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A Deconstructive Perspective of India in the French Gaze in Tasleema Nasreen’s Farashi Premik (The French Lover)

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Baijayanti Mukhopadhyay, Banwarilal Bhalotia College, Asansol

Modhurai Gangopadhyay, Bidhan Chandra College Asansol

Abstract

Our paper discusses the [mis]representation and the imaginary notions of India constructed through the European gaze in Tasleema Nasreen’s Farashi Premik or The French Lover. As the protagonist Nilanjana Mondal begins her search for love and independence far away from her home, in Paris, she feels herself continuously trapped within a prison-house of European gaze—where her motherland India is simply a barbaric land of beggars, poverty and prostitutes. It doesn’t take her long to realise that the French have a subconscious awareness that the Indian culture and civilisation is in some ways, far better and older than theirs and their gaze is an attempt to mask this schizophrenic fear behind a superiority complex. It is easy to give in to this gaze, like many of Neela’s Indian fellow diasporic Indians in Paris do, but much more difficult to deconstruct it, but that does not mean Neela would not try.

[Keywords: India, French, gaze, Neela, Benoir Dupont, European, oriental]

                                                  “They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented.”

                                                                       —Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire  

                                                                                     of Louis Bonaparte”

The Europeans’ view of India, Indians and everything associated with the subcontinent can be summed up exactly in the quote above. The tendency of Europeans has always been to speak and write in stereotyped and dehumanizing ways about “The East”, in order to construct an imaginary other and India too has been no exception to this golden rule—as Edward Said’s “Orientalism” makes it clear. According to Said, the “rational west” has to be distinguished from the “irrational” oriental countries like India, simply for the purpose of the construction of an European identity that is superior to non-European cultures like India, which have always been portrayed as inferior, regressive, primitive and irrational— which is amply borne out by Kipling’s portrayal of Indian characters and his unforgettable comment loaded with colonial overtones – “… East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet”. India no longer remains a geographical entity, rather it becomes an European invention— a land of “romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes …” ( Said 1). At the same time, India was seen as an oriental land of wish-fulfillment, as Jimmy Porter, the hero of Osborne’s Look Back in Anger points out in his process of “looking back” with longing and nostalgia at the days of India’s colonization:

All home-made cakes and croquet, bright ideas, bright uniforms. Always the same picture: high summer, the long days in the sun, slim volumes of verse, crisp linen, the smell of starch. What a romantic picture. Phoney too, of course. It must have rained sometimes. Still I regret it somehow, phoney or not” (I/6).

It is in the light of this ever pervading desire mixed with disgust that has always framed the European gaze and it has been further incensed by the “us-verses-them” contest that we, in this paper, would analyse the (mis)representation of India in the eyes of the French in Tasleema Nasreen’s Farashi Premik (The French Lover).

The French Lover is the tale of a woman’s search for love and independence in Paris, far away from her home. The plot centres around the protagonist Nilanjana Mondal, a young Bengali woman from Kolkata who moves to Paris after her marriage to Kishanlal, a Punjabi restaurant owner in Paris. After the breaking up of her marriage she meets Benoir Dupont, a blonde, blue-eyed handsome Frenchman, and is swept off her feet. What follows is a passionate and sexually liberating relationship with Benoir which ends with her realisation that they both love the same person—she loved Benoir, Benoir too loved himself and only himself and she was nothing but an exotic taste for him.

During her long stay in Paris, Neela is continuously confronted by the European’s [mis]conception about her motherland—they consider it to be an exotic yet uncultured civilization full of poverty, beggars, hunger and diseases. As Greenblat explains, we define our identities always in relation to what we are not—who must be demonised and objectified as “others” (Selden 164) The “unruly” and the “alien” are internalized “others” who help us consolidate our identities; their existence is allowed only as evidence of the rightness of the established order. That is exactly the reason why the Europeans have always sought to hide their fear of an alien culture behind the mask of a superiority complex. For the French, as Neela comes soon to realise, the poor India is the real India. This attitude of the French towards India surfaces when Neela watches a documentary film on India broadcast by a French channel with some of her French friends. The documentary begins with a close-up shot of an empty broken tin plate which diffuses into the picture of naked and bare-feet starved Indian children begging for alms and returning at the end of the day to a dirty unhygienic slum. It is also interesting to note that before his visit to India, Benoir had got himself vaccinated against almost all diseases known to medical science because, according to him, “We Europeans need it” (162) and in spite of the vaccinations, he says that he considers himself lucky to have come out hale and hearty from a disease-ridden country like India There is a reference to yet another documentary on India in the novel—on the life of prostitutes in India and their agitation for their rights causing Benoir to remark:“Holy Earth! There are so many prostitutes in your country, Neela!!”( 278).

Though the word “gaze” literally means an exchange of looks, in the post colonial perspective, it can be taken to mean a gaze that gives primacy to the European look. Thus, when talking about India in the European “gaze”, the word “gaze” actually is the look which denotes the dominant position of the European who controls the Orient as an object of desire and deceit. Thus India is always the object of the gaze—she can never look back, because she has no subjectivity. On the contrary, India and the Indians are expected to model themselves according to the Occidental gaze. The interesting point is that usually the Indian is co-opted into the occidental point of view.

The European gaze is a kind of whirlpool, into which many Indians, including Kishanlal, Sunil, and Choitali had already been sucked in. Comparing Paris to Kolkata, Kishanlal once says: “Do you think this is your dirty Kolkata that I have to wash my hands and feet every time I come home from outside? Ha Ha!” (30). Again, during her visit to Sunil and Choitali’s house, Neela notices that their baby daughter Tumpa does not respond at all to Bengali words. Choitali and Sunil inform her that Tumpa does not know Bengali, she has only been taught French. Since, according to her parents, two languages might confuse the child, they had stuck to French and had decided to leave out Bengali because “of what use would that language [Bengali] be of to her?”(44). Kishan’s view about the Bengali language is also no better; according to him, Neela shouldn’t be proud that she had been a Bengali major in her graduation, because “What can you do with your degree of Bengali literature? Would you be able to earn a Franc with it? You can’t.… So stop showing me your temper”(55). Actually, in spite of being Indians by birth, the European gaze towards their motherland had been thrust on them and they had begun to see India, Indian culture and Indian languages with the spectacles of disgust that the French had lent them, because, after all, it is far easier to swim with the current than against it…Access Full Text of the Article

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The Image of India & Hinduism in William Jones’ “Hymns” to Hindu Deities

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Bidhan Mondal, Kalyani University in West Bengal, India

Abstract

William Jones’ hymns to Hindu deities of India use ideas of translation and originality in order to provide a poetic and cultural space where the hymn syncretically demonstrates both a British and Hindu religious exegesis. A few fundamental questions arise: how was Hinduism represented? Who was representing it? From what sources were the poets gaining their impressions and understanding of religion? In what way were religion, in general, and the poet’s representation of it specifically received? Jones’s importance in my thesis lies in the fact that it would be utterly impossible to answer any one of these questions without mentioning his name and giving some account of his life and works. Drawing upon Michael J. Franklin’s Sir William Jones: Selected Prose and Poetical Works and Romantic Representations of British India, I want to emphasise Jones’ syncretic tendencies within the multi-cultural and multi-faith environment of metropolitan India rather than in the ideals of European Enlightenment.

[Key Words: Hinduism, Sir William Jones, politics and poetics of representation]

During the early nineteenth century India’s sudden geopolitical and economic importance led to a burgeoning interest in and study of its culture by British and Europeans alike – particularly on the subject of religion. As Joyti Mohan writes, because of his stature in Europe’s intellectual community, Voltaire’s writings on India were widely read and they enhanced the charm of Hinduism to begin its ascent into the intellectual mainstream of European Enlightenment thinking. There have been a number of worthy critical studies investigating India’s influence on the British literature. For example, Raymond Schwab’s pioneering The Oriental Renaissance: Europe’s Rediscovery of India and the East, 1680-1880 (1958) first broached the subject by recognising and identifying the frequency with which India was a topic of literary concern. Schwab argues that “The Orient served as alter ego to the Occident” (Schwab 43), suggesting the way in which the two complemented each other, rather than competed with – or controlled – the other. As Dalrymple writes:

Beneath the familiar story of European conquest and the Rule in India, and the imposition of European conquest and the rule in India, and the imposition of European Ways in the heart of Asia….the Indian conquest of the European imagination…widespread cultural assimilation and hybridity: what Salman Rushdie-talking of modern Multiculturalism has called Chutni-fication. Virtually all Englishmen in India at this period Indianised themselves To some extent (Dalrymple 123).

Thus it is relevant to contextualise Jones’ Hymns within a framework of bi-lateral and unilateral assumptions of postcolonial theory laid out in Edward Said’s Orientalism, which views Jones as the leading architect of Britain’s imperial ideology. Warren Hastings, the governor general of East India Company, implemented a policy of ruling India on its ancient laws, according to their own ideas and prejudices. From these policies, Hastings led a sustained effort to fund and support attempts of the British to learn, read and translate Hindu mythology into English. In 1787 “The Monthly Review” exhibits such an attitude when they write that

An acquaintance with Indian literature in general might have the most beneficial     effects. It might even tend to redeem the national character, by teaching Englishmen to consider the nation of India as men, as beings entitled by heaven with the same facilities, the same talents, and the same feeling with themselves (The Monthly Review :35).

In the midst of such colonial attitude, Indian literature like the Bhagabat Geeta offered not only a way to learn about another religion and culture, but also redeem the national character from these offences in the fostering of a cross-cultural appreciation of each other’s common humanity–one sanctioned by both a British and Hindu “Heaven”. These policies find their greatest success once Jones took up the study of Sanskrit, Hindu mythology and Hindu folklore. The eleven years Jones spent in Calcutta were the most productive of his literary life, which almost singularly centred on introducing, explaining, and representing Hinduism to a British and European audience, as exemplified primarily by his composition of nine hymns to Hindu deities. While other missionaries, such as William Carey, undermined Sanskrit as “sacred nothings”, Jones prided himself upon saying that he spoke “the language of Gods” (Jones 167). In this way Jones becomes synonymous with Hinduism in the Romantic period. Sir William Jones was the pioneer of philosophical studies in India and was, finally, the first Englishman to respond poetically to the Indian setting. He is the first Westerner to render Kalidasa’s Sakuntala into English and make the Occident aware of the richness of Sanskrit to Anglo-Indian literature.

The translation of Kalidasa’s Sakuntalam by Sir William Jones in 1789 was an epoch-making event in the history of cultural relations between India and the West. Indeed its impact on history has been more profound and far reaching than even that of the French. Jones had unveiled the vistas of a new world of ideas—a new era in Oriental scholarship and historical writing as well as a new movement in the spheres of comparative philology, comparative literature, English poetry, Sanskrit poetry and Indian historical writing (Ranganathan 3).

Jones’s nine hymns to Hindu deities, which belong to the late eighteenth century, are addressed to Camdeo, Prakriti, Indra, Surya, Lakshmi, Narayana, Saraswati and Ganga. His first hymn, addressed to Camdeo, is the first view of Hindu Mythology presented in English poetry. I shall prove his mastery in intermingling East and West by suggesting that the Sanskrit word ‘Dipaka’—one of the several names of Kama—and the English word ‘Cupid’ have an original linguistic connection. The Hindu god Camdeo is no doubt the counterpart of the Grecian Eros and the Roman Cupido, but in Hindu mythology a peculiar course of events attends his life and attributes so that his very name rouses romance and beauty. This hymn recalls to one’s mind the description of love full of romantic exuberance in Swinburne’s Atlanta in Calydon. His second and third hymns are addressed to Prakriti in her two aspects: Durga and Bhabani. “Prakriti” is the cause of creation and the means of discrimination, and “Purusha”, the manifestation of the Parabrahman, assumes the body and experiences the dualities of the world: good and bad, joy and sorrow, which are the contrivance of Prakriti as “Maya”. The theme of the first of these two hymns, “The Hymn to Durga”, is borrowed from Kalidasa’s Kumarsambhavam in Sanskrit. The second hymn, “The Hymn to Bhabani”, manifests the destructive side of the Mother, the third hymn is devoted to her benevolent aspect. The conception of a female power or “Sakti” being responsible for the creation, maintenance and destruction of the universe is not uncommon in both Eastern and Western mythologies. Sri Aurobindo assigns The Mother the attributes of Wisdom, Strength, Harmony, and Perfection. Robert Graves similarly conceives of an all-powerful, all-pervading Female power in his poems, while Swinburne depicts the picture of “Aphrodite” like that of Bhabani: at the emergence of these goddesses the whole universe leaps into life (Mukherjee 87)…Access Full Text of the Article

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The ‘Good’ European and his ‘Disinterested Mistress’: Mimicry and Aporia in John Masters

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Sayantika Chakraborty, Independent Researcher, Kolkata, India

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to critique John Master’s representation of India by analyzing three of his novels and his autobiography. As a member of the Indian army, Masters lived in India for a long time in the final phase of the British Raj. He wrote great many books based on his experiences in India, and the four texts chosen for this paper are central in this regard. This paper isolates Masters’s own emotional trajectory, especially how his initial disinterestedness changes into a passionate engagement with India, which he later describes as his mistress. The underlying dualities in the autobiographical narrative are linked to those in his fictional accounts of India, since in all his writings he deliberately blurs the factual and the fictional. However, such attempts to blur binaries are critiqued from Master’s own subject position to show how notions like mimicry and interstice, in the colonial context, define not only the colonized subject but implicate his colonial superior as well who has his own ways of encountering aporias.

[Keywords: Mimicry, Aporia, Imaginary, British Raj, Colonial India, Orientalism]

‘It was awful trying to be an Indian. No one understood me.’

Bhowani Junction (Masters, 1956, p.238)

Introduction

John Masters (1914-1983) was a fifth generation English settler in India, who served in the Indian Army in the twilight phase of the British Raj in India. He was not just a soldier. He was somebody who initially felt compelled to work in the Indian Army, then gradually fell in ‘love’ with India while working in the Army, and finally decided to passionately write down his experiences in the form of ‘factual story’. In his autobiography The Bugles and A Tiger: A Personal Adventure (1956), Masters states his initial reluctance to join the Army: ‘I was destined for Indian infantry. I use the word “destined” with intent. I did not want to go to Indian infantry – I thought myself far too clever to waste my life in that backwater’ (35). However, for financial reasons he eventually joined the Army. ‘The Indian Army got more pay…And as I have said, we were broke…’ ( 37) Pages after, Masters’s attitude towards India would completely change as he would narrate his sense of rootedness in India and his newly developed love for India: ‘If there was a justification for my family’s long guestship here, for my making so free with the Indian wood in the fire…We removed many fears… I was in love with India, and she’d have the hell of a job getting rid of me’ (314). His self-proclaimed love for India would grow to such a degree that he would acknowledge his unavoidable ‘Europeanness’ to be a bar. He would describe India as his ‘lusty, disinterested mistress’, since she could not be his ‘mother’ (314).

An analysis of Masters’s autobiographical narrative would indicate how his attitude towards India changed from disinterestedness to a sort of passionate engagement accompanied by a feeling that India herself might be ‘disinterested’ in him. His artistic urge for ‘story-telling’ to a great extent derives from this new found love, and in his ‘fictional’ narratives one discovers similar emotional trajectories on the part of the protagonists. In terms of studying three of his novels based on his experiences in India – Nightrunners of Bengal (1951), The Deceivers (1952), and Bhowani Junction (1954), this paper would accordingly examine Masters’s attitude to, and representation of, India.

Critiquing Fictionalised Histories

To begin with, one of the primary aspects of Masters’s fictional accounts of India is that his narratives reveal a deliberate blending of the imaginative with the factual and autobiographical. Such a blending blurs the binary of fact and fiction and generates what Masters himself calls the ‘fictionalised histories’. In the ‘Foreword’ to The Bugles and A Tiger, Masters states: ‘This is a factual story, but not a history. Please do not pounce on me with scorn if it turns out there were seven, not eight, platoons of Tochi Scouts on the Iblanke that night of May 11th-12th, 1937.’ He adds: ‘In the course of the story I hope to have given an idea of what India was like in those last twilit days of the Indian Empire, and something more than a tourist’s view of some of the people who lived there’. If this is how he writes his autobiography which should be strictly historical, he has similar ways of dealing with the fictional. In the ‘Postscript’ to his novel The Deceivers, Masters notes:

In a story of this sort the reader has a right to know how much was fact, how much fiction. My purpose in this book, as in Nightrunners of Bengal, was to recreate the ‘feel’ of a historical episode rather than write a minutely accurate report. To do this I had to use the novelist’s freedom to imagine people and create places for them to live in… (Masters d. 80)

The risk of this deliberate mixing of history and story is manifold. Such an admixture could certainly be considered a postmodernist gesture (the famous notion of ‘historiographic metafiction’ as described by Linda Hutcheon) to indicate that both history and fiction are human constructs. However, insofar as John Masters’s own subject position is concerned, such a representation of colonial India could be read in conjunction with the colonizer’s motivated rewriting of the colonial past (Crane 3). On an obvious level, one could talk about a specific form of ‘projection’ of India on the part of Masters as he exploits and exaggerates the facts and colours them with his own imagination. For example, in his first novel Nightrunners of Bengal, the character of the Queen of Kishanpur, Sumitra, is only loosely based on the historical figure Jhansi ki Rani. Masters in this novel also exaggerates the chapati events that played an instrumental part in building up the tension in the early months of 1857 (Crane 16)….Access Full Text of the Article

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The Metempsychotic Birds: An Exploration of Samuel Beckett’s Allusions to the Upanishads

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Thirthankar Chakraborty, University of Kent

 Abstract

This paper discusses references made to Indian culture and philosophy in Samuel Beckett’s Murphy, tracing them back to their sources via Arthur Schopenhauer. The allusions induce a rethinking of the conventional Cartesian interpretation of Murphy, and reconsider the usage of compulsive voice and situational irony within the novel from an Upanishadic point of view. The paper then analyses Waiting for Godot, and questions whether Beckett might have effaced his early allusions to Indian religious thought or could he have ironically personified the Upanishadic allegory of dualism as Vladimir and Estragon confined to a stage containing a single tree?

[Keywords: Samuel Beckett, Indian philosophy, Upanishads, dualism, allegory]

 Establishing Textual Parallels

In his German letter dated 7 July 1937, Samuel Beckett notes, “For in the forest of symbols that are no symbols, the birds of interpretation, that is no interpretation, are never silent” (Beckett 2009: 519). He writes this in a context where he appears to censure people, critics in particular, or the birds of interpretation, as being “hard of hearing” and incapable of remaining silent. This paper magnifies Beckett’s choice of words and considers whether he might have allowed these birds of interpretation to travel through his first published novel Murphy and into his later play Waiting for Godot.

In another letter dated 17 July 1936, Samuel Beckett writes that he chose to keep Murphy’s “death subdued and go on as coolly and finish as briefly as possible [. . .] because it seemed to me to consist better with the treatment of Murphy throughout, with the mixture of compassion, patience, mockery and ‘tat twam asi’ that I seem to have directed on him throughout” (Beckett 1983: 102). Whilst Murphy along with Beckett’s other works have yielded various critical exegeses vis-à-vis themes ranging from humour, ethics and aesthetics, scholars have so far largely ignored the phrase tat twam asi, loosely translated as “that you are”, originally from the Chandogya Upanishad. Based on empirical evidence from Beckett’s letters and the Whoroscope notebook, past critics have observed that Beckett adopted the phrase from the German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, without intending any direct reference to Indian thought.As John Pilling notes for example, by the time Beckett began writing Murphy, his grasp of Schopenhauer had become “second nature”, so much so that he dispensed with specific references (Pilling 1992: 14). My objective, on the contrary, is to expand this Schopenhauerian influence in Murphy and have it flow into a limited tract of Indian philosophy, as discussed in the Upanishads.

First, however, it is necessary to establish empirically the relation between Murphy and Indian philosophy. One must account for the fact that there is as yet a complete lack of archival material to suggest that Beckett studied the Upanishads, although the Bangladeshi playwright Sayeed Ahmed recalls in a newspaper interview that during his meetings with Beckett in Paris, Beckett would ask him probing questions about the Upanishadic philosophy. A major advantage is that Murphy and the Upanishads are essentially works of art, not cut and dried philosophical treatises, and consequently merit a comparative literary analysis, if nothing else. Beckett is not interested in delving into ontological disputes, just as the Upanishads “would not be considered philosophical in the modern, academic sense” (Britannica).Also, Schopenhauer, who stands as a common denominator that links Beckett to Indian Philosophy, is often compared to “a wisdom writer” rather than a philosopher (O’Hara 254).

At the start of Murphy, there are several references that are directly relevant to the Upanishads. In the first chapter, we learn that Murphy visits Neary several times and sits at his feet (Beckett 1957: 3). This, as annotated in Demented Particulars(2004), might refer to the term “Upanishad”, the Sanskrit etymology of which can be translated as “sitting down near” or “sitting close to” the guru or the teacher’s feet in order to gain spiritual knowledge (Ackerley2004: 32). Thus, if an immediate parallel is to be drawn, one could regard Murphy as a character curious about the Upanishads, and could further claim that the author was at least aware of the existence of this central body of early Sanskrit text.

In addition to the general definition, the term “Upanishad” also originally meant “‘connection’ or ‘equivalence’ and was used in reference to the homology between aspects of the human individual and celestial entities or forces that increasingly became primary features of Indian cosmology” (Britannica).This second meaning markedly coincides with the fact that Murphy pedantically follows the astrological chart or “ThemaCoeli With Delienations Compiled By Ramaswami Krishnaswami Narayanaswami Suk” (Beckett 1957: 32).What’s more, the first three parts of the compiler’s name are Indian, with the suffix swami signifying “holy man”. The prefix of the first two parts from left to right are the major avatars of Vishnu – Rama, from the Ramayana, and Krishna, from the Mahabharata – while the third, Narayana, is an alternative name for Vishnu, the preserver of the cosmos in Hinduism. The Vaishnavas or the monotheistic followers of Vishnu regard their God as the personification of the Brahman, the all-pervasive self beyond verbal grasp, or the tat from tat twamasi, a concept immediately relevant to Murphy’s design as a character.

To further this heuristic approach, Neary’s ability to stop his heart in “situations irksome beyond endurance” is relevant, added to the hand gestures that he practices corresponding to murdras (3). As annotated by Chris Ackerley, “the relation between heart rate and respiration permits the individual to exercise some control by means of sustained expiration” (Ackerley 2004: 32), which contextually refers to pranayama, the control of breath or vital power. In the Chandogya Upanishad (I.5), breath plays a central role, as elaborated by Max Müller, a nineteenth century German scholar of comparative language, religion, and mythology (Britannica), “The breath in the mouth, or the chief breath, says Om, i.e. gives permission to the five senses to act, just as the sun, by saying Om, gives permission to all living beings to move about” (Müller 1879: 12). Thus, having control over his breath, not only is Neary capable of stopping his heart, but he can also supposedly liberate his self from quotidian necessities such as drinking water and he can also annul “the pangs of hopeless sexual inclination” (3). What is more, Neary has acquired his knowledge of pranayama “somewhere north of the Nerbudda” (3), more commonly known as the river Narmada that runs across the central states of India. However, as far as the plot is concerned, Neary has clearly failed in his venture of suppressing his desires, which are directed instead “‘To gain the affections of Miss Dwyer’”…Access Full Text of the Article

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Colonized or Self-Colonizer: A Generational Journey Through Independence in E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things

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Cassandra Galentine, Northern Arizona University, USA

Abstract

The British Raj was established in India by Queen Victoria in 1858, and Britain remained the dominant power structure until Indian Independence in 1947. Though many novels as well as works of critical scholarship attempt to capture elements of the British Empire’s presence in India and its psychological effects on the citizens of India, less attention has been paid to the comparison of E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India to Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. When examining these two texts closely, it becomes clear that Forster’s novel exists as a narrative of a single moment of British Imperialism, whereas Roy’s novel presents a multigenerational approach to describing effects of the British Empire. These different perspectives and historical contexts affect the characters’ ability to transcend the continuous cycle of colonizer turned colonized. The juxtaposition of a colonial text composed by an English author with a postcolonial text written by an Indian author within the context of Albert Memmi’s The Colonizer and the Colonized, provides an illuminating perspective on the evolution of the intertwined colonizer/colonized relationship and displays the potential to mitigate the lingering psychological effects of imperialism.

[Key Words: Albert Memmi, colonizer, colonized, postcolonialism, British Empire]

Introduction

Both A Passage to India and The God of Small Things were written about the British Empire’s presence in India and share similar psychological themes throughout. However, the two novels develop representations of the colonizer and the colonized through strikingly different narrative backgrounds and forms. E.M. Forster’s approach to a critique of imperialism comes from a colonial, British perspective, and addresses one brief period of time in the history of Anglo-India, whereas Roy’s text approaches the subject from a postcolonial, multi-generational narrative form. This fundamental difference between the two authors creates many crucial points of variance in the expression of the colonizer/colonized relationship when placed in comparison postcolonially. This comparison exposes the psychological effects of colonialism which are illuminated by the reactions of the Indian characters in each novel—in particular, Dr. Aziz, and the Nawab Bahadur from Forster’s text, and Pappachi, Baby Kochamma, Ammu, Rahel, and Estha from Roy’s text—to their Western colonizers and their ability or lack thereof to blend British and Indian identity.

  1. Memmi: The “mythical portrait of the colonized”

To better understand the terms of comparison, it is useful to first establish the concept of the colonizer and colonized. French-Tunisian author Albert Memmi, in The Colonizer and the Colonized, briefly addresses his own relationship with the colonization of Tunisia. His deeply personal experience with colonialism lends credibility to his text, but he then applies his experience to create a description of imperialism and its effects in general terms. Broadening the scope allows Memmi’s text to be applied to all colonial legacies beyond Tunisia. Memi’s text is useful when assessing the effects of British rule in India within Forster’s and Roy’s novels. Crucial to such an examination is Memmi’s description of the “colonized” and their reaction to a long history of colonization.

In describing the colonized, Memmi argues that much of the colonized identity is generated by the colonizer. This is what he describes as the “mythical portrait of the colonized,” to which he devotes an entire chapter (Memmi 80-89)[1] The identity that the colonizer imposes upon the colonized is the most crucial part of colonization because the threatof the colonizer and their imposed identity on the colonized results in “a certain adherence of the colonized to colonization” (88). Though this is an integral part of successful colonization, Memmi does not believe it to be the final step in the process. He states that

It is not enough for the colonized to be a slave, he must also accept this role. The bond between colonizer and colonized is thus destructive and creative. It destroys and re-creates the two partners of colonization into colonizer and colonized … Just as the colonizer is tempted to accept his part, the colonized is forced to accept being colonized (89).

Thus, Memmi suggests that the colonized must identify with the colonizer at some point. This stage is what he considers to be the final act of the colonized preceding revolt. The colonized’s acceptance of colonization is reflected through several characters in A Passage to India and The God of Small Things.Memmi’s philosophy, when applied to these characters, allows for a historical, critical approach to exploring the overarching legacy of colonialism, and whether the Indian characters from either text successfully reconcile both British and Indian facets of culture into their own personal identities, or if, in the process, the colonized characters inevitably identify with the colonizer as Memmi predicts.

  1. Forster, Roy and Mirror Civilizations

Both Forster and Roy’s Indian characters represent facets of Memmi’s critical text. However, Memmi’s description of the colonized’s affinity for the colonizer, is more easily identifiable in Roy’s text because the novel was written postcollonially and includes three generations of characters that bridge the gap of Indian independence. A Passage to India still resonates strongly with Memmi’s text, but was published in 1924, twenty-three years before India’s independence from the British Empire. This difference in historical context as well as the “moment in time” nature of Forster’s book vs. the “generational” nature of Roy’s, shows individuals within the nation of India in two different stages of colonial identity. The God of Small Things demonstrates a nation that consists of a blended conglomeration of colonizer and colonized. Roy accomplishes this by incorporating voices of a pre-independence generation, an independence generation, and a post-independence generation within her text. Contrastingly, Forster’s novel captures the British Empire and the Indian people through the European gaze and sets up a starker dichotomy of colonizer and colonized.

A Passage to India, though focused on an acute moment in history, maintains a critique of the British Empire throughout. The most prominent character and protagonist of the novel, Dr. Aziz exists as a colonized subject. His close friendship with Cyril Fielding and his eagerness to please his supposed friends Mrs. Moore and Adela is what first forms his relationship as the colonized with the colonizer. Dr. Aziz ingratiates himself with Mrs. Moore and Adela in his constant attempts to fulfil their wish to see “the real India.” Throughout the entire beginning of the novel, Aziz’s goal is to “unlock his country for her” (Forster 73). Though he is still proud of his country, Aziz attempts close friendship with Fielding, Mrs. Moore, and Adela. Though Aziz becomes less of an Anglophile as the novel progresses, particularly after Adela’s rape accusation, he can be seen desiring that which is English throughout the first half of the novel…Access Full Text of the Article

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Manifestations of Social Darwinism in Colonial Reflections: A Study of the Writings of Sahibs, Memsahibs and Others

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Iti Roychowdhury, Amity University, Madhya Pradesh, India

Amanpreet Randhawa, Amity University, Madhya Pradesh, India

Abstract

The Orient has always conjured up images of an exotic land, mystic practices, of snake charmers and tight rope walkers. Contemporary fiction reinforced these images. However, the literature of the Raj is not confined to the writers of fiction alone. A vast body of literature which is largely unexplored yet exists. This comprises the writings of the Sahibs, the Memsahibs, the missionaries and other sundry visitors to India. The present paper explores these myriad images to ascertain the designs and patterns of writings on India. The paper also attempts to explore the motives if any behind the emerging frameworks of these diverse writings.

[Key Words: Social Darwinism, Orientalism, Occidental, Imperialism, Indologists, Colonialism]

The European Renaissance ushered in a spirit of enquiry and exploration. Geographical discoveries, scientific inventions, growth and appreciation of the arts were some of its essential features. Kings and nobles vied with each other to patronize the arts and learning for which one of the prerequisites was of course large quantities of money. Colonies represented power and pelf, while the search for and acquisition of colonies also satisfied the spirit of enquiry and exploration. And so Europe went about acquiring colonies across the globe, principally in Africa and Asia. The first dictum of Colonialism of course was that the colonies existed for the good of the mother country and the second, that the natives were an inferior people. However, the European Renaissance also swept in the spirit of humanism, which mandated dignity of man as man. Britain in particular prided itself on its spirit of justice and fair play. The dilemma therefore was how to reconcile the imperialistic motives with humanistic ideas. Kipling makes a sardonic interpretation of the dilemma by calling it ‘ the white man’s burden’.

Of all the colonies of the far flung British Empire, India was deemed the jewel in the crown. England gloried in the material prosperity and strategic advantage that India brought to it. India always had porous borders, and myriad visitors kept pouring into India from times immemorial. Some of them chose to make their home here. Those who went back carried with them tales of splendor and glorious riches, of magical land and exotic peoples. This in turn attracted the traders who came to India with gifts and entreaties, requesting permission to trade. The embassies of Captain William Hawkins and Thomas Roe are significant landmarks .It was the pioneering work of these gentlemen that subsequently led to the colonization of India.

The British arrival in India marked the beginning of a new kind of literature – depicting an exotic land, alien culture and inferior people. Edward Said says that the Orient was an invention of the West, whereby the West judged, studied or disciplined the East, depending upon the perspective of the viewer/ writer. For example, the image of India has been captured by 3 broad categories of writers: the writers of fiction, the reports and observations of the Sahibs (administrators), and finally, the writings of lay visitors such as the Memsahibs (wives of Sahibs), other members of the families of officials serving in India, the missionaries, etc.

The Man – Portrayal of the Indian Character

Some of the most celebrated books on India penned by the British are Foster’s A Passage to India’, Kipling’s Kim, Paul Scott’s Jewel in the Crown, etc. Foster’s protagonist, Aziz, is meant to represent the typical Indian – emotional, susceptible to kindness, generous, but mean, and having a way with truth. The character of Godbole is even more of an enigma. Foster does not even attempt to decipher him. It is as if Godbole is purposefully created to baffle and defy the Western understanding of Eastern character.

Another defining character in the British fiction on India is that of Kim, the protagonist in the eponymous work of Rudyard Kipling. Kipling’s Kim grew up a street urchin, and is familiar with every nook and corner of the city of Lahore. This helps him in carrying out his nefarious tasks – passing on messages, espionage and the like – typically sly, underhand things that an imperialist would expect a native to do. The Tibetan Lama in Kim is akin to Foster’s Godbole – a mystic – unearthly and unrealistic. These images of Indians are recurring- either a morally less evolved, devious, unscrupulous, lying brute, or an inscrutable mystic, communing with his pagan gods and immersed in his Eastern spirituality…Access Full Text of the Article

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An Early Nineteenth Century Vade Mecum for India

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Sutapa Dutta, Gargi College, University of Delhi, India

Abstract

A Guide-Book for an Empire is bound to be of epic dimensions, more so if it is on India. In its length and largeness, in its depth and diversity, in its grand ambition and ambivalence, such works would inevitably reflect the geographical, political and cultural drama of a country that is so varied. There can be no clear distinctions, no acute significations even, as the tragic and the comic, the grand and the common dissolve, intermingle and produce a chaotic discursive montage of what India is. One such early work which presents India through the eyes of an Englishman is the The East India Vade Mecum of Captain Thomas Williamson written in 1810. Meant as a ‘Complete Guide to Gentlemen intended for the Civil, Military, or Naval Service of the Hon. East India Company’, this colonial archive is probably the first patient and meticulous noting down of minute aspects of life and people in India. Spread over two volumes of more than thousand pages, the author’s professed aim in undertaking this stupendous labour was for ‘public utility’, ‘with the view to promote the welfare, and to facilitate the progress, of those young gentlemen, who may from time to time, be appointed to situations under [the] several Presidencies…’(Letter to the Hon. Court of Directors of the East India Company in Vade Mecum).

[Keywords: Colonial Bengal, East India Company, India, Vade Mecum.]

About Captain Thomas Williamson we come to know from what he writes about himself in this book. The author attributes his considerable insight and knowledge to his long stay of ‘twenty years’ in Bengal. He first arrived in India in 1778 and was a Captain in the Bengal army. It is apparent that the Williamson family had spent some time in Calcutta. His father, whom he mentions also lived in India and is buried in Calcutta. By the time he was writing the Vade Mecum, he had already achieved some fame with his Oriental Field Sports, or the Wild Sports of the East, published in 1809, an extraordinary book that documents vivid descriptions and picture plates of animal hunting in India, especially tigers. As a first travel guide to India intended for Europeans, Williamson’s Vade Mecum was intended to fill up the gaps in information required by the statesmen, military men, merchants, civilians and all those who proceed to this new country. Keeping this in mind Williamson adopts an ‘easy’ and ‘familiar’ style rather than a ‘didactic style’. The guide book is meant for those who would travel to India for a long stay and will need information of the place and people of this foreign country. His guide, he claims, has been written with the purpose to provide a ‘just’ conception of the ‘characters of the natives’ in India, and would remove all doubts, prejudices and national opinions, which if allowed to prevail “must occasion every object to be seen through a false medium” (I:Preface,vii).

Williamson’s assertion that his guidebook is not a false medium is apparently a rejection of such historical interpretations which are perceived very often through the narrow and distorted glasses of western preconceptions of India. From the seventeenth century onwards especially with trade links opening up, Western imagination and curiosity were fed with fantastic stories of India’s fabulous wealth and its rich markets. European relationship with India for the next 300 years remained based on vague knowledge, assumptions and misconceptions. From the latter half of the eighteenth century as the British began to consolidate their physical territories in India there began a simultaneous process of constructing a vision of the Empire. Such a vision shaped by the contemporary Enlightenment ideal in Europe, was at once based on an imaginary construct and fashioning of the ways the British conceived of India and their role as rulers. As they undertook from the 1770’s a more detailed study of India, there began an intense cataloguing and categorising of languages, races and tribes in India to secure a better understanding of the unchartered civilization they had to administer. Warren Hastings and his coterie of Oriental scholars like William Jones, Charles Wilkins and Nathaniel Halhed with their massive scholarly endeavours of translations and texts, reasoned that their effort to impart learning would be ‘useful to the state’ and would ‘lessen the weight of the chain by which the natives are held in subjection’ (Letter of Hastings to N. Smith, October 4, 1784, quoted in Kopf, p.18).Although there were obvious political and ideological differences between the Anglicist and the Orientalist point of view, yet both their perceptions were essentially those of the outsider. Charles Grant considered “the people of Hindostan, a race of men lamentably degenerate and base” (Grant: 71) and proposed in his Observations that “The communication of our light and knowledge to them, would prove the best remedy for their disorders” (Grant: 148-9).

Such viewpoints and scholarly enterprises reflected usually two extremes; on the one hand, there was an exuberant display of wonder and curiosity in those who saw India as a land of exotic differences. To comprehend such a mystifying entity, there was the obsessive desire to find parallels and common origins of languages, race, literature, etc. The attempt was to divest India of its strangeness and to fit it into a familiar framework that would be more comprehensible for the Western onlooker. The other extreme was to conceive India as a threat – as a land of dirt, disease and death – an exotic but a dangerous place. Throughout the eighteenth century as the British tried to contend with territorial supremacy, first in Bengal and later in the rest of the country, such contradictory tensions of differences and similarities continued to bother them. The sense of doubt, anxiety and uneasiness existed side by side as they tried to ‘master’ the land, the languages and the laws. Captain Williamson’s Vade Mecum shows this inevitable contrast between a seductive desirous India and a land which is at the same time threatening and fearsome. His insistence that the young English recruits ought to ‘know’ this land reflects to a large extent Wellesley’s ambition in setting up the Fort William College in Calcutta in 1800. Wellesley’s anxiety “for the better instruction of junior Civil Servants of the Company” as they were “totally incompetent and ignorant of the languages, laws and usages and customs of India”, was with a view to “the stability of our own interest, as to the happiness and welfare of our native subjects” (Wellesley’s Minute in Council, dated 18th August, 1800 in Roebuck: xx)…Access Full Text of the Article

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Charlotte Bronte’s ‘Imagined’ Indianness: Homogenized Othering as a Mimetic Response in Jane Eyre

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Debarati Goswami, Independent Researcher, Virginia, USA

Abstract                                         

This paper problematises Charlotte Bronte’s historically specific, religiously biased and homogenized underrepresentation of Indianness, considering Hinduism as an exchangeable term for Indianness, in Jane Eyre and claims this homogenized Othering to be a mimetic response. It concentrates on the Self/ Other dichotomy constructed through the characters of Jane Eyre and St John, both representing the British and Christian Self, and their individual approaches of Othering Indianness which resulted in a Self/Other polarisation in the Christian Self itself. Considering Rene Girard’s theory of mimetic desire, the objective of the paper is to study Bronte’s twofold way of homogenously Othering Indianness through Jane and St John, with an implication of doubly Othering the non-Hindu and non-Hindustani speaking Indians. It attempts to legitimize the novel as a quintessential discourse of British Selfhood besides being a mimetic response to the British social institutions which ‘constructed’ Jane as the marginalized “Other” in this autobiographical fiction.

[Keywords: Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, homogenized Othering, René Girard, Theory of mimetic desire]

At a conference titled “Europe and its Others” at Essex, while articulating the European strategy of representing itself as the sovereign Self and its colonies as Others or “programmed near-images of that very sovereign Self” (Spivak b. 247) , in her essay “The Rani of Sirmur: An Essay in Reading the Archives”, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak proposed:

On a somewhat precious register of literary theory it is possible to say that this was the construction of a fiction whose task was to produce a whole collection of “effects of the real,” and that the “misreading” of this “fiction” produced the proper name “India” (para. 6).

By grounding its research on the mimetic aspect of the homogenised Othering of Indianness in Jane Eyre, this paper engages itself in problematicing Charlotte Bronte’s ‘constructed’ representation of Indianness in the novel. It prefers the use of the word ‘Indianness’ to ‘India’ as Bronte’s contemptuous Othering in the novel was meant for anything representing or containing the essence of the abstract notion of the colonized, ‘coloured’ object ‘India’ rather than for the landmass with well defined geographical referents called ‘India’.

Entitled Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, during its first publication, the novel narrates the journey of an impoverished and orphan eponymous protagonist towards the attainment of her Feminine Selfhood, battling against the conventional patriarchal institutions of family, educational institution, class hierarchy, marriage and even religion. According to Margaret Howard Blom, the novel “(T)races an individual’s desperate struggle against insuperable odds to establish and maintain a sense of her own identity and to satisfy the deepest needs of her nature” (Blom 87). The reception of the novel with wide global acclamation and the erudite interpretations of its various universally appealing themes consolidated its acceptance as a canonical text. However, Bronte’s constructed narrativization of a historically specific socio-historical scenario of India through a religiously biased and homogenized Othering of Indianness, with a specific underrepresentation of Hinduism, proves to be a problematic. An attempt to discover India or Indianness through its representation in Jane Eyre is bound to lead a reader, alien to Indian history, to a factitious understanding of the nation and its socio-historical past from the viewpoint of the “master narrative that could be called ‘the history of Europe’” (Chakrabarty 1). This paper, thus, accentuates on the homogenous Othering of the mainstream Hindu population of India and doubly Othering the marginalised Indians primarily by homogenizing its religious plurality, multiculturalism and multilingualism which together constitute Indianness. The itinerary of this research sequentially includes a textual analysis of the underrepresentation of Indianness through the characters of Mr. Brocklehurst, Jane and St John, Jane’s Othering of Indianness as a response to the British patriarchal institutions which ‘constructed’ her as the marginalized “Other” in the novel and a psychoanalytic interpretation of her homogenous Othering of the Indianness as a mimetic act on the basis of René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire.

As a quintessential discourse of Imperial subject construction, this novel has genuinely represented the British and Christian spirit and the sovereign Self through a meticulous Othering of Indianness, the paradigm of which was profoundly religious, besides being racial. As a testament to establish corroboration of this proposition one must critically focus on the denigrating words of Mr. Brocklehurst, “the black marble clergyman” (81), self-righteous and fastidious proprietor of Jane’s Lowood institution. In a Biblical reference, in her Preface to the second edition of Jane Eyre, Bronte wrote, “Ahab did not like Micaiah, because he never prophesied good concerning him, but evil…” (xxxvii). This allusion justifies Jane’s contempt for Mr. Brocklehurst whose prime concern was to uphold the doctrines advocated by the Evangelical Anglicans in general and by the Methodists in particular (DeVere web) and who was entrusted with the responsibility of guiding Jane on a virtuous path by her aunt Mrs Reed. Like Micaiah, prophesying evil concerning Ahab, Mr. Brocklehurst despised Jane and once decried her for her lack of essential Christian virtues, in the following words:

(A) little castaway: not a member of the true flock, but evidently an interloper and an alien. You must be on your guard against her; you must shun her example; if necessary, avoid her company, exclude her from your sports, and shut her out from your converse. Teachers, you must watch her: keep your eyes on her movements, weigh well her words, scrutinise her actions, punish her body to save her soul: if, indeed, such salvation be possible, for (my tongue falters while I tell it) this girl, this child, the native of a Christian land, worse than many a little heathen who says its prayers to Brahma and kneels before Juggernaut — this girl is — a liar! (81).

From the perspective of this study, the above speech leads to at least two problems and one hypothesis. First, Bronte’s intention behind making Mr. Brocklehurst insolently refer to the shibboleths of Hinduism was a dissimulation, as Jane was not the signified but a signifier representing the polytheistic population whom the British needed to ‘watch’, ‘scrutinise’ and ‘punish’ for their heathen ways and guide them to ‘salvation’. Second, the insinuation drawn from the possessive determiner ‘its’ again highlights Bronte’s racial abandonment of the belittled population by reducing their identity to a homogenous, singular inanimate object. As the religious or communal group alluded to in the speech remains unspecified, the paper assumes that those polytheistic heathens stand the possibility of belonging either to the mainstream colonized elites group or marginalised communities or even to the ethnic groups of the British colonies. The rationale behind this assumption is that Bronte refers to some of the non-white or rather non- British races in the novel, the African slaves, Persians, Turks and Native Americans, besides Indians, and so it is difficult to specify the exact community she refers to in the speech. Susan Meyer calls this European notion of colonial culture and their tendency of alienating themselves from the colonized natives as “Eurocentric idea of colonized savages” (Meyer 45). Since Mr. Brocklehurst makes an allusion to the Hindu deities, from the standpoint of this research, the paper hypothetically claims that this speech has a disparaging allusion to the “colonized savages” and marginalised citizenry of the undivided nineteenth century India who definitely contributed to the omnium gatherum of Indian culture or Indianness although they were not considered as a part of the majoritarian population…Access Full Text of the Article

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Indian Religions in the Roman Catholics’ Gaze: 1920-1965

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Enrico Beltramini, Notre Dame de Namur University in California, USA

Abstract

How contemporary European Roman Catholicism elaborated a representation of Indian religions as spiritual and mystical, or pre-modern, is the theme of this article. After a brief summary of the Catholic Church’s recognition of the Indian religious Other in the context of the Second Vatican Council, and in particular the Church’s watershed document Nostra Aetate, this article addresses the preparatory work of French Catholic theologians and missionaries in the decades before the council, particularly in relation to theological approaches to Indian religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism.

[Key Words: Roman Catholicism, India, Vatican II, Nostra Aetate]

  1. Introduction

In a personal recollection of his participation in a session of the Second Vatican Council (also “Vatican II”), arguably the most significant event in the modern era of the Catholic Church, Francis Cardinal Arinze argued that “Thanks to Vatican II, the Catholic Church is irrevocably committed to meeting other believers” (Madges and Daley 2012, 207). He did not elaborate further about the identity of those categorized as “other believers.” In this article, the notion of “other believers” is understood as a Catholic representation according to Vatican II. The Catholic construction of the religious Other, including the Indian religious Other, at the Vatican II was significant for Catholicism’s self-definition, at a time when the Church struggled to articulate a post-colonial missionary discourse and enter into dialogue with the modern world (Nostra Aetate, Part One and Five)

  1. Nostra Aetate

The “Declaration on the Relation of the Roman Catholic Church to Non-Christian Religions” Nostra Aetate (Latin: In our Time) was a major contribution of the Second Vatican Council. The original draft document was titled “Decree on the Jews.” The decree was devoted to conveying details about the bond between Christians and Jews, while decrying all displays and acts of anti-Semitism—this only twenty years after the horrors of the Shoah. During preparation, the scope of the document was broadened to address the Catholic Church’s relationships with the world’s different faiths. Nostra Aetate mentions only four world religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism, arranged in an order indicating increasing closeness to Christianity. On Hinduism and Buddhism, the declaration states that:

In Hinduism people explore the divine mystery and express it both in the limitless riches of myth and the accurately defined insights of philosophy. They seek release from the trials of the present life by ascetical practices, profound meditation and recourse to God in confidence and love. Buddhism in its various forms testifies to the essential inadequacy of this changing world. It proposes a way of life by which people can, with confidence and trust, attain a state of perfect liberation and reach supreme illumination either through their own efforts or with divine help (Nostra Aetate, Part Two).

Nostra Aetate is not apologetic about the truth of the Christian faith. While the declaration does not display a sense of superiority or emphasize the limitations of other religious traditions, going so far as to state that “the Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions,” it also does not indicate that non-Christian religions might be considered as ways of salvation per se.

 While inclusive of only a limited number of statements on Indian religions, Nostra Aetate stands as a document of momentous historical significance: it is the first official recognition in the history of the Catholic Church of the existence and relevance of non-Christian religions as living traditions, on which the declaration shows a convinced option for a paradigm of inclusion. In 1965, when Nostra Aetate was solemnly announced, the Church was probably ready for a substantial, official rethinking of its attitudes about other believers, thanks to the preparatory work of the previous decades in the different fields of historical theology, theology of religions and missiology, including a fundamental encyclical of pope Pius XI in terms of development of autonomous local churches. A deeper look at Nostra Aetate may help identify the issues that the declaration maintains with regard to Indian religions…Access Full Text of the Article

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“I am black, but my soul is white”: the Christian Neophyte and his Alienation in 19th Century Anti-conversion Anglo-Indian novels

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Ayusman Chakraborty, Jadavpur University, India

Abstract

This article studies how the Christian convert is represented in three nineteenth century Anglo-Indian novels. On the basis of their attitude towards conversion, Anglo-Indian novels can be classified as pro-conversion or anti-conversion. In pro-conversion novels, conversion to Christianity is presented as a smooth transition. Anti-conversion novels, in contrast, portray conversion as a harrowing experience that shatters the mental stability of the convert. Alienation and isolation inevitably follow conversion. The three texts discussed here show how the authors highlight the alienation of the Christian neophyte to discourage proselytization. The alienation of the convert is thus strategically articulated in these texts.

[Keywords: Christianity, Conversion, alienation, Hinduism, Caste, The Missionary, Sydney Owenson, Seeta, Philip Meadows Taylor, The Old Missionary, William Wilson Hunter.]

The issue of conversion became very important in nineteenth century Anglo-Indian literature. This was not an isolated occurrence, unrelated to mainstream English literature. As Gauri Viswanathan shows, conversion became a popular subject of discussion in nineteenth century Britain. The nineteenth century witnessed progressive secularization and liberalization of British society and state. This was not a smooth passage. There was a heated debate on whether to incorporate the religious minorities like the Jews, the Catholics and the Nonconformists into the wider concept of nation. The orthodox groups like the Evangelicals insisted on the conversion of the minorities to Anglican faith before they could be incorporated. At the same time, they also called for the Christianization of the colonies. On the other side, there were those who wished to preserve religious differences. Their goal was to Anglicize the minority groups without tampering with their religious identities – to convert a Jew to a non-Jewish Jew, in the words of Viswanathan. In such an atmosphere of conflicting ideas, novels on conversion acquired added importance. Viswanathan states, “It is no accident that novels about the conversion of Hindus and Muslims to Christianity had wide popular appeal in nineteenth century England, not merely as wishful testimony to the efficacy of missionary ideology but more compellingly as exotic displacements of the pressing and often explosive issue of whether to admit Jews, Catholics, and Nonconformists into the English nation state” (Viswanathan 27).

The Novel, as Viswanathan’s study suggests, became a battleground where the pro-conversion and anti-conversion ideologies confronted each other. Indeed, on the basis of their attitudes towards conversion, novels can be classified as pro-conversion or anti-conversion. In the pro-conversion Anglo-Indian novels, conversion generally becomes, to quote Viswanathan again, “a straightforward, overdetermined spiritual movement to Christianity” (Viswanathan 28). That is, in such novels conversion to Christianity is portrayed as smooth and unproblematic. In contrast, anti-conversion novels problematize conversion. Such novels focus on the alienation of the neophyte to tacitly discourage conversion to Christianity.

This article aims to examine how three anti-conversion Anglo-Indian novels strategically describe the alienation of the Christian neophytes. In such novels a neophyte always appears as a tragic figure. Rejected by the Hindu society, he does not find place among his new co-religionists. His attempts to mingle with the Europeans always meet with rebuff. The anti-conversionist authors do not portray conversion as a joyous rebirth. Rather they portray it as a painful experience involving isolation and separation.

It is necessary to understand at the very outset why some colonial authors were so much against conversion. The stated aims of colonialism were the three ‘Gs’ – God, Gold and Glory – or the three “Cs’ – Christianity, Civilization, and Commerce. However, the conversion of the natives always induced an anxiety in the colonizers. In so far as the neophyte proclaimed the triumph of Christianity, he or she was seen as the “reformed, recognizable Other”, to use a phrase by Bhabha (Bhabha 122). However, much like Bhabha’s ‘mimic man’, the neophyte also acted as a menacing presence. This is because, united to the colonizers by a common religion (Christianity), he/she claimed like Blake’s “little Black Boy” – “And I am black, but O! my soul is white” (Blake 45). This claim challenged the colonial signifying practice by partly obliterating the barrier between the self and the other. The only way colonial authors could render the neophytes innocuous was by presenting them as failed converts. Their attitude towards the neophyte was therefore ambivalent; it oscillated between compassion and contempt. This in turn influenced the way they portrayed the neophyte and his alienation.

A few words on the concept of alienation is necessary here. The word ‘alienation’ has become so much saturated with meanings that it is difficult to arrive at a concrete definition. At best, one can provide only a working definition of the term. For the purpose of this study, we will accept the very basic definition of alienation. As Irving Louis Horowitz points out, “At its source the word ‘alienation’ implies an intense separation first from objects in a world, second from other people, third from ideas about the world held by other people. It might be said that the synonym of alienation is separation, while the precise antonym of the word alienation is integration” (Horowitz 231). Alienation, as Horowitz shows, can have both positive and negative effects – that is, can be “constructive as well as destructive” (Horowitz 233). However, as long as it is imposed from without, it generally has a destructive effect on individuals. It produces only negative feelings–the feelings of “powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, isolation and self-estrangement” as recognized by Seeman (Seeman 783).

The ostensible object of colonial authors in portraying the alienation of the Christian neophyte was to condemn the Hindu caste system. In this the pro-conversionist and the anti-conversionist authors were in agreement. It is interesting that the nineteenth century Anglo-Indian writers portrayed mainly Hindu converts in their novels. Despite the fact that the Muslims formed a substantial portion of the Indian population, the novelists rarely portrayed their conversion to Christianity. Now, as polytheists, the Hindus were felt to be more in need of ‘truth’ than the Muslims. After all, the Muslims also worshipped the one true god, while the Hindus were just ‘idolaters’. Islam was certainly an ‘errant faith’; but it was a monotheistic one, sometimes more rigidly monotheistic than Christianity. As T. R. Metcalf argues, “Islam in the end was a religion which commanded respect, even a covert envy, among the British in India” (Metcalf 144). But more importantly, the British were afraid of the Muslims. Unlike the pliant Hindus, the Muslims were ‘zealous’ and ‘fanatical’ in their eyes. The British feared that they had already earned the animosity of the Muslims by ousting them from a position of power. They were not ready to try their patience further. Hence, the British writers put more emphasis on the conversion of the Hindus than the Muslims…Access Full Text of the Article

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

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