Umed Singh
Colonialism and Postcolonialism: A Cultural Perspective
The publication of Frantz Fanon’sThe Wretched of the Earth in 1961 initiates the debate on the contentious issues related to postcolonial experience. Fanon, a psychiatrist by profession, advocates “cultural resistance” as a means through which liberation, both psychological as well as geographical, can be achieved. According to Fanon the first step to be taken by ‘colonized people’ towards liberation, is finding a ‘voice and identity’ to reclaim their own past. It is very surprising that children living in the colonized countries are rarely exposed to the history, custom and traditions of the pre-colonial era. If there is a reference to this period, it is always oblique and obscure and most of the times the curiosity of children is satisfied by designating or terming the pre-colonial era as uncivilized and barbaric. The history which is continuously falsified and manipulated by the dominant group is never considered worth reading so there is no question of correcting it or questioning it. For Fanon, the first step towards liberation is to reclaim one’s own past; the second step is to question the ‘dehumanizing ideology’ which has maligned and misrepresented our past.
Human history bears testimony to the fact that power and desire for more power have always impelled men and nations to conquer territories and expand their possessions. Among all European countries, Britain has been the leading imperial power and she conquered many countries and civilizations and reduced them to the status of colonies during the heyday of imperialism. Such was the magnitude of this empire that ‘the Sun did never set on’ this Empire. Initially the motive of these imperial powers was commercial but gradually European countries especially Britain, France, Italy, Portugal and Germany, became overambitious in their expansionist plan and established their control over America and Afro-Asian countries. In India, it was during the rein of Akbar, the great Mogul Emperor, that a Charter was signed on 31 Dec.1600 which became known as The English East India Company. Akbar was the most powerful king of his times and, according to the historians, his strength as a ruler and statesman was far greater than any other European monarch of that time.
The present paper while exploring the dialectics of power relationship that exists between the colonized and the colonizer attempts to underline the fact that colonialism does not necessarily “begin with the establishment of alien rule in a society and end with the departure of the alien rules from the colony”(Nandy 2). As a phenomenon colonialism is an all pervasive evil which emanates from the mind of Man and plagues the nations, societies and civilizations silently. It promotes the culture of division, segregation and hatred. It can be effectively contested only by understanding the silent and unpredictable ways of its growth and intrusions in various parts of the world.
It is an interesting fact to note that when the dominant European countries began to explore Africa for trade, they found a number of rich “societies which exhibited great confidence, coherence, moral and artistic vigor” (Walder26). But these civilizations and empires in South America, Asia, Africa and Arab world, which flourished and often surpassed European civilization in many ways, could not withstand the sophisticated designs of the dynamic, manipulative and emergent powers of North West European powers. These societies and civilizations were not open to the emergent changes brought about by industrialization and were gradually subjugated by European countries especially Britain. Spain and Portugal were also giving tough fight to other imperial powers and established their direct rule in America but very soon lost it to Britain, a formidable colonial power at that time . It was a lesson for all imperial powers and they chose economic hegemony instead of direct control to subjugate men and nations and it was not until the middle of eighteenth century that most of European countries had the will or power to impose colonial rule over the rest of the world. Britain consolidated its powers in various parts of the world first as traders and then as colonial rulers. This was a clever method for mastering the world.
In fact, imperialism was a European phenomenon whose impact and influence was felt in every nook and corner of the world. However, the imperial process has never been simple, smooth and straight. There were reactions and resistance by the natives in different parts of the world and in some cases there were armed struggles among the European powers to grab one particular country. By the end of the nineteenth century most of the world belonged to a handful of great European powers. And Britain had the lion’s share. In their pursuit for precious metals, land and power, the imperial powers not only ill-treated and dehumanized the people of the colonized countries but also destroyed the native cultures of these countries. The extent of the loss can be gauged from the fact that even the colonizers themselves expressed their concerns for what their civilization was doing to the innocent lives of the colonized people; “and some questioned, even opposed the colonizing process”(Ibid 29). Bartolome de Las Casas (1484-1576) expressed such concern in his book Short History of the Destruction of the Indies (1552). Las Casas questioned the ‘rationale’ and false assumptions of the colonizers that the colonized people were uncivilized, uneducated and barbarous and hence needed to be ‘civilized’ by the European countries. La Casas is one of those prominent voices who spoke out on behalf of those who could not speak because they had been “murdered, silenced or simply ignored” (Ibid 31). This concern echoes in Samuel Daniel’s Epistle to Prince Henry(1609-10), which was written a few years of the start of the British colonial enterprise in America. Similarly George Herbert ‘s poem “The Church Militant” forecasts the doom of England as she is devouring others nations and cultures.
When height of malice, and prodigious lusts,
Impudent sinnings, witchcrafts, and distrusts
(The marks of future bane) shall fill our cup
Then shall Religion to America flee (237-40,247).
Edward said rightly stresses the need of questing and re-writing the , histories of the colonizing process. It is a painful fact of history that some ‘voices’, which were silenced and suppressed during the heyday of colonialism, cannot be reclaimed now. But an attempt has to be made to reclaim at least some traceable ‘voices’.. These voices find expression in the literature written and studied from the postcolonial perspective. Edward Said’s reading of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park in Culture and Imperialism (1994) beautifully underlines the colonial issues which the novelist explores in her novel. In the novel Sir Thomas Bertram’s country estate is funded by income from his slave plantation in Antigua. Her unfinished novel Sandition also explores the problematic relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. Her novels apparently deal with family issues but they also offer a critique of the social history of the landed gentry.
The relationship between the colonizer and the colonized is very complex and problematic one. The problematic aspect of this relationship is evident from the means and methodology through which the colonizer wins the ‘consent’ of the colonized. Instead of using violence, the colonizer wins the consent of the colonized by manipulating the cultural apparatus like literature, language etc. They would win the mental domain of the colonized. For instance, in order to endear themselves to the people of Indian subcontinent, they learned Sanskrit and emphasized its affinity with classical languages. They used/abused religion and commerce to enlarge and expand their colonial empire. E.M Forster, the British novelist, openly questions the expansionist theory of his country. He describes his countrymen as hypocrites “who have built up an empire with a Bible in one hand, a pistol in the other, and financial concessions in both pockets”(Harvest 20). He vehemently criticizes the unhealthy nexus between empire, religion and commerce. In his ‘Notes on the English Character’, he observed that there are strong commercial instincts in the British native characters which have led to the description of the British as “a nation of shopkeepers.”For them the empire was nothing but commercial enterprise with the colonies providing the colonial power with the free markets, cheap human labour and supply of unlimited and unchecked raw material. Religion was also misused to further their colonial designs. Sacred institutions like religion and church were grossly misused to discredit and demolish the religions of the colonized. The same commercial motives led to the establishment of The East India Company in India. E.M Forster condemns the Elizabethan Age for its callousness:
The Elizabethans, even the greatest of them… increased our (British) political power and glorified our race and are rightly commended on public occasions. But they were at once too violent and too hazy to contribute much towards the development of human mind.(Adwani 173)
In Forster’s view the British promotion of colonialism in India, as was being done by the East India Company at that time, was least conducive for the growth of mind and thought, and there was no civilization mission involved in it, and hence it was not going to last for long. It was a prophecy which came true not only for India but also for other colonized countries which gained independence in the wake of the Second World War.
In A Passage to India, Forster seems to suggest that friendship or genuine human relationship cannot be formed within a colonial framework. He neither wrote about India at the behest of the British Govt. nor he visited India on the direction of his Govt. The importance of India for him was purely a personal affair. He clarifies his position: “It is on the basis of personal relationship that my connection with this country rests. I didn’t go there to govern it or make money or to improve people”(Ganguly 299). Forster is neutral and objective in his assessment of the interrelationship and connection which exists between people belonging to different religions and ethnicities. As depicted in the novel, the characters are divided on racial lines which keep them divided and prevent them from forming meaningful relationship with one another. This divide is evident in the behavior of the British towards the natives especially during the trial of Dr Aziz . Most of the relationships shown in the novel are formal and lack warmth. Some characters in the novel maintain a façade of civility and equality but the racial prejudices come to the surface with the slightest provocation. The ending of the novel, A Passage to India, shows that Aziz and Fielding are not able to form a meaningful and lasting relationship as they are entrapped within the colonial framework which impinges upon personal relationships:
‘Why can’t we be friends now?’ said the other holding him (Aziz) affectionately. ‘It’s what I want. It is what you want’. But the horses didn’t want it—they swerved apart; the earth didn’t want it, sending up rocks through which riders must pass single-file; the temples, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they issued from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn’t want it, they said in their hundred voices, ‘No, not yet, and the sky said, ‘No, not there.’(Forster 288)
Sometimes it is argued that colonial rule creates conditions for the progress of a country especially by way of industrialization and building physical infrastructure. But the fact remains that it is never conducive for the growth of human potential which is the real asset of a nation. Rather it causes damage to social, economic and cultural life of the people. And perhaps the damage at the level of culture is far more severe as it is incalculable and irreparable. In fact, colonization of mind is more dangerous than the geo-political colonization. As Ashis Nandi points out:
This colonization colonizes minds in addition to bodies and it releases forces within the colonized societies to alter their cultural priorities once for all. In the process, it helps generalize the concept of the modern West from a geographical and temporal entity to a psychological category. The West is now everywhere, within the West and outside; in structures and in minds… At one time, the second colonization legitimized the first. Now, it is independent of its roots. Even those who battle the first colonialism often guiltily embrace the second.(Nandy vii)
The second type of colonization i.e. colonization of mind is initiated and sustained not by military strength but it derives its sustenance from culture, literature, religion and history which are cleverly manipulated to induce among the people a psychology which is willingly receptive to the imperial designs. This psychologically induced colonialism survives the demise of empires and its dynamics needs to be understood and contested by the people. In other words it is an ideological battle in which the colonizer cleverly wins the “consent” of the colonized. This ideological battle has to be fought at the ideological level. The people of colonized countries need to understand the beauty and strength of their language and culture and these must not be allowed to be defiled by the imperial powers.
Frantz Fanon rightly observes:
Colonial domination, because it is total and tends to over-simplify, very soon manages to disrupt in spectacular fashion the cultural life of a conquered people. This cultural obliteration is made possible by the negation of national reality, by new legal relations introduced by the occupying power, by the banishment of the natives and their customs to outlying districts by colonial society, by expropriation, and by the systematic enslaving of men and women.(Fanon 190)
Edward Said also raises the same issue in his path-breaking book Orientalism and argues that the west systematically constructs the non-west by producing ideas, knowledge and opinion about the Orient. The knowledge thus generated is not pure knowledge but political knowledge which is bound up with power. The colonized agrees to be colonized and gets entrapped in the false consciousness generated by the colonizer. Said posits the relevant question:
How did philology, lexicography, history, biology, political and economic theory, novel-writing and lyric poetry come to the service of Orientalism’s broadly imperialist view of the world… How does Orientalism transmit or reproduce itself from one epoch to another?(Said 1978:14)
Said maintains the difference between latent and manifest Orientalism. The former, according to him, pertains to the unconscious positivity and the latter indicates the stated or structured views about Oriental society, language, and culture. These views induce “dreadful secondariness” in the mind of the native. Said suggests a contrapuntal reading, as opposed to a conventional reading, of everything written by the western scholars. Only this can prevent further damage.
Postmodernist thinking (of Baudrillard) implies that a signifier is not an index of some underlying reality. The connection between the signified and the signifier is arbitrary. A sign merely signifies another sign. We are repeatedly exposed to certain stereotypes that we can hardly differentiate between the real and the unreal. It is called the process of simulacrum i.e. the images and the stereotypes become more real than the real. Thus the discourse of the orientalism creates and maintains “hyper-reality” in place of reality, and creates haziness in the mind of the colonized.
Nigugi wa Thiong’o, a Kenyan dissent writer, underscores the power of language, and warns that the language of the colonial master must not be adopted as it carries the imperialist ideology which continuously dehumanizes humanity. In his seminal book Decolonizing the Mind, he convincingly argues that the biggest weapon wielded and actually unleashed daily by the colonial powers against the collective defiance is the cultural bomb. It is language which makes us receptive to the ideology of imperialism. It can turn our beautiful countries into permanent colonies to be conveniently ruled by the colonizers. The people should recognize the strength of their own languages and “speak the language of struggle contained in each of their languages”( Thiong’o 3). If we disown our language and culture and adopt the language of the colonizer, we will imprison our mind and psyche and we will be reduced to the status of a slave. Nigugi wa Thiong’o argues:
The future of the African novel is then dependent on a willing writer (ready to invest time and talent in African languages); a willing translator( ready to invest time and talent in the art of translating from one African language into another); a willing publisher (ready to invest time and money ) or a progressive state which would overhaul the current neo-colonial linguistic policies and tackle the national question in a democratic manner ; and finally, and most important , a willing and widening readership. But of all these factors, it is only the writer who is best placed to break through the vicious circle and create fiction in African languages. (Ibid 85)
Antonio Gramsci’s concept of ‘hegemony’ also illustrates the use of sophisticated tools like language, culture and literature by the colonizer/ dictator to obtain the consent of the ruled. The element of coercion and force is taken recourse to only as the last measure otherwise the consent of the ruled is obtained through subtle means. It is, therefore, necessary that various paradigms of thoughts institutionalized on academic, individual and political levels be questioned so that the non-west is fully understood and interpreted without a counterpoint offered by the west. The works of epigraphists, archaeologists, grammarians, and linguists, papyrologists, geographer, travellers, and poets need to be reinterpreted in the light of the post-colonial discourse.
The East is constantly misrepresented as something inferior to the West. The East also accepted its inferiority as it could not see through the cultural mischief done by the west. Edward Said brings home his point by quoting an excerpt from Macaulay’s 1855 Minutes: “ I am quite ready to take the oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Africa”(Said 1991:12).
In Revolution in Poetic Language, Kristeva underscores the potential of language for its radical role in building new thought and new possibilities which ultimately counter the hegemonic designs perpetrated by the colonial powers. She writes:
The ramification of capitalist society makes it almost impossible for the signifying process to attack material and social obstacles, objective constraints, oppressive entities, and institutions directly. As a consequence, the signifying process comes to the fore in the matrix of enunciation, and, through it, radiates towards the other components of the space of production. At the … and helps process break through into the most stable cogs of significance, its untouchable mainsprings: linguistic structure.(Rivkin 459)
Culture determines beliefs. We receive the version of reality that culture communicates. Dominant ideology is transmitted to us through culture. Culture is constructed by those in power—male, white, the west etc. The dominant group makes the rules and laws and the subordinate group obeys the commands and transmits them further. The black consider themselves inferior to the white and women readily assume inferior roles assigned to them by men. In a traditional society, a mother or grandmother can be heard telling their sons “to beat their wives for not obeying them”(Ibid 888).
In the modern age culture is major site of struggle and resistance. If there is attack at cultural level, the resistance has to be built at the cultural level. Cultural hegemony has to be contested through counter hegemony. As Raymond Williams argues that culture is both a means of domination, of assuming the role of one class or group over another and a means of resistance to such domination. It offers alternative and oppositional points of view to those in dominance. E.P Thompson and Richard Hoggart also recognize the power of culture as a means of resistance to capitalism, colonialism and imperialism. Culture, according to these thinkers, is not a passive agency which can be acted upon. It is rather a potent force which is primary not secondary component of the social reality; ‘constitutive’ and not reflective in the growth of a social order. Williams’ theory of culture which came to be called ‘cultural materialism’ implies that culture is not simply a reflection of the economic and political system, nor is it something independent of them. It is “a single and indissoluble real process simultaneously integrating economic, social, political and cultural activities”(Williams 352-53).
The resistance to western hegemony has become the leitmotif of postcolonial studies. The unequal relationship between the orient and occident must cease as it is against the spirit of democracy and promotes cruelty, discrimination and strife between nations and races. For Said the word ‘domination’ is unpalatable. All forms of dominations-- the western domination , the oriental domination -- beget hatred and violence and dehumanizes the humanity in worst possible categories. In Culture and Imperialism Said begins his argument with the idea of ‘resistance’ and explores the possibility of the idea of “freedom from domination” as domination in any form and by any agency is detrimental to the growth of a healthy, humane and democratic society on this earth. Underlining the significance of reconciliation between the east and the west, Said remarks:
But what I should like also to have contributed here is a better understanding of the way cultural domination has operated. If this stimulates a new kind of dealing with the orient, indeed if it eliminates the “orient” and “occident” altogether, then we shall have advanced a little in the process of what Raymond Williams has called the “unlearning” of “the inherent dominative motive.(Said 1978: 28)
The central argument in both the books of Said —Orientalism and Cultural Materialism – is to analyze “ the formation and meaning of western cultural practices” which manifest nothing but Eurocentrism. Said castigates the western scholars who exhibit Eurocentrism in their writings of the oriental nations and people.
The so-called humanists are also narrow in their thinking as they concern themselves with western humanity only as if humanity lives only in this part of the world. He criticizes the western thinkers and scholars such as Northrop Frye, T.S Eliot, Carlyle, J.S Mill, Karl Marx, Auerbach, Foucault who sing in praise of the west and find little merit in the cultures of the non-west. Prof Rajnath rightly observes: Marx places Western civilization at the top, Eliot thinks in terms of the European tradition, Auerbach looks upon Europe as the whole earth and Foucault’s episteme takes cognizance of the power-game in the west only”(Rajnath 114).
Said neither glorifies the west nor the east. He analyses the orient and the occident disinterestedly. He takes Jalal Ali Ahmad’s book Occidentosis with a grain of salt as it denounces the west and glorifies the east. Said is of this opinion that if we are glorifying the east and denigrating the west, then we are repeating the mistake committed by the western thinkers and rulers. “It is simply unjust—and I certainly do not want to lose the force of that – it is simply unjust for the colonizers to have done what they did. But, on the other hand, that does not mean, then, that entitles the colonized to wreck a whole system of injustices on a new set of victims”(Ibid 115).
Said proposes the idea of reconciliation and not of negation. He discredits any form of ‘privileging,’ be it Eurocentrism, Afrocentricism, American- centrism or Islamocentrism. All ‘isms’ divide and separate men nations, and cultures on one pretext or the other. He vehemently criticizes America for doing what Europe did in the first half of 20th century. He deplores the divisive forces which are dividing “human reality” into clearly “different cultures, histories, traditions, societies and races”(Said 1978:45). Spelling out the roles of intellectuals Said argues that the role of the intellectuals is to “speak for all human beings, and plead for just and equal treatment to all”(Said 1996:11).
Literature is an important component of culture and they share a dialectic relationship with each other; one shapes and gets shaped by the other. The literature written in third world countries can be analyzed and interpreted within the framework of postcolonial studies. In this respect Aijaz Ahmad makes an interesting observation: “It is fair to say, I think, that these writers born in other global spaces—Rushdie and Ghosh, Armah and Achebe, Lammimg and Harris, not to speak of dozens of others, especially from South Africa—have altered the traditional map of English fiction beyond recognition”(Ahmad 73). For instance, the publication of Kanthapura (1938) by Raja Rao heralds a new era in Indian writing in English as the novel subverts everything deified in the western canon. The language, narratology, tenor and tone have been modified to give expression to that reality which went unnoticed and unrecorded in the literatures produced according to western critical framework.
Postcolonial literatures being written in different parts of the world aim at asserting their linguistic, ideological and canonical independence. Though the task has never been easy but it was not impossible either. The writers of new literatures slowly and consciously eschewed Eurocentric models of literature and gradually gained ground which can be seen to correspond to stages both of national or regional consciousness. The beginning is made by literate elite who primarily derived their inspiration from the colonizing power. The first attempt in this direction was not idle as it infused confidence in the mind of the natives that they were capable of writing literature. Some writers chose their native language as the medium of literature; the others used the language of their colonial master. The literature produced by this group did not contribute effectively in the formation of indigenous culture as literature of this phase devoted more space to indigenous landscape, custom and language. But at the deeper level it simply served to hide the imperial discourse within which they were created. The literature written during the second stage of production within the evolving discourse of the native literature is the literature produced under ‘imperial license’ by English educated and upper-class native people, for instance, African ‘missionary literature.’ These writers appropriated the language of the dominant culture. But they failed to question the dominant literary paradigm and as a result the possibility of subversion remained half-realized or not realized at all. The material conditions of production and the available discourse restrain the possibility of exploring and realizing anti-imperial sentiments. The production of new literatures requires freedom from such restraining power of language, literary paradigm and ideology. After learning language from the colonial master, the native knows ‘how to curse’, to invoke Caliban’s utterance in The Tempest.
The Indian writers are using a distinct variety of English to their advantage. Raja Rao rightly stressed the importance of indianising English. He raises this issue very eloquently in his preface to Kanthapura:
“We cannot write like the English. We should not. We cannot write as Indians. We have grown to look at the large world as part of us. Our method of expression therefore has to be a dialect which will someday prove to be as distinct and colourful as the Irish or the American. The Time alone will justify it.”
The time has effectively justified it. Raja Rao’s contemporary Mulk Raj Anand and subsequent writers like Kamla Das, Salman Rushdie and others have contributed significantly to the evolution of Indian English which is capable of expressing every shade of Indian sensibility.
English in the hands of Indian novelists has been creatively modified in order to give expression to the spirit of Indian life in its variegated forms. As a result, its syntax, semantics, linguistic and cultural patterns have been constantly and suitably changed for giving expression to contemporary consciousness and the perspective that was consciously suppressed in Standard English.
G.V Desani’s novel All About H. Hatterr (1948) is another beautiful and bold experiment with English. Much of the beauty of novel emanates from the experiment which Desani makes with Standard English. As Anthony Burgess aptly puts it: “It is not pure English; it is, like the English of Shakespeare, Joyce and Kipling, gloriously impure”(Burgess). The future lies with impure and hybrid as the white and the pure has given to the world nothing but oppression and subjugation. The modern civilization needs to be democratic and egalitarian not only in theory but in practice also. The present age is the age of hybridity and cultural plurality. There is need to explore the possibilities of “human encounter between different cultures, traditions and societies”(Said 1978:46). This is possible when the Third World finds itself and speaks to itself through his voice. It is heartening to note that the categories of ‘centre’ and ‘peripheries’ are now being redefined with a major emphasis in favor of peripheries moving towards the ‘centre’ as ‘peripheries’ are now major sites for the production of powerful literature. The time is ripe to remap and to relook at the world that is being constantly threatened by invisible but potent forces of neo-colonialism and cultural imperialism.
Works Cited
Adwani, Rukun. E.M Forster as a Critic (London: Croom Helm Ltd.1984).
Ahmad, Aijaz. In Theory: Classes, Nations, Cultures (London: Verso, 1994).
Burgess, Anthony. Introduction to Desani’s All About H.Hatterr
Fanon, Frantz .The Wretched of the Earth, (rpt., 1961., Penguin Books,2001).
Forster, E.M. A Passage to India (1924 rpt., New Delhi: Peacock Books, 2002).
Ganguly, Adwaita. India, Mystic Complex, Real: An Interpretation of E.MForster’s “A Passage to India” (Delhi: Adwaita Press, 1990).
Harvest, Abinger. E.M Forster (1936., rpt., Middlesex: Harmondsworth, 1974).
Nandy, Ashis. The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (Oxford: O.U.P, 1983).
Rao, Raja. Preface to Kanthapura.
Rajnath, “Edward Said: Resistance and Reconciliation”, Journal of Literary Criticism 12.1-2 (2008)
Rivkin ,Julie and Michael Ryan (eds), Literary Theory: An Anthology (1998., rpt., Oxford: Blackwell Pub., 2002).
Said, Edward. Orientalism (1978., rpt., London: Penguin, 1995).
--------- Cultural Imperialism, ( London: Vintage, 1990).
--------- The world, the Text, and the Critic (London: Penguin, 1991).
--------- Representations of the Intellectual (New York: Vintage Books, 1996).
Thiong’O, Nigugi wa. Decolonising the Mind (1981., rpt., New Delhi: Worldview, 2007).
Walder, Dennis. Post-Colonial Literatures in English (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers,1998).
Williams, Raymond .Politics and Letters (London: Verso, 1977).