and perhaps even unconscious, that proximity to whiteness represents progress. That Western acceptance confers legitimacy. That being welcomed into powerful white circles somehow means you’ve arrived.

As an Asian myself, I find that mentality deeply disturbing.

I think about figures like Vivek Ramaswamy. I think about Usha Vance and the political environment she inhabits. I find myself asking questions about identity, belonging, compromise and the price of acceptance.

To be clear, I cannot know what motivates either individual. Their politics, marriages or associations alone do not establish internalized colonialism.

My concern is with the broader phenomenon.

When does genuine political conviction end and the desire for acceptance by the dominant group begin? How would we even recognize the difference?

Colonialism was never just about occupying land. It was also about shaping minds. About establishing hierarchies in which European culture, education, appearance and authority were presented as inherently superior.

Formal colonial rule ended across much of Asia decades ago. Yet the psychological inheritance deserves far more examination.

And I wonder whether some of us have become so accustomed to seeking validation from established power that we no longer recognize when we’re doing it.

There is nothing wrong with admiring Western institutions, marrying across cultures, adopting different beliefs or participating in conservative politics. Intellectual independence means being free to make those choices.

The question is whether those choices come from independent thought or inherited assumptions about whose approval matters.

Because the deepest form of colonization may be the one that no longer needs a colonizer.

It is the moment we unconsciously measure our own worth using someone else’s hierarchy.

I don’t believe progress means becoming more Western, more white, or more acceptable to those already holding power.

Progress means having the intellectual freedom to question the hierarchy itself.

And perhaps that’s where genuine decolonization begins. Not with anger at another race, but with the courage to examine our own minds.

We can inherit a colonial mentality without realizing it. The tragedy is never questioning whether we have.