The 'West' in the Indian Imagination: 1857-1947 -- Abstracts

C Vijayasree

The 'White Lady' Love Stories

My paper discusses inscriptions of the 'West' in Telugu literature, with a particular focus on instances of writing race, sex and difference in early 20th century Telugu fiction. Of all myths that colonialism fabricated the one about the effeminate native was psychologically the most debilitating to the colonized. The discourse of colonial masculinity has been adequately analyzed in recent scholarship in postcolonial studies.

Nandy (1983), Sinha (1995) Chaudhury (1998) have focused on politics of culture and gender in colonial Bengal. While the impact of the fundamental asymmetries of colonial rule is broadly common to all parts of India, each region developed its own strategies of negotiating, containing and contesting colonial designs of domination. I wish to analyze some dominant icons of self image inscribed in Telugu fiction of the early twentieth century, particularly those that form a part of the oppositional discourse that resists images of colonial masculinity and native effeminacy. It is interesting to note how Telugu writers produced their own discourses of self that stress the power and charisma of a Telugu cultural hero even while writing with in a colonially controlled domain. I shall look at three texts -- Mokkapati Narasimha Sastry's Barrister Parveteesam, (1924), Burra Venkata Subrahmanyam's 'Paris' (1946), Adavi Bapiraju's Narayanarao and demonstrate how these texts inscribe the masculinity of Telugu heroes and explode the colonial myth of the effeminacy of the colonized male. The white heroines who desperately seek the love of Telugu heroes in these stories become the sites for the inscription of Telugu masculinity. The discourse predictably remains patriarchal, as woman once again becomes an occasion for the self-definition of male.

Mahasweta Sengupta

Identity Crisis: Representing the "West" in Bangla Literature

The politics of identity and self-representation in Bangla writing during the Nationalist Period is marked by intense and multiple negotiations with the paradigms imposed by the dominant discourses constructed by the hegemonic powers of the colonizer and those surviving vigorously within the domains of indigenous society and culture. There was a political and historical need to fashion a self that could actively engage, deploy and subvert the categories and stereotypes representing the colonial subject; Bangla literature of the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries records the vehement contestation of values and ideals that were evolving in relation to the different forms of material and cultural practices introduced by the "West" in the "East".

Interestingly, considering the volume of creative writing available in Bangla from the period under consideration, it is surprising to note that the writers seldom deal with characters of English men and women in a straightforward and direct manner. However, the general attitude towards the foreigners appears to be rather ambivalent; there seems to be a clear split in the native's perception of the role and nature of the Western or British presence in this country. There are, clearly, two distinct representations of the Westerner/ colonizer: the ruthless, brutal and exploitative mercantile community, and the law abiding, educated, civilized administrators working under a benevolent mother Victoria. Dinabandhu Mitra's Nildarpan deals with both these types in an illuminating way.

The natives also, appear to have been categorized according to some broad paradigms. There are representations of the opportunist and imitative English educated "hybrid" class on one side, and on the other we have a whole array of characters who were actively involved in fashioning a new self and a new discourse out of the clash of cultures. Occupying an important place in the hierarchy of representation is the old orthodox group, unwilling to change or adapt, and who were dying a natural and slow death under the pressure of the critical transitions taking place in the social formation.

In this paper I wish to deal with a few of these diverse representations in Bangla writing of the period under consideration. While straightforward denouncement or acceptance of the cultural values of the West which came through the education system is not very common, there are shades of attraction and repulsion towards the new structures of identity that were emerging at the time. I will focus on some tracts from the famous text Hutom Penchar Naksha to show how the writer portrays some foreigners as well as natives to bring out characteristics that he found to be either emulated or discarded. I will then follow the analysis up with the portrayal of orthodoxy in relation to the West in a remarkable short story written by Syed Mujtaba Ali titled "Footnote"; and then go on to examine a subtler version of the "West" in some examples of Bangla writing. I want to focus on the "INGA-BANGA" breed, the cultural hybrids who occupy a very important place in the society and the literature of Bengal. My reading tells me that the cultural "Hansjaru" (Sukumar Ray- mix of duck and porcupine) - an early incarnation of the post-colonial "hybrid" celebrated by theoretical writing during the last two decades, has in fact been continuously castigated and ridiculed in Bangla writing from the earliest times to the present. While postcolonial theory upholds hybridity to be the distinguishing mark and survival mechanism of the expatriate Indian writing in English, writing in the regional Indian languages considers the cultural "hybrid" to be a butt of ridicule, a type of misfit unable to fashion a self that is a third product born out of the catalytic effect of the Western contact within the East.

The analysis of this aspect of representation will be based on a short story written by Manish Ghatak titled "Swaha". One finds the anglicized Bangalee who is a cultural hybrid to be constantly ridiculed in canonical as well as folk literature; jatra plays are replete with such characters that provide immense entertainment to the audience. Manish Ghatak's story inscribes in vivid language the tragic nature of hybrid identities, which cannot relate to the socio-cultural ecosystem of the country. There is no ambivalence in these denouncements, no scope for retrieving some sense of sympathy or understanding. Most of the time the writers view these characters as tragic because they cannot establish relationships with the world they live in and reach a crisis in their identities. It would be fruitful to examine this position in terms of the contemporary celebration of homelessness and schizophrenic identities.

Bala Kothandaraman

Construction of Knowledge: Libraries as Resource Centres

A great deal of interest in postcolonial studies and research is currently focussed on the 19th Century as a shaping force in subsequent developments which formed / firmed up the imperialist agenda as reflected in various aspects of individual, societal, economic, political and cultural formations and re-formations. The Indian experience, in many ways, is a paradigmatic site for such observation, and of contestation.

The rise of educational policies and institutions has provided an important (and perhaps obvious) area of investigation -- Gauri Vishwanathan's Masks of Conquest comes readily to mind. In the context of the spread of the use of the English language, of English- and British-based knowledge and education a significant factor, to my mind, must have been the establishment of Libraries. This resource needs to be focussed upon in the attempt to re-construct the scenario of generations of Indians who proved to be avid readers, absorbers and disseminators of the dominant power's storehouse of knowledge.

This paper proposes to consider this aspect in a modest way by narrowing the geographical area of study to one's own location; but an area which encompasses perhaps the entire gamut of possibilities during the period fixed for discussion at the Seminar. The range includes private collections (one of which has become a public library for over a century), College libraries of similar vintage and a University which promoted the regional medium and supported an official Bureau of Translation to provide international education. The aim is to try to reconstruct the kind of impact which such resources might have had on the shaping of diverse types of "reading public" in terms of colonial/postcolonial knowledge-transmission.

Asaduddin

From Persian to Urdu and English: Some Reflections on the Change in the Knowledge System, 1857-1947

The paper seeks to explore the impact of the West on the Perseanate knowledge system as it obtained in India and the underlying assumptions regarding the creation of literature and its functions. The cataclysmic events of 1857 were inevitably followed by shock, reflections and realignment of forces in the Indian society, particularly in the northern India. One thing was certain - the status of Persian as the privileged language of administration, thoughts and ideas and medium of instruction was irrevocably lost. What we would see in the next couple of decades was the gradual flowering of indigenous languages and English. In my brief presentation I want to look at some aspects of this transformation that, in some cases, resulted in what Chris A Bayly calls "epistemological balkanisation" in his book Empire and Information.

Though the process had started earlier, the upheaval of 1857 precipitated it with serious implications to the Persian-knowing and Urdu speaking Muslim elite. Members of this elite were now clearly divided into to two distinct groups. One group, designated as the "traditionalists" remained obdurately hostile to the British. They realised that the British power was here to stay and was not to be challenged for many years to come. Their strategy was one of withdrawal from political contest and cultivate the traditional knowledge system which largely, though not exclusively, concentrated on religion. There was substantial secular content in the syllabi. One great centre of Muslims of this group was the theological seminary at Deobond, U.P. established in 1869. The other known centres are The Nadwatul Ulema and Firangi Mahall in Lucknow. The other group firmly believed that the old Mughal order was gone for ever and that they must make their peace with the new order or perish. They embraced the impact of the west in a substantial way, and set the tone for changes that were to follow in the following century. To narrow down the focus of my paper further, I would like to examine these issues with reference to three great personalities of the period who to my mind best exemplify the kind of churning that was symptomatic of the literary-cultural life in the northern India in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. They are -- Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Muhammad Hussain Azad and Altaf Hussain Hali. Broadly speaking, they shared sympathies and anxieties that were common. While Syed Ahmad Khan operated mainly in the sphere of education, the other two were writers of considerable merit. The writings of these men brought about a revolution in the world of thoughts and ideas and significantly changed people's perception about literary values.

Tilottoma Misra

The West in the Indian Imagination: A Perspective from Asamia

In the Asamiya writings of the colonial period the dominant trend in imaging the West seems to be the "paternalistic' one that upholds the benevolent image of colonialism . Except for a few lone examples in the writings of Lakshminath Bezbaroa and in some of the anonymous folk -songs, direct criticism of the colonial administration or of the culture of colonialism is nearly absent in this period. Western characters are rarely portrayed by Assamese writers and even when they make an appearance, they are represented as a part of the benevolent colonial machinery. This reluctance to adopt a critical attitude towards the West may have been partly due to the social status of most Assamese writers of this period. Being mostly employees in the colonial government, the educated section was understandably afraid of incurring the displeasure of the colonial masters. But there were other more complex historical and psychological reasons for such an attitude. Assam entered the colonial fold almost seventy years after the Battle of Plassey that brought Bengal under British rule. In 1826, when the British troops entered Assam on the repeated appeals for help by the fugitive Ahom monarch , the country had been ravaged by civil war and a succession of Burmese invasions. The reigning king had been forced to seek refuge in the neighbouring British territory of Rangpur in eastern Bengal. The Burmese had let loose a reign of terror that remained in folk memory for almost a hundred years as the nightmarish 'Burmese Days'. The colonial administration that brought order out of the chaos, naturally gave a sense of relief and security to the people and this feeling finds expression in most of the writings of the nineteenth century. The Assamese intellectuals visualized the West as all that their own king or the rapacious Burmese were not. Justice, humanity, fair play and equality before law-these were the ideals which they identified as Western. They also believed that hard work and useful knowledge would enable them to transform their own land into another

England and the benevolent British government would help them to achieve It. The peasant rebellions against increase in land revenue, or the rebellion of 1857 in Assam therefore did not find any significant place in Asamiya writings of the period.

Another interesting feature of the east-west encounter as experienced by the Assamese intellectuals was that for most of them the "wonder city" of Calcutta, the seat of colonial rule, represented the epitome of western enlightenment. The image of the West, therefore, was constituted of a peculiar blend of the Bengali Babu and the Wite Sahib. The Assamese wrote in glowing language about the progress made by Bengal under British rule and longed for the day when Assam would be able to reach the same heights under British patronage. This note of urgency may be discerned in journalistic writings of the period.

Another aspect of Assam's response to the West was the consciousness of a distinct sense of identity generated by the colonial presence. The British undertook a systematic study of the language, history, and ethnography of the region in order to know the people whom they wanted to rule. These forms of knowledge introduced by colonialism were eagerly acquired and gratefully acknowledged by the Assamese intellectuals because through them they attained a distinct identity that set them apart from the "others"-the tribal people and the immigrant Bengalis. The exposure to western concepts of rationalism, liberalism or monotheism gave birth to a new critical trend in Asamiya literature and set in a modernist phase very much in line with similar trends in other regional literatures of India. However, in the question of women's emancipation, the Assamese writings of the period reveal an ambivalent attitude. There is by and large a reluctance to accept the concept of gender equality in the matter of education and work. The attitude of the more enlightened intellectuals too was reflective of the orthodox early Victorian concept of "the angel in the house". The dominant benevolent paternalistic image of the British found a formidable critic in Lakshminath Bezbaroa, a lone voice during the colonial period. Some of his comic satirical pieces portray the racist and arrogant face of colonialism. Though this critical trend seems to be rare in the writings of the Assamese middle-class, yet, oral folk literature contains many a critical portrait of the tea-garden Sahib whose cruel face was immediately visible to the common folk or of the white officer who leads his forces against the rebellious peasants in the countryside.