Even fully Westernized first-generation leaders must indigenize to lead postcolonial nations

Evidence

The process of indigenization need not wait for the second generation. Able, perceptive, and adaptive first generation leaders indigenize themselves. Three notable cases are Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Harry Lee, and Solomon Bandaranaike. They were brilliant graduates of Oxford, Cambridge, and Lincoln’s Inn, respectively, superb lawyers, and thoroughly Westernized members of the elites of their societies. Jinnah was a committed secularist. Lee was, in the words of one British cabinet minister, “the best bloody Englishman east of Suez.” Bandaranaike was raised a Christian. Yet to lead their nations to and after independence they had to indigenize. They reverted to their ancestral cultures, and in the process at times changed identities, names, dress, and beliefs. The English lawyer M. A. Jinnah became Pakistan’s Quaid-i-Azam, Harry Lee became Lee Kuan Yew. The secularist Jinnah became the fervent apostle of Islam as the basis for the Pakistani state. The Anglofied Lee learned Mandarin and became an articulate promoter of Confucianism. The Christian Bandaranaike converted to Buddhism and appealed to Sinhalese nationalism. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 255

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the author’s broader thesis on civilizational identity politics and to postcolonial leadership patterns (cf. V.S. Naipaul’s ‘mimic men’ theme). — connects to: Arabs hold deeper Arab identification than democratic or global-citizen identity even when outwardly Westernized — Youssef Cherif, Neo-pan-Arabism: a renewed contract of…, 60
• SEED: Essay angle: how political legitimacy forces cultural reversion — the mechanism by which Westernized elites must perform authenticity to win mass followings.