The Martyr's Corner -
A Critical Appreciation
Rama was a food vendor who used to sell
his items at a fixed corner in the market place which happened to be very lucky
for him. It drew all kinds of crowd to him very conveniently and he too was
very popular amongst his customers. Rama was very hardworking and punctual.
Daily at 8.15 in the evening he reached the place with a load of his stuff in a
big tray on his head, a stool stuck in the crook of his arm, a lamp in another
hand and a couple of legs to mount his tray. Rama’s well displayed
mouthwatering bandas, dosais, chappatis, chutney, duck eggs and freshening hot
coffee allured everyone to come to him and satisfy their taste buds. Even a
confirmed dyspeptic could not pass by without throwing a look at this tempting
sight. Rama’s customers included boot polish boys, jutka drivers, beggars,
grass selling women and the cinema crowd coming out after the evening show. The
corner where Rama used to sell his stuff was easily accessible to all his
customers and he was making a good profit of almost ten rupees everyday. It was
interesting to see that all the copper coins his clients earned throughout the
day by serving their customers ultimately came to Rama in the evening because
it was there only where they could buy eatables at very reasonable and cheap
rates. Rama and his wife were very happy about their growth because after
sparing fixed amount for next day’s investment they were able to save some
money for contingent expenses. On the other hand his fellowmen were a little
bit jealous of him because for them he hardly worked for two hours and minted
lots of money in this small span of time. They could hardly realize that to
cater his customers for two hours in the evening Rama and his wife worked very
hard throughout the day to prepare the base material.
Rama was very meticulous and vigilant. He was always watchful and could very well tell that who was picking what from his tray. He always cared for the satisfaction of his customers and allowed them to examine their buy thoroughly. He was kind and always dealt leniently with the boot polish boys and let them enjoy their coffee by sticking to the glass as much as they wanted but he did not like the women clients because their shrill voices irritated him immensely. He served his customers very sincerely. After the end of the evening show at 10. 15having emptied all the food items of the tray Rama used to get back home very delighted and saturated. Then he tucked a betel leaf with tobacco in his mouth and retired to bed to take some rest.
But one day Rama got astounded when he was denied to sell his stuff from his favorite corner because someone was murdered there in the noon so a group of people were holding a meeting there to show their protest. They were agitated and demonstrated strongly. Very soon a fierce fighting got started killing many people and consequently leaving the spot totally devastated. Even after few days Rama was not allowed to sell his goods from there because the corner was declared a holy place and it was decided that a stone monument would be built in memory of the departed leader who was killed there by the police. Soon the spot was cordoned off, money was raised and a stone memorial was erected with an ornamental fencing and flower pots encircling the spot and thus it became ‘The martyr’s corner’. Rama was forced to leave his favorite place but the new place did not bring luck to Rama. He lost his selected customers because it was inconvenient for them to reach to him at his new place. His income reduced substantially and he had to return home with a bulk of leftover each day. His business and happiness were all ruined. He lost his reputation too when he tried to reuse his leftover because it made some of his customers sick. Ultimately Rama wound up his business and got to retire but soon his savings were too exhausted and ultimately he had to take up the job of a waiter in Kohinoor restaurant where he was dealt with very rudely by his guests. He submissively gulped the insult but never forgot to inform them that once he himself was a hotel owner and this piece of reminiscence gave him great satisfaction.
The language of the story is vivid and descriptive. The content of the story takes us to the first half of the last century when the coins of annas, paisas and pies were prevalent. Rama is portrayed as a kind hearted person. The hollow eyes and ragged dresses of beggars and boot polish boys rent his heart. The title of the story is sarcastic and points out at the sick mentality of the politicians who give more importance to the dead but they inhumanly ignore the sufferings and plights of living.
Although in conventional manner the spot had emerged out to be a ‘Martyr’s Corner’ but ironically it was Rama only who paid the price by losing his livelihood, reputation and entire fortune. In true sense the real martyr is Rama himself.
Saadat Hasan Manto
(May 11, 1912 — January 18, 1955)
WHILE thousands are involved in the unprecedented communal frenzy that follows the announcement of Partition, the inmates of a mental asylum find themselves in a strange situation. The authorities have decided that while the Muslim inmates could stay back, the Hindu and Sikhs would have to go to India. This creates confusion because the inmates have not heard of Pakistan. A Sikh inmate refuses to leave because, when he was brought in, the asylum was in India. What follows is confusion, confusion and more confusion. And as you read you begin to wonder who is insane: the inmates of the asylum or the violent mobs outside, hell-bent on killing anyone who does not belong to their religion. And all though the story, Toba Tek Singh is hilarious, you are not quite sure whether to laugh or cry.
Many stories have been inspired by the horrors of Partition, but no one portrayed it in so few words, and with such irony as Saadat Hasan Manto, the amazing genius of modern Urdu literature, did.
Born in Samrala, Manto wrote radio scripts, film scripts, produced more than 250 short stories, scores of plays, and essays as well a novella. During World War II, he was with the All India Radio, New Delhi. But the best years of his life were spent in Bombay, where he was associated with leading film studios. He wrote over a dozen films, the prominent of them being: Eight Days, Chal Chal Re Naujawan, and Mirza Ghalib.
Manto's forte was the short story. With cynical wit and brutal frankness, he exposed the decaying social mores and traditions of society that was physically in the 20th century but mentally in the 12th. "In my reform house, I keep no combs, curlers, or shampoos," he used to tell his critics, "because I do not know how to apply make-up on people. . . . Every angel who came to my faculty was barbered thoroughly and in style so that not a single hair was left standing on their head."Manto was tried thrice for obscenity before and thrice after independence. Two of his greatest stories Colder than Ice and The Return were considered obscene by Pakistani censors. He was never really comfortable in Pakistan, for his missed India, especially his beloved city Mumbai. His friend Ahmed Rahik once remarked, "He [Manto] began to die the moment he left Bombay."And like his character from Toba Tek Singh, Manto was in a strange dilemma after Partition:"I found it impossible to decide which of the two countries was now my homeland?"
Rama was very meticulous and vigilant. He was always watchful and could very well tell that who was picking what from his tray. He always cared for the satisfaction of his customers and allowed them to examine their buy thoroughly. He was kind and always dealt leniently with the boot polish boys and let them enjoy their coffee by sticking to the glass as much as they wanted but he did not like the women clients because their shrill voices irritated him immensely. He served his customers very sincerely. After the end of the evening show at 10. 15having emptied all the food items of the tray Rama used to get back home very delighted and saturated. Then he tucked a betel leaf with tobacco in his mouth and retired to bed to take some rest.
But one day Rama got astounded when he was denied to sell his stuff from his favorite corner because someone was murdered there in the noon so a group of people were holding a meeting there to show their protest. They were agitated and demonstrated strongly. Very soon a fierce fighting got started killing many people and consequently leaving the spot totally devastated. Even after few days Rama was not allowed to sell his goods from there because the corner was declared a holy place and it was decided that a stone monument would be built in memory of the departed leader who was killed there by the police. Soon the spot was cordoned off, money was raised and a stone memorial was erected with an ornamental fencing and flower pots encircling the spot and thus it became ‘The martyr’s corner’. Rama was forced to leave his favorite place but the new place did not bring luck to Rama. He lost his selected customers because it was inconvenient for them to reach to him at his new place. His income reduced substantially and he had to return home with a bulk of leftover each day. His business and happiness were all ruined. He lost his reputation too when he tried to reuse his leftover because it made some of his customers sick. Ultimately Rama wound up his business and got to retire but soon his savings were too exhausted and ultimately he had to take up the job of a waiter in Kohinoor restaurant where he was dealt with very rudely by his guests. He submissively gulped the insult but never forgot to inform them that once he himself was a hotel owner and this piece of reminiscence gave him great satisfaction.
The language of the story is vivid and descriptive. The content of the story takes us to the first half of the last century when the coins of annas, paisas and pies were prevalent. Rama is portrayed as a kind hearted person. The hollow eyes and ragged dresses of beggars and boot polish boys rent his heart. The title of the story is sarcastic and points out at the sick mentality of the politicians who give more importance to the dead but they inhumanly ignore the sufferings and plights of living.
Although in conventional manner the spot had emerged out to be a ‘Martyr’s Corner’ but ironically it was Rama only who paid the price by losing his livelihood, reputation and entire fortune. In true sense the real martyr is Rama himself.
Saadat Hasan Manto
(May 11, 1912 — January 18, 1955)
WHILE thousands are involved in the unprecedented communal frenzy that follows the announcement of Partition, the inmates of a mental asylum find themselves in a strange situation. The authorities have decided that while the Muslim inmates could stay back, the Hindu and Sikhs would have to go to India. This creates confusion because the inmates have not heard of Pakistan. A Sikh inmate refuses to leave because, when he was brought in, the asylum was in India. What follows is confusion, confusion and more confusion. And as you read you begin to wonder who is insane: the inmates of the asylum or the violent mobs outside, hell-bent on killing anyone who does not belong to their religion. And all though the story, Toba Tek Singh is hilarious, you are not quite sure whether to laugh or cry.
Many stories have been inspired by the horrors of Partition, but no one portrayed it in so few words, and with such irony as Saadat Hasan Manto, the amazing genius of modern Urdu literature, did.
Born in Samrala, Manto wrote radio scripts, film scripts, produced more than 250 short stories, scores of plays, and essays as well a novella. During World War II, he was with the All India Radio, New Delhi. But the best years of his life were spent in Bombay, where he was associated with leading film studios. He wrote over a dozen films, the prominent of them being: Eight Days, Chal Chal Re Naujawan, and Mirza Ghalib.
Manto's forte was the short story. With cynical wit and brutal frankness, he exposed the decaying social mores and traditions of society that was physically in the 20th century but mentally in the 12th. "In my reform house, I keep no combs, curlers, or shampoos," he used to tell his critics, "because I do not know how to apply make-up on people. . . . Every angel who came to my faculty was barbered thoroughly and in style so that not a single hair was left standing on their head."Manto was tried thrice for obscenity before and thrice after independence. Two of his greatest stories Colder than Ice and The Return were considered obscene by Pakistani censors. He was never really comfortable in Pakistan, for his missed India, especially his beloved city Mumbai. His friend Ahmed Rahik once remarked, "He [Manto] began to die the moment he left Bombay."And like his character from Toba Tek Singh, Manto was in a strange dilemma after Partition:"I found it impossible to decide which of the two countries was now my homeland?"
Good Advice Is Rarer than
Rubies: Overview
“When I first saw The
Wizard of Oz, it made a writer of me,” Rushdie once said. He drew on his
interest in that story when he wrote “Good Advice Is Rarer Than Rubies,” which
alludes to the famous slippers that offer Dorothy an opportunity to go home,
away from the magical and foreign place that is Oz. “Good Advice Is Rarer Than
Rubies” was published in the collection East, West, which explores the
ways in which people of Eastern ethnicity, especially those from India and
Pakistan, experience conflict when they confront Western cultures. The
collection is divided into three groups of stories—the East, the West, and the
combination of both. “Good Advice Is Rarer Than Rubies” uses unreliable third-person
narration to celebrate Eastern values through a tale about an Indian woman who
will use trickery to avoid marriage to a man in Great Britain because she
prefers to stay at her home in India. Miss Rehana, a beautiful Indian woman, so
beautiful that she captures the attention of all men who look at her, is on her
way to get her papers to go to London. Muhammad Ali, an expert advice-giver and
trickster, smitten by her beauty, gives her free advice as to how to avoid the
insults and red tape of immigrating to England, offering to arrange for her a
free passport to bypass this. After listening to him patiently, Rehana instead
uses his advice to avoid getting the permits she needs. Her fiancé in England
was chosen by her parents rather than by herself, and as it turns out, he is an
old man. She prefers to reject the Indian societal pressure to marry and
instead continues her life as an independent, single woman working as an ayah
(nanny) to three children in Lahore. The story rejects the notion that England
is a preferable place to live over India but equally rejects the Indian
practice of arranged marriage as well as the expectation that all young women
must marry. As a result, the author does not simply celebrate Indian culture;
he depicts it in a realistic, nuanced way.
Presentation of the story
“Good advice Is Rarer Than Rubies,” is written by Salman Rushdie. Salman was born in India, but today he is a British citizen.
He graduated from Kings College in 1968 in Cambridge.
He has won several literature prizes and is one of the best known contemporary writers in English language.
He often writes stories that are based on his own experience as an immigrant in England.
This is a short story in the book “East, West” that was published in 1994. East, West are divided into three parts: “East,” “West” and “East, West.”
Each selection contains stories around their geographical area. “Good Advice Is Rarer Than Rubies”, is a story from the East.
“Good advice Is Rarer Than Rubies,” is written by Salman Rushdie. Salman was born in India, but today he is a British citizen.
He graduated from Kings College in 1968 in Cambridge.
He has won several literature prizes and is one of the best known contemporary writers in English language.
He often writes stories that are based on his own experience as an immigrant in England.
This is a short story in the book “East, West” that was published in 1994. East, West are divided into three parts: “East,” “West” and “East, West.”
Each selection contains stories around their geographical area. “Good Advice Is Rarer Than Rubies”, is a story from the East.
Summary:
This story is about a lady named Rehana. She is going to get permission to London and is waiting outside the British Embassy.
Outside she meets a man named Muhammad Ali, he is a poor bus driver. The bus driver wants to give Rehana some advice for only a small cost, but Rehana have no money.
Muhammad didn’t give up, and because she was so beautiful he gave her the advice for free.
He told her that going into the Embassy was her biggest mistake. When he started to answer her question she understood that he was helping her.
He went through the presentation that she was going to have in the embassy. When she was done he told her that it would cost more than a big smile and her truth in some questions.
They would ask all kinds of questions and if she answered wrong at any of the questions she was finished, she would lose her dignity if she went inside.
But Muhammad really surprised her when he told her that he had some contacts and could get Rehana a false passport.
Rehana got very unsure about what she was going to do, since it was in fact illegal.
As determined as she was, she walked away and went into the line where all the women stood waiting to go into the embassy.
When she got out in the street again, Muhammad Ali was there waiting for her.
She grabbed him in the arm and when they sat on the front bumper she told him about her life.
She was going to England to meet the man her parents chose for her when she was a little girl.
In the end she also told him that she got the questions wrong and she was not going to England. She was not sad, in fact it seemed that this was the best thing that could happen to her.
The story ends with Rehana turning back to her job as ayah for three good boys, without a passport so she could travel to England.
Setting:
The story takes place in the multi million city Lahore in Pakistan. The year is 1970, and we are in the gates of the British Embassy.
Point of view:
“Good Advice Is Rarer Than Rubies,” is written in 3rd person narrator that stands outside the story. The narrator has got some sight in the main characters thoughts and life.
This makes him able to give us a bit background information that we would not get, if he didn`t know their thoughts. For example he says about Muhammad Ali: "Miss Rehana eyes where large
and black and shiny enough not to need help af antomony, and when the advice expert Muhammad Ali saw them, he felt himself becoming young again." The text also contains a lot of dialog
between the two main characters, Miss Rehana and Muhammad Ali.
Theme/Moral:
We think that the theme in this story is very complex. In the story we have people that have to s probably arranged marriage and how it is to be an immigrant in other countries.
The moral in this story is to do the right thing and be happy for what you have.
Character description:
Miss Rehana : Miss Rehana is a beautiful Indian woman, with large, black and shiny eyes. She is described as very independent by some of the other characters in the story.
Because of her beauty, she often gets special treatment from other men that likes her. Muhammad Ali did for example notice her because of her beauty,
and thought that she would be easy to trick. She did not want his advice, and acted like she was very clever woman, and does not want this Muhammad Ali`s good advice.
Muhammad Ali: Muhammad Ali is an "advice expert" and a poor bus driver, that makes money out of fooling people outside the British Embassy in India.
He tricks other people that pays him a larger amount of money, so that he can fix them illegal papers to Britain.
As soon as he gets their money, they never sees him again.
Relations between characters:
In this story Miss Rehana meets Muhammad Ali outside the British Embassy. She is there to reply entrance and passport to Britain,
while Mohammad Ali is there to trick money out of naive people. Miss Rehana is a clever woman, and does not want this Muhammad Ali`s good advice.
He change his mind about tricking Miss her, and does after some time actually want to help.
He waits at her outside the Embassy, while she`s inside. Muhammad Ali felt sorry for Miss Rehana when she did not receive passport and entrance to Britain,
and the story end with the two of them walking to buy some pakora (fried vegetables).
This story is about a lady named Rehana. She is going to get permission to London and is waiting outside the British Embassy.
Outside she meets a man named Muhammad Ali, he is a poor bus driver. The bus driver wants to give Rehana some advice for only a small cost, but Rehana have no money.
Muhammad didn’t give up, and because she was so beautiful he gave her the advice for free.
He told her that going into the Embassy was her biggest mistake. When he started to answer her question she understood that he was helping her.
He went through the presentation that she was going to have in the embassy. When she was done he told her that it would cost more than a big smile and her truth in some questions.
They would ask all kinds of questions and if she answered wrong at any of the questions she was finished, she would lose her dignity if she went inside.
But Muhammad really surprised her when he told her that he had some contacts and could get Rehana a false passport.
Rehana got very unsure about what she was going to do, since it was in fact illegal.
As determined as she was, she walked away and went into the line where all the women stood waiting to go into the embassy.
When she got out in the street again, Muhammad Ali was there waiting for her.
She grabbed him in the arm and when they sat on the front bumper she told him about her life.
She was going to England to meet the man her parents chose for her when she was a little girl.
In the end she also told him that she got the questions wrong and she was not going to England. She was not sad, in fact it seemed that this was the best thing that could happen to her.
The story ends with Rehana turning back to her job as ayah for three good boys, without a passport so she could travel to England.
Setting:
The story takes place in the multi million city Lahore in Pakistan. The year is 1970, and we are in the gates of the British Embassy.
Point of view:
“Good Advice Is Rarer Than Rubies,” is written in 3rd person narrator that stands outside the story. The narrator has got some sight in the main characters thoughts and life.
This makes him able to give us a bit background information that we would not get, if he didn`t know their thoughts. For example he says about Muhammad Ali: "Miss Rehana eyes where large
and black and shiny enough not to need help af antomony, and when the advice expert Muhammad Ali saw them, he felt himself becoming young again." The text also contains a lot of dialog
between the two main characters, Miss Rehana and Muhammad Ali.
Theme/Moral:
We think that the theme in this story is very complex. In the story we have people that have to s probably arranged marriage and how it is to be an immigrant in other countries.
The moral in this story is to do the right thing and be happy for what you have.
Character description:
Miss Rehana : Miss Rehana is a beautiful Indian woman, with large, black and shiny eyes. She is described as very independent by some of the other characters in the story.
Because of her beauty, she often gets special treatment from other men that likes her. Muhammad Ali did for example notice her because of her beauty,
and thought that she would be easy to trick. She did not want his advice, and acted like she was very clever woman, and does not want this Muhammad Ali`s good advice.
Muhammad Ali: Muhammad Ali is an "advice expert" and a poor bus driver, that makes money out of fooling people outside the British Embassy in India.
He tricks other people that pays him a larger amount of money, so that he can fix them illegal papers to Britain.
As soon as he gets their money, they never sees him again.
Relations between characters:
In this story Miss Rehana meets Muhammad Ali outside the British Embassy. She is there to reply entrance and passport to Britain,
while Mohammad Ali is there to trick money out of naive people. Miss Rehana is a clever woman, and does not want this Muhammad Ali`s good advice.
He change his mind about tricking Miss her, and does after some time actually want to help.
He waits at her outside the Embassy, while she`s inside. Muhammad Ali felt sorry for Miss Rehana when she did not receive passport and entrance to Britain,
and the story end with the two of them walking to buy some pakora (fried vegetables).
Good Advice Is Rarer
than Rubies by Salman Rushdie
Brief summary
One Tuesday morning, the beautiful Miss Rehana
leaves a bus in front of the British Consulate somewhere in Pakistan. Her
parents are dead,and her fiancé,who lives in Bradford and who she has not seen
since she was nine years old,has sent for her,and she has come to apply for a
visa to immigrate to Britain. She is immediately accosted (D.: jmd.ansprechen)
by the advice expert Muhammad Ali,who is so attracted to the beautiful young
girl,that he even offers her his advice for free. Miss Rehana conscientiously
uses his advice, but not to”pass” the test. Instead, she deliberately (D.:mit
Absicht) fails,telling Muhammad afterwards that she has a job in a great house
as ayah /nanny to three boys who would
have been very sad to see her go.
Structure of the plot
Rushdie has always been fascinated by motion pictures, and the action of this
single incident
is presented to the reader as if he was
watching actors in a film.
At the beginning of the story Miss Rehana is at
first concealed (D.: verborgen) by a cloud of dust,and then makes a dramatic
entrance when she descends from the bus.
The narrative is
divided into short scenes, in which the reader forms certain expectations as to (D:hinsichtlich)
how the narrative could continue.
p.203 -205 /15 : the reader has formed the
impression that Miss Rehana is a beautiful and
polite young lady.
p.205/16-206/27: Miss Rehana does not seem to be
so polite any longer, as she is
obviously
making fun of the
old man.
p.206/28-208/2:
Muhammad Ali,the crook and swindler,who usually feels no guilt when it
comes to tricking women into giving him
money,is giving his advice for
free.
p.208/3- 208/25:
Miss Rehana is angry now and the old man feels like a fool, as she tells
him off
(D: jmd. ausschimpfen)
p.208/26- 210/29:
Miss Rehana is happy again. Against all the expectations she does
not
want to leave Pakistan and go to Britain to
marry Mustafa Dar. Muhammad is puzzled,but
impressed by Miss Rehana`s determination and the beautiful smile she gives him
when she departs.
The theatrical opening finds its parallel in the ending:”Her last smile,which he watched
from the compound until the bus concealed it in a dust-cloud,was the happiest
thing he had ever seen in his long,hot,hard,unloving life.”
Setting
The compound . Rushdie has revived the colonial
setting of the compound or contact zone.The area in and around it is clearly
defined by a bus-stop,a shanty-town and the closely guarded consulate,where the
privileges for entry to the West are granted. The author wants to show that
colonial structures still exist even after independence and that entry to the
West is still regarded as a privilege.
Good Advice Is Rarer
Than Rubies by Salman Rushdie
Point of view
The story is told by a third-person narrator
who concentrates on Muhammad Ali. He offers us insight into Muhammad`s motives
and his fascination with Miss Rehana. As the reader concentrates more or less
on him and forgets about Miss Rehana, the outcome of the story comes very much
as a surprise to him.
Style
The story is written in a very simple style
with relatively short sentences. The reader is not distracted (D.: ablenken)
from the events by any subplots or long,descriptive passages.
An important feature is the spoken language,
which gives a realistic sense of the way many people speak in Pakistan.
Muhammad`s English is not fluent and full of grammar mistakes.
In contrast to him Miss Rehana`s English is
perfect; she has probably had a better education.The protagonists`s language
contains elements which are typically English (“tip-top”,”absolutely
topsy-turvy”). On the other hand, Hindi,Urdu and Arabic expressions also come
up (“lala,sahib,pukka,babuji,bibi,salaam,wallah”).
Besides there are expressions which the Western
reader might class as being oriental: “Good advice is rarer than rubies.” “When
fate sends a gift,one receives good fortune.”
Finally there are expressions which the
oriental reader might class as being British: “.. a great nation full of the
coldest fish in the world.” Rushdie does not only underline the post-colonial
consequences of the spread of the English language but also the question how it
has mixed with indigenous (D: einheimisch) languages to form a hybrid
language,which both the colonizer and the colonized can understand.
Characters
Miss Rehana
She is different from all the other Tuesday
women. From the very beginning, the author stresses her breath-taking beauty by
which she attracts the bus-driver`s, Muhammad`s and the Consulate official`s
attention . When the advice-giver Muhammad Ali approaches her to give her
advice, she confidently informs him that she is a poor orphan and cannot give
him any money. Under her spell (D: Zauber), he offers his advice for free,which
she accepts.However, she is by no means the docile and shy young woman the
reader expects. She forms her own ideas and knows about what is right or
wrong.Probably, she has learnt only to rely on herself. To the reader she
appears as very self-confident, conscientious, content with her present
situation,polite ,but also quite firm and strict when the situation demands it.
Muhammad Ali
He is a merciless crook who exploits the
situation of those who try anxiously to get permission to enter Great Britain.
Muhammad cannot do without the money he is given by these women. Yet Miss
Rehana obviously manages to twist him around her little finger by her beauty,
that he does not appear as the powerful advice-giver any longer who knows
everything. He is suddenly a foolish old man ,who has lost his head, because of
a young woman who even makes fun of him. His male pride is extremely hurt,when
Miss Rehana turns down his advice.
Good Advice Is Rarer
Than Rubies by Salman Rushdie
Themes
Stereotyping
The story opens with the description of the bus
which brings Miss Rehana to the compound: it is decorated with oriental
arabesques but also with Western slogans, and can therefore not be classed as
belonging to one culture or the other – it cannot be stereotyped.
Miss Rehana is not the beautiful,polite young
lady she seems to be and Muhammad is not the corrupt crook.
The narrative structure underlines in which way
stereotypes are formed,and by disappointing the expectations the reader has
formed,Rushdie wishes to make the reader aware of the mechanisms which lead to
stereotyping. Rushdie stresses that the reader should reflect on historical and
cultural processes which have determined our way of seeing things.
Links to other stories
Immigration:
Although it is not a central issue, Spark`s
“The Black Madonna” also deals with immigration. However, it shows the racism which some immigrants
experienced when they entered Britain, whereas Rushdie underlines the fact that
immigration is not always the ideal solution.
Stereotyping: This also an issue in Qaisra
Sharaz`s “A Pair of Jeans”: in the eyes of the future in-laws Miriam is at
first the ideal stereotypical Muslim daughter-in-law, but when she sees her
dressed in Western clothes she is automatically stereotyped as the wild,
disobedient girl.
The author
Rushdie was born in Bombay in 1947 to a
middle-class Muslim family.he was educated at the Engluish public school Rugby
and studied at King`s College Cambridge.His fourth novel, “The Satanic Verses”
opens with two Indian actors falling from the sky after a jumbo jet is hijacked
and explodes. The novel was controversial as it dealt with the founder of Islam
, Muhammad, in a satirical way. This led to accusations of blasphemy against
Islam, so that the novel was banned in many countries and was burned in the
streets of Bradford. Iran`s spiritual leader at that time, issued a fatwa (a
legal pronouncement) calling on all Muslims to kill the writer and the
publishers of the book, which forced
Rushdie to go into hiding.
POSTMODERN
TRAITS IN THE NOVELS OF AMITAV GHOSH
Indian writing in
English has stamped its greatness by mixing up tradition and modernity in the
production of art. At the outset, the oral transmission of Indian literary
works gained ground gradually. It created an indelible mark in the mind and
heart of the lovers of art. The interest in
literature lit the burning thirst of the writers which turned their
energy and technique to innovate new form and style of writing. Earlier novels projected India’s heritage,
tradition, cultural past and moral values. But a remarkable change can be
noticed in the novels published after the First World War, which is called, modernism. The novels written in the
late 20th century, especially after the Second World War, are considered
postmodern novels. Salman Rushdie, Vikaram Seth, Shashi Tharoor, Upamanyu
Chatterjee and Amitav Ghosh are the makers of new pattern in writing novels
with post-modern thoughts and emotions.
Amitav Ghosh is one among the postmodernists. He is immensely influenced
by the political and cultural milieu of post independent India. Being a social
anthropologist and having the opportunity of visiting alien lands, he comments
on the present scenario the world is passing through in his novels. Cultural fragmentation,
colonial and neo-colonial power structures, cultural degeneration, the
materialistic offshoots of modern civilization, dying of human
relationships,blending of facts and fantasy, search for love and security,
diasporas, etc… are the major preoccupations in the writings of Amitav Ghosh.
The elemental traits of post-modernism are
obviously present in the novels of Amitav Ghosh. As per postmodernists,
national boundaries are a hindrance to human communication. They believe that Nationalism causes wars.
So, post-modernists speak in favour of globalization. Amitav Ghosh’s novels
centre around multiracial and multiethnic issues; as a wandering cosmopolitan
he roves around and weaves them with his narrative beauty. In The Shadow lines,
Amitav Ghosh makes the East and West
meet on a pedestal of friendship, especially through the characters like
Tridib, May, Nice Prince etc., He stresses more on the globalization rather
than nationalization. In The Glass Palace, the story of half-bred Rajkumar
revolves around Burma, Myanmar and India. He travels round many places freely
and gains profit. Unexpectedly, his happiness ends when his son is killed by
Japanese bomb blast. The reason for this calamity is fighting for national
boundaries.Amitav Ghosh has been credited for successfully mastering the genre
known as ‘magical realism’ which was largely developed in India by Salman
Rushdie and in South America by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Ghosh is seen as
“belonging to this international school of writing which successfully deals
with the post-colonial ethos of the modern world without sacrificing the
ancient histories of separate lands.” (Anita
Desai, 1986:149) Like Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh perfectly blends fact
and fiction with magical realism. He reconceptualizes society and history. He
is so scientific in the collection of material, semiotical in the organization
of material, so creative in the formation of fictionalized history. Vol. II.
Issue. II 1 June 2011 Amitav Ghosh weaves his magical realistic plot with postmodern
themes. Self-reflexity and confessionality characterize fictional works of
Amitav Ghosh. Displacement has been a central process in his fictional
writings; departure and arrivals have a permanent symbolic relevance in his
narrative structure. Post modernism gives voice to insecurities, disorientation
and fragmentation. Most of his novels
deal with insecurities in the existence of humanity, whichis one of the
postmodern traits. In The Glass Palace, the havoc caused by Japanese invasion
in Burma and its effect on the Army officers and people -- a sense of dejection
that deals with so much human tragedy, wars, deaths, devastation and
dislocation (Meenakshi Mukherjee, p.153) – has been penned. In The Shadow
Lines, Tridib sacrificed his life in the act of rescuing May from Muslim mobs
in the communal riots of 1963-64 in
Dhaka. Pankaj Mishra describes Amitav Ghosh in the New York times, as one of
few postcolonical writers, “ to have expressed in his work a developing
awareness of the aspirations, defeats and disappointments of colonized people
as they figure out their place in the world”.
Postmodernism rejects western values and beliefs as only a small part of
the human experience and rejects such ideas, beliefs, culture and norms of the
western. In The Hungry Tide, Ghosh routes the debate on eco-environment
and cultural issues through the
intrusion of the West into East. The Circle of Reason is an allegory about the
destruction of traditional village life by the modernizing influx of western
culture and the subsequent displacement of nonEuropean peoples by
imperialism. In An Antique Land, contemporary political
tensions and communal rifts were portrayed.
Postcolonial migration is yet another trait of postmodernism. In The
Hungry Tide, the theme of immigration, sometimes voluntary and sometimes
forced, along with its bitter/sweet experiences, runs through most incidents in
the core of the novel – the ruthless suppression and massacre of East Pakistani
refugees who had run away from the Dandakaranya rufugee camps to Marichjhampi
as they felt that the latter region would provide them with familiar environs
and therefore a better life. In Sea of Poppies , the indentured labourers and
convicts are transported to the island of Mauritius on the ship Ibis where they
suffer a lot. In The Glass Palace, Burmese Royal family, after the exile, lives
an uncomfortable life in India. Rajkumar who piles heap of amount in Burma is
forced to leave his home and business due to Japanese invasion. Irony plays a
vital role in the postmodern fiction. The writers treat the very subjects like
World War II, communal riot, etc. from a
distant position and choose to depict their histories ironically and
humorously. In The Glass Palace, Amitav Ghosh weaves the characters of Queen Supayalat
and Arjun with a tinge of irony. Queen Supayalat, even after being captured by
the British forces, does not lose her pomp throughout the novel. The
portraiture of the Queen is too ironic. Arjun, basically an Indian, is
completely influenced by the western ideology. He imitates the West in his
dressing sense and food habit. He is not
aware of the fact that he is used as instrumental to inflict pain on his own
people. Temporal distortion is a
literary technique that uses a nonlinear timeline. The author may jump forwards
or backwards in time. In The Glass
Palace, Amitav Ghosh uses nonlinear timeline. The memory links the past to the
present and many of the characters. It helps to recreate a magical world. In The
Hungry Tide, he shuttles between the Marichjhampi incident from Nirmal’s point
of view and the present day travels of Piya Roy, Kanai and Fokir. This
timetravel creates an intricacy of sub-topics and plots. In his other novels, characters move round a
Vol. II. Issue. II 2 June 2011gyre of timelessness, yielding helplessly to the
chasm in human relations and other postmodern perturbations. The narrative
style of Amitav Ghosh is typically
postmodern. In The Shadow Lines, the narrative is simple. It flows smoothly,
back and forth between times, places and characters. His prose in The Shadow Lines is so evocative and
realistic written effortlessly as well as enigmatically with a blend of fiction
and non-fiction. Throughout The Glass Palace, Ghosh uses one end to signal the
beginning of another so that at one level, nothing changes but yet everything
does. There is a strong suggestion of Buddhist metaphysics in his technique.
Life, death, success and failure come in cycles and Ghosh uses the conceit of a
pair of binoculars early in The Glass Palace to sensitize the reading in this
perspective. Being a postmodernist, he makes use of very simple language to
give clarity to the readers. Many
Indians writing in English experiment with the language to suit their story.
Ghosh also does it in The Hungry Tide using Bangla words like
mohona, bhata and others, interweaving them with local myths like that of Bon
Bibi and her brother Shaj Jangali, the presiding deities of the region. Though
The Glass Palace and The Hungry Tide have their share of non-English lexical
items, Sea of poppies in numerous places piles up the Indian (Bengali or
Bhojpuri) or lascar-pidgin terms to the point where some readers might to some
extent begin to get confused. For Amitav
Ghosh, language in the process of the production of art attains the status of
diasporic representation – voicing him and thousands of other uprooted
individuals. Language embodies the attempt to create family that has broken and dispersed in the mire of confused identity. Ghosh
acknowledges it in The Shadow lines:-You
see, in our family we don’t know whether we’re coming or going – it’s all my
grand mother’s fault. But of course, the fault was n’t hers at all: it lay in
the language. Every language assumes a centrality, a fixed and settled point to
go away from and come back to, and what my grandmother was looking for was a
word for a journey which was not a coming or a going at all; a journey that was
a search for precisely that fixed point which permits the proper use of verbs
of movement. (The Shadow Lines, 153) This is a language that Ghosh believes in
and this kind of language he tries to create in his work. Postmodernists reject elaborate formal
aesthetics in favour of minimalist designs. Amitav Ghosh does not give any
significance for picturesque description and ornamental use of language. Tabish
khair comments on this as Ghosh is very
careful in his use of English and vernacular transcriptions. He develops a
conscious and rich tradition in Indian English fiction, a tradition that
includes R.K. Narayan and Shashi Deshpande. The attempt is not to stage Indian
Englishes. Ghosh avoids the aestheticisation of language. (p.108)
Postmodernists defend the cause of feminists.
Uma, Amitav Ghosh’s character, is a perfect example of this. Uma is a
break from the traditional women characters.
She is a political activist who travels around the country to dissipate
the patriotic spirits. Blurring of
genres, one of the postmodern traits,
can be witnessed in the writings of Amitav Ghosh. He disfigures by blending
many genres. Girish Karnad rightly said about him, “ Ghosh uses to great effect a matrix of
multiple points of view in which memory, mythology and history freely
interpenetrate …….. A delight to read” (Indian Express). The Glass palace is
not only a novel but also romance, narrative fiction, adventure fiction, and
historical fiction. He combines all the elements of a novel to create
fragmentation. Ghosh uses the romantic genre to chart the characters who
reflect on the history of colonialism in Burma and the formation of the present
Myanmar nation. It is also a narrative fiction that employs a complex spiral
narrative structure to texture many characters’ identities and experiences in
the world where we live in. It can be read in historical point of view, since
it is portraiture of history and document of nation. Ghosh invents the third
person narrator who relates a story in a spiral fashion that fictionalizes and
makes real historical subject and event. The Calcutta Chromosome (1995) is “not only a medical thriller but also a Victorian ghost story, a scientific
quest, a unique mixture of a ‘whodunit
thriller’, and a poltergeist tale”. (Sudeep Sen,p.222) To sum up, postmodernism, not having concrete
definition yet, is a blooming and ongoing area. Even if it has its own
features, it is very difficult to concretize these solid elements. Thus, this
paper remains an attempt to apply the post-modern theory in Amitav Ghosh’s
novels.
PRE-INDEPENDENCE INDIAN ENGLISH NOVEL
Indian
fiction in English emerged out of almost
six decades of intellectual and literary gestation that had begun in 1930’s
with the triumvirate of R.K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao. It is with
their advent that the actual journey of the Indain English novel begins. The
early Indian novels which were merely patriotic gained a rather contemporary
touch with their arrival. The nineteen
thirties were the beginning of the fertile era in Indian Writing in English.
The political scene dominated by Gandhiji, the Satyagraha movements, the Round
Table Conferences and various other social and cultural factors ignited the
spirit of the Indian writers that earned international renown. The novelists,
Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao and R. K. Narayan form a
trilogy
of early Indian Writing in English and with their advent ushered a new era in
this field. Under the profound Gandhian influence, Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable
(1935), Coolie (1936),
Two Leaves and a Bud (1937), The
Village (1939) take up the issues concerning the exploitation of the underdogs
and the have-nots of the Indian society and treats them with the sympathy and
respect
due to human beings. The sweeper, the peasant, the plantation labour, the city
worker, the sepoy; all emerge alive from his novels, anguished, wretched yet
human and vividly portrayed in spite of their sufferings. R. K. Narayan too
began his career as a writer in the same year 1935
with
Swami and Friends. His other works The Bachelor of Arts (1936) and The Dark
Room (1935) appeared in quick succession but the next publication of The
English Teacher (1945) came after a long gap. The third of the great trilogy is
Raja Rao. His novels are few and of
them
only Kanathapura (1938) is published in
the first half of the twentieth century. Kanthapura is simple in plot,
structure language and philosophy. The novel set in the 1930’s in Gandhiji’s
golden decade, when the spark of genuine nationalism and awakening, typically
Indian in its yoking of social and spiritual values, swept through out the
country, razing all barriers-communal, religious and intellectual. I Untouchable
(1935), the shortest of Anand’s novels, is a poignant recordation of a
days experience in the life of Bakha. Born into a family of sweepers, one of
the neglected communities of the traditional Hindu caste structure, he is a
sweeper with a difference. He is young, intelligent and sensitive and thus more
prone to suffering. Like all the untouchables, he is condemned to live in a
world where “the day is dark as the night and the night pitch-dark”.
Surprisingly, his presence in the midst of dirt has not stained the innocence,
purity and responsiveness of his heart.
The day begins, like all his days, with bullying from his father, Lakha,
and loud shouts from the sepoys reminding him of his duty. His sister Sohini’s
tribulations
are no less severe. She has to wait for hours to get a pail of water from the
well. The low caste-men are not allowed to draw water, for their touch meant
pollution even to water, the great purifying element. They have to depend upon
the charity of somebody. If men like Pandit Kalinath draw water for them, it is
not out of mercy on their part, but as an occasional cure for their
constipation. If he favours Sohini by offering the bucket of water, it is meant
more than sympathy and less than consideration for her. Bakha often thinks of retaliation against the
injustice and exploitation meted out on him and the lower castes but his
father, Lakha pacifies him. His is the voice of servile humility and he cannot
entertain any thought of retaliation
against
a high caste man. The difference in the reaction of Bakha and Lakha to the
exploitation is the difference of the old and the new generations. Belonging to
an older generation, he is apt to accept the law of untouchability with less
resentment than Bakha. For Bakha it is a curse which has to be fought and
destroyed. In the afternoon, Bakha
attends the marriage of his friend Ram
Charan’s
sister – the girl of a higher caste whom he couldn’t marry. Ram Charan the
washerman’s son, Chota the leather-worker’s son, and Bakha forget for once the
caste discrimination and differences and share the sugarplums, and plan to play
hockey in the evening. The only comfort Bakha derives is from the house of
Havildar Charat Singh when he goes to
receive the promised hockey-stick. When the havildar asks him to bring coal from the kitchen for his
hookah, he simply cannot believe himself. Anand gives a graphic description of
Bakha’s reaction-his excitement and admiratrion for the man who has such a
unique gesture and also the furtive circumspection that the Havildar, after all
might not be in his senses. He reflects: He might be forgetful and suddenly
realize what he had done. Did he forget that I am a sweeper? He couldn’t have
done, I was just talking to him about my work. And he saw me this morning. How
could he have forgotten? (Untouchable 39)
Bakha is only partly the prototypical ‘untouchable’, for he is also
himself, a unique individual, even in some measure an exceptional
‘untouchable’. The many things that happen to him in the novel could have happened with
anybody. The dramatic telescoping, the
juxtaposition, the linking up, of so many events in the course of twelve hours
is of the novelist. Bakha’s quest is a
quest for identity, in a world which refuses to
recognize
him as anything more than dirt. At the end of the novel we find that he has
succeeded to some extent. In the presence of Gandhi, people seem to forget all
their differences of caste and creed and
high and low. Gandhiji’s concern for the untouchables adds new dimension
to the outlook of Bakha. He has become altogether a different man for he has
seen a new world. There is a noticeable growth in the consciousness of Bakha and his adoration for the Englishmen
stands shattered under the impact of Gandhi-touch. Anand’s treatment of untouchability has
both a merciless clarity and tonal
objectivity which transfers a whole range of inherited feeling associated with
the practice from the victim to the
social structure and its moribund quality. Towards the conclusion, we begin to
wonder as to who are the real untouchables. Is it Bakha and his men or the
people who insulate themselves with petrified traditions? Thus the attention of
the readers is shifted from the exploited individual to the exploitative system which denies man his simple natural
sense of worthiness. Anand’s picture of
Bakha has a clear ring of authenticity about it. Thus E. M. Forster remarks:
Untouchable could only have been written by an Indian, and by an Indian who
observed from the outside. No European, however sympathetic, could have created
the character of Bakha, because he would not have known enough about his
troubles. And no untouchable could have written the book, becausehe would have
been involved in indignation and self-pity. (Preface to Untouchable p.vi.)
Untouchable is the novelist’s shortest novel, and the unities in it are
admirably preserved, as in a classical play, for Untouchable covers the events
of a single day, twelve hours from dawn to dusk to be precise, in the life of
the
‘low-caste’
boy, Bakha, in the town.. Anand achieves the maximum effect by strictly
observing the classical unities and this economy and the severe discipline with
which he organizes the material is not equally evident in Coolie. In any satisfactory work of art, form and
content are inseparable parts of a single whole. Thus the form of a structure of a work of art should
correspond
to the requirements of the theme and the elaboration of that theme in that work
of art. There must be a close correlation between the formal or technical side
of a work and its subject-matter. Anand’s first novel is a great success
because in it the unities of time and
place have been observed, in addition to the unity of action. Untouchable
strikes us as the picture of a place, of
a society, and of certain persons not easily to be forgotten: a picture that is
also an indictment
of the
evils of a decadent and perverted orthodoxy. II From the plight of the social
outcaste, in Untouchable Anand in Coolie (1936) turns to the lot of another
class of the underprivileged in modern Indian society. But in Coolie the range
and scope of the novelist’s fiction widens, his
canvas
expands and there is the orchestration of the themes barely touched upon
in Untouchable. Coolie (1936) is the odyssey of Munoo, an
orphaned village boy from the Kangra hills, who sets out in search of a
livelihood. His several roles include working as a domestic servant in an urban
middle-class household in Shamnagar, as a worker in a pickle-factory and a
coolie in the bazaar in Daulatpur, as a labourer in a cotton mill in Bombay and
a as a rickshaw-puller in an Anglo-Indian household in Simla. The central theme of the novel is the
refusal to a simple, landless
peasant
of the basic right to happiness. Delineating the miserable past of Munoo, the
novelist writes: He had heard of how the landlord had seized his father’s five
acres of land because the interest on the mortgage covering the unpaid rent had
not been forthcoming when the rains had been scanty and the harvest bad. And he
knew how his father had died a slow death of bitterness and disappointment and
left his mother a penniless beggar, to support…a child in arms.
(Coolie
p-6) It is not that Munoo was a
below-average child. He was full of zest for life and quite promising.
Describing his intelligent activities
that could be compared to any of the bright children the novelist delineates:
…was a genius at climbing trees. He
would hop on to the trunk like a monkey, climb the bigger branches on all
fours, swing himself to the thinner space, he would jump from one tree to
another. (Coolie p-7) Poverty leads Munoo to begin his tryst with destiny at the age of fourteen. He
begins working as a domestic servant in the house of Babu Nathoo Ram at
Shamnagar. The lady of the house Bibi Uttam Kaur underfeeds and humiliates him.
Ultimately he is forced to run away from this house after realizing his
position in this world. The novelist remarks: He realized finally his position
in the world. He was to be a slave, a servant who should do the work, all the
odd jobs, someone to be abused, even beaten. (Coolie p-33) But the Shamnagar episode is only the
beginning. It is his stint at Sir George White Cotton Mill in Bombay that
exposes Munoo to the full forces of modern capitalistic machine. The British
management offers no security of tenure and retrenchment is carried out
frequently. The British foreman is at
once the recruiting authority, a landlord who rents out ramshackle cottages at
exorbitant rent, and also a moneylender-all rolled into one. The Pathan
doorkeeper practices usury with even severe methods. The Sikh merchant exploits
his position as the only provision store-keeper in the colony to his full
advantage. M. K. Naik: observes: The ill-paid, ill-housed, under-nourished and
bullied labourer is broken, both in body and mind, as Munoo finds his friend
Hari is, though his own youthful vitality saves him from this ultimate fate.
(Mulk Raj Anand p-41-2) It is not only
capitalism and industrialism that exploit the likes of Munoo, but communalism
too does not spare them. A worker’s strike is easily broken. Casual rumours of
communal disturbances divert the objective of the workers from their rights to
communal issues.
The novelty in this work is the depiction of the relationship shared between
the colonizers and the colonized. The relationship which has exploitation at
the core is depicted with its dimensions
of prejudices, embarrassment and inhibitions on both sides. Thus the theme of
the exploitation and the underprivileged is presented in depth in Coolie and the picture is drawn with
vividness, but the temptation to lay on
the colours too thick is on the whole avoided.
The social panorama against which Munoo moves gives Anand an opportunity
to deal with a cognate theme such as the relationship between the Indians and
the British in pre-Independence days, a relationship in which the element of
exploitation is mixed with prejudices, misunderstandings and inhibitions on
both sides. The setting in the novel moves briskly from the Kangra hills to the
plains of Bombay and back to the Punjab hills. The novel depicts the people
belonging to different cross sections of society from the landless peasants to
the aristocratic Anglo-Indian and British and its varied spectacle from the
scrupulous to the mean. This too is depicted in a period of about two years. So
zealously
has the novelist attacked the social system that M. K. Naik finds its impact to
an extent of crippling the art of the novel. He remarks: A sensitive and
intelligent rustic adolescent, uprooted from the heaven of his native hills and
thrown into the maelstrom of the varied urban world would undergo nothing short
of a total transformation of personality within the
space
of two years, which can actually constitute an age in terms of development at
that impressionable period. Of this transformation there is no sign in Munoo.
The change brought by puberty and the loss of vitality consequent on the onset
of the disease are duly noted, but the inner development of Munoo is totally
neglected. Things happen to him and, he reacts to them, but strangely enough,
the growth of the mind is nowhere shown. The only explanation possible is that
Anand is so busy painting his picture of social inequality that the artistic
danger in leaving his protagonist a static and passive victim escapes his
notice altogether. (Mulk Raj Anand p-
45) The
novelist has a dual role to perform. He has to tell a tale and also with it
convey his philosophy forcibly, without in any way mitigating his artistry. He
tells us of the class-conflict between the rich and the poor, of the
individual’s right to work and of the
worker’s right to share the produce. Anand’s art, owing to the tension between
humanism and his radicalism, is
ever on
the point of being impaled on the horn’s of a dilemma; but his fidelity to the
fact of life and to the interior modalities of the human personality saves him
from being a mere propagandist. Even his socialist view of art serves as an
alembic rather than as a screen between the detail and the pattern of the felt
life. But the artistic balance is rather precarious, and in this novel, the
novelist seems to fall a prey to his political instinct. He portrays
exploitation at various
levels,
including the one which thrives in the name of Trade Unionism and thus
universalizes the theme. By over-emphasizing the sincerity and integrity of the
Red Flag Union and showing Onkar Nath, who happens to be the President of the
Indian Trade Union Congress in an unfavourable light, Anand the propagandist
seems to have taken precedence over Anand the artist. Anand’s portrayal of these characters lacks objectivity. They are
not full-blooded characters but only skin-deep and transparent. Yet they do
conform faithfully to the quaint image
into which a ruled nation forces the personality of the ruler. The comic
epiphany orders into a viable focus the
subversive feelings which the folk-mind entertains in respect of the
pretentious
superiority
of the master-race. In a country’s fables of identity, low-mimetic images of
power constitute a kind of counter-myth, and Anand seems to be subconsciously
operating at this level in his delineation of the English characters. The novel cannot be said to possess
the unity of which we expect from a well built plot as Anand pays more
attention to the content of his novels than to the form. Anand makes no special
effort to build up or construct his plot as a true craftsman should do. Having
decided upon a theme Anand proceeds to invent a plot to develop, to expand, to
elaborate and to illustrate that theme; but, while inventing a plot, he does
not take pains to bind the plot into a unified whole. The theme in Coolie is
poverty and unemployment. An offshoot of this theme is the contrast between the
rich and the poor. This theme has been
comprehensively
and exhaustively dealt with by Anand in this novel. The plot which Anand has built in this novel does not have organic unity. The
plot here consists of long strings of incidents, events, situations and
episodes. The incidents and the events involve persons, individuals, groups of
people who have certainly been made to
live and who are integral to these incidents and events. But the incidents and the events have not been closely inter-woven
and do not even follow one another according to logic of cause and effect. The
incidents happen just by chance and without any design either on the part of
the characters or on the author. For instance, while Munoo does get a job in
Babu Nathoo Ram’s house as a domestic servant in accordance with a plan formed
by Munoo’s uncle, the rest of the story is a matter of chance happening. Munoo
meets Prabha Dyal and Ganpat just by chance; he happens to receive the help of
circus elephant-driver just by chance: he saves the life of a child in Bombay
just by chance, thus becoming acquainted with Hari; he comes to know Ratan just
by chance; he is knocked down on a road by a passing car just by chance and is
taken to Simla. The only unity about this string of chance-happenings lies in
the fact that the protagonist stands at the centre of all these happenings, so
that it is the personality of the protagonist which imparts to the novel
whatever unity it does. The chapter dealing
with his life in Bombay is by far the longest chapter and it depicts not only
the plight of Munoo but also of Hari, Lakshmi, Ratan and thousands of
other workmen. The last chapter deals
with Munoo’s experience in Simla where he dies a premature death. In each of
these sections of the novel we meet a
different group of characters and the only common
character
in all of them is Munoo. The characters we come across in the second chapter
are forgotten when we come to the next chapter. It is only Munoo who imparts
some kind of unity to the novel. Thus the real theme of the novel is the
experience of Munoo and his reactions to these experiences in different places.
But the incidents and the happenings of the different chapters
of the
novel have not been interwoven into an artistic design or pattern; and no
device has been employed for a close inter-linking of the various events of the
episodes. The incidents and the events do not follow one another logically and
are the result of mere chance and accident. Actually chance and fate play too prominent
a role in the novel. Munoo is a passive character. Things happen to him and he
has no role in determining the course of events. The novel has succeeded in
serving the purpose which the author had in writing it. The wretchedness and
the misery resulting from the poverty and the exploitation of the unemployed
and the under-privileged by the capitalists and also the affluent middle-class
have most effectively been conveyed to us through the experiences of Munoo and
also through the experiences of others
at
various places and in various contexts. Munoo the domestic servant at Babu
Nathoo Ram’s house; Munoo, the factory worker in Daulatpur; Munoo as a
mill-worker in Bombay; and Munoo as a rickshaw-coolie in Simla – in shor, Munoo
as a victim of the social system in the country has been portrayed in detail
and most convincingly. Others belonging very much to the same category are
Tulsi, Maharaj, Ratan, Hari, Lakshmi and Mohan. They all belong to suffering
and their exploiters are Bibi Uttam Kaur, Ganpat, Jimmie Thomas, the Pathan
gate-keeper, the Sikh shopkeeper and the Sahiblogs of Simla- have been depicted
in a realistic manner as the tyrants and the blood-suckers. Besides, there are
thousands and thousands of other coolies whose wretched existence has been
described. Munoo, by temperament is the kin of Bakha. He shares with Bakha his
sensitivities, imagination, love for life
and fellow-feeling for others. But the difference between the two is
that the problem of Bakha is peculiarly Indian, Munoo’s is of a more universal
nature. Bakha’s experience is limited in time and space whereas, Munoo’s life
is painted on a large canvas and his struggle for survival takes him through
the cross-section of the country. If Bakha is an untouchable, Munoo too, is an
untouchable in a different sense: he is poor. Coolie is about double the size
of Untochable, and the action is spread over some years and moves from village
to town, from town to city, and from city to Bombay, and from Bombay to Shimla. The pace of writing, as in
Untouchable, is swift, and has scenes follow in quick succession. Thus Coolie
is a picaresque novel presenting the journey of the protagonist and the
crosssection of India. It highlights the pains and predicaments of poor working
people. If the Untouchable is the microcosm, Coolie is more like the macrocosm that is
Indian society.
III The
next work of the novelist to come in
chronological order is Two Leaves and a Bud (1937), which presents the theme of
the exploitation of the underprivileged with the far greater concentration than
Coolie, sine in the earlier novel the scene shifts from one stratum of society
to another, while in the latter work, the entire tragedy is unfolded against the background of the
tea-plantation
which is a microcosm in itself, a world in which British officials and their
Indian subordinates on the one hand and the coolies on the other are ranged in
two separate camps of the exploiters and
the exploited. Thus the issue of racism looms large over the novel than in any
other works of Mulk Raj Anand. The starting point in his novel too is a
village, as in the case of Coolie. But here we travel from a village in the
Punjab to a tea-estate in Assam. The protagonist in this case is a middle-aged
man by the name of Gangu. He travels from his village to Assam in the company
of his wife Sajani and his two children, Leila and Buddhu. Ganga begins to work
as a labourer on the teaestate and becomes a victim of the exploitation which
is going on there. It is
double
exploitation. There is exploitation of
the labourers by their foreign masters, but there is also the exploitation by
certain well-placed Indians. Among the British masters some are really good
men, while some are evil. The worst of the evil Britishers is a man called
Reggie Hunt, who is the assistant manager of the tea-estate where Gangu has
found employment. Reggie Hunt is hated by the labourers and not much liked even
by the fellow Britishers. The devil of a man, he tries to seduce Gangu’s daughter Leila who is now a charming,
grown up girl. Thwarted in his nefarious attempt he fires at Gangu killing him
on the spot. At the trial this villain
is acquitted of the charge of murder and even of culpable homicide. Gangu’s exploitation begins when he is lured
to the tea-estate with a grand promise by Sardar Buta who recruits labourers
for the tea-estate, with a promise of receiving a plot of land free of charge.
Once he reaches it, the
promised
land turns out to be a prison where he just receives starvation wage and is
compelled to live in unhygienic conditions and undernourished, he and his wife
fall a prey to disease of which she even
loses her life. On his intervention when the British Assistant Manager attempts
to molest his daughter, he is shot dead and ends up by paying with his life
rather than beginning a new one. Gangu
is a victim of the exploitation by the forces of capitalism and here too the
exploiters are the British colonizers. The British attitude towards the Indians
is revealed by the treatment meted out
on them by the British tea-estate
officials namely Croft-Cook and Reggie Hunt. M. K. Naik observes: For them the Indian labourer is just a piece
of property, a sub-human being with no rights and all duty, whose only utility
is to be a serviceable tool in the
vast
machine of the plantation. (Mulk Raj Anand p-47) The British officials totally mistrust the
Indians. Every coolie is for them a potential agitator. Even a simple quarrel
between the two collie women is magnified as an uprising and severely dealt
with, and when the coolies come
peacefully
to seek redress, they are branded as revolutionaries and shot down.The
consequence of utterly failing to understand the difficulties of the coolies is
resorting to suppression as the panacea to
all issues that arise in the relationship between the colonizers and the
colonized.
Besides the British feeling of superiority is
represented the deep-rooted feeling of inferiority in the colonized Indians.
Such a feeling is not limited to the illiterate coolies who have been the
victims of the feudal Indian structure since generation but even the educated
middle-class Indians. Thus Babu Shashi Bhushan Bhattacharya cannot
assert himself in the presence of a kind doctor like de la Havre. De La Havre rightly summing up the situation
observes: If only the British had begun by accepting these people from the very
start on terms of equality, as human beings…But there it was, the British had
exaggerated the worst instinct in their own character, and called out the worst
in the Indian. (Two Leaves and a Bud p-154)
In the picture of race-relationship the novelist presents an effective
counter-balance to Reggie Hunt through the young doctor de la Havre. He is
depicted as sensitive, fair-minded Englishman, as opposed to the shrewd, sly
and selfish Reggie Hunt. He can analyze the problems of the coolie and of the
273
Indo-British
relationship in all its aspects, such as the historical, the economic, the
political, the sociological and the psychological; at the same time he can put
himself in the coolie’s place and feel for him. Thus de la Havre is, indeed one
of the finest portraits of one aspect of British character in Indian fiction in
English. Gangu, the protagonist of the
novel is comprehensively sketched. He rightly represents the class of the
pre-independence peasants. He is credulous
enough
to believe the exaggerations of Buta regarding the plantation to which he is
being lured and simultaneously he is aware that Buta is laying it on thick.
Years of misery have converted him into a meek, passive and abject fatalist.
But the instinct to live is still very strong in him. This instinct is clearly
stated in the delineation by the novelist wherein he observes:
Women
fiction writers
Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy was
born in Shillong,
Meghalaya, India, to Ranjit Roy, a Bengali Hindu tea planter and Mary Roy, a Malayali Syrian
Christian women's rights
activist.She spent her childhood in Aymanam in Kerala, and went to school at Corpus
Christi, Kottayam,
followed by the Lawrence School, Lovedale, in Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu.
She then studied architecture at the School of Planning and
Architecture, Delhi, where she met her first husband, architect Gerard da
Cunha.Roy met her second husband, filmmaker Pradip
Krishen, in 1984, and played a village girl in his award-winning movie Massey Sahib. Until made
financially secure by the success of her novel The God of Small Things, she worked
various jobs, including running aerobics classes at five-star hotels in New
Delhi. Roy is a cousin of prominent media personality Prannoy Roy,
the head of the leading Indian TV media group NDTV. She lives in New Delhi.
Literary
career
Early career: screenplays
Early
in her career, Roy worked for television and movies. She wrote the screenplays
for In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (1989), a movie based on her
experiences as a student of architecture, directed by her current husband, and Electric
Moon (1992); she also
appeared as a performer in the first. Roy attracted attention in 1994, when she
criticised Shekhar
Kapur's filmBandit Queen, based on the life of Phoolan
Devi. In her film review entitled, "The Great Indian Rape Trick",
she questioned the right to "restage the rape of a living woman without her
permission," and charged Kapur with exploiting Devi and misrepresenting
both her life and its meaning.[3][4][5]
The God of Small Things
Roy
began writing her first novel, The God of Small Things, in 1992,
completing it in 1996. The book is semi-autobiographical and
a major part captures her childhood experiences inAymanam.
The
publication of The God of
Small Things catapulted Roy
to instant international fame. It received the 1997 Booker Prize for Fiction
and was listed as one of the New
York Times Notable Books
of the Year for 1997. It reached fourth position on the New York Times Bestsellers list for Independent Fiction. From the beginning, the book was also
a commercial success: Roy received half a million pounds as an advance; It was published in May, and the book
had been sold to eighteen countries by the end of June.
The
God of Small Things received
stellar reviews in major American newspapers such as The New York Times (a "dazzling first novel," "extraordinary," "at
once so morally strenuous and so imaginatively supple" and the Los
Angeles Times ("a
novel of poignancy and considerable sweep"),
and in Canadian publications such as the Toronto
Star ("a lush,
magical novel").
By the end of the year, it had become one of the five best books of 1997 by TIME. Critical response in the United
Kingdom was less positive, and that the novel was awarded the Booker Prize
caused controversy; Carmen Callil, a 1996 Booker Prize judge, called the novel
"execrable," and The
Guardian called the
contest "profoundly depressing." In India, the book was criticised
especially for its unrestrained description of sexuality by E. K.
Nayanar, then Chief Minister of Roy's homestate Kerala, where she
had to answer charges of obscenity.
Shashi Deshpande
Shashi
Deshpande (Kannada: ಶಶಿ ದೇಶಪಾಂಡೆ)
(born in 1938 in Dharwad, Karnataka,
India), is an award-winning Indian novelist. She is the second daughter
of famous Kannada dramatist and writer Sriranga. She was born in Karnataka and educated in Bombay (now Mumbai) and Bangalore.
Deshpande has degrees in Economics and Law. When she was living
in Mumbai she did a course onjournalism at
the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and worked for a couple of months as a journalist
for the magazine 'Onlooker'.She published her first collection of short stories
in 1978, and her first novel, 'The Dark Holds No Terror', in 1980. She won the Sahitya
Akademi Award for the novel
'That Long Silence' in 1990 and the Padma Shri award in 2009.
Shashi
Deshpande has written four children’s books, a number of short stories, and
nine novels, besides
several perceptive essays, now
available in a volume entitled Writing
from the Margin and Other Essays.
Shobhaa De
Early life
Shobhaa De was
born in a Maharashtrian Goud Saraswat Brahmin family in Mumbai, India. She completed
her schooling from Queen Mary School, Mumbai and graduated from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai with a degree in psychology.
Career
After making her
name as a model, she began a career in journalism in 1970, during the course of which
she founded and edited three magazines – Stardust, Society,
and Celebrity. Stardustmagazine, published by
Mumbai-based Magna Publishing Co. Ltd., was started by Nari Hira in 1971. and
became popular under the editorship of Shobhaa De. In the 1980s, she
contributed to the Sunday magazine section of The Times of India. In her columns, she used
to explore the socialite life in Mumbai lifestyles of the celebrities. At
present, she is a freelance
writer and columnist for
several newspapers and magazines.
Shobhaa De is one
of India’s top best-selling authors. All her 17 books have topped the charts
and created records. Spouse –
The Truth About Marriage, that examines the urban institution of marriage,
sold 20,000 copies on the day of its official launch in Delhi and is currently being translated into
several languages. De gave a new definition to the mass market best seller with
her breakthrough, bold and highly individualistic style that spoke a new
language. She is credited with having given birth to Hinglish, a heady, irreverent
mix of Hindi and English, that spoke to readers in
an entirely new way. Four of her titles, namely, Socialite Evenings, Starry Nights,
Sultry Days, and Second
Thoughts are course material
in the University of London. Her work features
extensively in Comparative Literature courses at Universities abroad and within
India. An academic examination of her books titled, The Fiction of Shobhaa De,
compiled by Professor Dodiya, features 40 critical essays by academics – Indian
and foreign. Over a hundred dissertations on her work are in various libraries
worldwide.
Recipient of
several awards for her journalistic contributions, De writes prolifically for
Indian and International publications. She runs four weekly columns in
mainstream newspapers, including theThe Times of India and Asian
Age. She has been the writer of several popular soaps on television,
including India’s first daily soap, Swabhimaan.
She also anchored a prestigious weekly show called Power Trip which featured India's Billionaires as
never before. She participates on a regular basis on important TV debates, such
as The Editor's Verdict on NDTV during the 2009 elections. She is
recognized as an important social commentator and something of an authority on
popular culture. Outspoken and forthright, De chronicles today’s India in her
own inimitable style. More recently via her blog and Twitter account.
Her books are best
sellers in several regional languages, including Punjabi, Hindi, Gujarati,
Malayalam, Bengali and Marathi. Bollywood
Nights was launched at the
London Book Fair in April 2007, and for the American market in the same year,
by Penguin International. The U.K. edition of her work, Superstar India was published in April 2009. Superstar India sold over 100,000 copies in India
during its first year, to establish a new record. It will be published in
America in September 2009. Glitzernacht,
was launched at the prestigious Frankfurt Book Fair in 2006, followed by 4 more
titles in German, with an additional 3 to follow. The first of her Italian
books, Sorelle was launched in Milan and Rome,
followed by Bollywood Nights in May 2007. Her books are in
translation in Spanish, Italian, German, Hungarian, Portuguese, Turkish,
Russian, Polish and Korean at present. Her first book in its French edition was
published by Actes Sud in 2010.
She was the chief
guest at Chandigarh University, in 2007. Department of English, where she
delivered the Presidential Address on "New Trends in Contemporary
Writing." De has participated in several literary festivals, including the
prestigious Writers' Festival in Melbourne. The Writers’ Festival in Hong Kong,
Singapore and Jaipur, besides the literary festival called Kitaab in Mumbai.
She has been invited to the Kovalam Lit Fest as well as the first South African
Festival of Indian Authors in September 2009. Dubai Lit Fest in 2010. Jaipur
Lit Fest 2010. Hay Lit Fest in the Maldives in 2010. Karachi Lit Fest in Feb
2011. There are over 50 dissertations on her work in publication. She was a
part of the official Indian Delegation to the Global Women’s Forum at Deauville
(France) in October 2008. She was a keynote speaker at the Leadership Conclave
in Delhi, October 2009 . The subject – "Has the Indian Woman Come of Age,
Finally?." She is regularly invited to participate in prestigious
All-India debates, like the annual one in Kolkata, The Telegraph Debate.
Invited regularly as a leading television panelist on national issues by
India’s top anchors, Arnab Goswami, Rajdeep Sardesia, Karan Thapar.
Considered one of
the top Opinion Shapers in the region, she is on the Readers’ Digest List – “
India’s Most Trusted People” published in March 2010, along with Ratan Tata and
Dr. Abdul Kalam. She is on the list of ‘50 Most Powerful Women in India”
published by the DNA Newspaper, March 2010. She was also featured on the 2010
list of ‘ India’s 50 Most Beautiful’ in Hi Blitz.
Her latest book is
titled Shobhaa at Sixty and has been published by Hay House in
2010. 2010 saw her emerge as a Publisher in her own right, with the launch of
her own imprint by Penguin Books, titled The
Shobhaa De Book.
Jhumpa Lahiri
Lahiri was born in London, the
daughter of Indian immigrants from the state of West Bengal.
Her family moved to the United States when she was three; Lahiri considers
herself an American, stating, "I
wasn't born here, but I might as well have been." Lahiri grew up in Kingston, Rhode
Island, where her father Amar Lahiri works as a librarian at the University of Rhode Island; he is the basis for the protagonist in
"The Third and Final Continent," the closing story from Interpreter of Maladies. Lahiri's mother wanted her children to
grow up knowing their Bengali heritage, and her family often visited
relatives in Calcutta (now Kolkata).
When she began
kindergarten in Kingston, Rhode Island, Lahiri's teacher decided
to call her by her pet name,
Jhumpa, because it was easier to pronounce than her "proper names". Lahiri recalled, "I always felt so embarrassed
by my name.... You feel like you're causing someone pain just by being who you
are." Lahiri's ambivalence over her identity
was the inspiration for the ambivalence of Gogol, the protagonist of her novel The Namesake, over his unusual name. Lahiri graduated from South Kingstown High School and received her B.A. in English
literature fromBarnard College in
1989.
Lahiri then
received multiple degrees from Boston
University: an M.A. in English, M.F.A. in Creative Writing, M.A. in
Comparative Literature, and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. She took a
fellowship at Provincetown's Fine Arts Work Center, which lasted for the
next two years (1997–1998). Lahiri has taught creative writing at Boston
University and the Rhode Island School of Design.
In 2001, Lahiri
married Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, a journalist who was then Deputy Editor of TIME Latin America, and who is now Senior
Editor of Fox News Latino. Lahiri
lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn with her husband and their two
children, Octavio (b. 2002) and Noor (b. 2005).
Literary career
Lahiri's early
short stories faced rejection from publishers "for years".[9] Her debut short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, was finally
released in 1999. The stories address sensitive dilemmas in the lives of
Indians or Indian immigrants, with themes such as marital difficulties,
miscarriages, and the disconnection between first and second generation United
States immigrants. Lahiri later wrote, "When
I first started writing I was not conscious that my subject was the
Indian-American experience. What drew me to my craft was the desire to force
the two worlds I occupied to mingle on the page as I was not brave enough, or
mature enough, to allow in life."[10] The collection was praised by American
critics, but received mixed reviews in India, where reviewers were alternately
enthusiastic and upset Lahiri had "not paint[ed] Indians in a more
positive light."[11] Interpreter of Maladies sold 600,000 copies and received the
2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (only the seventh time a story
collection had won the award).[3][12]
In 2003, Lahiri
published The
Namesake, her first novel.[11] The story spans over thirty years in
the life of the Ganguli family. The Calcutta-born parents emigrated as young
adults to the United States, where their children, Gogol and Sonia, grow up
experiencing the constant generational and cultural gap with their parents. A film adaptation of The
Namesake was released in
March 2007, directed by Mira Nair and starring Kal Penn as Gogol and Bollywood stars Tabu and Irrfan Khan as his parents. Lahiri herself made a
cameo as "Aunt Jhumpa".
Lahiri's second
collection of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth, was released on April 1,
2008. Upon its publication, Unaccustomed
Earth achieved the rare
distinction of debuting at number 1 onThe New York Times best seller list.[13] New York Times Book Review editor, Dwight Garner, stated, "It’s hard to
remember the last genuinely serious, well-written work of fiction —
particularly a book of stories — that leapt straight to No. 1; it’s a powerful
demonstration of Lahiri’s newfound commercial clout."[13]
Lahiri has also
had a distinguished relationship with The
New Yorker magazine in
which she has published a number of her short stories, mostly fiction, and a
few non-fiction including The
Long Way Home; Cooking Lessons, a
story about the importance of food in Lahiri's relationship with her mother.
Since 2005, Lahiri
has been a Vice President of the PEN American Center, an organization designed
to promote friendship and intellectual cooperation among writers.
In February 2010,
she was appointed a member of the Committee on the Arts
and Humanities, along with five others.
Anita Desai
Anita
Mazumdar was born in Mussoorie, India, to a German mother, Toni Nime, and a Bengali businessman, D. N. Mazumdar.[3] She grew up speaking German at home and Bengali, Urdu,Hindi and English outside the house.
Although German is her first language she did not visit Germany until later in
life as an adult. She first learned to read and write in English at school and as
a result English became her "literary
language".[4] She began to write in English at the
age of seven and published her first story at the age of nine.[3]
She
was a student at Queen Mary's Higher Secondary School in Delhi and received her
B.A. in English literature in 1957 from the Miranda
House of the University of Delhi. The following year she
married Ashvin Desai, the director of a computer software company and author of
the book: Between Eternities:
Ideas on Life and The Cosmos. They have four children, including Booker
Prize-winning novelist Kiran Desai.
Her children were taken to Thul (near Alibagh) for
weekends, where Desai set her novel The Village by the Sea.[3] For that work she won the 1983 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize,
a once-in-a-lifetime book award judged by a panel of British children's
writers.[2]
Career
Desai
published her first novel, Cry
The Peacock, in 1963. She considers Clear
Light Of Day (1980) her most
autobiographical work as it is set during her coming of age and also in the
same neighbourhood in which she grew up.[5] In 1984 she published In Custody –
about an Urdu poet in his declining days – which was
shortlisted for the Booker
Prize. In 1993 she became a creative writing teacher at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.[6] Her novel, The
Zigzag Way (2004), is set
in 20th-century Mexico and her latest novel The
Artist of Disappearance came
in 2011.
Desai
has taught at Mount Holyoke College, Baruch
College and Smith
College. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the American Academy of Arts and
Letters, and of Girton College, Cambridge University (to which she dedicated Baumgartner's
Bombay).[7] In addition, she writes for the New York Review of Books.
Postcolonial
literature
Indian English
literature (IEL) refers to
the body of work by writers in India who write in the English
language and whose native or
co-native language could be one of the numerous languages of India. It is also associated with
the works of members of the Indian diaspora,
such as V.S.
Naipaul, Kiran Desai, Jhumpa
Lahiri and Salman
Rushdie, who are of Indian descent.
It is frequently
referred to as Indo-Anglian literature. (Indo-Anglian is a specific term in the sole context
of writing that should not be confused with the term Anglo-Indian).
As a category, this production comes under the broader realm of postcolonial literature- the production
from previouslycolonised countries
such as India.
IEL has a
relatively recent history, it is only one and a half centuries old. The first
book written by an Indian in English was by Sake
Dean Mahomet, titled Travels
of Dean Mahomet; Mahomet's travel narrative was published in 1793 in
England. In its early stages it was influenced by the Western art form of the novel. Early Indian
writers used English unadulterated by Indian words to convey an experience
which was essentially Indian. Raja Rao's Kanthapura is Indian in terms of its storytelling
qualities. Rabindranath Tagore wrote in Bengali and English and was responsible
for the translations of his own work into English. Dhan Gopal Mukerji was the first Indian author to win a
literary award in the United
States. Nirad C. Chaudhuri, a writer of non-fiction, is
best known for his The Autobiography of an Unknown
Indian where he relates
his life experiences and influences. P. Lal, a poet,
translator, publisher and essayist, founded a press in the 1950s for Indian
English writing, Writers
Workshop.
R.K.
Narayan is a writer who
contributed over many decades and who continued to write till his death
recently. He was discovered by Graham Greene in the sense that the latter helped
him find a publisher in England. Graham Greene and Narayan remained close
friends till the end. Similar to Thomas
Hardy's Wessex, Narayan
created the fictitious town of Malgudi where he set his novels. Some
criticise Narayan for the parochial, detached and closed world that he created
in the face of the changing conditions in India at the times in which the
stories are set. Others, such as Graham Greene, however, feel that through
Malgudi they could vividly understand the Indian experience. Narayan's
evocation of small town life and its experiences through the eyes of the
endearing child protagonist Swaminathan in Swami
and Friends is a good
sample of his writing style. Simultaneous with Narayan's pastoral idylls, a
very different writer, Mulk
Raj Anand, was similarly gaining recognition for his writing set in rural
India; but his stories were harsher, and engaged, sometimes brutally, with
divisions of caste, class and religion.
Poetry
An
overlooked category of Indian writing in English is poetry. Rabindranath Tagore
wrote in Bengali and English and was responsible for the translations of his
own work into English. Other early notable poets in English include Derozio, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Toru Dutt, Romesh Chunder Dutt, Sri
Aurobindo, Sarojini
Naidu, and her brother Harindranath Chattopadhyay.
A
generation of exiles also sprang from the Indian diaspora. Among these are
names like Agha
Shahid Ali, Sujata
Bhatt, Richard
Crasta, Yuyutsu
Sharma and Vikram Seth.
In
modern times, Indian poetry in English was typified by two very different
poets. Dom Moraes,
winner of the Hawthornden
Prize at the age of 19 for
his first book of poems A
Beginning went on to occupy a
pre-eminent position among Indian poets writing in English. Nissim
Ezekiel, who came from India's tiny Bene Israel Jewish community, created a voice and
place for Indian poets writing in English and championed their work.
Their
contemporaries in English poetry in India were Jayanta
Mahapatra, Gieve Patel, A.
K. Ramanujan, Arun
Kolatkar, Dilip
Chitre, Eunice
De Souza, Kersy
Katrak, P. Lal, Kamala Das,
andArvind Krishna Mehrotra, among several
others. The younger generation of poets writing in English include Smita
Agarwal, Makarand Paranjape, Nandini
Sahu, Vattacharja Chandan, Arundhathi Subramaniam, Ranjit
Hoskote, Sudeep Sen, Hemant
Mohapatra, Jeet Thayil, Mani Rao, Jerry Pinto, Abhay K among others.
The Partition as portrayed
in the novel and short story
The partition of India and the associated bloody riots
inspired many creative minds in India and Pakistan to create literary/cinematic
depictions of this event.[1] While some creations depicted the
massacres during the refugee migration, others concentrated on the aftermath of
the partition in terms of difficulties faced by the refugees in both side of
the border. Even now, more than 60 years after the partition, works of fiction
and films are made that relate to the events of partition.
Literature
describing the human cost of independence and partition comprises Khushwant
Singh's Train
to Pakistan (1956),
several short stories such as Toba Tek Singh (1955) by Saadat Hassan Manto, Urdu poems such as Subh-e-Azadi (Freedom’s Dawn, 1947) by Faiz
Ahmad Faiz, Bhisham
Sahni's Tamas (1974), Manohar
Malgonkar's A Bend in the
Ganges (1965), and Bapsi
Sidhwa's Ice-Candy
Man (1988), among others.[2][3] Salman
Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children (1980), which won the Booker
Prize and the Booker of Bookers, weaved its narrative
based on the children born with magical abilities on midnight of 14 August
1947.[3] Freedom at Midnight (1975) is a non-fiction work by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre that chronicled the events surrounding
the first Independence Day celebrations in 1947. There is a paucity of films
related to the independence and partition.[4][5][6]
Hoshyarpur to Lahore
Entitled Hoshyar Pur say Lahore tak in Urdu, it is a true story based on a
train journey from Indian city of Hoshiarpur to Lahore in Pakistan. It is written by a Police
officer who traveled in this train.
Ali Pur Ka Aeeli
Ali
Pur Ka Aeeli in Urdu is an
autobiography of Mumtaz
Mufti that includes his
narration on the account of bringing his family from Batala to Lahore on a truck.
Khaak aur Khoon
Khak aur Khoon is a
historical novel by Nasīm Hijazi that describes the sacrifices of
Muslims of the Sub-continent during the time of partition in 1947.
When a portion of
the Muslims from the various regions of India were trying to get to Pakistan,
some faced attacks from Hindu and Sikh groups, during their journeys, that
involved snatching of money, and jewellery of their wives and daughters.
The Broken Mirror
The Broken
Mirror, a Hindi novel by Krishna Baldev Vaid, portrays the psychological
and sociological transformations in a West Punjabi village in the phase leading
up to the Partition, with emphasis on commensal taboos and hardened community
boundaries.
Half a Village
Half a Village,
a Hindi novel by Rahi Masoom Reza, represents the experiences of subaltern
Indian Muslims in village Gangauli, and their distinctive take on the vacuity
of 'high politics'.
The Weary Generations
The Weary
Generations, an Urdu novel by Abdullah Hussein, tracks the prehistory of
the partition through the experiences of the main character, Naeem, a veteran
of the First World War who faces up to the futility and meaningless of the
partition.
Basti
Basti by Intizar
Hussain is an Urdu novel that
focuses on the partition as memory, through the lens of protagonist Zakir, a
historian who seeks to come to terms with this memory in the context of the
happenings in 1971 in Pakistan leading up to the formation of Bangladesh.
The Dark Dancer
The Dark Dancer is a novel by Balachandra Rajan that
portrays the experiences of an Indian educated abroad who returns home to face
the horror of the Partition.
A Bend in the Ganges
A Bend in the
Ganges is a novel by Manohar
Malgonkar that features some
of the graphic violence that occurred during the partition.
Sunlight on a Broken Column
Sunlight on a
Broken Column is a novel by
Attia Hosain which depicts the experiences of the protagonist, Laila, a young
woman from a taluqdari family of Oudh, in the years leading up to the
partition.
Pinjar
Pinjar is a Punjabi novel written by Amrita
Pritam which is the story of
a horse that goes for a walk with a girl called zoe the
same name.
Dastaan
Dastaan is a drama
on hum channel Pakistan based on razia butt novel [bano] which is the story of
a Muslim family in Ludhyiana India and two lovers Hassan and bano those got
separated in partition. Its Heart breaking story of the division of India
Kingdom's End and Other Stories
Kingdom's End
and Other Stories (1987) is a
collection of stories written by Saadat Hasan Manto, published by Penguin Books
India (ISBN
0-14-011774-1). The majority of stories by this Urdu writer from Punjab
revolve around the end of the Raj, Partition and communalism. His stories
include Thanda Gosht, Khol Do, Toba Tek Singh, Iss Manjdhar Mein,
Mozalle, Babu Gopi Nath etc.
Some of his characters became legendary. An online translation of Toba Tek
Singh is available.
Raavi Paar and Other Stories
Raavi Paar and
Other Stories (2000) is a
collection of stories by Sampooran Singh Gulzar that deal with the partition of India
and Pakistan..
Sacred Games
While Vikram
Chandra's 2006 novel Sacred Games is
not about partition, it does contain a long and graphic chapter describing the
main character's mother's flight as a young Sikh girl from what would become
Pakistani Punjab, during which her beloved older sister was abducted.
Train to Pakistan
This saga by Khushwant
Singh was first published in
1956. Singh’s version of the Partition is a social one, providing human
accounts in a diverse, detailed character base where each person has unique
points of view, pointing out that everyone is equally at fault and that placing
blame was irrelevant. Interwoven with this point are the subtle questions of
morality which Singh asks through his characters, such as whether or not the
bad needs to be recognized to promote the good, and what constitutes a good
deed. It was adapted into a Hindi film by the same name by Pamela
Rooks in 1998.[9]
Tamas
Penned by Bhisham
Sahni and the winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1975, Tamas depicted riots in a small Indian town.
The fiction was later adapted into a TV series by the same
name forDoordarshan,
and later a one-off four hour feature film
Midnight's Children
Salman
Rushdie wrote this famous
surrealistic fiction full of satirical references to the event of partition and
independence. The "midnight" alluded to in the title is the moment at
which partition and independence became official. It was later adapted into a
film by the same name by Deepa Mehta.
Purbo-Paschim
Purbo-Paschim (East and the West) is an epic Bengali
saga by Sunil Gangopadhyay. The narrative deals with a
particular family that had to migrate from East
Pakistan to West Bengal,
and their fight against the tide.The story stretches from a pre-independence
period to early 1980s and reflects the socio-economical changes that this
region went through during this long period of time.
A Fine Balance
Written by Rohinton
Mistry, the story is set in 1975. However, the Partition plays a dominant
role in the narrative.
Ice-Candy Man
Bapsi
Sidhwa's 1988 novel, written in the backdrop of the riots in Lahore, re-released
in 1991 as Cracking
India. Later the story was made into a film, called Earth by Deepa Mehta.
Interpreter of Maladies
Jhumpa
Lahiri was awarded the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Interpreter of Maladies, a collection
of short stories some of which involved the aftermath of the partition.
Azadi
Semi-autobiographical
novel by Chaman Nahal.
"The Shadow Lines"
A novel by Amitav
Ghosh, that reflects the hollowness of the partition through its character
Thamma. The book is written in English. It is a Sahitya Akademi award winner
book. It was published by Oxford University Press.
Dalit
literature
Dalit Literature, literature about the Dalits, the oppressed class
under Indian caste system forms an important and distinct part of Indian literature. Though Dalit narratives have been a
part of the Indian social narratives since 11th century onwards, with works
like Sekkizhar's Periya Puranam portraying Dalit women like half-naked and sexually
exploitable and praising the killing of thousands of Dalits on
"Kazhumaram" in the hands of Gnanasambandan, Dalit literature emerged
into prominence and as a collective voice after 1960, starting with Marathi, and
soon appeared inHindi, Kannada, Telugu and Tamil languages, through self-narratives, like poems, short stories and most
importantly autobiographies known for their realism, and for its contribution
to Dalit politics. It denounced as petty and false the
then prevailing romanticism with the bourgeois Sadashiv pethi literature
treated the whole Dalit issue, ignoring the social reality of appalling poverty
and oppression of caste Hindus which was the result of the bourgeois character
of this culture. It is often compared with the African-American
literature especially in its
depiction of issues of racial segregation and injustice, as seen in Slave narratives
Ambedkari (Literature) Sahitya
In 1993, Ambedkari Sahitya Parishad,
Wardha organized first "Akhil Bhartiya (All India) Ambedkari Sahitya
Sammelan" in Wardha, Maharashtra to reconceptualize and transform
"Dalit Sahitya (literature) into "Ambedkari Sahitya" after the
name of its modern age hero and inspiration Dr.B.R. Ambedkar. Ambedkari Sahitya
Parishad then successfully organized Third Akhil Bhartiya Ambedkari Sahitya
Sammelan in 1996 and became a strong advocacy force of this transformation. Since
then ten similar sahitya sammelans were held in various places. Ambedkari
Sahitya Parishad was formed in 1992 with the goal to connect people with common
ideals and aspirations, to provide a platform to those who are inspired by Dr B
R Ambedkar's thoughts and philosophy to express their anguish through their
literature against the oppression and bigotry, and to make their presence felt
in the world.
Dalit Writers
Maharashtra
Arun Kamble, Shantabai
Kamble, Krushna Kamble, Raja Dhale, Namdev
Dhasal, Daya Pawar, Annabhau
Sathe, Bandhu Madhav, Laxman Mane, Laxman Gaikwad, Hari Narake, Sharankumar Limbale, Waman Nibalkar, Bhimsen Dethe, Bhau
Panchbhai, Ambadas Shinde, Murlidhar Bansode, Kishor Shantabai Kale, Mayur Vhatkar. Heera Bansode,Joyti Lanjewar, Mallika Amershekh
Diasporic
fiction
Indian English fiction
has always been responsive to the changes in material reality and
theoretical
perspectives that have impacted and governed its study since the time of its
inception.
At the earlier stage
the fictional works of the writers like Mulk Raj Anand, R. K.Narayan and
Raja Rao were mainly
concerned with the down- trodden of the society, the Indian middle class
life and the
expression of traditional cultural ethos of India. At that time, even to a much
later
stage when writers
like K. S. Venkataramani, Markandaya, Bhabani Bhattacharya, Chaman
Nahal, Ruth Praver
Jhabvala, Nayantara Sahagal, Arun Joshi, and Khushwant Singh wrote, Indian
English fiction
concentrated on the depiction of social reality of the times. And the study of
these
writings was largely
based on realist ideology. The critical studies of their works were directed to
explore how far they
had been successful in giving expression to the reality around them. Much
of the study was based
on sociological and Marxist theoretical perspectives. Apart from the views
related to the study
of external reality, the psychological
reality expressed through different
characters formed
another aspect of literary criticism.
The interplay of a
variety of material and philosophical developments marks a discernible
shift in the nature
and study of Indian English fiction. Consequently, Indian English fictional
scene has become
variegated, complex and thematically richer. The writers settled abroad and the
ones who divide their
time between India and abroad have contributed much to this rapidly
developing sub-genre
of English literature. Now Indian English literature no longer remains
limited to the
writings necessarily of the sons ofthe soil. It has broadened the scope of
fictional
concerns of these
writers from purely Indian to the global and transnational.
The diaspora writers
in particular interweave the Indian and the global that marks the
emergence of cultural
mix at a mass level in the times impacted by globalization and
unprecedented growth
in the field of technology and communication. Their writings show how
the developments in
one part of the world have immediate and wider impact in different parts of
the world. Their
fictional works become more significant for giving expression to cross-cultural
encounter from a
different perspective. The writings of Bharati Mukherjee, Jhumpa Lahiri, Anita
Desai, Kiran Desai,
Kavita Dasvani, M.G. Vassanji, V.S.Naipaul and Hari Kunjru, to name a few,
provide an inside view
of the problems faced by the displaced people in their adopted homes in a
way that questions the
traditional understanding of the
concepts like home, nation, native and
alien. These writers
contest essentialist nature of the
difference between cultures premised on
binary division
informing the east and the west. Whereas the earlier writers depicting
crosscultural encounter often created stereotypical forms of life and
characters to mark the essential
difference between the
cultures, diaspora writers often contest fixed notions of identity and stable
norms that govern life
at home and abroad. Diaspora fiction highlights an altogether different
attitude of the people
from the earstwhile colonies in the postcolonial times.
Postcolonial
perspectives have also impacted the critical and the creative aspects of Indian
English fiction. How
the colonial rulers created a particular image of their subject races to
perpetrate their hold
on them forms an important feature of the emerging forms of narrative.
Contemporary writers hailing from the previously colonized nations,
particularly India, explore
forms of life that
existed during the British rule and expose the subtle strategies employed to
make the colonized
people take their subjugated position as something natural and transcendental.
These writers also bring
out the functioning of almost the same power politics that defines the
relations between the
power wielding people and the people kept at the margins even after the end
of political
imperialism. A number of contemporary writers fictionalize these aspects of
life and
the postcolonial
critics analyze and expose the way colonialists propagated constructed reality
about different
societies and cultures as the reality. The theoretical perspectives used
for the
purpose are usually
based on the insights provided by Michel Foucault, Edward Said, Homi
K.Bhabha and the other
postcolonial thinkers. All these ideas contest monolithic, unitary and
totalitarian views
about reality and its understanding. The study of literary woks is taken up to
find how the writers
have presented experiences of the colonized people. The variery of life that
forms the subject
matter of postcolonial creative and the critical writings also includes
different
forms of oppressed
human existence even after the end of British Imperialism. It points out the
colonialist nature of
the native rulers and challenges the essentialist understanding that treats
certain races as
always the colonizers and the others as fundamentally free from such cultural
traits. The
postcolonial fictional writings often
provide a revisiting to history and contest its
existing
interpretation . The fiction writers often mix fact and fiction to re-examine
the earlier
happenings, incidents,
views and assumptions. Their major concern being the nature of reality
that existed during
the colonial period, these writers often concentrate on the political and
social
happenings with a view
to contesting the academic or the accepted versions about them. In the
process these writings
use the historical facts and references to persons and places to subvert the
earlier discourses.
The fictional polemics in such writings is often premised on the ideas that
treat
history as something
constructed, hence a kind of fiction. The major function of these writings is
to expose and
criticize the subjugation of man by man in all its forms. Therefore, the
critical
stance used by post
colonialists turns extremely relevant in the works concentrating on the
decolonization of the
social groups oppressed in the name of class, caste, gender and race. Instead
of objective and
realistic,this kind of fiction tends to be purposive and political as it
involves the
assertion of specific
views in the name of giving voice to plurality, multiplicity and heterogeneity
informing life.
Another theoretical
perspective that asserts multiplicity, heterogeneity, and plurality in
socio-cultural reality
and the world of ideas relates to Bakhtin’s insights about dialogic nature of
discourse and
significance of interactive voices. His insights in terms of heteroglossia,
polyphony
and dialogism have
provided new ideas for the understanding and analysis of fictional works.
Earlier a fictional
discourse was understood to be governed by the singular perspective of the
narrator or the author
or some dominating character. All the fictional details were supposed to
move towards a unified
world view presented in a work of art. All other voices were subordinated
to the governing
consciousness of the author or the character assumed to carry the ideas of the
writer. In the changed
scenario, reality presented in a novel as well as the world view of the
characters form
‘polyphony' of voices. Sometimes even the characters subordinated to the
predominant voices in
a novel represent multiple valid voices. These ideas have challenged the
unitary nature of
reality , the authority of the omniscient narrator and presence of a
centralized
perspective. It points
out a decisive shift in the
understanding of reality and its presentation in
fiction. As reality is
no longer treated to be unitary and singular, the meaning of a work of art too
is no longer
considered to be ultimate, complete, total and limited to the intended meaning
of the
writer that he can
convey in authoritative terms. The ideas
contesting stable and fixed nature of
reality and rejecting the possibility of
complete and ultimate
understanding of reality along with the insights provided by existentialists
who challenge the
existence of essential human self and reality, thinkers like Foucault, Derrida,
Jean Francis Loytard,
Frederic Jameson, form what is commonly considered postmodernist
perspective. In spite
of the difference in their approaches their views taken collectively contest
originary, unitary and
transcendental nature of reality and the concepts like humanism, idealism
and other overarching
systems like spiritualism, Marxism, humanism, etc. used to make sense of
human experience. The
reality and ideals like truth, justice human self and identity are treated to
be constructed and
contextual. By implication, the stable, pre-given and fixed nature of values
stands contested. In
the study of literature it displaces the
canonical view about culture and
literature. According
to these ideas the difference between high and low serious and popular
culture and art is
constructed and fictional. The life in the mainstream or kept at the margins or
periphery has equal
relevance and significance for art. These theoretical views have impacted the
thematic as well as
the formal features of literary writings, particularly fiction. According to
these
frameworks a work of
art is not supposed to follow set literary patterns and parameters. It has
encouraged
experimentation in fiction writing. Consequently, a shift from traditionally
accepted
standards and forms of
life to the popular, and marginalized
forms of life, and from fixed literary
norms of presentation
to altogether new, striking and wonderful has resulted.
Apart from different
theoretical views, quick urbanization of the Indian society in recent
years, emphatic role
of institutionalized form of democracy and an unprecedented awareness of
human rights have
resulted in self assertion and individual independence that can be observed
from a lack of the
sense of community and a disregard for moral and social values.
Corresponding to these
developments, there has emerged a spurt of writings about what is
commonly called the
marginalized forms of life. These writings concentrate on the life and
problems of the people
kept at the margins due to the compulsions of gender, caste and ethnicity.
For example, the
writings concentrating on the problems of women are now explored with a view
to ascertain how far
they support women’s struggle for liberation from patriarchy. Using
theoretical ideas
propounded by different western feminist thinkers, the critics study the
fictional
works of art as an
expression of a specific reality related and limited to women’s existence in
society. Similarly,
the life and experiences of the people related to specific, particularly
minority,
ethnic group also form
the subject of study in a number of
fictional writings. Although these
writers tend to give a
realistic view of the life around but the way they fictionalize these forms of
life marks a study of
reality from a specific point of view that makes the presented reality created
and constructed
purposefully rather than being representation of reality understood
traditionally.
Consequently what has
been presented does not seem as important as how it has been presented.
It highlights the
fictional nature of the reality depicted and tends to make these writings a
politically symbolic
act. Such writings further highlight multi-layered and heterogeneous nature
of reality and the
vertical nature of cultural division instead of horizontal.
The foregoing views
about the nature of fictional writings and their study suggest some
predominant aspects of
Indian English fiction. These ideas in any case, do not mean that these are
the, and the only features of Indian English
fiction and fictional studies. Moreover, a creative
artist does not
consciously take up writing to suit or support some philosophical, ideological
or
critical perspectives.
On the other hand, critical studies may apply specific critical tools without
limiting the meaning
of a work of art. However, the recurrence of some elements in creative and
critical writings
marks the predominant trends. The present anthology of critical writings on a
variety of fictional works is aimed to trace
the gradual growth and
maturity of creative and critical
expressions related to Indian English
fiction. The critical
analysis taken up in different papers marks the variety of perspectives used
for the study of
fictional writings and the shift that Indian creative and critical perceptions
have
registered. In her
study of Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance
of Loss Tejinder Kaur explores the
nature of fictional
discourse that concentrates on the problems of diasporas at home and abroad.
Her analysis points
out the broad nature of the term ‘Diaspora’ that also includes displaced people
even within their own
country. The promise of comfortable and prosperous life acts as a great
pull for the people
particularly from the Indian sub-continent to settle abroad. These people
experience inhuman
life, discriminatory treatment at the hands of the people of the host country
including the earlier
settlers from different countries. On the other hand, political compulsions
and peculiar
socio-economic conditions result in
people’s migration within their own country.
Apart from this, how
diasporas respond to their adopted homes also forms the subject of study
concentrating on Kiran
Desai’s fictionalization of diaspora life.
P.S.Ramana’s paper concentrates on the nature
of the fictionalization of diaspora
experiences. He points
out the difference between the migrant novel in vernaculars like Punjabi
and the novels written
in English about people’s lives in an alien land. He observes that whereas
the Punjabi novel
about diaspora life explores the
hardships faced by the illiterate and semiliterate, farm and industrial
labour the novels like The Namesake are mainly about the problems
that the educated
middle and upper middle class people face in their adopted homes. Apart from
this, Ramana
critically examines how Jhumpa Lahiri’s
The Namesake remains silent about the
political and the
broader social issues and limits to the personal and the familial. Such
observations provide
valuable insights for the critical evaluation of diasporic fiction. Looking
from a postcolonial
perspective Ramana asserts that novels like The Namesake, no doubt, bring
out the hardships and
tensions that immigrants undergo in their adopted homes in general and in
the western countries
in particular, yet they fail to draw attention to the marginalized position of
the migrants in
socio-political terms. The silence about larger ethnic, demographic changes and
cultural and economic
conflicts is more intriguing in this novel. Emphasizing the role of a literary
work for the
consolidation or the subversion of
certain ideologies Ramana considers Lahiri as
writer complicit with
neo-colonial forces for suggesting assimilation into the adopted culture.
Diasproa writing
mostly constitutes the works by the writers settled abroad. Exception to
this can be seen in
Manju Kapur’s novel The Immigrant. She depicts the immigrant experience
without herself being
one. How her novel offers a counter narrative to the ideas often expressed
in fictional writings
concentrating on diasporic experiences forms the main thrust in Narinder
Neb's study of this
novel. The novel subverts the discourse that tends to treat all kinds of
immigrant experiences
as diasporic. The paper discusses how the novelist brings out a highly
pragmatic approach of
the immigrants who willingly leave their native places tempted by a
promise of bright
future or as an escape route out of some economic or personal problem. They
do not leave their
earlier homes under political compulsions or due to hostile circumstances that
result in forced
exile. Therefore, these people’s desire to settle abroad is completely the
result of
their own conscious
choices. They are ready to make all
sorts of compromises to fulfill their
dreams. The sense of
alienation, discrimination and being marginalized is not as harrowing and
painful for them as it
is for the people who have to leave their country against their wishes. It
points out a different
narrative stance adopted by Manju Kapur in her novel The Immigrant. The interaction between different cultural
groups particularly related to the East and the
West has been studied
from post colonial perspective by Jagroop Singh in his paper “Colonizing
the Mind:
Civilizational Imperialism and Amitav Ghosh’s
The Glass Palace”. His study of
Amitav Ghosh’s novel
brings out how colonialists use strategies of “physical usurpation of
territories” through
militaristic and civilizational imperialism for the colonization of the minds
of
their subjects. The material
and ideological instruments go a long way in subjugating the subject
races. The paper
studies this novel as a postcolonial text as it exposes the colonial designs of
the
British Empire.
Jagroop Singh finds this novel ‘a probing critique of the civilizational
imperialism of British
rule which colonized the native mind by re-framing the existing structures
of human knowledge
into East-West binaries of orientalism’. He also points out how the novel
challenges the
propagation of certain constructed forms of reality and ideas as something
essential and
transcendental. In the process he emphasizes how the subtle ways of
civilizational
imperialism function
as more potent, though invisible, tool in the hands of the colonialists.
Premised on Said’s insights
provided in his seminal works and Foucault’s concept of power
knowledge discourse,
Jagroop Singh’s study of The Glass Palace explores the implications of
post colonialism in
Ghosh’s novel.
Using Foucauldian perspectives Anand Bajaj,
explores the role of power structures and
the discourses in the
fictional world created by Arundhaty Roy in her novel The God of Small
Things. In the
process, he explains the nature of power, knowledge and discourse the way they
are understood and
interpreted by Foucault. His paper analyzes the functioning of casteism and
patriarchy as the
discourses that impact the lives of different characters in Roy’s novel. How
the
variety of
perspectives interact and supplement one another to award meaning to human
experiences also finds
relevance when he coalesces Althusser’s perceptions about the functioning
of ideology with the
concepts of knowledge and power as propounded by Foucault. It brings out
the similarities in
the way ideology and power function as discourses of truth to “hide the
essential nature of
all relations”.
Bakhtin, like Foucault
and other theorists, has impacted literary studies to a large extent.
His concepts of
polyphony’ ‘heteroglossia’ and the dialogic nature of discourse are used to
study
the co-existence and
interactive role of plurality of ideas presented in a work of art, particularly
novel. Seema Singh
uses these ideas to show the presence of
multiple valid voices in Amitav
Ghosh’s novel ‘The
Shadow Lines’. Her study shows that the author\ narrator does not have
absolute authority at
the same time nor do they turn irrelevant. On the other hand, their voices
along with the other
characters and the context in which the novel is being read form the fictional
discourse constituted
of multiple voices. These voices always stand in a dialogic relationship that
makes the novel
polyphonic. Consequently different shades of reality and ideologies find
expression through
multiple consciousnesses. The simultaneous co-existence of different literary
and artistic motifs
highlights the hybrid nature of novel.
The fictionalization
of women's problems and their study forms another significant aspect
of contemporary Indian
Englisy fiction. How women suffer due to patriarchal hegemonic
structures and the way
these women protest against their subjugation forms the central concern in
a number of fictional
writings. The study of such writings is aimed to explore the extent to which
they serve the purpose
of giving voice to women and support their struggle for rights. The critical
perspectives used for
this study involve the study of the kind of images of women the writiers
present and the way
these images serve the feminist ends. Sunita Goyal and Manmeet Sodhi present
feminist critique of Shashi Deshpande's A Matter of Time and Bapsi Sidhwa's
Cracking
India in their
respective papers.
The theoretical
perceptions applied for the study of
life and its creative representation
highlight the
plurality of existence and challenges the existence of a commonly experienced
epistemological world.
The assertion of separate cultural identities based on religion, caste
ethnicity and gender
in contemporary Indian English fiction can be studied against this backdrop.
Jagroop Singh’s paper
on Rohintion Mistry’s The Family Matters
studies the ethno-religious
politics that makes
the minority communities in India, like the Parsis, wary of the majority
community. Rohinton
Mistry himself being a Parsi gives expression to the fears and anxieties of
his community. The
present study of his novel highlights the limitations and relevance of the
fiction concentrating
on particular ethnic groups. In the process it expresses the view that the
novel does not remain
ethnocentric as it celebrates hybridity and multi-culturalism in the on going
process of
globalization and transnationalism. The study also highlights the peculiarities
of the
post-modern,
globalized world in which identity is considered something fluid and
constructed.
At the same time the
concept of identity acquires greater significance for the minorities and
marginalized groups
who seek a space within the larger cultural groups through the assertion of
their ethnic identity.
It can also be understood in terms of emergence of micro narratives against
the hegemonic nature
of meta-narratives. These aspects of life, their presentation and study also
forms a significant
feature of post- modernist aesthetics.
Post modernist
writings share the elements of modernism in breaking away from traditions,
experimentation with
form and a markedly different attitude towards life and its understanding
yet they do not have
everything in common. While modernists lament the loss of order and try to
re-create it, the
postmodernists celebrate it. The postmodernist art registers the disintegration
of
social and literary
traditions and values. All these aspects, along with other thematic features of
postmodernism form the
subject of study in Surekha’s paper on Shashi Tharoor’s Riot, and Rohit
Phutela’s analysis of
Hari Kunjru’s novel The Impressionist.
The variety of
critical perspectives used to study
fictional works marks a radical
transformation in the
attitude towards reality and realism. In spite of taking the artistic and the
formal aspects of
differnt writings the major thrust of such studies often remains thematic.
Considering this as a
kind of overconscious critical focus on themes Kulbhushan Kushal believes
that it usually
ignores the formalistic and the aesthetic. His paper on Raja Rao's The Serpent
and
the Rope brings out
the relevance and significance of the study of the formal and the technical
aspects of the
narrative. His paper analyzes the interactive role of different structrual
elements,
particularly theme and
character in the novel. In the course of the study, he observes that the
presentation of a
contrast between two cultures in this novel reveals 'the protagonist's
consciousness as it
passes through various emotional and spiritual problems'. Kushal's paper
exhibits yet another
dimension of the change informing the study of fiction in general and Indian
English fiction in
particular.
Another dimension
related to the variety informing critical perspectives deployed for the
study of fictional
writings and the understanding of reality presented in these works can be
ascertained from
Surekha's paper presenting an existentialist study of V. S. Naipaul's The Magic
Seeds, and Narinder
Neb's paper in which he discusses the nature of Shobha De's fictional world
that finds relevance
in the shift informing paradigms of understanding life and its
fictionalization.
The present collection
of articles offers valuable reflections on theoretical
and creative aspects
of contemporary Indian English fiction impacted by different material and
ideological spheres of life in recent times. A study of contemporary
fictional works and
their analysis based on different theoretical perspectives
certainly points out
how contemporary y creative writings and their studies have
moved ahead to explore uncharted lands.
