 M.G.

Vassanji – connections with East Africa – his family migrated in the 19 th century – later he
migrated to America as a result of his educational pursuits and aspirations, which weren’t
allowed to him in his homeland.
 Two memoirs – connected to both his birthplace (Kenya) and his cultural homeland (India).
 The recovery of memory and the past central to this text – for diasporic subjectivities, the past is
a source of sustenance in terms of their personal identity and cultural moorings.
 Vassanji's own religious identity as a Ismaili-Khojah Muslim, makes his examination of the
minorities and their histories filled with syncretism and not neat cultural binaries.
 Pius Fernandes' anxiety of being redundant – propelling him to decode the meaning of the diary,
which in turns leads him to a rediscovery of his own past and the self.
 Diary writing – bridging the gap between the private domain and the public sphere. Here
however this idea is inverted by the title itself “the book of secrets”.
 Metahistorical text – history being a collection of contesting narratives – the novel attempting to
resolve this conflict by the juxtaposition of multiple perspectives in a non-linear narrative,
however the actual construction of such an intersectional history is left uncertain – pointing out
to how History is inevitably also an erasure of alternative histories.
 Historical records being codified and received memories – how every History is also shaped
depending upon a certain ideological position – no historical moment can be captured in its
totality – history cannot be centripetal but centrifugal – codified memories do not account for
the embodied selves that are genuine accounts of legitimate histories, that may be erased or
treated as mere footnotes. This novel attempts to give certain voice (and life) to these long-
buried selves with narratives left unsaid.
 East African Indian communities – despised and beleaguered – seen as complicit in ivory and
slave trade – Vassanji's attempt to rectify this misrepresentation of this community, the “anti-
Asian” sentiment in Africa. Rather it is represented as the grass that gets trampled upon by
contesting colonial forces, caught in the crossfire of those who have no concern for these
people. His fictionalized narrative is nevertheless invested in a communitarian ethic which is
essential to postcolonial literary discourses.
 Alfred Corbin's diary – entries being sketchy – does not account for the silenced lives of the
Indian community which are not adequately represented in colonial history, within the
framework of a pro-nationalist African polity.
 Postmodern text – conscious of its own meta-narrativity – no account here can claim for itself to
stand for the Truth – no finality or totality in the written word.
 The diary – has its origins in the hands of an ADC deputed to Kikono (Little Hand). The time lapse
between its writing and the bestowal of the diary into Pius' hands is 71 years. It has witnessed
several phases of lives, both colonial and postcolonial histories of Africa – the entry point for
investigating into history, but also a site which has passed through different phases of political
history of East Africa – history as a site of contestation that the diary has been witness to, both
in the colonial and postcolonial contexts.
 Patriarchy and colonialism – the duality of which contributes to the silence of women in the
novel.
 The Oriental land described by Corbin – analogous to Mariamu's impressions. His received ideas
of Africa are rooted in travelogues. Corbin has clearly internalised the stereotypes he’s read
about.
 Orientalism – had to do with the deliberate construction of an other – Edward Said says how the
Orientalist discourse divides the Orient to a stage which can be studied and then dissected – the
textual, territorial
 The texutality of orientalism had infiltrated into the psyche of the European – atemporal,
stagnant, savage and uncivilized towards the Orient. This also extends to other colonized lands.
 The Western world's tendency to perceive the spiritual belief systems and practices of the East
with a 'rational' lens – not accounting for “trans-rational” notions that cannot be explained by
existent rational discourses.
 Page 13 – “a job, which would require from him, as he put it, “his whole life and soul.””
 Page 11 – “It was in order to be impressed, to confirm his schoolboy expectations fed on tales of
famous adventurers and explorers, that he had strained his eyes seaward ever since they’d left
Marseilles with a fresh load of passengers from the British Isles.” – given the kind of
pervasiveness of the Oriental discourse and his conditioning, he cannot be expected to be open
to the possibilities of exploring new systems of thought.
 Corbin’s family – long relation to colonialism – Charles tried a hand at cattle farming in
Argentina, Robert in the Punjab, Kenneth in Nyasaland, and him working at the Union Mail
Shipping Lines.
 “it was in Hamburg harbour that he first laid eyes upon natives of Africa, ship hands conscripted
from the west coast of the continent” v/s how “he would describe how he was conscripted into
the Colonial Service.” – the English language used in a deceptive manner – conscripted in the
latter is a matter of pride and privilege for the British administrator (a role of honour where the
figure occupies a more rarified realm), while for the former it is a debasing way to dehumanise
them and render them a part of a homogenizing whole (the bodies becoming instruments of
biopower through their labour).
 Thomas – while he is opportunistic in his relation to Corbin, the community itself is not to be
read
 Page 17 – references to the Indian casualties through diseases and attacks by wild predators.
 Page 18 – “His presence, once he arrived, like the man-eater's above him, became part of the
character of the room…Corbin tried not to feel like a mouse under that overbearing smile, that
brilliant predatory gaze...this was a man who had trampled the land from corner to corner, slept
in the forests and killed its wildlife and natives.”
 “He respected the African, yet would call him nigger. He loved animals. He had killed scores of
both.”
 For the soldier, the African is a human presence, albeit hostile. For the settler, the African is
clearly dispensable, an object – the soldier would “respect the African – as a redoubtable enemy
or a friend. I would kill him with as little compunction as he would me. But the settler, and the
low class official…despises the black and would use me to kill him.”
 Maynard's paradigm of masculinity that is predatory and brutal – with Corbin he represents a
more civilized face of the Empire, and in the way he has his relation with Mariamu.
 The narrative structure of the novel:
a) Pius' Fernandes – not the author, but a scrutiniser of the diary of Alfred Corbin.
b) Alfred Corbin – writing accounts of his early years in East Africa. However his narrative is
fragmented and does not include the voices of others – heavily biased – instrumentalist in
his approach to know the community that he governs with least resistance
 c) The functional author – the voice through which all other voices are filtered – deeply
invested in salvaging marginalized voices and not disinterested – favouring the subaltern.
The voice carries with it a critique of imperialism and British colonial enterprise – looking
critically at Corbin’s narrative in the diary.
 The tripartite power sharing structure in East Africa – the British, the Indian community and the
Swahilis.
 Page 26 – “It was said, with some truth, that open one Indian duka, or shop, in the middle of
nowhere and soon you’d have a row of dukas” –
 Jamal Dewji – an unofficial banker for the British Consul – he sent his son Jamali to East Africa,
who later founded the town of Kikono as its mukhi.
 Page 28 – “fleeting glimpses caught between bush and tree and anthill – a figure draped in
white, dashing from left to right, cutting across his path in the distance…then a red head-cover
over the hair to complete the female figure.” – the introduction to Mariamu, who is shown to be
fleeting – continues throughout the narrative.
 Page 30 – “Hr administered with a quiet, forceful diligence, a monastic rigour, in the
unquestioned belief that what he did in his small way was part of a bigger enterprise in which he
had some stake.” – on the surface, he did believe in communication and dialogue. However, he
was simply there for “backward Africans and Orientals to enter the society of civilised peoples”
– his belief that this is a humane system to nurture an emerging nation, is what marks Corbin’s
own view of Kikono.
 The official discourse juxtaposed with Corbin’s ideas of colonialism – epistemological framework
is already closed to the what they feel “is repugnant to higher ideals of morality and justice” –
critique of the invasiveness of colonialism. (Page 31, the Governor’s Memoranda)
 “when his superiors demanded, surveyor” – instrumentalist approach, where the surveyor is not
the inhabitant and hence fundamentally detached.
 Page 37 – reference to Kilimanjaro – here said to be “Queen Victoria's present to the German
Kaiser” – Kilimanjaro being the highest peak of Africa; a synecdochal reference, that has also not
been spared by forces of European subjugation – the geographical resistance of such a mountain
compared to the political resistance of the peoples, and both crushed by European force of
technology and administration. Also, how this exchange of the mountain is highly problematized
in the case of Kikono which becomes the site of contestation between these very powers, and
which mercilessly trample upon this hamlet.
 “SEND US, O ENGLAND, YOUR MEN said a wooden plaque hanging from the gate and decorated
with a painted floral border. England had sent two women instead.”
 Thomas – a study in religious proselytization – earlier named Hari where now he is deracinated
from the Indian community – disapproves of Indian food and customs now. Alongside religious
indoctrination, he’s also a product of cultural alienation that the colonised experience, given
how he was born in Bombay and now lives in East Africa.
 Page 47 – “Letters by Indians of German East to kinsfolk in Bombay and Porbandar and assorted
villages in India – “Desh” as they call the home country – were understandable…their reliance on
the British government for this most important service was touching.” – the diasporic imaginary
of the homeland based on affective interpersonal ties and not the nation-state per se – Corbin’s
argument gives further impetus to the British enterprise as he feels it is connecting these
 diasporic peoples to their kinsfolk back in their homeland – severely ironic, since this does not
account for the migration of indentured labour in 19 th century on account of colonialism.
 Page 49 – “Powerless though the individual Indian is beside a European, as a community they
have a voice that is heard.” – while they stood to gain from the imperialist project in Africa, they
were also victims of this colonialism back in India.
 “I asked him what his people sought in this country, in the wilderness, so far from their own
culture. “Peace and prosperity”, he said.” – Mukhi's reserve places the Shamsi community and
its political position as one that is obedient and non-resistant. However, the author does not
take this stance on either side.
 Historiographic metafiction – continually engaged with the critique of colonialism and
historiography as resting on fictive borders.
 Corbin’s book within Pius Fernandes' narrative, and his narrative within the larger narrative of
the novel – postmodernism in the novel, where it pushes the bounds of fact and fiction and
negotiates these boundaries.
 Pipa gives a sanctity to Corbin’s diary – the novel is centrally concerned with the recuperation of
history.
 Western metaphysics that privilege the written over the spoken – Vassanji aware that the
spoken and the written both have their absences and silences – the binary between the two is
fictitious.
 The diary is demystified of its status as a fetish – the frontiers that separate fiction from fact,
myth from history, - dependent on
 Writing about the past – this account however is occurring in the present. The past is dialogic –
the historian ventriloquizes, and thus the novel is attempting to grapple with the reality of
selectivity of narrativisation and representation within history writing, that renders the colonial
subject mute.
 Pius Fernandes, unlike colonial historiography, is conscious of the fact that his work will remain
incomplete. The novel is hence metafictional in the sense that it is conscious of its own
physicality as an artifact – one that cannot accommodate every single strand of narrative that is
left in oblivion within historiographic documentation.
 Corbin’s diary – does not accommodate the complexities of the demographic of the colonised –
any representations of indigenous Africans are absent. Even the Shamsi community is
homogenized in terms of just one family. The silences of colonial historiography are concerned
with the excesses and the duplicitous practices of colonialism, and also a lack of a holistic
knowledge about the people they governed.
 Page 132 – the camel analogous to the Indian community – illusion of a destination. There is a
parallel drawn between the camel and the young Indian men in the community – “The moral of
the camel's story…was that of a man who had lost his home, did not know where he was going.”
– the diasporic predicament of having no anchor, of the inability to return home, and hence
yoked to a present that is beyond their control. This comparison is also a secular image, not a
religious one, which the Indians draw an analogy from.
 “Whether he was of the Shamsi community or not, Pipa could not say with certainty…he
accepted the Shamsis, and the rewards that followed; a job and a place to stay…he could
become the camel who at last stopped his endless journey and found a home.”
 Page 137 – the writing paraphernalia are invoked in a mystical way, only to be demystified.
 The linguistic wherewithal, and the knowledge of the nuances of the cultural baggage associated
with it would enable one to make history and literature more accessible to critique, which is
what the novel is attempting at. This is why Corbin’s diary is held sacrosanct for Pipa who
enshrines it within his home, while for Fernandes it is a means to investigate and recuperate
history.
 Pipa's investment in history and spirituality – contingent primarily on circumstances and not
ideological – looking at the past through the quotidien, which is what Pipa’s narrative attempts
to do.
 Page 171 – “She had been violated, but there was no point in broadcasting that.” – Mariamu’s
body subject to the norms of her community. However it becomes the site of gratuitous
violence, which could be the deed of anyone. However the British are conspicuously excluded
from this suspicion, restricted to Rajput, Baluchis, Punjabis etc. – indoctrination of the colonial
subject to believe or internalise the idea that the master is not culpable in such a moral
depravity. The metaphor of the blindfolded camel is echoed here, where Pipa has a political
blindspot to this. Instead, Rajputs, Baluchis, Punjabis who belong to the same geographical
nation-state, are rendered as foreigners, not the British and the German forces – the home here
for the old diasporas is not the imaginary homeland of the nation-state, but the native village.
 Page 175 – “But there is no sign of the war here, no sign of the past. History drifts about in the
sands, and only the fanatically dedicated see it and recreate it, however incomplete their visions
and fragile their constructs.” – the novel approximates to the idea of frontiers – coming closer to
the limits of our own frontiers in the process of investigating and reassessing history. The novel
is conscious of its own narratorial and literal frontiers.
 The idea of frontiers associated with the body of the woman – a frontier in the hegemonic sense
– as in the case of Mariamu where the porosity of the frontiers between the British and German
colonial forces that trample upon the site of Kikono, culminates literally in the display of the
sheer vulnerability of Mariamu's body, which is easily available to brutality and violation that
results in her death.
 Fernandes as the historian and Corbin as the colonial administrator – both open to the idea of
frontiers in the knowledge systems – allows for a deeper engagement with the Other.
 The novel itself is to make the reader see the process of its own crafting – while the novel is a
finished product, the fate of the works of Fernandes is left uncertain.
 Colonial masculinity – associated intricately with whiteness. The white colonizer's body is at
home – does not need to orient itself to anything, because it itself represent the norm. This
body is free to navigate and dominate. With Gregory there is a deliberate subversion where
we’re told of his bodily vulnerability – he subverts and queers the colonial masculine standards,
and also wants to renounce his whiteness when he surrenders his British passport.
 Gregory's body – not at home in East Africa – however he attempts to anchor himself at home in
his renunciation of his white masculinity – a tragic irony. He refuses to occupy his body in the
discursive manner of colonial white masculinity.
 Diachronistic and synchronistic investment into history – the former dealing with the history of
East Africa both during colonialism and post Independence (hence the division of the novel into
two parts), while the latter points out to the way colonialism was seen and experienced by
various heterogeneous communities that were colonised.
 Page 228 – reference to Orpheus – the prototype of the poet/musician who brings to life his
wife – how Pipa continues to believe that the book houses the spirit of Mariamu. Like the Greek
myth, which is deeply entrenched in patriarchy and hence how his poetic narrative saves her,
here too, while however devoted Pipa might be, he still believes that Mariamu stole the diary
for him – the memories of Pipa continue to appropriate Mariamu’s narrative.
 Page 225 – “set up private empires while servicing foreign ones” – the predicament of
postcolonialism.
 Kaleidoscopic society of Dar es Salaam – India, Britain and America being the key contenders for
cultural and economic power – postcolonial societies inheritors of such complex legacies.
 Page 240 – the history syllabus that encourages reactionary politics – not rigorous material
historiography as opposed to communal historiography – “Yet what to blame – the
backwardness of the community or the advice of government inspectors? And blame for what?”
– also a class-divide in education where the lower-classes are taught nothing but myth.
 Page 313 – Gregory’s box containing notes and papers that are now rendered dated with the
“arrival of the syllabus of Achebe and Soyinka, and Miller and Ibsen.” – the way education
becomes a contested site, which mirrors what was relevant to a particular epoch – educational
curriculums representing the contemporary politics – also what gets literary recognition in the
First World later gets relevant for the Third, which is paradoxical of postcolonialism. There is
also a sense of national pride associated with these writers who respond to their own social
contexts – there is a recognition of the local. However there exists a simultaneous addition of
Miller and Ibsen, from America and Norway, that represents the threat of neo-colonialist
narratives from the West, which is contradictory in such a postcolonial context.
