Tuesday, February 5, 2008

The tale of ‘White Nigger’, et al

by Kuldip Dhiman

It is believed that Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the star of the Indian Renaissance, had two homes: In one everything was Indian except Raja Ram Mohan Roy; in the other everything was western except Raja Ram Mohan Roy!

Parama Roy's "Indian Traffic" is a study of similar East-West intercourse. This "traffic" is not one-sided; there are scores of Europeans who went "native". All this results in ambivalence "that undergrinds the procedure of colonial mimicry, produces simultaneous and incommensurable effects, destabilising English and Indian identities as part of the same operation." How does one come to terms with two diverse cultures and yet manage to strike a golden mean? Roy concerns herself not only with the continual interaction between the peoples of two vastly diverse cultures and regions, but also brings in her scope the fusion or "mimicry" between Hindus and Muslims, males and females, bourgeoisie and the elite. It is about the blurring edges of cultural icons in colonial and post-colonial India and their effort to learn and adapt to a new culture. "What I propose to consider here," the author writes, "are not so much the volatile effects of the mimicry that generates the 'not quite black' not quite white' subject of colonialism but the range of other, relatively untheorised prospects and identity formations beyond the bounds of male anglicisation that emerge in colonial and post-colonial South Asia in the 19th and 20th centuries..."

Roy begins with the exploits of the famous adventurer Sir Richard Francis Burton who in the 19th century very successfully managed to pass off for a Hindu and later as a Muslim. He adapted himself so well to the Orient that his colleagues used to call him the White Nigger. Aided by his linguistic skills (he knew "Hindostani, Guzaratee", Persian, "Maharattee, Sindhee, Punjaubee", Arabic, Telugu, Pushtu,Turkish, and Armenian) and the art of disguise, he even managed to make a pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, quite an unbelievable feat for a non-Muslim.

When the early colonisers came here, they must have found India and its people totally backward. It was a time when Britain was at the height of its military power. It was going through the industrial revolution; its navy was the best in the world. And Britain was poised to become a world power.

"India, on the other hand, was politically disunited, culturally rather unchanging, and seemingly unprepared for the impact of the West. The Mughal empire had disintegrated after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707. India was an arena for a political struggle among the Mughal successors, Persian adventurers such as Nadir Shah, Afghan leaders such as Ahmad Shah, and Hindu states such as the Marathas and the Sikhs and Rajputs. India, as a whole, was strange and incomprehensible — a fable of spice, silk, indigo and the 'glowing gems'."

In their time, the Mughals themselves had to go through the process of cross-cultural intermingling. They brought their religion, language and customs along with them. And just as the British, they must have found the country and its people "impossible to comprehend".

Roy's canvas includes, among others, Rudyard Kipling and his oriental stories, Margaret Nobel alias Sister Nivedita and her experience with spiritualism, Swami Vivekananda's relationship with his guru Swami Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Sarojini Naidu and her poetry and politics. The book ends with case of film star Nargis who played the role of Radha in "Mother India", and then, as they say life imitates art, she married her Hindu co-star Sunil Dutt. The study could have included Bishop Reginald Heber, writer Robert Southey, Lord William Cavendish Bentick, Sir Charles Metcalfe, Sir Thomas Munro, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Annie Besant and others like Motilal Nehru, Maulana Azad and Jinnah, all of them tried in their own way to absorb the best elements of diverse cultural influences.

Although it is informative, "Indian Traffic" reads like a university text-book or a research paper rather than a book. The subject matter is great but the handling is pedantic and dull. In fact, you feel you are listening to a lecture. For instance, in the chapter "Discovering India, Imaging Thuggee" Roy writes: "This chapter has three sections, with significant amounts of overlap. The first examines the official records of the Thugee and Dacoity Department...." This type of spoonfeeding that the reader is subjected to throughout the book, is a trifle irritating. The longish introduction says everything the author has to say, so much so that when you read the rest of the book, you feel you have read it before.Top
http://www.tribuneindia.com/1999/99jan31/book.htm#5

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