Chapter I

Colonialism
and
Postcolonialism
 -1 -

1. COLONIALISM AND POSTCOLONIALISM

1.1. Introduction:

The history of the world civilization is a grandiose tale of power

struggle between various agents of human consciousness. Ever since the days

of Darwinian exploration of the world mystery and the processes affecting it,

the existence has always been a subject of a great debate among the scholars.

The human life, according to Darwin in ‘The Origin of Species’, is shaped by

heredity and environment. It is a culmination of animal instinct among many

species that suffice into newer understanding of the world in the evolutionary

process. The human being evolved through the various processes of an

environment is gifted with varied instincts that gave him superior recognition.

In the primitive days, the unrefined organs of speech and the unconditioned

power of mind struggled against the bitter realities around and sustained their

steady progress in the course of time. The books of anthropology and world

history bear witness to the various periods of human understanding and its

development through the stark realities operating upon it. The existence of the

human being, like all other natural species, largely depends on its struggle

with environment. This aspect of life ascertains its supremacy over the other

species, themselves combating with, for their survival. The everlasting power

struggle among the species is desired for their survival. Since the Stone Age

to the present, the human being has always been trying to ascertain his

superiority over the various factors, natural, psychological or economic. The

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- -

present- competition-crisis in the air of globalization can be viewed as a

power-straggle-for -existence. This struggle divides the existence into two:

the ‘self and the ‘other’; the ‘ruler’ and the ‘ruled’. This binary distinction

testifies the growth of every domain of human existence.

1.2. Colonialism:

The progress of human civilization is a record of many battles

and conflicts. The desire for rule and dominate the less powerful can be seen

in the history of most of the Eastern and Western countries. Colonialism is

such a concept that clearly gives us an idea of how a particular nation tried to

dominate the indigenous territory for the sake of enhancing its economic and

mechanical resources. A great deal of skepticism prevails over the relatively

new field of colonial and postcolonial studies. There exist many controversies

regarding these studies despite the fact that writing about colonialism is as old

as colonialism itself. A recent essay by Russell Jacoby [1995:30] complains ,

that, “the term postcolonial has become the latest catchall term to dazzle the

academic mind. He adds that lots of theory is written in a confusing manner, it

is marked by infighting among critics who accuse each other of complicity

with colonial structure of thought”.^

It has been a common tendency among critics to perceive

colonialism and postcolonialism synonymous though they bear some common

paraphernalia. The word colonialism, according to the Oxford English

Dictionary comes from the Roman word ‘colonia’ which meant ‘farm’ or

‘settlement’, and referred to Romans who settled in other lands but still
 -3 -

retained their citizenship. Accordingly, the OEQdescribes it: A settlement in

a new country .... A body of people who settle in a new locality, forming a

community subject to or connected with their present state; the community so

formed, consisting of the original settlers and other descendents and

successors, as long as the connection with the parent state is kept up. Quite

ironically, this definition seeks to avoid any references to those already living

therein where colonies got established. The ‘new locality’ was already been

inhabited by those living there. Colonialism is the extension of a nation's

sovereignty over territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either

settler colonies or administrative dependencies in which indigenous

populations are directly ruled or displaced. Colonizers generally dominate the

resources. ^Iabor) and markets of the colonial territory and may also impose

socio-cultural, religious and linguistic structures on the conquered population.

However, though colonialism is often used interchangeably with Imperialism,

the latter is sometimes used more broadly as it covers control exercised

informally as well as formally. The term colonialism may also be used to refer

to a set of beliefs used to legitimize or promote this system. Colonialism was

often based on the belief that the mores and values of the colonizer are

initially superior at the end of the observers link such beliefs regarding values

to racism, and to pseudo-scientific theories of the 19th century, although this

can be misleading since to those of the colonized. Some Racism is by

definition specifically about race, not values. The historical phenomenon of

colonization is one that stretches around the globe and across time, including
 -4-

such disparate peoples as the Hittites, the Incas and the British, although the

term "colonialism” is normally specific to European empires or seeks to draw

a comparison with those Empires. European colonization may be broadly

divided into two large waves, the first one starting with the "Age of

exploration" and the beginning of the Columbian Exchange, and the second

one beginning in the second part of the 19th century with the new imperialism

period. Colonization and decolonization have overlapped themselves, since

most of the New World colonies had already acquired their Independence

when the scramble for Africa and the New Imperialism began.

The history and progress of colonization date back to the

advent of the seventeenth century. In 1498, the Portuguese set foot in Goa.

Rivalry among reigning European powers saw the entry of the Dutch.

Britishrench. Danish among others. The fractured debilitated kingdoms of

India were gradually taken over by the Europeans and indirectly controlled by

puppet rulers. In 1600, Queen Elizabeth I accorded a Charter forming the East

India Company to trade with India and eastern Asia. The British landed in

India in Surat in 1624. By the 19th century, they had assumed direct and

indirect control over most of India.Colonialism was first and foremost part of

the commercial venture of the Western nations, while Africa , India and the

Caribbean were directly under the British rule , the African Americans , were

‘ colonized, enslaved, Lynched, exploited, deceived, abused ’ (Malcom X,

Quoted in john Barcy, 1970, :1414 ) . He too says that, ‘the Black American

exists in a state of colonial subordination to the white America”. Albert

 -5- ♦ K

Memmi dedicated the American edition of his book, The colonizer and the

Colonized, to the American Negro, also colonized Colonialism was not an

identical process in different parts of the world but everywhere it enchained

the original inhabitants and the newcomers into the most complex and

traumatic relationships in human history. Based on the exploitation of natural

and human resources of the colonized nation, colonialism perpetuates itself

through oppression and aggression. Oppression means, says Jean Paul Sartre

in his introductory to Memmi’s book [1965: xxxvii], “first of all, the

oppressor’s hatred for the oppressed’ which creates ‘a petrified ideology’ that

devotes itself to regard human being as ‘talking beasts”. This, in turn

dehumanizes both the colonizer and the colonized. The dialectics of

colonialism has a vested interest in the economic and political exploitation of

the colony. By circulating the myth of the inferiority of the colonized and

getting it reaffirmed through the educational system, the colonizer gets it

internalized by the colonized. Once that is done, this myth acquires a

dimension in which the colonized views him through the mirror of the

colonizer. This internalized myth gets into the fabrics of the social, religious

and cultural lives of the colonized. Thus having been thrown out of the history

process, the colonized starts viewing himself as inferior, barbaric, alien. He is

completely carried away by this process and forgets his cultural heritage. The

internalization of the ‘alien language’ becomes instrumental in keeping the

colonized fixed to his position, The colonizer distorts and disfigures the

‘history’ of the colonized by changing the names of streets, putting of statues

 -6 -

of his native heroes, designing building according to his architectonic

structures. He hardly leaves anything untouched and obliterates everything

from the memory of the colonized about his past and creates antipathy for his

own culture. Even his native folk letters get corrupted due to this alien

invasion. He is taught the language of the colonizer and the dual identity of

the colonized is formed. The colonized after adapting to the oppressor’s

language participates in two realms namely psychic and cultural which

conflict with each other.

Colonial encounter in any territory gives birth to bi-culturalism

that gives a double identity for the colonized. There exists hardly any social

interaction between the ruler and the ruled. The writers of this era mediate

between two worlds: European and the native, modem and traditional. They

become heirs to two cultures; two world-views; two systems of thought and

generally, two or more languages. Frantz Fanon, in his speech before the First

Artists Congress of Negro Writers and Artists in Paris in 1956, states that

colonialism aims at ‘de-culturation through the process of a systematic

elimination of a raison d’etre for the colonized.

Modem European colonialism was a distinctive feature of

human history, By 1930, colonialism had exercised its sway over 84.6 percent

of the land surface of the globe, Only parts of Arabia, Persia, Afghanistan,

Mongolia, Tibet, China, Siam, and Japan had never been a subject to the

European colonial impact, Because of the diversity existing among the

colonized subjects world over, geographical and historical generalization tend

 -7-

to be very complex since they involve heterogeneous practices such as

complex debates and histories. Right from its inception, it deployed diverse

strategies and methods of control and of representation. European discourses

about ‘the other’ are variable. Colonialism is a particular manifestation of

imperialism, specific to certain places and time. In this context British Empire

is a form of imperial economic and political structures. Elleke Boehemer’s

[1995:2] judicious definition of colonialism as the ‘settlement of territory, the

exploitation or development of resources, and the attempt to govern the

indigenous inhabitants of occupied lands’, gives us an idea of the concept:

Colonialism . In pursuit of this definition, British colonialism was not always

successful in particularizing its aims and it met with acts of resistance from
%

the outset by the indigenous inhabitants of the colonized lands as well as the

members of the European intellectuals who settled overseas and no longer

wished to defer power and authority to the imperial ‘motherland’. As Shirley

Chew [1995:32] has explained, “a paradox sits at the heart of the

Commonwealth: described as a free association of equal and mutually

cooperating nations, it nevertheless, drawn together by a shared history of

colonial exploitation, dependence and inter-change”. As regards the imperial

venture of the British Empire, there are three distinct periods of

decolonization when the colonized nations won the right to govern their own

affairs. The first was the loss of American colonies and declaration of

American Independence in the late eighteenth century. The second period

spans the end of the nineteenth century to the first decade of the twentieth
 - 8 -

century, and concerns the creation of dominions such as Canada, Australia,

New Zealand and South Africa. These settlers’ nations, often violating the

indigenous inhabitants agitated for the self-government and still recognized

allegiance to the ultimate authority of Britain as the ‘mother country’. The

third period of decolonization occurred immediately after the end of World

War II when the once the colonized nations such as India, Pakistan, Ceylon,

Ghana achieved independence from the British. The achievement of

Independence is a consequence of indigenous anti-colonial nationalism and

military struggle. By 1960, Britain’s status as a world economic power

rapidly declined due to the emergence of nationalistic movements in once-

colonized nations while America and the Soviet Union became the military

superpowers. The British Empire was becoming increasingly expensive to

administer. It made economic sense to hand over the costly administration of

colonial affairs to its people, whether or not the colonized people were

prepared for the shift of power.

13. Commonwealth Literature:

The two areas of intellectual study: Commonwealth Literature

and the Theories of Colonial Discourse have influenced the context of

postcolonialism. The term ‘Commonwealth Literature’ came into use among

the literary critics from 1950’s to describe Literatures in English emerging

from the countries with a history of colonialism. Initially, the term was used

to refer collectively to, the special status of the dominions within the ‘Empire’

and their continuing allegiance to Britain. Later, ‘Commonwealth’ became

 -9-

redefined after the war and its meaningus_ap. association of sovereign nations

without difference to a single authority. This shift from ‘Colonial’ to

‘Commonwealth’ perhaps suggests a particular version of history in which the

colonized nations happily changed from subservience to equality. One of the

significant things about the relatively new approach in the Commonwealth

Literature is the birth of ‘liberal humanism’. For liberal humanists, the most

literary texts always transcend the provincial contexts of their initial

production and deal with moral preoccupations relevant to people of all times

and places. Their experimental elements, their novelty and local colour made

them exciting to read and helped to depict the nation with which they were

concerned. A.Norman Jeffers [1965: xiv] while addressing the First

Conference of Commonwealth Literature at the University of Leeds, England

in 1964 remarked, “One reads [commonwealth writers] because they bring

new ideas, new interpretations of life to us”. Many agreed that the ‘novel’

ideas and new ‘interpretations of life’ in Commonwealth Literature owed

much to the ways that writers were forging their own sense of national and

cultural identityrJust as the idea of a Commonwealth of Nations suggested a

diverse community with a common set of concerns, Commonwealth

Literature, whether produced in India, Australia or Caribbean was assumed to

reach across national borders and deal with universal concerns and their best

writing possessed the power of transcending them too. Attempts have been

made to secure commonwealth literature as an important category of artistic

Endeavour and as a viable area of academic study. Critics like Jeffers and

(
 -10 -

Walsh assisted in ensuring that these literatures were major fields that merited

serious attention on the same criteria as the ‘classics’ of English literature.

Much of the postcolonial criticism and postcolonial critical activity largely

owes to the extensive enterprise of Commonwealth Literature as Shirley

Chew [1993:32] has explained, “A Paradox sits at the heart of

Commonwealth: described as a free association of equal and mutually

cooperating nations, it nevertheless, drawn together by a shared history of

colonial exploitation, dependence and inter-change” . The first side of this

philanthropic spirit of studying the Commonwealth Literature, the

paraphernalia of postcolonialism concentrated more on the nature of

exploitation and dependence. In the late 1970’s and 1980’s, many critics

obliterated the liberal bias and started reading literatures in new ways. This

attempt produced theories of ‘colonial discourses’, often thought as an

antecedent of postcolonialism.

1.4. Theories of Colonial Discourses:

Theories of colonial discourse have been largely responsible for

the development of postcolonialism. They attempt to explore the

representations and modes of perception that are widely used by the colonial

agent to keep the colonized people subservient to colonial rule. Abdul Jan

Mohammad [1985:12] formulates this in terms of binary or ‘Manichean’ code

of recognition which underlines colonialism’s domination of the other. This

consists of a series of fixed oppositions such as self/other, white/black,

good/evil, rationality/sensuality, master/slave, subject/object etc. These ways

 -11 -

V perceiving specific modes of umtaja fing the world and one’s place in it

are at the root of the study of colonial discourses. Under colonialism, the

colonized subjects are made subservient to the truest world-views and value-

systems of the colonial power through the internalization of the education

system, precisely language. The colonial power distorts and disfigures the

identity of the colonized, making him feel inferior and dependent from which

he must be rescued. The colonial power internalizes its own set-values and

cultural heritage. Frantz Fanon is an important figure in the field of

postcolonialism. He was bom in 1925 in France. He suffered heavily the

notions of colonial exploitation, recorded the psychological damage suffered

by colonized people who internalized colonial discourses. His work includes

two polemical books- Black skin, White Masks (trans. Charles Lam

Markmann, Pluto [1952] 1986) and The Wretched of the Earth (trans.

Constance Farringdon, Penguin [1961] 1967). The former explains the

consequences of identity formation for the colonized subject who is forced to

regard himself as ‘other’. Negro remains ‘other’ to all qualities against which

colonizing people derive their superiority. “The White World”, writes Fanon

[1952, 1986:114], “the only honourable one, barred me from all participation.

A man was expected to behave like a man. I was expected to behave like a

Black man”.He remembers in the chapter, 'The Fact ofBlackness’ how he felt

when in France, white strangers pointed at him as ‘look a negro!’. He writes

[1952,1986:112-13]:
 - 12 -

On that day, completely dislocated, unable to be abroad with the

other, the white man, who unmercifully imprisoned me, I took myself far off

from my own presence, far indeed and made myself an object. What else

could it be for me but an amputation, an excision, a hemorrhage that spitted

my whole body with black blood? But I did not want this revision, this

thematisation. All I wanted was to be a man among other men. I wanted to

come to lithe and young into a world that was ours and help to build it

together.

Among many a domain instrumental in strengthening the

colonial impact on the indigenous properties by force and physical coercion,

language played an important role which comprises a set of beliefs to which

the colonized people were subjected. As Chris Tiffin and Alan Lawson

[1994:3] explain, ‘colonialism (like its counterpart, racism), then, is an

operation of discourse, and an operation of discourses it interpallets colonial

subjects by incorporating them in a system of representation’. The

representation of the colonized subjects in colonial discourse is an outcome of

an ideology that perpetuates the colonizer’s notion to regard the colonized as

the ‘other’, enabling him to derive a new sense of self-worth through their

participation in the ‘furthering’ the progress of civilization.

Reading literatures in the context of colonial discourses refuses

the humanistic assumption that literary texts exist above and beyond their

historical contexts. It situates texts in history by exposing how historical

contexts influence their historical moment. In the wake of postcolonial

 -13-

studies, Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism' (1978) is considered influential. He

looked at the divisive relationship between the colonizer and the colonized

but from a different angle. Drawing upon developments in Marxist theories of

power, especially the political philosophy of the Italian intellectual Antonio

Gramsci and France’s Michel Foucault* Said asserted that the production of

knowledge by the Western imperial powers in the colonies helped them

continually to justify their subjugation. He opined that they spent immense

time in producing knowledge about the locations they dominated and hardly

ever tried to learn about them. The Western representation of Egypt and

Middle East, in a variety of writing materials is a cursory sum of their

propagandists attitude. The ‘Orient’ is a collective noun Said uses to refer to

the sum of West’s representation of the places like North African and Middle

East. Even after decolonization of the former colonies, he argues, how

Orientalism still survives even today in Western media reports of Eastern,

especially Arab lands. One of the fundamental views Said expresses is its.-----^

binary division it makes between the Orient and the Occident. Each is

assumed to exist against the other. The Orient is conceived as everything that

West is not, its ‘alter-ego’. The Orient is frequently described in a series of

derogatory terms to buttress a Western notion of superiority and strength. The

West is considered to be a vital seat of knowledge and learning while the

Orient, a place of exoticism, moral laxity, sexual degeneracy and so forth.

David Richard [1994:289] writes, ‘the representation of other cultures

invariably entails the presentation of self-portraits, in that those people who

 -14-

are observed are overshadowed or eclipsed by the observer”. Said’s critique

of the machinery of colonialism is anticipated by the Foucalijan view of

tracing the connections between the production of knowledge and the exercise

of power. It also inaugurates the use of literary material to discuss historical

and epistemological processes. Said’s use of culture and knowledge to

interrogate colonial power initiated colonial discourse analysis, as claimed by

Said, traces connections between the centre and the marginalized, the real and /

the hidden. It allows us to see how power interplays through language,

literature, culture and the institutions which channalize our daily lives. Said’s
L

basic thesis is that Orientalism was ultimately a political vision of reality

whose structures promoted a binary oppositions between the familiar (Europe,

the West, us) and the strange (the ‘Orient, the East and them’). Since the

inception of Orientalism, colonial discourses have analyzed a wide range of

cultural texts and practices such as art, cinema, scientific systems, medical

practices, geology, educational institutions etc. according to R. Young

[1990:11], “colonial discourse analysis forms the point of questioning of

Western Knowledges Catagories and Assumptions”. Desf^of^th^enormous

popularity, Orientalism evoked hostility and much criticism among many

Western intellectuals. Said’s binary divisions of East and West praxis has

been a more or less static feature of Western discourses from Classical Greece

to the present day. Said’s work is seen to flatten historical nuances into a

fixed East versus West divide”, writes Ajaz Ahmed [1983:183]. He [1992:3-

25] also accuses Said of homogenizing the West in that he does not connect
 -15-

Orientalists’ knowledge production to colonial history and its connections

with the development of colonialism. Critics have also pointed out that Said’s

analysis concentrates almost exclusively on canonical Western literary texts.

Radically more frequent charge, Ajaz Ahmed [1983:200] views, is that Said

ignores the self-representations of the colonized and focuses on the imposition

of colonial power rather than on resistance to it. He promotes a static model

of colonial relations in which ‘colonial power and discourse is possessed

entirely by the colonizer and therefore there is no room for negotiation or

change.

Like Said, Bhabha has become one of the leading voices in the

study of postcolonialism since 1980. Bhabha’s work seems to be r

incomprehensible due to his complex writing style. ArifDirlik[1994:328-56] /

argues that Bhabha is ‘something of a master of political mystification and \

theoretical obfuscation’. He was inspired by the monumental works of \i

Sigmund Freud on psychoanalysis and the poststructuralist Jacques Lacan,
f
and Frantz Fanon. His essays of ‘Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of

Colonial Discourse and ‘The Other Question: Stereotyped, Discrimination

and Discourse of Colonialism construct a working knowledge of his concepts

of ‘ambivalence’ and ‘mimicry in the operation of colonial discourses’. “The

objective of colonial discourse,” Bhabha writes [1994:70], “is to construe the

colonized as a population of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin, in

order to justify conquest and to establish systems of administration and

instruction”. Bhabha argues that the emergence of colonial stereotypes that

 -16-

represent colonized peoples has never been fully met with, since it does not

function according to its plan because of its dualistic patterns. The colonized

subjects in the discourse of colonialism are radically strange creatures whose

eccentric and barbaric nature is the cause for both curiosity and concern. At

another level, the discourse of colonialism attempts to domesticate colonized

subjects and abolition of their radical ‘otherness’ bringing them inside the

western set-up through the Orientalsts’ project of constructing knowledge

about them. He writes, “colonial discourse produces the colonized as a social

reality which is at once and “other” and yet entirely knowable and visible”.

Echoing Said’s arguments that Western representations of the East are based

primarily on the fantasies, desires and imaginings, Bhabha [1994:72] points

out that the discourse of colonialism is frequently populated with terrifying

stereotypes of savagery, cannibalism, lust and anarchy. His ‘Discourse of

Colonialism’ is characterized by both ambivalence and anxious repetition. In

his essay, “Of Mimicry and Man”, Bhabha explores how the ambivalence of

the colonized subjects becomes a direct threat to the authority of the

colonizers through the effect of mimicry. He [1994:82] defines mimicry as,

“one of the most elusive and effective strategies of colonial power and

knowledge”. He pointed out that in colonized nations like India, the British

authorities required native people to work on their behalf and thus

internalized the English language. Macualy’s [1835, 1995:] infamous

‘Minutes’ on Indian Education is an indictment towards the need to create a

class of Indians capable of taking on English opinions, morals and intellect.

 -17-

These ‘Mimic Men’ as described by Fanon are to be anglicized not to be

English. The ambivalent position of the colonized mimic men in relation to

the colonizers- ‘almost the same but not quite’, is, according to Bhabha, is a

source of anti-colonial resistance. It presents an unconquerable challenge to

the entire structure of the discourse of colonialism.

Like Said and Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak too questions the

Western domination but from a different perspective. Here is a feminist

deconstructive approach that questions West’s predominant discourse in the

1970’s and 1980’s. Herself a ‘Marxist-feminist-deconstructionist, she is

critical of the imperialistic’ neo-capitalistic market strategies used by the west

to control’ manipulate and exploit the Third World population. Her numerous

essays and reflections analyze the double-bondage of women in the colonial

and patriarchal system. She relates diverse aspects of the third world

population to analyze the causes and features of the condition of exploitation.

Like the ‘Materialist feminists’, as some of the Marxist feminist such as

Judith Newton and Deborah Rosenfelt are called, Spivak related the problems

of women’s oppression in patriarchal system with those of economic and

political systems and manipulations. Her close reading and translation of ‘Of
\
V# Grammatology’ (1976) helped her to adopt the deconstructive method to

examine the western intellectual discourse and the cultural institutions of the

two worlds interrogated within the framework of international capitalism.

After having experienced as an immigrant Asian and a woman, she

experiences an element of marginality in the context of Euro-centric

 - 18-

intellectual and cultural hegemony. She makes her experience of marginality

a location, from which she can examine and deconstruct the West’s

domination. In her essay, Spivak [1979:107] introspects her marginalized

stance in the words as, ‘the putative centre welcomes selective inhabitants of

the margin in order to better to exclude the margin’. Spivak [1979:104]

maintains that both deconstruction and feminism have the common cause of

‘paying attention to marginality because of ‘a suspicion that what is at the

center often hides a repression. Learned from Jacques Derrida’s handling of a

texture of language to a re-reading of a textual production, she says

[1979:105],’’that every textual production of every explanation, there is the

itinerary of a constantly thwarted desire to make the text explain. She is

critical of the First world’s construction of explanation /knowledge to explain

the ‘other’, in explaining the ‘other’ postcolonial world, for she writes

[1979:105],”in explaining the ‘other/world, we exclude the possibility of the

radically heterogeneous’. Dissatisfied with the gradual decline of humanities

in the universities because of the capitalist control over most social, cultural

institutions including education, she [1979:107] points out that the humanities

are required to produce the culture that will describe and make neo-capitalism

acceptable to the masses in the First and Third Worlds. The production of

knowledge has a clear purpose aiming to justify and popularize ‘explain’ the

culture of consumerism, high-fashion and advancing technology. Spivak and

other postcolonial critics maintain that the construction of knowledge in the

metropolitan centers and the Western universities produce a specific type of

 -19-

culture. And this culture describes, defines and shapes the scholars. She

maintains the need for rethinking of the concepts like selfhood, culture and

national identity. The ‘official explanations, aligned with power imposing

status of the ‘other’ on those on the margin, follow the requirements of the

power emphasizing continuity or discontinuity with past explanations,

depending on a seemingly judicious choice permitted by the play of their

power’. In producing these official explanations, ‘we reproduce’ she writes

[1979:108], ‘structures of possibility of a knowledge whose effect is that very

structure’. ‘We (The Third World scholars who study the knowledge

produced by the First World Academy), ‘are a part of the records we keep’,

and “...we are written into the texts of technology. These effects upon us of

the close adherence to the knowledge produced elsewhere emphasize the

‘complicity’ and the ‘surrender’ to the controlling power of neo-capitalism.

Spivak’s writing is a commentary on the First World’s practice of imposing

its political power over the Third world through indirect strategies like

education, mass-media and market forces. It is this that strengthened its

power.

1.5. Postcolonialism:

Definitions of postcolonialism, of course, vary widely but

according to Spivak, ‘for me the concept proves most useful not when it is

used synonymously with a post-independence historical period in once-

colonized countries, but rather when it locates a specifically anti- or post­

colonial discursive purchase in culture, one which begins in the moment that
 - 20 -

colonial power inscribes itself the body and space of its others and which

continues as an often occulted tradition into the modem theatre of

neocolonialist international relations.

The relationship between colonialism and postcolonialism has

to be understood in the light of contemporary debate among the scholars. It is

no longer safe to assert that colonialism ends when a colony achieves

independence through its anti-colonial machinery but values, codes common

to colonialism persist even after the decolonization of a colony. They have an

agency in most of the enterprises. As the theories of colonial discourses argue

that colonialism affects modes of representation, proper ordering of things,

postcolonialism involves challenge to colonial ways of knowing. It

emphasizes ‘writing back’ to the colonial centre in tarnishing the colonial

self-proclaimed knowledge.

After having looked at the historical and intellectual contexts of

postcolonialism which is considered to be the antecedents to the study of

literary studies carried through the last decade of the twentieth century,

postcolonialism is seen academically busy among the literary circles because

of its wantonness. Makarand Paranjape [1998:48] opines, ‘postcolonialism is

one of the most “wanted” isms in the obtaining academic discourses. It has

attracted great debate among the scholars over its connotative nature. Some

write with a hyphen i.e., post-colonialism signaling a historic periodisation

whereas some write without hyphen as postcolonialism referring to disparate

forms of representation, reading practices and values. Mishra and Hodge

 -21 -

[1991:284] write that if the hyphen is dropped, the term postcolonialism is

used as ‘an always present tendency in any literature of subjugation marked

by a systematic process of cultural domination through the imposition of f

imperial structures of power, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin

use the term postcolonial ‘to cover all the culture affected by the imperial

process from the moment of colonization to the present day’. In his Forward

to ‘The Empire Writes Back’, Stephen Slemon [1987:3] problematizes

postcolonialism as he writes in his forward, “ Definitions of the ‘post-

colonial’ of course vary widely, but for me the concept proves most useful not

when it is used synonymously with a post-independence historical period in

once-colonized nations, but rather when it locates a specifically anti- or post­

colonial discursive purchase in culture, one which begins in the moment that

colonial power inscribes itself the body and space of its Others and which

continues as an often occulted tradition into the modem theatre of

neocolonialist international relations”. Postcolonialism is a complex cultural *

process that represente the general mood of a particular period of history as

shown by ideas, beliefs or the spirit of the times} The intermediary nature

between colonialism and postcolonialism seem to offer different perspectives

of colonialism in that the identity of the marginalized groups in once-

colonized nations, their exploitation and oppression, displacement, nostalgia

and the loss of language and culture are the predominant issues related to

postcolonialism. Postcolonial literature offers to its reader the centre- ,,

periphery dichotomy, resistance and subversion of the imperial centre. Some

 -22 -

crities like Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak conceive of postcolonial writing

as resistance to Euro-centric colonial hegemony,. Initially, the postcolonial

writing was considered to explicate the colonial experiences of marginalized

groups located in Britain, Canada and such other countries. Later on, the

writers like Arun Mukhaijee and Benita Parry opposed to the established

decorum and opened new possibilities for cross-cultural contact.

Postcolonialism is not die same as ‘after colonialism’. On the other hand, it

recognizes both historical continuity, and change, As John Macleod [2000:32]

argues, “postcolonialism in part involves the challenge to colonial ways of

knowing, ‘writing back to the centre’ in opposition to such views...colonial

ways of knowing still circulate and have agency in the present; unfortunately,

they have not magically disappeared as the Empire declined”. Stephen

Slemon [1994: 15] asserts that, “There is a veritable scramble for

postcolonialism”. Gayatri Spivak Chakraborti [1991: 224] adds another

dimension to postcolonialism when she calls the term “just totally bogus” and

she prefers the term postcoloniality to it.

Whatever be its assumptions of the term, postcolonialism

remains currently in use and has come to stay in our critical and literary

discourses. An attempt has. been made to introduce the concepts; Colonialism

and Postcolonialism in their ideological and theoretical formulations. In the

present scenario, it is difficult to insulate ourselves from the postcolonial

affectations being done to us. So, it is quite necessary to respond to it on one’s

individualistic ways. The present study entitied POSTCOLONIAL

 -23-

CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE NOVELS OF AMITAV GHOSH seeks to

explore the impact of postcolonialism on Amitav Ghosh. It also seeks an in-

depth study of Amitav Ghosh as a postcolonial writer. It is intended to

diagnose how Ghosh’s work is correlated and expands the broader perspective

of globalization in the interest of humanity in general. It will highlight on the

present need of world peace and materialize human values in the wake of

contemporary religious fanaticism and socio-cultural conflict at the

international scenario.

The reason for the same is quite explicit. Over the past two

decades or so, Amitav Ghosh (b.1956) has enthralled readers with novels and

travelogues that have acquired the status of modem classics. This 1989

Sahitya Akademi Awardee has authored six novels along with a wide body of

non-fiction. His novels have been unanimously appreciated for their

fictionality and humanistic outlook. His novels are concerned with exploring

the connection between past and present, between events and memories and

between people, cultures and countries that have shared a colonial past. One

of the important aspects of his writing is his cosmopolitanism. His treatment

of themes is not related only to India but to several countries like Britain,

Egypt, Malaysia, Burma and Bangladesh. Furthermore, his narrative

technique takes him very near to the modem tabulators like John Fowles,

V.S.Naipaul, Salman Rushdie. Amitav Ghosh is a serious writer writing in

the postcolonial space. His works breathe out various postcolonial issues that

signal the writer’s pre-occupation. Six novels to his credit along with the
 -24-

celebrated non-fictional works such as Imam and the Indian, Dancing in

Cambodia: At Large in Burma and Countdown, Ghosh sustains his

postcolonial consciousness through his works. His works have been serious

concern at the national and international level. Several research articles have

been published on the diversified aspects of his works in national and

international journals. Besides, his novels have been reviewed at home and

abroad. The research work carried so far has touched upon his thematic

aspects, particularly social realism, myth and history, nationalism, politics and

religion. For instance, Tabish Khair has completed his Ph.D from

Copenhagen University, Denmark in “Amitav Ghosh: A Critical Study of his

Novels”. Dr.A.Sudhakar Rao has done his Ph.D from Osmania University,

Hyderabad in “Myth and History in the Contemporary Indian Novel in

English” pertaining to Amitav Ghosh’s The Circle ofReason. Vasuki, P. from

Thaiagaraja College, Madurai has obtained M.Phil degree for her dissertation

in “The Novels of Amitav Ghosh: A Study”. Currently, Dr. Shymala A.

Narayan, Department of English and Modem European Languages, Jamia

Milia Islamia University, New Delhi is supervising an M.Phil. Dissertation on

“Colonialism in Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace”. However, as Amitav

Ghosh is the postcolonial writer of 1980’s and 1990’s, the study of

nationalism and internationalism needs a closer look. One easily gets

acquainted with his postcolonial consciousness in his fictional work. As a

champion of Human Rights, he makes a plea for tolerance and world peace.

Therefore, his novels need a comprehensive critical attention to find out

 -25-

different facets of postcolonialism in his novels. Keeping this in view, the

present study aims at the new postcolonial perspectives in his novels in order

to help better understanding among different nationalities in the wake of

globalization. The present study adheres to one of the definitions of

postcolonialsm that avoids the hyphen and considers it as a single word

throughout. Reason for the same is obvious; in that, it considers, not historic

periodisation as in Post-colonialism, but Postcolonialism as it refers to

disparate forms of representations, reading practices and values. These can

circulate across the barrier between colonial rule and national independence.

The methodology of this study is to identify the postcolonial issues as

stemmed out from the celebrated discourses on postcolonialism and explicate

the reflection of these issues in the novels of Amitav Ghosh. The present

study is restricted only to its postcolonial occupation. It considers the novels

published up to 2004 only. It aims to evaluate the attitude and objectives of

the novelist as communicated through the issues of postcolonialism. As this

study is restricted only to postcolonial implications, more emphasis would be

given on the novelist’s choice of the point of view as it is a powerful means

towards the positive definition of concern.

 -26-

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 -28 -

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