Depriving colonized peoples of their own philosophy is the gravest colonial crime.

Evidence

If it is a crime against education to impose upon a race of men a civilisation devoid of philosophy, of practical wisdom and of spiritual aspirations, it would be a still graver offence to deprive peoples of their own patrimony, which is their only possession able to serve as the starting point of a higher civilisation. It would be unspeakable for the white educator to persist in killing in the African that human mind of his which is the only reality that prevents us from thinking of him as the inferior human being. It would be high treason on the part of the coloniser to free primitive races from what is of value, which constitutes a kernel of truth in their traditional thought, their philosophy of life, an integral part of the very essence of their being. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 216

Categorization

• SHARE: A striking full-throated Tempels statement against cultural imposition; worth sharing with someone studying missionary anthropology or colonial intellectual history.
• ADDENDUM: Relevant to the Bantu Philosophy argument about African philosophy’s validity against Western dismissal.