Literature from the Peripheries: Refrigerated Culture and Pluralism 1666927538, 9781666927535

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Literature from the Peripheries

Literature from the Peripheries Refrigerated Culture and Pluralism

Edited by Anjum Khan and Shubhanku Kochar

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2023 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Khan, M. Anjum, editor. | Kochar, Shubhanku, editor. Title: Literature from the peripheries : refrigerated culture and pluralism / edited by Anjum Khan and Shubhanku Kochar. Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022046206 (print) | LCCN 2022046207 (ebook) | ISBN 9781666927535 (cloth ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781666927542 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Culture in literature. | Minorities in literature. | Ethnic groups in literature. | Group identity in literature. | Cultural pluralism in literature. | LCGFT: Literary criticism. | Essays. Classification: LCC PN56.C85 L58 2023 (print) | LCC PN56.C85 (ebook) | DDC 809/.8—dc23/eng/20221027 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022046206 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022046207 ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Introduction 1 Anjum Khan and Shubhanku Kochar 1 Colonial Encounters and Cultural Genocide: A Postcolonial Textualization of Ferdinand Leopold Oyono’s The Old Man and the Medal Zuhmboshi Eric Nsuh 2 The Anglo-Indian Community and Its Cultural Aporia: Reading the Works of Allan Sealy’s The Trotter-Nama: A Chronicle Medha Bhadra Chowdhury 3 The Traces of Dystopian in Postindependent Manipuri Poetry Neelima B. and Saji Mathew

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4 Cultural Refrigeration through Cinema in the Age of Globalization: From Hollywood to Nollywood 55 Stephen Ogheneruro Okpadah 5 Subaltern Cosmopolitanism: The “Parankis” of Postcolonial Kochi 65 Anupama Nayar 6 Unseen, Unheard, and Unacknowledged: An Eco-Cultural Reading of Benyamin’s Goat Days in the Age of the Anthropocene 81 Risha Baruah 7 The Idea of Minor Literature by Deleuze and Guattari with Reference to Naga Identity, Psyche, and Victimization of Indigenous Communities in Temsula Ao’s These Hills Called Home: Stories From a War Zone 95 Sindhura Dutta and Asijit Datta v

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8 The Influence of West Indian Cultural Values on Collective and Individual Identities in Brown Girl, Brownstones and Praisesong for the Widow Renée Latchman 9 Mainstreaming the Marginal: Cultural Extermination and Tribal Resistance in Ranendra’s Lords of the Global Village Asis De 10 Passing and Caribbean Identity in America in No Telephone to Heaven by Michelle Cliff Denise M. Jarrett

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11 “American Dream Versus Nightmare”: Migration, Minority Culture, and Magic in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices 157 Munira Salim 12 Coloring Culture, Cosmopolitanizing Identity: Shades of “Otherness” in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah Maitrayee Misra

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13 Passing: Trauma and Technique—An Inquisitive Reading of Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and Passing Prachi Behrani and Vinaya Kumari

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Index201 About the Contributors

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WHY THIS BOOK?—BACKGROUND The research interest in cultural minorities and ethnically or racially discriminated groups has hatched this idea to discuss and discourse the plight of marginalized cultures and communities. There are non-literary books and journals discoursing and debating social, political, economic, anthropological, and historical aspects related to marginalized or minority cultural groups; however, there is, more or less, a dearth in literary analysis related to this subject. The present book which is titled Literature from the Peripheries is one of its kind as there are hardly any assorted perspectives on multiple minority communities in the same volume. Though there are few titles on marginalized cultures, minority communities, and so on, they either are focused only on one community or a particular geography. However, this book is a multidimensional volume consisting of narratives from the rubble of various cultural histories and literary texts. CRITICAL INTERVENTION There are very few books on minority cultures that have inspired and driven the idea for this project. For instance, Routledge Handbook of Minority Discourses in African Literature by Tanure Ojaide and Joyce Ashuntantang (2020) accumulates rich critical investigations concentrated in African literature about the oppressed and the marginalized. Similarly, The Palgrave Handbook of Minority Languages and Communities by Gabrielle HoganBrun and Bernadette O’Rourke (2019) is an in-depth reference book providing profiles of several fewer known languages and communities. The 1

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mini-narratives of these less-known and undiscovered cultural communities require scholarly and academic engagement. Multiculturalism and pluralism in tandem with liberal democracy have witnessed different seasons—ranging from the summer of assimilation to the winter of racism. “Generally, liberal theories of multiculturalism, or liberal nationalism in this context, focus on the complex relationship between national identity and liberal ideals (autonomy and tolerance)” (Roach 36). There are studies that deconstruct the facade of pluralism and reveal the stark reality. After Pluralism: Religion, Culture, and Public Life edited by Courtney Bender and Pamela E. Klassen and published by Columbia University Press (2010) is an interesting academic read explaining pluralism and also examining its shortfalls. Likewise, William A. Galston’s Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy published by Yale University Press, 2018, is an intelligent estimation endorsed with facts about the recent trends in multicultural countries. The Pluralist Imagination from East to West in American Literature by Julianne Newmark published by Nebraska University Press (2014) decodes the idea of harmony in multiplicity with reference to a group of eclectic writers. Once Greece and Rome dominated the rest of the world scores of centuries ago, now America, Russia, and China are leading the other countries providing a clear example of center moving to the margin and the margin becoming the center. Therefore, the interplay between the center and the margin or majority and minority accentuates the history of cultures and civilizations. However, at present, the flood of migrants, the drought of social acceptance, and the volcanic eruption of nationalism pose several challenges to the survival of relegated cultures. Sir Peter Ustinov in his forward to Parallel Cultures: Majority/Minority Relations in the Countries of the Former Eastern Bloc employs phrases like “Virus of bigotry” and “lunatic theory of ethnic cleansing” reflecting the atmosphere of the twenty-first century where “panick” and “concern” are interchangeable. Cultural imperialism is as offensive as political colonization. Not all the democracies or multi-ethnic countries bind together by any international law or policy. “The manner in which the dialectic between the individual bound by the obligations of citizenship and the right of the same citizen to promote the culture of his or her minority group plays out differently from country to country” (Beakerman and Kopelowitz 12). There are Governments that bring laws barring citizenship to certain ethnic and religious groups. Further, there are also countries where the state justifies the persecution of a particular group or community. “Powerful States with indifferent attitudes towards their international obligations face no significantly harsher punishment for cultural genocide than they do for other human rights transgressions” (Finnegan 12). The law of state overrides the law of nature and discrimination aids in the politics of identity. The political terms “united” and “union” also fail to remind the state that diversity is the rule of thumb, and majoritarianism is just demographics.

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Region, language, and race are often mistaken for nationalism and nationhood. Loyalty to a nation is not synonymous with loyalty to a monoculture or one race. Cultural hegemony subverts the sectional cultures confining to liminal spaces. Similar to renewable and non-renewable resources, cultures are also renewable and non-renewable. When cultures draw state vested interest, they are revised and renewed like “revival of Sanskrit” language in India. Unfortunately, there are several cultures that fade away without rescue, re-claim, or state intervention. The need for cultural renaissance and inclusive cultural ecosystem becomes ever more essential. The minority groups are considered as foreigners, monsterized, demonized, and become scapegoats. When the binary division of a society is majority and minority, then one becomes the persecutor and the other victim. The binary opposites like insider/outsider, majority/minority, and persecutor/victim prevail in a rapidly growing populist social order. The effect of majority and minority is discrimination, oppression, and so on. Sometimes the minority governs the majority for instance in Rhodesia when the native blacks even after independence were not bestowed with equal opportunities. The cultural hegemony combined with political power reigns and overcomes to nullify the large number of majority. Further, the United States which is a model nation of multiculturalism also exhibits inequality and racism. “The United States is beset by systemic inequality between ethnic groups” (Molina and et al. 226). Evidently, the glory of cultures is eclipsed by power politics and egotistical interests. Terms like “melting pot,” “mosaic,” and “salad” are theoretical in narrowing the gulf between insider and outsider. “Diversity is a fact of modern life in individual countries and in individual human beings” (Wieland-Burston16). However, multiculturalism and heterogeneity become breeding grounds for different challenges. Native, indigenous, and tribal communities also endure the pangs of community and cultural suppression. Indigenous communities require cultural autonomy and lack state intervention. Indigenism has evolved as a concern in the postcolonial world. “Threats to indigenous cultural survival have dominated the discourse on indigenism” (Mako 192). The endangered indigenous culture, upsurge of xenophobia, and rapidly growing cultural politics lead to conceptualization and enquiry. EXPLAINING THE RUBRIC—REFRIGERATED CULTURE Ever since the creation of the universe, human desire and human imagination have always constructed and perceived this world as divided between the powerful and the powerless. The one who rules actually decides the terms of both domination and oppression. The mighty always tries to control

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everything like physical and meta-physical realities for his use and abuse. All the policies are so imagined that their yield favors only for one who is dictating the norms. Whoever is sitting on the golden throne and wearing the golden crown, from antiquity till the present, does not want this to slip away. That’s why earlier the sons of kings used to replace him and now the sons of the political leaders replace their fathers and democracy keeps starting like a neglected offspring. For example, in Panchatantra, the ancient tale treasure from India, the king is not worried because of his sons’ stupidity, but he is vexed by the fact that if his sons do not recover their intellectual stability, his kingdom will slip away from his family. The same fear and anxiety also are at work when one finds kings governing as the representatives of the God on the earth in Western civilizations. Today also not many commoners want to participate in real politics either by casting vote or fighting elections because they have internalized the belief that politics is not their cup of tea. When such an ideology controls the thinking process of the masses of the planet, when all the people just feel like letting go, the masters celebrate their victory. They know that for sure, there is no one who will counter them. In order to sustain their power, they keep ripping the society apart on account of religion, caste, class, gender, race, ability, nationality, education, family history, majority, and minority. Usually, it is the population that is considered as a yardstick for someone to become a dominant ideology. If there are more people, there are more chances of their becoming oppressive. For example, any African will feel weak and oppressed outside Africa whereas the same African will feel empowered in his own motherland. Likewise, women feel more vulnerable where there are more men and they feel more comfortable where there are more women. Sometimes, the number of participants in a particular community and culture is not important. For example, throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, blacks were in majority in Caribbean islands as far as their numbers were concerned, but they were never powerful. It were the whites who took all the decisions. It were whites who controlled everything including the means and modes of production. It were the whites whose voice and opinions mattered. Likewise, during colonial rule, the Europeans were always in insignificant numbers wherever they went to govern. Asians, Africans, and other indigenous communities were present in millions and billions, still the colonized were converted into objects whose voices, languages, and cultures were either totally obliterated like that of indigenous communities in America and Australia or were dismissed and declared as meaningless and nothing like that of Indians, Arabs, and Africans.

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Sometimes, one who is a minority in one geographical and cultural context is not a minority in another geographical and cultural context. For illustration, Jews in Europe and America are exploited and victimized on account of anti-Semitism whereas the same Jews segregate and exploit the Arabs in Israel. Likewise, Hindus are in a dominant position in India and Nepal, hence they are more powerful here, but in countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan where there is Muslim domination, Hindus and Sikhs have to face systemic persecution. Many a times, it has been observed that religion is deployed as a weapon to otherize a community. Wherever there is the name of any God, vindicating the oppression becomes easy and durable. For example, Dalits in India have been repeatedly told that the God has willed them to take birth in a lower caste. They have been conditioned since ages that they committed something wrong in their previous birth, and that’s why they have to undergo oppression in their present birth. Here, because, the God is invoked, the reaction from the recipients becomes next to impossible which explains why it took much longer for Dalits in India to demand their liberation. Likewise, in the case of women also, God is often presented as a scapegoat who desired the otherization of women. We find that almost all the mainstream religions are governed by patriarchy like Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and others leaving aside some pantheistic religions of ancient Africa and ancient Indian tribes of northeastern mountains. We find that even to justify racism, Christian missionaries would invoke the holy Bible to justify the exploitation and victimization of the Africans and the Indians. When the oppressor becomes stubborn to destroy the culture of the minority groups, when the ruler decides that there should be no counternarrative to his rule, when the king starts discriminating among his subjects, when the crown and court start taking sides, and when equality and egalitarianism become only subjects to be taught in the classrooms, the subcultures start refrigerating their ideas, values, opinions, and belief systems. In other words, when basic survival becomes difficult for the minorities in their own society, they start preserving their culture like one preserves fruits and vegetables in the refrigerator for a later date use. It is the responsibility of every culture and community to pass on its culture and heritage to the posterity. Every community must tell its next generation about its habits and customs like, what they ate and when they ate; what they wore and how they wore; what they celebrated and how they did that; how they lived and how they died; how they honored their living and how they respected their dead; how they danced, sang, told stories, spent time, worked in the fields and factories; how they married and made love; how they brought their children up, how they worshiped and who were their Gods; and how

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they interacted with nature, everything like this and everything related to this should be conveyed or refrigerated for the next generation. When telling becomes difficult, when passing becomes impossible, and when handing down becomes risky because you are constantly under surveillance, your steps are counted and monitored, then all this is refrigerated, sometimes consciously and at other times unconsciously, in the form of poetry, novel, drama, autobiography, memoire, jokes, songs, painting, dances, and rituals. It is not easy for the minority cultures to do all this because the art is also censored heavily, still the oppressed communities find their own ways to refrigerate their own cultures and their own self for both their own sake and their posterity’s sake. This book is divided into 13 chapters covering different cultures with reference to literary texts. Zuhmboshi Eric Nsuh, in the opening chapter of the book, exposes the cultural sabotage of the Africans under the French. he argues that the colonizers not only exterminated the natives but also destroyed their culture as a result, the natives were reduced to mere copycats. The chapter presents a sharp critique of the policies of French Colonial masters who had no sympathy for indigenous institutions. Medha Bhadhra Chowdhury in the second chapter discusses one of the very fewer known topics of discourse—the marginalized status of Anglo Indians in India with Allan Sealy’s The Trotter as the literary case study. The chapter furnishes a detailed background to the liminal existence of the community in both political and social spheres. The author also uses a literary case study to elaborate and elucidate her points. In chapter 3, Neelima B. and Saji Mathew examine the marginalized status of the Northeast India in general and Manipuri poetry in particular. The chapter furnishes a comprehensive survey of the minority position of the Northeast Indian writing and the under-representation of the region’s problems with an intense focus on Manipur. The chief poets under scrutiny R. K. Bhubonsana (1951–), Yumlembam Ibomcha (1949–), Thangjam Ibopishak (1948–), Robin S. Ngangom (1959–), and Narom Bidyasagar (1972–). In chapter 4, Stephen Ogheneruro Okpadah argues that since ancient times, human beings have been trying to preserve and refrigerate cultures through various means. Initially, this was achieved through folktales, art and architecture, inscriptions, and festivals. But, because of natural disasters and invasions, much was lost with the passage of time. Due to globalization in a postmodern setup, cultures of ex-colonies are facing the threat of extinction. It is high time, therefore, to preserve and refrigerate these cultures via museums and cinemas. Both Hollywood and Nollywood are playing their part to preserve and keep these cultures alive for the posterity. In incidents like slavery and Nigerian Civil War, heroes like Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass are handed down to the masses via the medium of films both in America and Nigeria.

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In chapter 5, Anupama Nayar discourses on the subaltern cosmopolitanism existing in Kochi from Kerala in India. The chapter introduces the reader to a creolized, marginalized, and forgotten community “Parankis.” In postcolonial Kochi. Nayar enlarges the picture of “parankis” with the aid of two literary case studies—Maya and Requiem. In chapter 6, Risha Baruah argues that in twenty-first century because of anthropocentric perspective, nature and her constituent elements have become part of minorities. Since ages, human society is characterized by division and bifurcation. Now, because of anthropocentric perspective of human species, animals are becoming extinct day by day. She further observes that one has to take a stand otherwise it will be very difficult to revive animals. In order to explain her point, she maintains that there are animals in human beings and at times animals behave like human beings. One has to learn to coexist with one’s environment only then one can imagine proper symbiosis. In chapter 7, Sindhura Datta and Asijit Datta intersect the concept of “minor literature” and the sufferings of Naga community in India with the help of Temsula Ao’s These Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone as a literary case study. The chapter contextualizes the sufferings of the marginalized Naga community both politically and socially. The authors in addition to validating the idea of “minor literature” also examine the marginalized status of the community represented. Renée Latchman in chapter 8 argues that it is important for the minorities to remember their culture if they want to survive in the hostile mainstream society. She applies the concept of orientalism given by Edward Said to explain the identity crisis faced by African American and African Caribbean Society. Her argument is that globalization poses a threat to indigenous cultures. For her, individualization also is a menace to collective identity. If any marginalized community wants to survive, it has to write its own story. Every marginalized community has to revert back to its culture, memory, language, rituals, and customs to maintain distinct identity. Returning back to one’s own roots can be the only remedy to an identity crisis. In chapter 9, Asis De portrays a less-known tribal community from India. The chapter profiles the tribal community of Asurs from the Western part of India. Asis De examines the kinship between the habitat and its inhabitants, the latter being the Asurs who merge with their surroundings. However, the encroachment of globalization and capitalism proves to be a menace for both the community and the environment. Denise M. Jarrett, in chapter 10, argues how blacks in the United States have to confront trauma for their survival because of their color. In order to explain her point, she differentiates between racism and colorism. She compares the conditions prevalent in the Caribbean islands with that of the United States. She continues that life for blacks is full of challenges as they have to face constant rejection

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from the white society. In order to be accepted, people of color adopt the strategy of passing if at all they get an opportunity. However, as she further argues, every black person does not try to pass even if he or she is given the opportunity. In chapter 11, Munira Salim talks about the oppression that Indian American community has to face in America. She argues that Indian American community forms one of the important minority groups, still it has to face discrimination. She further states that for Indian American community, the only way of respite is to go back to their ancient roots as a solution for hard circumstances. She questions the concept of melting pot and the American dream and concludes that these luxuries are reserved only for white Americans. In chapter 12, Maitrayee Misra argues that African diasporic community has been haunted by discrimination and failure throughout its presence in America. She states that in every facet of life, the African diaspora community is pitted against the dominant culture. She concludes that the African diaspora community like African American community has no option but to accept this system of oppression to continue living. African American community, as she argues, cannot go anywhere for solace but African dice Pura community certainly can go back to their homeland where they are disillusioned by the lack of first-world facilities. In chapter 13, Prachi Behrani and Vinaya Kumari excavate in the history of African American community and intensely examine the trauma of passing as white during the Harlem renaissance with reference to Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and Passing. The chapter furnishes a comprehensive sociopolitical backdrop of the African Americans in America. It brings forth with textual examples the efforts of African Americans to assimilate socially and culturally with the white majority and how they face the reality in the white dominant society.

WORKS CITED Beakerman, Zvi, and Ezra Kopelowitz eds. Cultural Education—Cultural Sustainability Minority, Diaspora, Indigenous, and Ethno-Religious Groups in Multicultural Societies. Routledge, 2008. Bender, Courtney, and Pamela E. Klassen eds. After Pluralism: Religion, Culture, and Public Life. Columbia UP, 2010. Finnegan, Ciara. “The Uyghur Minority in China: A Case Study of Cultural Genocide, Minority Rights and the Insufficiency of the International Legal Framework in Preventing State-Imposed Extinction.” Laws 9, no. 1 (Jan. 2020): 12–19. Galston, William A. Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy. Yale UP, 2018.

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Hogan-Brun, Gabrielle, and Bernadette O’Rourke . The Palgrave Handbook of Minority Languages and Communities. Palgrave, 2019. Mako, Shamiran. “Cultural Genocide and Key International Instruments: Framing the Indigenous Experience.” International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 19 (2012): 175–194. Molina, Ludwin E, and et al. “National and Ethnic Identity in the Face of Discrimination: Ethnic Minority and Majority Perspectives.” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 21, no. 2 (2015): 225–236. Newmark, Julianne. The Pluralist Imagination from East to West in American Literature. Nebraska UP, 2014. Ojaide , Tanure, and Joyce Ashuntantang. Routledge Handbook of Minority Discourses in African Literature. Routledge, 2020. Roach, Steven C. “Democratic Socialism and Multiculturalism: The Social Determinants of Cultural Autonomy.” In Cultural Autonomy, Minority Rights and Globalization. Routledge, 2018. Ustinov, Peter. Foreword. Parallel Cultures: Majority/Minority Relations in the Countries of the former Eastern Bloc. Edited by CHRISTOPHER LORD and OLGA STRIETSKA-ILINA. Routledge, 2001. Wieland-Burston, Joanne. “Deconstructing the Archetype of the Foreigner.” In Archetypal and Cultural Perspectives on the Foreigner: Minority and Monsters. Routledge, 2020.

Chapter 1

Colonial Encounters and Cultural Genocide A Postcolonial Textualization of Ferdinand Leopold Oyono’s The Old Man and the Medal Zuhmboshi Eric Nsuh

Prominent postcolonial writers and critics such as Helen Tiffin, Homi Bhabha, Edward W. Said, George Lamming, and Achille Mbembe argue that postcolonial literature performs a functional role because it constitutes a sociopolitical and cultural project that discusses the contact and contestation between the Western metropolitan culture and the peripheral local culture by highlighting and explaining its multiple effects on the latter. One of the effects of the cross-cultural contact, as revealed in the narrative fictionalism of most postcolonial writers, is the denigration of the local cultural systems. In this connection, the narratological program of African postcolonial writers is the textualization of the Western ideological and cultural agenda in their works in order to galvanize resistance against it. Evidently, the postcolonial text becomes highly committed and engaging in nature, thereby, endorsing Bill Ashcroft’s argument that post-colonial writing affirms the primacy of the message event because the immense ‘distance’ between author and reader in the cross-cultural or sub-cultural text undermines the privilege of both subject and object and opens meaning to a relational dialectic which “emancipates” it. (299)

In fact, Gisele Sapiro argues that the sociology of literature “requires the mediations between text and context” (225). This argument finds sufficient relevance in postcolonial African literature where African writers, especially those 11

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writing during the colonial period, conceive literature as a zone of contestation against cultural emasculation. Thus, Stephen Slemon posits that “post-colonial studies need always to remember that its referent in the real world is a form of political, economic, and discursive oppression whose name, first and last, is colonialism” (52). This narratological vision, which is the effect of crosscultural encounter, is evident in the works of postcolonial writers and critics, such as Chinua Achebe, Mongo Beti, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Ahmadou Kourouma, John Nkemngong Nkengasong, and Mbuh Mbuh Tennu. These writers portray the politics and conflictual intercourse between the Western imperialist culture and the African local culture and how the latter is drastically influenced by the former and in most cases the local culture being subsumed and obliterated by the imperialist culture. Thus, Helen Tiffin argues that “it has become the project of post-colonial literatures to investigate the European textual capture and containment of colonial and post-colonial space and to intervene in that originary and continuing containment” (97). Furthermore, Bill Ashcroft et  al. contend that place and displacement, which result in the crisis of culture and identity, are the fundamental features of postcolonial literatures because “it is here that the special post-colonial crisis of identity comes into being; the concern with the development or recovery of an effective identifying relationship between self and place” (8). In the novels of Ferdinand Oyono and most especially in The Old Man and the Medal, cultural displacement and the dystopian crisis of identity with the subaltern or peripheral characters in the novel is as a result of the assimilationist agenda of the Gaullist metropolitan colonial master. In this regard, this chapter enunciates the encounter between the colonial cultural ideology and the African cultural ideology bringing out the negative effects on the African local culture. Admittedly, the chapter posits that Oyono’s The Old Man and the Medal is a narrative discourse that illustrates how the encounter and interaction between the imperialist and the African cultures have led to the erosion of the African cultural space, thereby resulting in what Raphael Lemkin has described as cultural genocide. Furthermore, the colonialist ideological substratum in Oyono’s narratology is not only the denigration of the African cultural space but a complete emasculation and erasure of it. However, what is cultural genocide and how does it manifest itself in African literary discourse and most especially in the novel The Old Man and the Medal? DEFINITION OF CONCEPT The concept of genocide, as a human act, has existed from time immemorial. However, its legal implication and the word itself are twentieth-century inventions. The word “genocide,” etymologically comes from two Greek

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words: genos and cide. The former means a tribe, race, people, or nation while the latter means killing, destruction, or elimination. Consequently, the concept of genocide alludes to the killing, elimination, or destruction of a people, race, tribe, or nation. In international law, genocide is defined as the deliberate and systematic destruction and elimination of an ethnic, racial, or cultural group. This word was originally coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent, in his book entitled Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. In this seminal text, Lemkin argued that genocide is not just the physical elimination of an ethnic, tribal, or racial group but also the conscious elimination of a people’s culture and traditions. From this perspective, Lemkin considered a crime as genocidal when it consists of the deliberate obliteration, destruction, or annihilation of a nation or ethnic group; this could occur either through physical genocide, that is the killing of members of a group or nation or cultural genocide, that is undermining and desecrating of the culture and traditions of a people. With this idea in mind, Lemkin, in 1946, proposed to the United Nations General Assembly that a law should be promulgated against both physical and cultural genocides. The initial draft of the Convention was prepared by the UN Secretariat in conjunction with Lemkin and Professors Vespasian Pella and Henri Donnedieu de Vabres. It divided genocide into three categories: physical, biological, and cultural genocide. However, in the final text, which was adopted on December 9, 1948, the concept of cultural genocide was not considered. In fact, Article II of the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” which was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, spells out the various acts which are considered as genocidal. The Convention stated, inter alia, that genocide includes acts that are committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” such as killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. As per the Convention, therefore, genocide is limited only to physical genocide. The Convention came into existence and ratification on the heels of rapid, brutal, and conscious European colonization, imperialism, and cultural assimilation. In this context, therefore, the probable reason why the concept of cultural genocide was not considered in the final draft of the December 1948 Genocide Convention was the fact that it was going to hamper the colonial project of Western European countries which was aimed at dominating and eradicating the indigenous cultures of their different colonial territories. So, passing a law against cultural genocide would have meant stifling the

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Western colonial agenda of cultural imperialism which was the driving force of their colonial exploration and encounter. This chapter is based on Raphael Lemkin’s notion of cultural genocide and how it is manifested in postcolonial narratives with reference to Ferdinand Leopold Oyono’s The Old Man and the Medal. It, therefore, supports the view that genocide should not just be narrowed down to the physical elimination of a group of people but also extended to the elimination of their culture and traditions as well. In this case, cultural genocide will be defined as the conscious, deliberate, and systematic destruction of traditions, values, language, and other cultural elements that make one group of people distinct from another.

OYONO’S THE OLD MAN AND THE MEDAL: THE WESTERN IMPERIALIST CULTURAL OSMOSIS The European colonization of Africa was based on a dominant and hegemonic narrative, which was ideologically devastating on the African psyche and existence because this form of human and material exploitation was constructed on the premise that Africans were ignorant, primitive, and unenlightened of the content of civilization. In this guise, the colonialists saw their mission in Africa as morally and ethically justified since they claimed they were coming for a “civilizing mission.” In fact, Jenny Sharpe in “Figures of Colonial Resistance” explains the concept of colonial resistance and notes that there is bound to be conflict, resistance, and in some cases violence, whenever two opposing cultures come in contact. “The discourse of civility,” she argues, “strains to effect a closure in the case of the subaltern, where the violence of the colonial encounter is all the more visible” (99). In this conflicting situation, the culture with a stronger and resistant osmosis will certainly subvert and submerge the weaker one which might lead to cultural assimilation and degradation. Sharpe’s idea is appropriately foregrounded in Ferdinand Leopold Oyono’s narratology in The Old Man and the Medal—a fictionalism that interrogates the French colonial policy in Africa. Evidently, the Francophone Cameroonian novelist first published Le Vieux Nègre et la Médaille in 1956. The year of publication of this novel speaks volumes because this was a period when almost all of Africa was still suffering under the yoke of colonial exploitation, cultural emasculation, and trauma. The novel was later on translated in 1967 under the title The Old Man and the Medal. This novel, which is a caustic critique of the French assimilationist colonial policy in Africa, centers around Meka, the protagonist and the peasant elder of the village of Doum who has always been loyal and serviceable to the French colonial administration in the novel. He is awarded a medal by the colonial administration in recognition of his selfless services to his colonial

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master. His loyalty to the French colonial superstructure is viewed in the fact that he had given part of his land for the construction of the church and his two sons had died fighting for France in one of the world wars. The narrative program in the novel does not really mention the war that Meka’s sons fought and were murdered, but it could probably be either the First or Second World War where France took an active part in them. Despite the euphoria in the village of Doum that goes prior to the award of the medal, at the end of the novel, it is realized that this action, by the French colonialists reveals their hypocrisy, perfidy, and duplicity as the medal is of low quality and Meka is subjected under the scorching sun without any form of protection meanwhile his white counterparts who are also receiving medals like him are comfortably sitting under a shade provided for them. Edward W. Said, in “Orientalism,” argues that “the relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony” (89). Within the context of postcolonial discourse, the “occident” symbolizes the metropolitan colonial master in the novel while Meka is an extended metaphor of the “orient” the subaltern class. As a matter of fact, in Oyono’s narratology, the colonial project of cultural emasculation of the subaltern is deeply foregrounded in the pages and structure of the novel. Oyono’s novelistic vision is, therefore, anti-colonialist in nature whereby he brings to the forefront the colonialist project of systematically exterminating the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural worldviews of the Africans. Thus, Lydie Moudileno, in “The Francophone Novel in Sub-Saharan Africa,” comments that the novels of Ferdinand Oyono narrate what she describes as “a universe of duplicity and violence whose primary villains are colonial institutions” (131). Lydie Moudileno, in “The Francophone Novel in Sub-Saharan Africa,” notes that “Oyono uses the resources of the novel to offer his readers both a voyeuristic depiction of the colonizer’s world, and a detailed insight into the culture and experience of the colonized” (131). The “culture and experience of the colonized,” as depicted in The Old Man and the Medal, is one of the colonial humiliations, terrorization, and cultural liquidation and extermination. In this guise, Oyono’s narratological fictionalism, in The Old Man and the Medal, is based on the mission of the colonialist to undermine and eventually rupture and erase the subaltern cultural space from the surface of the earth—a move which is tantamount to cultural extirpation. In this regard, Franz Fanon argues that colonialism is not simply content to impose its rule upon the present and the future of a dominated country. Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it. (154)

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Inter alia, the raison d’etre of colonial exploration is anchored and manifested in the view that in most of the cases, the colonial ideology was forced on the colonized against his will; if it were the conscious choice of the colonized to be colonized by the Western imperialist, the colonized would have had the freewill and liberty to pick and choose what the colonial master was offering to him. Thus, Olúfémi Táíwò in How Colonialism Preempted Modernity in Africa argues that recognizing and embracing the subjectivity of the colonized would have meant allowing the colonized to choose not just whether they wished to be ruled by their colonizer but also what they would like to keep and what to expunge of their customs, institutions, and practices and what to accept or reject of the new customs, institutions, and practices brought by colonialism—and how both of those processes were to be executed. (24)

The most probative evidence of cultural repression and its eventual erasure is at the politico-administrative level. The foremost strategy of the colonialist which prepares the grounds for cultural repression and its eventual annihilation is the subjugation of all African political and administrative institutions. David Richards, in “Framing Identities,” contends that the growth of European empires and dominance by foreign powers have had an impact on the economic, political, and cultural lives of subject peoples who experience radical distortions of their language, law, and civil society: indeed, imperialist intervention is a fundamental denial of the enabling features of humanity. (10)

In Oyono’s narrative presentation, it is the French-led colonial administration that is the domineering force in the novel. The colonial administration, because of its military superiority, has successfully suppressed all forms of African administration and political leadership. Thus, it is this administration that is the overall lord over the territories of Doum and Zourian. In this guise, one of the hallmarks of the colonial administration in these localities is the brutal nature in which it administers the people. This explains why when Meka is summoned by the Commandant Kelara cautions him thus: “Be careful,” his wife enjoined. You must not show your feelings in front of the white man. For once have a little concern for me. Don’t answer the guards back, you know they are quite ready to take it out of a responsible, elderly man like you. (4)

Kelera’s advice does not only depict the concern she has for her husband but most indirectly conveys a general atmosphere of terror in Doum orchestrated

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by the colonial master and their cohorts. For his part, Meka assures his wife thus: “I shall keep my mouth shut.” “But if I don’t come back go and tell the priest so that he can see about it, he owes me that at least” (4). The general suspense and uncertainty among the natives of Doum are so great that Ignatius Obebe, the Catechist, has to organize prayer sessions for Meka since it is getting to the evening and Meka has not come from the commandant’s office. The narrator notes that the natives are confounded by Meka’s summons and cannot make out what it could mean. Consequently, the narrator argues that the Commandant would have had to have the eye of God himself to be interested in Meka. After they had tried unsuccessfully to discover the reasons for Meka’s summons, the villagers went to sleep, convinced that the land would soon have a martyr, a holy martyr. (13)

In addition, another unvarnished indication of cultural deracination in the narrative discourse of The Old Man and the Medal is that of African spiritual expurgation. Throughout the entire narrative, there is no hint of the practice of the African traditional religion by any of the African characters—practices such as the pouring of libation, rituals, and incantations. In fact, the ocular presence of Christianity in the localities of Doum and Zourian symbolizes the expunction of African spirituality, metaphysics, and theophany. Nathan Nunn, in “Religious Conversion in Colonial Africa,” recognizes the fact that “in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Africa witnessed an explosion of missionary activity. The success of missionaries during this period was due in large part to the onset of colonial rule” (147). Nunn’s comments translate the view that during the colonial era in Africa Christian missionaries worked in tandem with colonial administrators to foster the agenda of each other. Thus, when the novel commences, one comes into a lucid contact with the plenary annihilation of African religious and spiritual values— an annihilation that forms part of the Western metropolitan agenda to muzzle and eventually emasculate the African culture. In other words, the beginning of the narrative reveals that the theological and eschatological worldview of the protagonist, Meka, has been assimilated into Christian spirituality which is alien to African spirituality. The protagonist Meka gets up in the morning and when he is about to answer a summon from the commandant who is the French colonial administrator in the area, he tells his wife, Kelara, that they should do their routine morning spiritual devotion before responding to the commandant’s summons. The prayer that they recite is a Christian prayer and is typically Catholic in nature. The presence of the Catholic and Protestant Churches in the village of Doum, therefore, is a symbol of Western imperialism and throughout the narrative, there is no hint by the omniscient narrator of the existence of African spirituality. Also, the mental consciousness and

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worldview of Meka and Kelara have been constructed to resemble a typical Western consciousness. When Meka rebukes his wife for still sleeping when he is to answer the commandant’s summons, he describes her by using Judeo-Christian imagery and biblical allusions which as alien to the African culture and cosmology. Thus, he chastises his wife she is as “the disciples were on the Mount of Olives” (3). In the same token, after Meka has finished eating his breakfast and prepared for his journey to the commandant’s office, Kelara appreciates him that he resembles “an American missionary” (4). From a critical discourse analysis perspective, the use of these allusions in the various speech acts of Meka and his wife is an indication that their aesthetic, critical, and imaginative consciousness have been colonized and replaced with a colonial mindset. Consequently, Meka and his wife are victims of psychological displacement because their worldview is Western-oriented and not foregrounded on African cosmology. This kind of displacement undergone by Meka and Kelara has resulted in cultural dismemberment and eventual assassination. The manifestation of cultural displacement in the novel is visible in the manner in which the subaltern characters dress—a manner of dressing that reflects their colonial mindset. Most of the characters in the novel dress in Christian symbols instead of the normal traditional African symbols and regalia. The omniscient narrator remarks that the Christians coming back from the hut which served as chapel, muffled up in cloths or blankets. Those who had some relatives in the town wore next to their skin an old overcoat or a dressing gown or some article of nightwear, looking sadly out of place on those creatures festooned with holy medals, scapularies, rosaries and sometimes a massive lead cross hanging from their necks by a cord of rattan fibre. (27)

All these Christian elements worn by the natives are semiotic evidences of cultural imperialism which is tantamount to cultural assimilation. In other words, there are colonial archetypal symbols that constantly construct the minds and hearts of the natives to think that the world evolves only in the metropolitan colonial center and the occupants of the colonial margin are only there to consume and not to produce. This pernicious effect of colonialism is vividly expressed by Pal Ahluwalia, in Politics and Post-colonial Theory: African Inflections. He argues that the colonization of the mind is manifested in the manner in which a people’s history is denied, and they are made to feel inferior and incapable of challenging the colonial order. In this way the national identity of a people is denigrated and made non-functional. (41)

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More so, while the colonial administration is preparing anxiously for the feast, preparation is also heating up in Meka’s household. In his consciousness, Meka thinks that this July 14th celebration warrants him to have a new dress for the occasion since he is also one of the supposed dignitaries to be knighted with a medal. Mindful of this, he goes to Ela, a renowned tailor in Doum, and requests him to sew him a dress for the occasion. Meka’s discussion with Ela shows a tailor who has been assimilated by Western imperialism. He tells Meka that he is going to sew him “a zazou jacket” and comments thus: Well, what I’m going to do is to make you something which will come right down to your knees. This will be called the zazou jacket. I get the catalogues from Paris, and I am always up with the latest fashions. (49)

Put differently, Ela is affirming that “the latest fashions” of sewing can only come from the colonial metropolitan center of Paris. Ela’s obsession with the Parisian style shows the extent to which colonialism and assimilation have infiltrated the consciousness of the natives. Ela further assures Meka that he is sewing him a zazou jacket and soon everyone will be asking him if the jacket “comes from Paris” (50). Ela’s attitude toward Paris shows that he is a victim of mental colonialism since he believes that Paris is the measure of all good things. Furthermore, naming is an important element in all African cultures because names are the carriers of culture and identify the individual with his ancestral soil. This explains why many early African nationalists in the 1950s and 1960s, such as Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Mongo Beti, suppressed all the foreign names that were given to them at birth. These Africanists opined that bearing Christian names meant that they were projecting the colonial agenda of cultural assimilation and mental colonialism which culminated to cultural genocide. In corroboration of the importance of personal names in Africa, Mandinda Elias Mabuza, in “Individual Names and Personality: A Consideration of Some Beliefs,” elucidates that the African personal name system and its practices is a marker of people’s beliefs, ideology, religion, culture, philosophy and thought. These names are best understood and analyzed if one has insight into the language and culture of Africans. (839)

In Oyono’s novel, the names given to children at birth demonstrate that the natives of these localities have largely forgotten their heroes and they are now projecting Western heroes and their heroism. Most African inhabitants, in the novel, give names of Western heroes, politicians, and statesmen to their

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children. When Engamba and his wife, Amalia, undertake the journey from Zourian to Doum to attend the medal-award ceremony, they do so with a lot of storm and stress unmindful of the unvarnished fact that the ceremony will eventually turn out to be a mockery and disdain to the African personality. On their way, they stop at Binama’s house and it is here that one realizes the pernicious effects of colonialism on the minds of the natives. Binama’s fiveyear-old son is called De Gaulle. One also realizes that the natives are abandoning their traditional names for Western colonial names. The omniscient narrator even affirms that General Charles de Gaulle’s name is very popular among the natives and naming their children after him is very fashionable and prestigious. The narrator testifies that Binama’s son had been at a time when the name of the famous general was fashionable. This was immediately after the Second World War. Everything was De Gaulle then, just as everything was now zazou. Pictures of the general were in all the huts. There were girls called De Gaulle and boys called De Gaulle. The one climbing onto Amalia’s thighs was five years old. (58)

The name of General Charles De Gaulle symbolizes colonial subjugation and cultural assimilation. By naming their children after him shows that instead of valorizing African heroes, the natives are more prone to projecting Western colonialist heroes. The narrator, to further shows the strength of the colonial agenda, notes that “pictures of the general were in all huts.” The culture or practice of putting the picture of general De Gaulle on the walls of their huts demonstrates the level to which this French general was worshiped and deified among the villagers. Another area or domain of Western cultural incaution in the lives of the natives is the matrimonial institution. This institution is the nerve center of African cultural existence because Africans believe that it is only through it that the growth and development of society are guaranteed. John S. Mbiti, in African Religions and Philosophy, gives an insightful scrutiny of the concept and importance of marriage in African religion and philosophy. In this pivotal book he argues succinctly that for African peoples, marriage is the focus of existence. It is the point where all the members of a given community meet: the departed, the living and those yet to be born. All the dimensions of time meet here, and the whole drama of history is repeated, renewed and revitalized. (130)

Before, the advent of Christianity, the African society in the text practiced a form of polygamy known as polygyny where a man had the latitude to get married to many wives. This vital aspect of African culture has been

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ruptured with the advent of Christianity in the society in The Old Man and the Medal—since most of the natives are now driven into monogamous marriage preached by Christianity. Through the use of heterodiegetic analepsis, Engamba laments the fact the arrival of Christianity is almost putting an end to polygyny (36–37). The narrator testifies that Engamba had succeeded his father who was a polygamist and also inherited his father’s six young wives and his mother (37). He, further, remarks that Engamba used to spend his day in the indaba hut sitting between the legs of one of his wives, discussing one of the thousand matters that go to make up the life of a polygamous African. It was an easy life, full of leisure. (37)

However, the glorious and pleasurable days of polygyny in precolonial Africa have been ruptured by the coming of Christianity in Zourian and Doum because Engamba could only marry one of his wives in the church to the exclusion of all the others. In fact, the narrator echoes that “he (Engamba) never thought in those days that the whites and their religion could ever trouble his happiness” (37) because when Engamba converted to Christianity, Amalia is the only one of his wives who accepts to marry him in church. The eradication of polygamy in this society is one of the strategies of the colonialist to uproot the Africans from their culture and imbibe the Western matrimonial institution of monogamy. The Gaullist-led colonial administration in Oyono’s narrative discourse is also engaged in the frantic and procacious effort to extirpate the African political economy. The colonialist is cognizant of the fact that the backbone and mainstay of the development of any society is its economic prowess. For this reason, the colonial master must ascertain the eradication of the economic signposts of the natives of Doum as part of their malicious program. Stephen Ocheni and Basil C. Nwankwo, in “Analysis of Colonialism and Its Impact in Africa,” examine the politicoeconomic, social, and cultural consequences of colonialism on Africa. They reiterate that colonialism was largely unbeneficial to Africa since it fostered the destruction of political, economic, and cultural signposts in Africa. In this context, they conclude that colonialism shaped both the economic and political structure of African colonies to be in line with the needs of the metropolis. It ensured that African economic and political structures both in form and content serve the interest of their home government (European powers). Colonialism therefore, in all intents and purposes was a disservice to Africa. (53)

On his way to the commandant’s office, Meka branches at Mammy Titi’s bar to consume the locally brewed wine called “arki” (6–7). While in the

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bar, one of the drunkards identifies him as the man who had given his land to the church. The character confirms thus: “Now I remember that face,” said Meka’s neighbor. “You know what I think? .  .  . You’re the one who gave your land to the Good Lord” (7). The idea of giving his land to the church is a semiotic resource of economic exploitation since, in Africa, land has a serious economic and spiritual significance. Curiously, Meka acknowledges that he did not give his land to the church out of his own volition as such; it was somehow seized from him. In this guise, one of the drunkards comments thus: “If they’d taken it away from you, that wouldn’t have surprised me” (8). Meka’s response depicts that he was dragooned by the colonial superstructure to relinquish his land to the church. He says: “Well, it was a bit of that too” (8). Another colonial agenda and master plan of economic disruption is put in practice when the colonial administration places an injunction on the production and consumption of “arki” which is a locally brewed wine and constrains the natives to instead consume wine produced in European countries such as Italy. Labo Bouché Abdou in “Colonial Administration Extortion in the African Novel” notes that the European tradesmen were also accomplices of the colonial officials. Oyono has denounced in The Old Man and the Medal, the interdiction made to natives to distil the low-priced banana and corn alcohol to lead them toward the European hot drinks and red wine that flooded the commercial center. (172)

Abdou’s critique reveals that the declaration of “arki” as a contraband good in Doum shows that the colonial administration is fighting hysterically to crush and crumble the African local industry to the advantage of Western economic structures. Accordingly, the omniscient narrator comments that “the natives had been forbidden to distil their own cheap alcohol from maize and bananas to drive them on to the European spirits and the red wine that flooded into the commercial centre” (9). More so, the colonial administration uses the church as her mouthpiece to fight against the consumption of this locally brewed alcohol. In fact, the administration connives with Father Vandermayer to sermonize against the consumption of “arki” during mass. The narrator notes that “for the sake of quiet Gullet went to see Father Vandermayer. The missionary lost no time in condemning the drink from the pulpit for, he said, it blackened the teeth and the souls of his parishioners” (9). He goes further and decrees that “every Christian who drank it was committing a mortal sin with each mouthful that he swallowed” (9). Sadly, the Christian church is an accomplice in the colonial project to desecrate the African culture in Doum and destroy all the economic structures of the locality.

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Finally, even the medal award in itself is a metaphor of colonial falsehood and pretence. The medal-award ceremony is a semiotic representation of colonial humiliation and acute subjugation of the African people. Meka, on the day of the medal-award ceremony, is put under the scorching sun waiting for the chief of the whites to come and award him the medal while the other white dignitaries are sitting under a comfortable canopy. The omniscient narrator paints a vivid picture of this event thus: “Meka stood bareheaded and quite still, his arms to his sides, inside the circle painted with whitewash where he had been placed to wait for the arrival of the White Chief” (85). What is striking is that he is subjected to this kind of brutal condition while those who are to be decorated with him are comfortably sitting under a shade. The narrator further comments that “in front under the shade of M. Fouconi’s veranda were the white men but Father Vandermayer with his black cassock and his black beard was the only one Meka could recognize” (85). This painful contrast shows the reign of racism and white supremacist ideology in the colonial mentality. It is this supremacist mentality that facilitates cultural repression and eradication. After going through this excruciating psychological trauma, the chief of the whites finally arrives at the courtyard for the commencement of the ceremony. When the medal is awarded to M. Pipiniakis, the chief of the whites embraces him, probably because he is white like himself; however, when Meka’s turn comes, he is only given a handshake (91–92). Worse still Meka discovers that the medals are not the same. In fact, the narrator affirms that “Meka had time to notice that it was not the same as the Greek’s medal” (92). The disparity in the medals reveals the concept of racial discrimination in the mind of the colonial master to the point where Meka is aware that the medals are different especially in quality. The author uses Meka’s awareness to educate him about the hypocrisy of the colonialist. Intriguing and embarrassing is the fact that the medal award is accorded to Meka because his two sons had died in war and he had also given his land to the Catholic mission to construct a church in Doum. This is brought to the fore in a dialogue between two onlookers of the event in which one happens to be the commandant’s Houseboy: “There’s somebody,” they were saying. “You can’t say we haven’t got a great man at Doum.” Then some troublemaker said “I think they ought to have covered him in medals. That would have been a bit more like it! To think he has lost his land and his sons just for that” (94). This dialogue portrays the worthlessness of the medal that Meka receives; when this comment reaches the eyes of Kelara, she weeps profusely because she discovers the hypocrisy of the colonial masters. On hearing this Kelara comes back home in lamentation for discovering the duplicity of the colonialist. She criticizes her husband for not to have known that the medal is a ridiculous compensation of the fact that she had lost two sons in the war with the white man. In her discussion with Engamba and Amalia, Kelara lashes out at Meka:

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Is any wife or mother more wretched than I am? I had thought I had married a man, a real man . . . instead I married an arse-full of shit. My children, my poor children—sold like the Lord who was sold by Judas. . . . He at least did it for money. The man who lay with me so that I should hear you did not get a good price for the drops of his seed. Both of you together, my little ones, priced at one medal. (100)

Kelara’s lamentation at the end of the medal-award ceremony conveys a general dystopic irony that pervades the entire narrative discourse of the novel. It ridicules the African characters who have been in a state of colonial entrapment without comprehending the colonial spirit that animated the medalaward ceremony—which is the spirit of cultural dislocation whose ultimate end is cultural genocide.

CONCLUSION In conclusion, Norman K. Denzin in Symbolic Interactionism and Cultural Studies affirms that the cultural text cannot be disentangled from its ideological world of textual production and rendition. Thus, in this connection, he argues that “ideology repressively intrudes into the worlds of lived experiences” (90). From the perspective of the sociology of literature, literary production is the fruit of sociopolitical and ideological consciousness. In this view, the focus of this chapter has been to analyze the colonialist ideology in Oyono’s The Old Man and the Medal and to explicate how this ideology eventually lays the foundation for cultural genocide suffered by the African indigenous culture/tradition in the text. In other words, the encounter between the Western metropolitan culture and the subaltern culture in Africa resulted in cultural eradication since the metropolitan center, with all her military might, turned to force her politicocultural and legal systems on the throats of the indigenous people. In this context, Oyono’s narratology exposes the goal of the French-led colonial superstructure to destabilize the African cultural space into the limbo of cultural insolvency.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abdou, Bouché Labo. “Colonial Administration Extortion in the African Novel.” International Journal of English and Literature 6, no. 10 (Oct. 2012): 168–173. https://academicjournals​.org​/journal​/IJEL​/article​-full​-text​-pdf​/EEC76A455912. Ahluwalia, Pal. Politics and Post-colonial Theory: African Inflections. London: Routledge, 2001.

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Ashcroft, Bill. “Constitutive Graphonomy.” In The Post-colonial Studies Reader, eds. Bill Ashcroft et al. London: Routledge, 1995, 298–302. Denzin, K. Norman. Symbolic Interactionism and Cultural Studies: The Politics of Interpretation. Oxford: Blackwall, 1992. Fanon, Franz. “National Culture.” In The Post-colonial Studies Reader, eds. Bill Ashcroft et al. London: Routledge, 1995, 153–157. Mabuza, Mandinda Elias. “Individual Names and Personality: A Consideration of Some Beliefs.” Biblioteca Tècnica de Política Lingüística, no. XXIV (2016), 833–841. doi: 10.2436/15.8040.01.86. Mbiti, S. John. African Religions and Philosophy. 2nd ed. Oxford: Heinemann, 1969. Moudileno, Lydie. “The Francophone Novel in Sub-Saharan Africa.” In A Cambridge Companion to the African Novel, ed. F. Fabiola Irele. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009, 125–139. Nunn, Nathan. “Religious Conversion in Colonial Africa.” American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings 100 (May 2010): 147–152. http://www​.aeaweb​.org​ /articles​.php​?doi​=10​.1257​/aer. Ocheni, Stephen and Basil C. Nwankwo. “Analysis of Colonialism and Its Impact in Africa.” Cross-Cultural Communication 8, no. 3 (2012): 46–54. doi: 10.3968/j. ccc.1923670020120803.1189 Oyono, Ferdinand. The Old Man and the Medal. Trans. John Reed. London: Heinemann, 1967. Oyono, Ferdinand. Houseboy. London: Heinemann, 1968. Richards, David. “Framing Identities.” In A Concise Companion to Postcolonial Literature, eds. Shirley Chew and David Richards. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, 9–28. Said, W. Edward. “Orientalism.” In The Post-colonial Studies Reader, eds. Bill Ashcroft et al. London: Routledge, 1995, 87–91. Sapiro, Gisèle. “Comparativism, Transfers, Entangled History: Sociological Perspectives on Literature.” In A Companion to Comparative Literature, eds. Ali Behdad and Dominic Thomas. West Sussex: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2011, 225–236. Sharpe, Jenny. “Figures of Colonial Resistance.” In The Post-colonial Studies Reader, eds. Bill Ashcroft et al. London: Routledge, 1995, 99–103. Slemon, Stephen. “The Scramble for Post-colonialism.” In The Post-colonial Studies Reader, eds. Bill Ashcroft et al. London: Routledge, 1995, 45–52. Táíwò, Olúfémi. How Colonialism Preempted Modernity in Africa. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2010. Tiffin, Helen. “Post-colonial Literatures and Counter-discourse.” In The Post-colonial Studies Reader, eds. Bill Ashcroft et al. London: Routledge, 1995, 95–98.

Chapter 2

The Anglo-Indian Community and Its Cultural Aporia Reading the Works of Allan Sealy’s The Trotter-Nama: A Chronicle Medha Bhadra Chowdhury

The Anglo-Indian community in India occupies a curious position, bordering the fringes of mainstream culture, struggling to assimilate itself in the prevailing cultural life and simultaneously resisting the complete dissolution of its unique identity and heritage. The Anglo-Indians have, over a period of time, disappeared from the public eye and remain restricted to pockets of the country, their collective histories obscured through years of neglect and urban homogenization. They exist in a refrigerated state, as vestiges of the colonial past in popular consciousness, associated with British and European traditions and yet rooted in the Indian sociocultural milieu. “Anglo-Indian” is a term primarily used to identify descendants of British and European settlers in India, born out of the union or romantic liaison between men posted in the colonies for service and Indian women. Article 366(2) in The Constitution of India, 1949, provides the following category for identification: An Anglo-Indian means a person whose father or any of whose other male progenitors in the male line is or was of European descent but who is domiciled within the territory, of parents habitually resident therein and not established there for temporary purposes only.

Interracial marriages were encouraged by early Portuguese settlers. The indigenous population, particularly the upper class could freely consort with the Portuguese. In 1510, Alfonso de Albuquerque, the second governor of the Portuguese territories (1509–1515), actively promoted the evangelical 27

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mission of converting the native population to Christianity and encouraged Portuguese men to marry women of Indian origin. This was largely a political and administrative measure to strengthen trade and commercial relations with the natives and to consolidate colonial control. Their progeny, the Luso-Indians or Portuguese-Indians, remained under the protection of the Portuguese and later the Dutch colonizers in 1662 after the collapse of the Portuguese empire in India. The British who succeeded the Dutch took responsibility for their Luso-Indian subjects and British men separated from their homes and society married Luso-Indian women, leading to the emergence of the IndoPortuguese-British community in India. Marital unions between British men and Indian women were common during the early years of colonial trade and occupation and these were given due recognition by the British administration until the end of the eighteenth century. An article titled, “The English in India” published in Calcutta Review (1844) records that “there is no more striking feature on the face of AngloIndian society, than the general diffusion of all the outward characteristics of wealth” (25). The British made provisions for their Indian mistresses and children, who were often given legal status and therefore could claim their marital or paternal rights. When an officer of respectability dies, in either the civil or the military service, leaving a widow or children, a subscription is immediately set on foot, which in every instance has proved liberal, and not unfrequently has conferred on the parties a degree of affluence that the life of the husband or parent could not for years have assured them. The hearts of the British in this country seem expanded with affluence, they do everything on a princely scale. (24)

In later years, the rise in passenger vessels which provided security and comfort increased the homegoing tendency of British men serving in India. The establishment of a regular line of Government Steamers from Bombay and of Oriental and Peninsular Company’s steam-ships from Calcutta witnessed hundreds of British officers availing these “splendid locomotive boarding houses” (9) on their trip back to England and also led to the greater presence of English women in the country, who could visit India for prolonged residence. The same article in The Calcutta Review mentions that in former days, when wives were few and native mistresses many, the greater number of residents were tied to India, and had little inducement to quit it. Now, however, wives are many, mistresses few: and whilst the number of illegitimate children is diminishing every year, the lawful offspring of British residents in India is progressively increasing. The books of that noble institution, the Military Orphan Asylum, show, that whereas in 1810, the proportion of illegitimate

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to legitimate children subsisting on the charity of the Fund, was as ten to eight; in 1840 there were forty legitimate wards to every eleven of the other class. (10)

This resulted in the diminishing importance of the “Indian wives,” who were looked upon with a deep-seated prejudice by their British counterparts and their children were perceived as “bastards,” who had to pretend to be “pukka” (legitimate) in order to cope with the snobbery of the legitimate white children. By the end of the nineteenth century, marriages between British men and Indian women were socially shunned. This indicated a critical change in intercultural relations and introduced the problem of cultural assimilation for the Anglo-Indian progeny. Historically, the status of the Anglo-Indian community has undergone many discursive changes, but their contribution was at all times considered significant. Cedric Dover, who includes the Anglo-Indians in his analysis of “half castes,” or “half breeds” also argued that the Eurasians of India who, as the sagacious Albuquerque anticipated, have been the most potent factor in the spread of Christianity in that country, deserve some further consideration as an example of the ways in which a mixed community influences cultural and religious diffusion. (86)

The Anglo-Indians were among the first beneficiaries of European education and adopted Western values and customs. They shared the language of their European fathers and nativized English. In terms of religious diffusion, the Anglo-Indians were a vision of potentiality for the colonizers, initiating the process of conversion to the paternal religion and consolidating the presence of a resident Christian community. The community thrived economically in the years of colonial rule and enjoyed a position of privilege in the field of education and employment. They willingly served the interests of the British in India and formed a community consciousness that maintained a sense of exclusivity from the native population. The history of the Anglo-Indian community in India from the colonial to the postcolonial period has been briefly summed up by Sudarshana Sen in the introduction to her book Anglo Indian Women in Transition: Pride, Prejudice and Predicament (2017). Educated in private schools, articulate in English and the ways and customs of the English, Anglo-Indians became indispensable to the Company’s service. Anglo-Indian men also helped martially to build up the British colony in India, as they served loyally and efficiently in the Company’s army. The community was appreciated and often rewarded for their efforts but such prestige was fickle, as it depended on the varying decisions the Company took from time to time regarding the status of the community. Accordingly, we find the Anglo-Indian

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community went through various phases of development. These phases can be divided broadly into three periods: the emergence and early evolution of the community, its sustenance and growth as a community throughout the period of British rule and its resilience in post-1947 India. The status of the community in British India was different from what it became in post-independence India. Moreover, in the latter part of the period of British rule in India, the community suffered its greatest shock—the British forced the status of being “the natives of India” upon the community. This was a crucial change for the members of the community, for they felt threatened by this newly acquired status; this was the first time in history that they were set at par with all other Indians, which effectively meant that they were no longer to enjoy any special advantage. They were left in the lurch, so to speak, by the administration and would have to fend for themselves in the unpredictable future of independent India. (Sen 3)

The native status attributed to the Anglo-Indian community in India engendered the anxiety of a new cultural politics, which included building relations with the native Indian population and re-negotiating their own position in a postcolonial society. This connectedness did not signal a homogeneous unity but rather a contingent, fragile coalition building in an effort to pursue libertarian and democratic goals in the postindependence period. The cultural identity of the Anglo-Indians remained circumscribed by patriarchal, imperial, and xenophobic constraints. The anti-imperialist liberalism celebrated a token pluralism and although Anglo-Indians were a part of a newly independent nation, their inclusion into mainstream society was rendered problematic due to perceived differences of ethnicity and their cultural affinity to the British. The narrow parochialisms of race and culture restricted the integration of the Anglo-Indian community into the social fabric and the imposition of a moral authoritarianism led to the impression that Anglo-Indians were a part of a “mongrel” culture born out of illicit associations between British men and Indian women. The cultural hegemony of an emerging postcolonial state in India marginalized “variants” despite its vision of greater democracy and integration for diverse ethnic groups and communities. In spheres of politics and economy, the Anglo-Indian community was pushed to the fringes and relegated to a subordinate position through discreet processes of marginalization. Since independence, Article 334 of the Indian Constitution has provided for the representation of the Anglo-Indian community in the House of the People (Lok Sabha) and in the Legislative Assemblies of the States by nomination. Two members of the Anglo-Indian community have been nominated to the Lok Sabha since the adoption of Article 334, but for many Anglo-Indians, the transfer of power at independence made their position in the new states of India and Pakistan even more uncertain. Up to 250,000 of the community remained in the Indian subcontinent after 1947, either by choice or by necessity. Frank Anthony, the president of the All India Anglo-Indian

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Association and Member of Parliament, expressed his anxiety about the status of the community in his presidential speech delivered in 1964, where he declared that “the minority peoples of India walk in the shadow of death” (34). Although Anthony later retracted from the political critique implicit in his original statement, he drew attention to the discriminatory attitudes against Anglo-Indians and other minorities in the country. Given the political process defined by the Indian state, the ambiguities of legitimacy are expressed most clearly in the mechanisms of representation, but the state may use both coercive and persuasive powers to allocate relative priorities to certain majority groups as opposed to others. In his rhetoric, Anthony challenged the conception of the nation as a cultural monolith and emphasized the need to regard nationalism as a hybridized subjective consciousness that can act as a bulwark against the politics of minority exclusion or discrimination. Postindependence, the Anglo-Indians who remained in India were given a coherent sense of place and belonging but were expected to display a stable commitment and ethical responsibility toward the nation. As a minority group, the Anglo-Indians were caught in the dialectic of maintaining the legitimacy of difference on the one hand and the ideology of unity demanded by the nationstate on the other. They were faced with ethnocentric hegemonic cultural assumptions and the hypocrisies of class, hierarchy, and moral puritanism. However, cross-cultural influences in a period of globalization have introduced an evolutionist view of culture and in this process, small societies with relatively well-defined cultural borders and only a small degree of internal social differentiation have also undergone radical changes. The Anglo-Indian community has thus been caught in the paradox of continuity and change. Struggling to preserve their way of life, they have also realized the need to modify their cultural practices in order to embrace the transnational, transcultural, and transethnic networks of communication and interaction which have been produced through the effect of globalization. This process of transformation has problematized the conception of a “true” culture and other syncretic designations, leading to a complex hybrid model of culture, which is not determined by holistic and essentialist constructions. Introduced in The Location of Culture (1994), Homi Bhabha’s theory of hybridity and the third space has dominated postcolonial and cultural studies. Bhabha redefines culture, discourse, and identity as fluid and ambivalent, rather than fixed and one-dimensional. As theorized by Bhabha, the third space is interchangeable with hybridity, or more precisely, hybridity is the third space: All forms of culture are continually in a process of hybridity. But for me the importance of hybridity is not to be able to trace two original moments from

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which the third emerges, rather hybridity to me is the ‘third space’ which enables other positions to emerge. [. . .] the process of cultural hybridity gives rise to something different, something new and unrecognizable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation. (211)

In its actual formulation, the third space, like hybridity, is posited as a site of displacement, newness, renegotiation of cultures and identities, and multiple positionalities. Bhabha emphasized the creative and radical potential of the third space in terms of a site where new discourses emerge. Historically created through the amalgamation of contrary cultures, or polarities, the Anglo-Indian community has come to occupy what Bhabha regards as the “third space.” The Anglo-Indian community domiciled in the country as well as part of the Indian diaspora has embraced cultural and sub-cultural differences to expand the normative boundaries of the community set by their predecessors. Between 1947 and 1970, numerous Anglo-Indians migrated to Britain and Australia: Britain in the late 1940s and 1950s and to Australia particularly in the late 1960s and 1970s. The two main waves of migration and the settlement of Anglo-Indians in foreign countries indicated a remaking, reshaping, and reforming of culture through the adoption of diverse practices and intercultural relationships. Modern crossovers contribute to the hybridity of the Anglo-Indian culture even today. Anglo-Indians settled abroad have sponsored their relatives living in India, actively encouraging the process of immigration to countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. The Anglo-Indians have merged almost seamlessly into mainstream communities, sometimes making it impossible to distinguish them. But irrespective of location, the hybridity of their present culture and tendency toward multiculturalism have further challenged the elitist, bourgeois vision of the purity of the culture. The Anglo-Indian community has repeatedly resisted attempts to museumize their culture and moved toward a poetics of re-inscription. While they have preserved cultural emblems and practices of everyday life, they have negotiated their identities situationally in the light of recent sociocultural changes in order to contest attempts to objectify and exclude them. Irwin Allan Sealy, an Anglo-Indian of European descent from his father’s side, dedicated his novel The Trotter-Nama: A Chronicle (1988) to “The Other Anglo-Indians.” The process of “othering” occurred at the historical juncture when the postcolonial state developed a distinctly racialized environment, marking out Anglo-Indians as targets for racial barbs. Faced with the confusing paradoxes of identity, the Anglo-Indian community either chose deliberate isolation from the rest of the social body or attempted to slip between the cracks in their quest for social acceptance, dissolving itself in the melting pot of mainstream culture. This phenomenon caused them to either

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be “ghettoized” or rendered invisible to the public eye. As an Anglo-Indian author, Sealy’s fiction is determined by his intention of exploring the particular cultural heritage of his community and the distinctiveness of their identity. He depicts them as caught in the conundrums of belonging and unbelonging: in their willingness to voluntarily eliminate those aspects of the self which distinguish their racial and cultural history and at the same time their need to preserve or “refrigerate” their cultural identity. While critics have observed similarities between Sealy’s fiction and that of his contemporary Salman Rushdie, in terms of their preoccupation with the nation and the community, the narrative experimentations and the use of fantasy and history, Sealy unlike Rushdie maintains a unique focus on the concerns of his own community and the hybridity of their cultural status in India. The novel retells the history of the minority community, spanning two centuries and seven generations. In an interview with Arvindar Singh for India International Centre, Allan Sealy explained the raison d’etre for writing a novel about seven generations of an Anglo-Indian family. I needed to set the record straight. I knew it was going to be a novel about Anglo-Indians, and there were a lot of misconceptions about the community. A lot of things had been written which I felt to be false. I needed to wipe those traces away and write what I felt was the true record. I needed to look at the history of this community, and it went back several hundred years; so 1 thought here is one way of doing it which will not be a standard history. It will be a fictional version of that history, and one way of doing this is to create this family—the Trotters—who go down through the centuries and in whose history is encapsulated the actual larger history of the Anglo-Indians. I began at the end of the 18th century—in fact, the history of the Anglo-Indians goes further back— but I took that as a beginning. Into this family I wove all the strands from the actual history and the real origins of the Anglo Indian community. (92)

Sealy understood the hesitations, ambiguities, and diverging interpretations associated with the Anglo-Indian community. By providing new insights into historical facts, Sealy paves the way for a reformed consciousness about the community. This historical revisionism assesses the cultural roots of prevailing attitudes toward Anglo-Indians and the racial divisions which engendered the problem. Ideas about cultural and racial inferiority are re-examined and Sealy comically represents the biases Anglo-Indians faced on both sides by describing the experiences of Justin Trotter’s mother, Queenie. A few days after she arrived in England, [his mother, Queenie] had found herself turning brown. In fact, the whole process had started in the aeroplane when she went to powder her nose, half-way between Delhi and London. Now she was dark enough that one Sunday when she thought she’d worship in another

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suburb the verger said kindly, meaning to clarify, “This is an Anglican church.” In short, Queenie was ready to come back home again. She suspected the process would start all over again in the reverse until she was once again stuck out in India, but what was one to do? There was no ideal solution short of becoming an air hostess, and it was too late for that. Even they didn’t remain forever suspended in the air over Constantinople. (397)

The formation of a collective identity for the Anglo-Indian community had become a critical project in the preindependence period itself. From being a fragmented social group, the Anglo-Indians presented a Petition to the British Parliament in 1830 for a systematic set of laws which would ensure their political and economic autonomy. The East Indians’ Petition (1830) by John Ricketts vaguely defined the connotations of being an “Anglo-Indian” and ironically reflected the ambivalence which characterized the community. Sealy cites the words of the Petition in the initial chapter of The Trotter-Nama to develop the ambiguous position of the Anglo-Indian people in India and the problem of identification which persisted in the years after. The attempt to suppress differences and impose a uniform cultural identity is demonstrated through the character of the Fourth Trotter, Thomas Henry. The Assistant Collector (Thomas Henry) is Anglicized in his dress and fashion and refrains from association with the “natives.” His cousin, Alina, on the contrary had “gone native” and practiced “Indian” habits. Naturally, “the gulf between the Assistant Collector and the dairy-woman was widened by this going native. Alina’s Hindusthani had become fluent, too fluent” (385) and she wore a sari, used mustard oil on her body, and put a bindi on her forehead. Thomas Henry’s daughter, Victoria, the fifth Trotter and the matriarch of the family, takes after her father and sympathizes with the British. She strongly opposes the Ilbert Bill, which would allow an Indian to judge an Anglo-Indian, stating that “it’s not right for servants and all to go judging their masters. I wouldn’t want an Indian to sit in judgment of me, and that’s that.” Victoria’s husband Theobald Horatius Montagu, who appears as a parody of the infamous British educationalist, Sir Thomas Macaulay, provides a sharp contrast to his wife, in his belief that Western education had ruined the beauty of the native tongue. “Whenever Victoria complained about Indians, Mr. Montagu quoted one of his anti-European works, of which he had acquired a small collection” (403). As an active member of the Indian National Congress, Mr. Montagu vehemently opposes the Ilbert Bill at the Anglo-Indian gathering in the Railway Institute, even as his wife sits on “unmoved, massive and statuesque” (399). He is joined in his anti-colonial movement by Alex Trotter, “fierce Attila’s progeny” who is quickly enlisted in the Congress party. Alex is declared a “half-caste” by the local newspaper for his participation in the political convention. He proudly declares,

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I will have my people called by their proper name, which is Anglo-Indians. The descendants of the Saxons and the British were called Anglo-Saxons, their descendents with the Normans were called Anglo-Normans, and we are AngloIndians. (Sealy 401)

Writing in a pamphlet published by the Calcutta Study Circle in 1946, Reginald Maher argued that “going Indian” meant primarily a realization of the fact that the Anglo-Indian is an Indian. Many Anglo-Indians did not see themselves as Indian and did not feel at home in a nation, though governed by the British, belonged to the “natives.” Gradually, from this sense of difference grew an unsettled domesticity which led the Anglo-Indian community to realize a dual affinity. They attempted to find broad similarities of culture and lifestyle with Indians and rediscover their maternal heritage. Sealy overcomes the temptation to venerate his community by shifting focus to the broader narrative of the community’s history in India and their changing inclinations toward the nation and its people. He observes the mixed habits of the Trotters, their linguistic quirks, and peculiar customs. While cultural possessions such as manners, diet, rituals, and attire were perceptible, the Anglo-Indians were responsive to a wider chain of associations and developing tastes. Sealy depicts the Trotter as combining a distinctive mixture of Western and Indian food, eating with hand rather than cutlery. As his appetite for curries deepened, his tastes widened to take in mint chutneys, cauliflower pickles, cucumber salads, green mango achars, tomato kasaundis, lotus-root, tamarind, pepper-water, pastes, purees preserves, curds, raitas and a thousand accompaniments of rich and satisfying food. (Sealy 127)

Food has been an integral part of Indian communities, who have developed their own distinctive culinary traditions. Whether it is eating cakes for Christmas or roasts for Easter, the Anglo-Indians have displayed a sense of loyalty to their heritage and have maintained their collective memory of culinary practices inherited from their British or European forebears. However, the Anglo-Indian community has also exhibited a rich diversity of practices related to food and cooking which has contributed to the creation of their own cultural identity. Over time, Anglo-Indians transformed their food cultures and habits to foster and reproduce an identity that was distinctive from both the British and Indians. It was unmistakably a combination of Western and Indian influences. By examining the Trotters’ attitudes toward food, Sealy communicates how colonial and indigenous patterns intersect, blending the contours of Anglo-Indian cultural practices. By exploring the micro-histories of the Trotter clan, Sealy further establishes that the marginal position of the community is caused by a set of

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complex cultural practices operating both within and without. While he introduces popular stereotypes in his novel, the purpose is not to merely elaborate on them but to explore complexities of attitudes and their resistance to change. The dominant cultural stereotypes associated with the Anglo-Indian community persisted even as Anglo-Indians attempted to “Indianize” themselves in a postcolonial society. Despite the community’s efforts to adapt to the changes in the social climate, in matters like food, dress, and music, AngloIndians were subjected to clichéd representations in the cultural imaginary. They were often narrowly categorized in their occupational roles as school teachers, nurses, secretaries, clerks, musicians, and these confining images were perpetuated through literature, films, and popular culture. The AngloIndian community not only had to contend with political placidity and social marginalization but also the stereotypically negative images extending particularly to Anglo-Indian women, who were perceived as overtly sexualized and morally dubious objects of interracial desire. Even within the community, there were internal divisions which fragmented the sense of collective identity. The community has not remained unchanged and homogenous, and stable notions about identity have been disrupted by distinct cultural and geographical positions. Sudarshana Sen remarks that most of the Anglo-Indians of Kolkata think that they have remained truer to the spirit of the ‘Anglo-Indian culture’ than any other Anglo-Indian group in the country. They distinguish themselves from Anglo-Indians of the railway colonies at Kharagpur or from those of South India and other small towns and metropolises of India. There is another angle to this local pride. Urban AngloIndians think that in Kolkata they can be more easily identified as Anglo-Indian than in any other place in India. They think their identity, especially their ethnic identity, can readily be maintained here in Kolkata: they can remain as AngloIndians. In Delhi, for example, Anglo-Indians are scattered all over the city. Though they converse in English among themselves, they speak fluent Hindi with others. (29)

Anglo-Indians in Kolkata, inhabiting the famous Bow Barracks, have in many ways retained Western habits and customs, their practices are often reminiscent of the colonial past. The psychological and social need for a clear identity led to the gradual development of a sense of belonging and community pride. The community, in general, survives as a self-sustaining minority within the larger Indian community through a complex network of social organizations created long ago. The image of Peter Augustine Trotter is presented as the “jiving” stereotype. In his book Midnight’s Orphans (2006), Glenn D’Cruz states that “in India, the jive is emblematic of the Anglo-Indian attitude towards life. It

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signifies a specifically western outlook that embraces liberal attitudes towards sex, alcohol and gambling” (12). In The Trotter-Nama, Sealy writes, Peter Augustine Trotter, failed priest, lived on toddy and music. Vocally a baritone, he naturally fought shy of singing and preferred to play, having lost none of his enthusiasm for the organ . . . He became an organ tuner. Unwelcome at the Roman Catholic church, where his reputation preceded him, he attended the various Protestant churches by rotation and might have become a permanent organist at any one of them had it not been for his habit of turning up drunk and making no distinction between sacred and secular music. (409)

However, Sealy establishes the stereotype deliberately to debunk the prevalent idea that Anglo-Indians are people prone to alcoholism, indolence, and moral laxity. Peter’s tumultuous marriage to Lucia, a woman of different religion and caste causes the Trotter family to alienate them. Peter’s drinking habit exacerbates the problem but Sealy focuses on the social perceptions which lead to prejudices. The family’s rejection of Peter is precipitated by his decision to marry Lucia. Alex, who wishes to marry Suchita, a “converted Hindu from Bengal,” realizes that it would also cause a strong emotional response from the family and they would find reasons to ostracize him. Sealy contemplates the axiological assumptions predetermining the opposition of “self vs. other” and the diverse peculiarities functioning in various sociocultural codes. The Anglo-Indian community has often been disinclined toward intercultural marriages, with the community remaining rigorously insular in the years postindependence. But Neil O’Brien in his presidential address to the Anglo-Indian General Body (1998) defended his community by explaining that this was due to an urgent need to “maintain their individuality.” O’Brien stated that “our Community has maintained its identity through endogamous marriages (though there are exogamous marriages now). But identity remains; social practices that are very special to our Community continue.” Inter-community marriages have significantly increased in the past few decades, leading to a crossing of cultural boundaries. Marriage outside the community is not frowned upon as it was previously. However, Nancy Brennan in her study of Anglo-Indians living in Madras argues that “these marriages diminish the Anglo-Indian way of life and are seen as a threat” (252). Sealy emphasizes the fact that ambivalence exists on both sides and while Anglo-Indians have been victims of social marginalization, there are also psychological barriers which the minority community experiences in their acceptance of those whom they perceive as the “unsympathetic” majority. The Anglo-Indian community in India, though open to dialogue between the group and others, has often been averse to intrusions in the intimate or private domain of marriages and family. While they embraced an optimistic and

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expansive rhetoric, the community like any other has been zealous in their espousal of cultural particularism. The technique of stereotyping is therefore used by Sealy to subtly indicate a more complex process of isolationism and operation of prejudices. In this respect, Sealy’s novel The Trotter-Nama may be read as “a kind of corrective to that whole misguided view . . . written by somebody on the inside” (Irwin Allan Sealy with Arvindar Singh 93). The Anglo-Indians gradually came to acknowledge their Indian compatriots as kinsmen and developed a sense of brotherhood. While wider processes of differentiation persisted even after independence, there was also a fundamental need to identify with the nation as an “imagined community,” that is, “regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship” (Anderson 7). In the novel, Trotter’s funeral is attended by several others belonging to diverse communities. The Great Trotter was buried that same night. Father Angelico came to sprinkle water and dab holy oil, and Hakim Ahmed read aloud from the Koran. Looking on were Rose Llewellyn Bibi, Farida Wilkinson Bibi, Yakub Khan, Fonseca, and Jarman Begum. Gathered around the plinth in the wavering yellow light, they were a curious company. (Sealy 104)

The eclectic gathering mourns the Great Trotter’s death and the members see their lives reflected in each other. They remember the Great Trotter’s life and think of themselves as kindred souls. In The Nation and Its Fragments (1993), Partha Chatterjee observes that the crucial break in colonial and postcolonial histories occurs when the nation-state moves beyond the agency of colonial rule and the realm of disciplinary power is challenged by the idea of community. The people construct their national identities within a different narrative, that of the community. They do not have the option of doing this within the domain of bourgeois civil institutions. They create, consequently, a very different domain—a cultural domain—marked by the distinctions of the material and the spiritual, the inner and the outer. (237)

Sealy represents the presence of the Anglo-Indian people within this “cultural domain” and the possibility of different, contextually defined communities coexisting productively and creatively. By rendering a historical account of the community through a postmodern parody, Sealy reclaims the experiences of Anglo-Indians and implicitly critiques the “grand narrative” of the nation. Sealy’s novel, though parodic

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and comical in its impulse, encourages a relativist notion about history by expressing the struggle for inclusion and representation encountered by the minority community in a multicultural, liberal democracy. Dipesh Chakrabarty argues that “democracy requires hitherto neglected groups to tell their histories” (100) and Sealy tells the story of this overlooked minority group through literature. Through a shared, rational understanding of historical evidence, Sealy imaginatively recreates a narrative of identity. Dipesh Chakrabarty provides an alternative understanding of the term “minority” and suggests that minority and majority are, as we know, not natural entities; they are constructions. The popular meaning of the words “majority” and “minority” are statistical. But the semantic fields of the words contain another idea: of being a “minor” or a “major” figure in a given context. (100)

While cultural identification is a prominent concern within the Anglo-Indian community residing in India today, they are constantly seeking for new ways of mutual understanding regarding sets of issues currently facing each thinking member of the national culture that is stricken by a proclivity toward consolidation and hegemonic integration. Shifting from their marginal position, the Anglo-Indians are exploring the new principles that may allow for their participation in the common cultural space, while simultaneously preserving their freedom and individuality. Sealy’s novel reminds the readers that a relation of contemporaneity exists between the historical past of the community and the present and expresses itself ontologically when interventions of modern bureaucracies and other instruments of government in the collective life of the people raise the fear of exclusionary politics and create anxieties in a representative democracy. In December, 2019, the Indian Parliament passed the 126th Amendment Bill ending the provision for the nomination of two Anglo-Indians to the Lower House and assemblies. Although the Bill was unanimously passed by both houses, members of parliament such as Derek O’Brien and Ghulam Nabi Azad expressed their disapproval, stating that it had committed injustice toward the minority community. An article published in the national daily The Hindu, on December 12, 2019, reported that while all members supported the Bill, they also asked the government to reconsider scrapping of the nomination of Anglo-Indians to legislatures. Derek O’Brien of the TMC [Trinamool Congress Party] cited the contribution of the Anglo-Indian community, saying that he was speaking as a member of the community for the first time in 15 years.

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The predicament of accommodating, containing, or managing minority groups has plagued the nation since its inception, but the minority question remains pertinent even today, particularly when observed through the lens of the protection of minority identities and rights in India. The recent parliamentary debate over the scrapping of the provision related to the AngloIndian community in Article 366 of the Constitution has brought to light the politics of equal recognition in the public sphere. The Anglo-Indians residing in India, though few in number, continue to be an important part of the social make-up and the nomination of two members of the community to the parliament may have ensured continued visibility and opportunities of interacting with state institutions and agencies through political representation. The nature and character of the public domain, its ideological orientation, and capacity to influence or legitimate state action appears even more profoundly at present, but the Anglo-Indian community, by virtue of its diminished numerical strength, continue to partake in the struggle for recognition. Naturally, the recent changes in Constitutional law introduced by the government may be perceived by the community as a political measure which implicitly calls for the submergence of its cultural distinctiveness and political outlook in the sphere of consensus, coalescence, and conformity. The majoritarian cultural impulses expressed through the emerging activities in the public arena could appear threatening to minority groups and a glimpse into history may reveal the legitimacy of such concerns for the Anglo-Indian community in India.

WORKS CITED Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, 2006. Anthony, Frank. Britain’s Betrayal in India: The Story of the Anglo-Indian Community. Allied Publishers, 1969. Anthony, Frank. “Presidential Address.” The Anglo-Indian Review 39, no. 57 (November–December 1966). Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994. Brennan, Nancy. The Anglo-Indians of Madras. PhD dissertation, Syracuse University, 1979. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton University Press, 2000. Chatterjee, Partha. The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton University Press, 1993. D’Cruz, Glenn. Midnight’s Orphans: Anglo-Indians in Post/Colonial Literature. Peter Lang, 2006. Dover, Cedric. Half Caste. Martin Secker and Warburg Ltd., 1937.

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O’Brien, Neil. “Presidential Address to the Anglo-Indian General Body.” The Review (October 1998): 6–7. “Parliament Approves 10 Year Extension to SC, ST Reservation; Anglo-Indian Nomination Dropped.” The Hindu. 12 December 2019. https://www​.thehindu​.com​ /news​/national​/parliament​-approves​-10​-year​-extension​-to​-sc​-st​-reservation​-anglo​ -indian​-nomination​-dropped​/article30289758​.ece. Accessed 20 November 2020. Sealy, Irwin Allan. The Trotter-Nama: A Chronicle. Knopf, 1998. Sealy, Irwin Allan, and Arvindar Singh. “Irwin Allan Sealy with Arvindar Singh.” India International Centre Quarterly 40, no. 2 (2013): 91–104. Sen, Sudarshana. Anglo-Indian Women in Transition: Pride, Prejudice and Predicament. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. The Constitution of India. Part XIX- Miscellaneous- Arts. 365–366, pp. 235–236. https://www​.india​.gov​.in​/sites​/upload​_files​/npi​/files​/coi​_part​_full​.pdf. Accessed on 20 November 2020. “The English in India.” The Calcutta Review. 1, no. 1 (May-August 1844): Art. 1, Sanders and Cones.

Chapter 3

The Traces of Dystopian in Postindependent Manipuri Poetry Neelima B. and Saji Mathew

Manipuri poetry has a tradition of almost 2,000 years. But it is in the last decade that mainland India managed to have a glimpse at Manipuri poetry. The primary source of this study is an anthology of Manipuri poetry. Dancing Earth, an anthology of contemporary poetry from Northeast India, was edited by two poet translators Robin S. Ngangom and Kynpham Singh Nongkynrih. This anthology contains English translations of poetry from the Manipuri/ Meitei language by several poets. The Bhakti movement, colonialism, and Christian missionary reforms continuously rearranged the very cultural and literary history of Manipur. As the early influences were primarily Christian and English, the postindependent modern Manipuri poetry identifies postcolonial and post-human anxieties. Manipuri poetry reflected on the questionable accession of Manipur to the Indian union, tensions with the new political arrangement, the subsequent militant resistance movement, and the counter-insurgency measures by armed forces. Manipuri poetry recurrently revolves around a dystopian landscape that is fundamentally destructive. Here, the culture is highly degraded, the environment is ruined and civilization is abandoned. In this wasteland, feminine presence often emerges as a sign of cultural revival against the masculine narratives of militarization and nationalism. A dystopian society functions on the edges of death, confusion, and chaos. The poems of R. K. Bhubonsana, Yumlembam Ibomcha Singh, Thangjam Ibopishak Singh, and Robin S. Ngangom present such a disturbed tone. Their poetry deletes what is human where frustrated people transform themselves into beasts or half-humans. Manipur means “The Jeweled Land.” Jawaharlal Nehru called Manipur “The Jewel of India” (Devi 501). The reason for such a remark should have been the geography of blue hills, green valleys, and deep forests. The landscape itself is enough to evoke the imagination of any ruler. However, 43

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Manipur is also known for the regular internal conflicts and animosities within the state. The Northeast region comprising eight states Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tripura, and Sikkim has been one of the most militarized regions of India since independence. There is a sense of anger against the institutional and constitutional mechanisms in India. The same has been the basis of much of the unrest and violence in the area. The popular image of this region is that of the countless insurgencies. It has strengthened the alienation that exists between the people of Northeast and “mainland” India. Therefore, geographically as well as culturally, the hills are alienated from the plains. Geographically Manipur was bounded by Nagaland to the north, Mizoram to the south, Assam to the west, and Burma lies to its east. Its people include Meitei, Kuki, Naga, and Pangal, mostly subaltern community, who speak Sino-Tibetan languages. In Manipur, Meithei-lon (Meitei language or Manipuri) is the common language adopted by all tribes for communication. Mostly, Manipuri literature was written in the Meitei language. During the British Raj, the kingdom of Manipur was one of the princely states. It entered the Indian union in 1949. Manipuri people resented the forced merger of their land with the Indian union that denied them an autonomous political space. Two thousand years of Manipuri history have not been indifferent to the voices of resistance against the establishment. The first and second Nupi Lan wars in 1904 and 1939, mainly led by women, were waged against British imperialism. The peasants and women of Manipur were known for their history of subaltern resistance. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Communist ideology spread by leaders like Hijam Irabot strengthened the Manipuri sense of freedom. Irom Chanu Sharmila, a Manipuri woman, fasted for 16 years (2000–2016) to repeal AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act). She began her hunger strike in November 2000. It was a protest against the massacre in Malom where Assam Rifles, an Army wing, shot at pointblank range eight people sitting at a bus stop. This hunger strike has become the longest political fast known in human history. In July 2004, 12 Meira Paibi (Women’s Collective, literally “torchbearers”) women protested in the nude outside the Kangla Fort of Manipur. It demanded justice for Thangjam Manorama Devi raped and murdered by Assam Rifles. Like Sharmila, these nude protesters fielded their body as a weapon. Sharmila refused food and Meira Paibies clothing, a significant social norm attached to the adult female body (Gill 224). These women reclaimed agency and asserted their right to be respected as autonomous subjects. Those voices of resistance against state terrorism coming from women and other disadvantaged groups are often unheard. Indian nationalism is not merely an innocently perceived object of a historical construct but also a movement, an establishment, a cultural interest, an ideology, and ultimately a state. And it excludes a large number of people.

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THE NATION, NATIONALISM, AND PEOPLE The crucial point is that no nationalism is entirely homogenous. But this phenomenon has always been subjected to the political demands of different periods. After the Second World War, nationalism meant anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism with its promising commitment to building national solidarities across ethnicity, tribe, race, religion, and language. In much of Asia and Africa, nationalism has been identified with envisaging a strong nation-state, modern and secular, based upon equal rights of citizenship. Many of them later ended up erecting filthy dictatorships similar to colonial states. In India, the idea of creating a united nation in a religiously, linguistically, and culturally plural society came to be associated with the notions of secular democracy and visions of rapid industrialization. At the same time, between the early 1970s and 1980s, nationalism and the idea of “nation” itself started falling into terrible dispute. And the fictive unity of a nation began to disturb the symbols of unity and development. Benedict Anderson’s book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983) has been phenomenally influential in its formulation that national identity is very far from being something that flows in people’s blood. Anderson ironically argued that “nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our times” (3). He signaled the process of appropriating this so-called legitimacy of nationalism through various print media. Anderson demonstrated that nations are not determinate products of given sociological conditions. According to him, in Europe and elsewhere, communities of national characteristics are imagined into existence. But, who did imagine this community? All postcolonial nations are left to imagine very little. People who felt that they have a share in imagination were altogether a privileged class of people. Thus, the Indian nation in its formation itself suffered the burden of many modular forms of nationalisms available in Europe and America. In the essay “Whose Imagined Community” (1996), Partha Chatterjee writes: History, it would seem, has decreed that we in the postcolonial world shall only be perpetual consumers of modernity. Europe and the Americas, the only true subjects of history, have thought out on our belief not only the script of colonial enlightenment and exploitation but also that of our anti-colonial resistance and post-colonial misery. Even our imaginations must remain forever colonized. (216)

Identifying a community is again problematic. The character of nationalism emerged earlier in history before the formation of a community. At least in India, a homogenous community was absent to imagine a nation to its requirements. In the essay “The Imaginary Institution of India” (Subaltern Studies VII), Sudipta Kaviraj writes about this historical confusion:

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The responsibility is born before the agent. And contrary to what is said in the common hagiography of the Indian nation, what this community will be is a matter of some confusion and occasionally of dispute. (10)

And many writers of the early stages of nationalism speculated on a Hindu or Muslim community filling this role through alienation of a significant other. It has been at the cost of the exclusion of different religious, ethnic, and political communities. However, what we imagine as the collective community which bleeds for nationalism is essentially European and colonial. The language used in the narrative of nationalism is highly contaminating as far as the discourse is concerned. In another sense, words preoccupy the meanings as they, in turn, define what is national, anti-national, colonial and imperial, and so on. Intellectuals and national leaders such as Gandhi and Nehru, who had a comprehensive view of Indian culture, had known for doing things with words. Words were the terrain on which most of the politics was done. Hence, the dams were the temples of modern India, Kashmir was the paradise on earth, and, Manipur was the jewel of India. Even though the language of nationalism metaphorically elevated the status of particular regions, the reality was not that poetic. The term “Northeast” is meaningless and inappropriate. The expression entered the Indian lexicon in 1971 (Gill 31). Like other directional place names (e.g., the Far East and the Middle East), Northeast India reflects an external point-of-view (Baruah). This gaze from outside is a derogative view. It views Northeast as the other that was exotic, violent, and immature. In none of the local languages of northeastern states does exist a word that groups together eight states. Eight states are different in terms of culture, ethnicity, and internal problems (Baruah). An India internally defined did not exist before the nineteenth century. The name India does not create the image of a singular India. The same is the case with the Northeast. Unlike the place names that evoke cultural or historical memory, the term “Northeast” is not the emotional focus of a collective, political community. Moreover, Northeast India’s troubled postcolonial history cannot go along with the standard narrative of democracy in India. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE LITERARY TRADITION IN MANIPUR Manipuri poetry encompasses nature, myth, violence, despair, and a peculiar sense of survival instinct. Paradoxical realities form the social and political texture of poems. These are satirical with a fearful element of surreal complexity. The literature of the region has unique tastes, despite the confusion of

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tribes and sub-tribes, cultures, and languages. The Assamese, the Manipuries, and the Bengalis of Tripura had their distinct scripts. Their written literature came to exist in and around the fifteenth century. The advent of missionary and education further helped the literature to flourish. The significant literary influence on the majority of tribes was exclusively Christian and English. However, the taste of Assamese, Manipuri, and Bengali literature is entirely different partly because of the contact with Sanskrit and Hindi literature (Ngangom and Nongkynrih X). Before inventing a written tradition, Manipuri poetry, like most of the literature, had a tradition of oral poetry for centuries. For convenience, Manipuri poetry can be divided into three periods: early Manipuri poetry, medieval Manipuri poetry, and modern/contemporary Manipuri poetry. Most of the early poems were in the old Manipuri language, written anonymously in limited syllables. The poetry written in the medieval period, from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century, influenced Manipuri culture. During this period, Ramayana, Mahabharata, and many texts were written in the language. The twentieth century was considered the Renaissance of Manipuri poetry. After the British occupation in 1871, Western education transformed Manipuri sensibility. The Meitei community began to experiment with the possibilities of cultural expression in their literary works. Some of the poets included in this early modern stage are Arambam Dorendrajit, Hawaibam Nabadwipchandra, Hijam Anganghal, Ashangbam Minaketan Singh, Khumanthem Ibohal, and Rajkumar Shitaljit Singh. The style of writing manifested in this period was the type of Romanticism in English literature. Poets used mellifluous words as they also maintained limited syllables in a metrical form. This simple, poetic structure was broken by a new generation of poets. Elangbam Nilakanta Singh who wrote the famous poem “Manipur” (1949) is the father of modern Manipuri poetry (Nongmaithem 71). This poem signaled the moral disintegration of Manipuri society and culture as a result of corrupted politics. In early the 1970s, there came out poets such as Rajkumar Madhubir, Thangjam Ibopishak Singh, and Yulembam Ibomcha Singh to enrich modern Manipuri poetry. They were writers dissatisfied with the monotonous voice in poetry. The imagery they presented in their poems reflected the corrupted social system and political instability. A sense of anger and frustration were the driving forces of their poetry. The modernist tone and un-rhythmic sensibility in their poetry rejuvenated the Manipuri poetry scene. The poets for this study come from the modern era of Manipuri poetry. Most of them have produced significant works in the 1970s and 1980s. Relying on the English poems translated from Manipuri is a kind of limitation and a possibility. It is a limitation because, in translation, the language characteristics are often missed. Yet, the English language adds a universal color that

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helps to read these poems along with the resistance poetry written in other languages. Many poets share postmodern concerns and anxieties. However, their modern sensibility is the focus of this study. The selected poets for this study include R. K. Bhubonsana (1951–), Yumlembam Ibomcha Singh (1949–), Thangjam Ibopishak Singh (1948–), Robin S. Ngangom (1959–), and Naorem Bidyasagar (1972–). The commonality that relates them is their similar poetic experience which foretells violence as everyday reality. Resistance poetry is known for its loud voice. Manipuri poetry represents a frozen state of affairs. Its world has been metamorphosed into something strange and cold. In such a Kafkaesque landscape, poetry imagines a strong voice. This voice is both involving and uninvolving at the same time. Subsequently, the poetry falls into irregular structure and word patterns. As noted earlier, Northeast poetry is the child of its historical conflicts and political events. A writer from the Northeast cannot have the luxury of “verbal wizardry and wooly aesthetics” (Ngangom and Nongkynrih XI–XII). There is a collective love for the land and its people. The poets are also unhappy about the political complications that people suffer. The land of jewels is also the “land of half-humans.” Ibopishak Singh’s poem “The Land of Half Humans” (2003) foretells that for six months just the head without body lives and for another six months the body without head rules. Ngangom and Nongkynrih term this terror-stricken environment in the poems as “the banality of corruption and the banality of terror” (Dancing Earth XII). Terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and the growth of militant nationalism form the background for the poems. This form of “poetry of witness” adds a sense of immediacy and vividness to the literary tradition of Manipur (Ngangom and Nongkynrih XIII).

“THE LAND OF HALF-HUMANS”: THE SURREAL AND THE DYSTOPIAN IN MANIPURI POETRY Primarily, Manipuri poetry springs from the cruel contradictions of the place. The hills of Manipur and the plains of India are in continuous conflict. The existence of paradoxical worlds such as old and the modern, deep forests and city streets, and Indian and Manipuri makes Manipur vulnerable to a tragic fate. In poetry, disillusionment, trauma, and tragic element have evolved into a kind of inevitable farce. In poetry, the inclination toward the surreal is a reaction against the absurdity of violence and death. A loud laugh is more crushing than a howl of agony (Ibomcha Singh, “Ibomcha and the Poetics”). Not only Indian nationalism but often Indian literature, as it is the umbrella term given to the literature produced from India, also does not include much of the literary tradition of Northeast in its national imagination. Many

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significant poetry anthologies edited by Ranjit Hoskote, Jeet Thayil, and Eunice de Souza have no single voice from Manipur (Venkatakrishnan 2012). The Indian-ness in Manipuri poetry is not very vocal. Manipuri poets do not identify themselves with the Indian scenario of poetry writing. They find a common sensibility of resistance across modern-world poetry. In Manipuri poetry, Ngangom and Nongkynrih identify a universal tone similar to modernists such as Federico Garcia Lorca, Giorgos Seferis, Tudor Arghezi, and Pablo Neruda (XI). Yumlembam Ibomcha Singh, Thangjam Ibopishak, and Robin S. Ngangom have produced their significant poetry in postindependence India. They did not understand what India has celebrated in the name of independence. Manipuri literary culture dismisses the myth of Indian imagery that is monolithic. Their poetic expression oscillates between the dystopian and surreal tones. Ibomcha Singh was one among the early poets who transformed his lament into a satire. His poetic persona does not indulge in a victim point-of-view as it witnesses the events. This peculiar sense of observation influenced the poetic sensibility of many later poets. Ibomcha Singh’s poetry constructs a poetic universe where bullets turn into grapes, the muzzle of a gun into the caress of a young woman, gunfire into notes of a sitar, wives into moles, and lovers into goddesses (“Story of a Dream”). Here, dreams are nightmares. Ibomcha Singh explores such themes skillfully. His poem “Story of a Dream” begins with the slaughter of the innocents. The poet exclaims surrealistically: “How happy I am being shot /this bullet shooting into my mouth/ is also a mellow grape” (Ibomcha Singh). In the beginning, the poet dreams: “I was having a dream; a very pleasant one/ it began almost like a nightmare” (Ibomcha Singh). Slowly, the situation escalates: “bodies of children lay about/ Like rats run over by vehicles” (Ibomcha Singh). The blood has made his soles sticky. The poet has seen the worst. A “mad laugh” is the only weapon that the poet has to fight reality. With the appearance of such a topsy-turvy world, the poet’s dream voraciously accumulates more images: gun showers raisins, almonds, and grapes; the sound of gunfire resembles flute and sitar; men and women happily meet at the marketplace (Ibomcha Singh). The everydayness of reality is brutal. Though hilarious dreams are possible, the eventuality of bloodshed and death are unavoidable. In the last lines, the poet did not want to awake. The beginning and the ending are the same, “Who else would dream such a dream” (Ibomcha Singh). So, there is a circular flow of everyday events that returns to where it has begun. Violence never stops. It returns and repeats. In Ibomcha Singh’s poem “Derived from a Puppy,” he mocks the conventional notions of heroism. In his world, life is invaluable and survival is nothing but a daily act of heroism. The poem is a surreal treatment of what happens between a husband and wife. By overnight, the husband transforms

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into a tiger. He has already confessed to his wife that he can no more live among dogs, foxes, and monkeys: “How could we live as whelps/ among these dogs, foxes and monkeys? / I will turn into a strong and big tiger” (Ibomcha Singh, Dancing Earth 124). The next morning, the wife complains that her tiger-husband cries not like a tiger but like a cat. The human form is unbearable. The human shape is only a myth where escape always culminates in an animal with a cat’s cry and a tiger’s body. In Ibomcha Singh’s “Worshipping Imoinu,” it is the wife who transforms into a mole: “She growls daily that she wants to become a mole/ unable to bear her nagging I gave away a hundred rupees/ telling her she can be either a mole or an egret” (Ibomcha Singh, Dancing Earth 126). The wife had transcended the shape and poverty of being human. Meanwhile, her husband engages in the usual talk on AFSPA and Irom Sharmila. Then, the husband returning home finds that his wife has turned into a toad. Overnight, she once again transforms herself into a drongo. By morning, she becomes a goddess. The contrast between the world of husband and wife is also a kind of prototype of Manipuri society. Women have many roles to play. Men are subterranean creatures who often discuss politics in their comfort zones. And the strange and interesting thing is that women are the more aggressive participants in Manipuri politics. It is easy to trace out many political movements led by Manipuri women (for instance, Two Nupi Lan wars, the Meira Paibi movement, Irom Sharmila, and the naked protest of Manipuri mothers). Women are at the forefront of resistance because the system hits them severely. When men discuss politics, women act it out. Eventually, on Imoinu day, the woman in the poem becomes a goddess. Imoinu is the Meitei goddess of prosperity. The husband feels a kind of discomfort at the fact that he had to worship his wife. The male voice represents the confusion that arises from the gender question. Thangjam Ibopishak Singh’s “Dali, Hussain, or Odor of Dream, Color of Wind” shares the similar anxious concern found in Ibomcha’s “Worshipping Imoinu.” In Ibopishak’s poem, the wife has transformed into someone with a peepal tree waist. Then the poetic voice revisits his earlier likeness for peepal trees: “How can I claim now/that I like peepal trees?” (Ibopishak Singh, Dancing Earth 137). It is structured in long lyrical stanzas where every emotion is in extreme pitch as it revolves around the fear of violence. In the last stanza, the poet boasts that he loves to see every citizen of Imphal walking with a peepal tree growing on their heads. He is not much surprised by his wife’s transformation. The situation informs us of human beings, incapable of wondering at miracles, are castrated themselves to be mere witnesses. Nothing surprises them as they are in a permanent state of shock. In Ibopishak Singh’s “The Land of Half Humans,” the homeland is a land of half-humans where for six months people are living without body and the

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next six months without a head: “Has anyone seen a land inhabited by these people/No I have; it’s not a folktale; / I’ve not only seen but have been to that land” (Ibopishak Singh). The image of the half-humans conveys the picture of a society hanging at the edge of degradation. People have stopped thinking of human in a corruptive system that demands lifetime loyalty in exchange for traumatic memories. The women give birth to their children through the mouth. Their language is the language of Man. A recurring theme in poems is that of humans transfiguring into birds and beasts. Being an animal is intended to be more natural than being human and violent. Jatinga is a place in Assam known for the “Suicide of Birds.” In Jatinga, there is a phenomenon where birds die as they are attracted to an inclination of light. In R. K. Bhubonsana’s poem “Jatinga,” dead are not birds but humans. Here, “house is only holes without walls” (Bhubonsana, Dancing Earth 56). And death is a frequent trader who does not discriminate between birds and men. Bhubonsana and many other poets portray nature as it has been the other side of the conflict. Romantic images such as moon, river, beautiful woman, and the valley would not last as the bullets and bombs enter the poetic scene. Bhubonsana’s “Bullet” recreates the speed and sharpness of the bullet through words. The amplitude of the voice increases toward the end. Its brutal flow from one image to the next, in a single stretch, is similar to the thrust of a bullet from a gun. The poem is articulated in a single breath as if one’s life is short and shot by a death sentence. The encouraging tone addressing the bullet in the beginning, “you should keep going” (Bhubonsa, Dancing Earth 58–59), is sarcastic concerning a bullet’s journey. Death happens not only by a bullet shot at one’s breast but also by one’s lips’ silence. Here, the idea is that of death at a gunpoint even before realizing it. The victim could not comprehend his death. Those lips would have realized the end but the brain could not. The poet placed the word “lips” between “breast” and “bullet.” Between “breast” and “bullet” exists only seconds. There exist words between “breast” and “bullet.” Time flies. Within minimal seconds bullet annihilates lips, utterances, words, and thereby the world. In Naorem Bidyasagar’s “Blood Smeared Dawn,” a personified bloodsmeared dawn enters the courtyard after awakening from a grave. In the second stanza, the poet remembers the blood-smeared life that everyday newspaper records. The ordinary people are target to the “blind bullets” and “a dead moon/ is hanging precariously/ near the chamber of the barrels of guns” (Bidyasagar, Dancing Earth 63). The confused poetic voice asks a few rhetorical questions regarding the fate of the people and claims that the hills are in chains: “To whom shall we complain about this? / It’s because the land of hills has been in chains” (64). The term “ordinary folk” indicates a community that suffers. This community assumes a rebellious tone. It

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mocks the idea of freedom: “To the lips of freedom, thirsty only for blood without sacrificing a handful of blood” (64). It is an irony that those who are free ask for more blood from people in the chain. Ultimately, the freedom that the Indian republic has gained is also a kind of diplomatic negotiation to torture and alienate its people. The poet concludes his words in pain and disappointment. The meaning of freedom gets distorted: “Friend, freedom and gore/Are a single entity/ only the names differ” (64). Here, the meaning of freedom varies. It oscillates between the official interpretation and people’s feelings. Almost similar emotions are there in Bidyasagar’s poem “Flag of a New Day.” The poem begins with an image of a mother who writes poetry using her children’s blood. The poet states: “But a poem is not a bullet” (Bidyasagar, Dancing Earth 65). Life is impossible for a poem in an environment where nothing survives. This question is significant in the context of Manipuri poetry. The Manipuri mother in the poem has seen her children exchanging guns in the place of greeting cards (65). Her children are attired in red. This flag is at least not the Indian tricolor flag. The seven colors might have been the seven sister states whose individualistic character is the product of their very social, cultural, and political situations. Mother’s ragged phanek— phanek is a sarong-like dress worn by Manipuri woman— is the only thing left for making a flag. Tradition has almost ragged and lost. Robin S. Ngangom identifies his poetry with similar contradictions. Ngangom invented his material for aesthetic resistance from the surroundings of violence. He writes: But my poetry seems to be drifting towards something “more.” It is no longer a mere diary of private incidents, or a confessional. I’ve been trying to come to terms with this change of heart, which is even more distressing than the shattered love of a woman. And I have perhaps opened my eyes to insistent realities and have stepped out of the proverbial ivory tower. If anyone should ask now why my poems do not speak of my land’s breathtaking landscapes; its sinuous dances, its darkmaned women I can only think of Neruda’s answer: “come and see the blood in the street.” (Ngangom 2005, pp. 171)

Being passionately self-reflexive, his poetry represents an individual whose existence is unknown to the universe because he lives somewhere in the corner of the third world. An abandoned sense of home is frequent in Ngangom’s poetry. The vegetation crudely assumes the nuances of terror, fear, and death: leaves do not respond to the seasons, the heart expects winter rain, dreams turn to rust, lust breaks the branches of night, and the fragrance of wild rose is lost (Ngangom, Dancing Earth 198–199). Slowly the texture of the poem exposes more concrete images which were non-negotiable in everyday

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reality. The poem “When You Do Not Return” represents an abandoned land of reptiles, gunfire, bullets, and flies (199). The poet foretells another era of chaos: “The barbwire/ of the day encloses us as we enter the era/ of the assassin” (199). In one of Ngangom’s poems, “To Pacha,” he pays tribute to Pacha Meitei, a Manipuri writer. Invoking the spirit of Pacha’s poetry, Ngangom writes that poetry must have a very natural death in their homeland. Pacha and Ngangom, the writers from two generations, rekindle their connection through pain and poetry. Pacha’s death reminds the death of many people who have lost their lives in troubled times: “and leering death walks your homeland . . . / death is callous, Pacha, in the land of your innocent birth” (Ngangom, Dancing Earth 205). Ngangom writes about the poetry that survives in between the gun of terrorism and the gun of state: My home is a gun pressed against both temples a knock on a night that has not ended a torch lit long after the theft a sonnet about body counts undoubtedly raped definitely abandoned in a tryst with destiny. (“My Invented Land”)

Observing Ngangom’s anti-poetic style, K. Satchidanandan in “Voices from the Hills” observes that after the holocaust it has become easier to make culture and murder coexist (99). The footprints of the holocaust are the hallmark of Manipuri poetry. Starting from 1947, the experience of living at gunpoint has maintained the worst form of the holocaust. The project of nationalism has a role in maintaining such a holocaust. As the culture and murder coexist, a chaotic everydayness emerges in the cultural scene. Fear of the worst and the subsequent bitterness creates a feeling of menace. The poetic process that has a shared history of pain and mutilation assumes a strange voice. The surreal treatment of events encompasses the angst in its extreme sense where a laugh is a mad cry reaching nowhere. The political events that followed soon after the War, the withdrawal of the British from India, the questionable accession of the kingdom of Manipur to the Indian union, the disillusionment with the new political arrangement, and the subsequent militant resistance movement are the spirit of the Manipuri literature in the postindependence period. The poetry that has been published postindependence is known for its rage. Above all, the dystopian element stands out in Manipuri poetry.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Revised Edition ed., Verso, 2006. Baruah, Sanjib. “India and Its Northeast: an Interview with Sanjib Baruah.” Interview by Rishav Thakur. BOARDERLINES, 26 August 2020, https://www​.borderlines​ -cssaame​.org​/posts​/2020​/8​/22​/int​ervi​ewsa​njib​baruah. Bidyasagar, Naorem. “A Brief History of Manipuri Poetry.” Translated by K. Kulladhwaja. http://yogish​.co​.in​/wpcontent​/Nisyandan​/Manipuri​%20Poetry​%20Special​/ Bidyasagar1​.pdf. Chatterjee, Partha. “Whose Imagined Community.” Mapping the Nation, edited by Gopal Balakrishnan and Benedict R. Anderson, reprint ed., Verso, 1996, pp. 214–225. Devi, Khwairakpam Renuka. “Representation of the Pre- Vaishnavite Culture of the Meiteis: ‘Cheitharol Kumpapa’ of Manipur.” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 72 (2011): 501–508. Gill, Preeti, editor. The Peripheral Centre: Voices From India’s Northeast. Zubaan, 2010. Ibomcha Singh, Yumlembam. “Ibomcha and the Poetics of the ‘Huge Mad Laugh.’” Interview by Robin S. Ngangom. Poetry International Archives, 15 February 2010, www.poetryinternational. ———. “Story of a Dream.” Translated by Robin S. Ngangom. Poetry International Archives, 2003, www.poetryinternational. Ibopishak Singh, Thangjam. “The Land of the Half-Humans.” Translated by Robin S. Ngangom. Poetry International Archives, 2003, www.poetryinternational. Kaviraj, Sudipta. “The Imaginary Institution of India.” In Subaltern Studies No. 7: Writings on South Asian History and Society. edited by Partha Chatterjee and Gyanendra Pandey. Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 1–39. Ngangom, Robin S. “My Invented Land.” Poetry International Archives, 2008, www. poetryinternational. Ngangom, Robin S, and Kynpham S Nongkynrih, editors. Dancing Earth: An Anthology of Poetry from North East India. Penguin Books India, 2009. ———. “Poetry in the Time of Terror.” Indian Literature 49, no. 3 (227) (2005): 168–174. Nongmaithem, Anuradha. “Literature and Society: A Glimpse into the World of Manipur Literature.” International Journal of English Language, Literature and Humanities(IJELLH), VIII, no. IV (August 2016). Rehman, Teresa. Mothers of Manipur. Zubaan Books, 2017. Satchidanandan, K. “Voices from the Hills.” FRONTLINE, 14 July 2013, pp. 95–99. Singh, L. Damodar. “Post-Independence Manipuri Poetry.” Indian Literature 20, no. 1 (1977): 27–36. doi: www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/24157545. Venkatakrishnan, Preetika. “Contemporary Poetry in English from Manipur.” FRONTISPIECE-Search of Freedoms, February 2012, nelit​​revie​​w​.blo​​gspot​​.com/​​2012/​​02​ /fr​​ontis​​piece​​-in​-s​​earch​​-of​-​f​​reedo​​ms​.ht​​m.

Chapter 4

Cultural Refrigeration through Cinema in the Age of Globalization From Hollywood to Nollywood Stephen Ogheneruro Okpadah

The discovery and exploration of the tomb of King Tutankhamun of Egypt in 1922, perhaps the greatest archeological discovery of all time, sparked a global debate and interest in research into the ancient civilization of Egypt. This discovery was made possible with the refrigeration of the ancient civilization of Egypt which dates back to more than 3,000 years ago. This revelation affirmed the imperative of preserving cultures that are threatened with extinction. Cultural refrigeration is the documentation and preservation of practices, norms, and traditions. With the gradual subjugation of the cultures of the ex-British, French, and Portuguese colonies, also tagged minority spaces, the former colonies have begun to find ways to conserve their languages, ethics, and civilization, threatened by globalization. While the Indian Museum in Kolkata, India, the Museum of Black Civilizations in Dakar, Senegal, and the Museum of Royal Tombs of Sipan in Chiclayo, Peru, have gone a long way to achieve this, the performance art, especially film, has also made attempts at cultural documentation, which is the accumulation, classification and dissemination of information of material collected. Documenting traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions may include recording them, writing them down, taking pictures of them or filming themanything that involves recording them in a way that preserves them and could make them available for others. It is different from the traditional ways of preserving and passing on traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions within the community. (Engelbrecht, 40–41)

The scramble to document cultures to prevent them from extinction led to the popularization of the historical film genre in Hollywood and Nollywood—the 55

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American and Nigerian film industries, respectively. The popularity of these historical films that are aimed at documenting or refrigerating individuals and cultural spaces is well established in the success of these films at the box office. In fact, African heroes and incidents on the continent have become subject(s) of homilies in films. King Shaka of the Zulu people in South Africa, the Nigerian civil war that raged from 1967 to 1970, the Rwandan genocide, and among others have become sources of raw materials for filmmakers. Films such as Hotel Rwanda and Sometimes in April established a corpus of African historical cinema that explored contemporary sociopolitical issues. In a broader perspective, Escape from Sobibor archives the Machiavellian feature of the German dictator Adolf Hitler and the destruction he meted on the Jews. The questions that emanate from this, however, are how well have Hollywood and Nollywood refrigerated global cultural and historical processes? Against this backdrop, using and content analysis of select films and descriptive methodological investigative approaches, I examine the role of Hollywood and Nollywood, in cultural refrigeration. I argue that cinema has been a potent tool for the preservation of minority cultures in this age of globalization. In the chapter, the terms “cinema” and “film” are used interchangeably.

CULTURES REFRIGERATED IN TIME AND SPACES Globalization and transnationalism ignited the quest for the refrigeration of indigenous cultures since they were a threat to the existence of particular tangible and intangible cultures—especially that of the formerly colonized. The history of the preservation of indigenous cultural heritage in the twentieth century can be traced to the Second World War era. In the words of Engelbrecht, the term “cultural heritage”: Was introduced after World War Two by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The need for the safeguarding of cultural heritage arose from the fear of it being destroyed by wars, natural disasters or other negative influences. UNESCO’s Convention on the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage from 1972 was aimed at the protection of the material heritage, such as cultural monuments, historical buildings and natural sites. By December 2015, 1031 heritage elements had been included in the World Heritage List, of which there were four times more examples of cultural heritage than of natural heritage, and an additional 1631 elements on the Tentative List. (13)

Thus, UNESCO has been a major promoter of the preservation of traditions. Ethnic groups whose cultural identity is threatened by the interplay of cultures

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devised means to refrigerate their identity for posterity. An expression that is prominent in this study is the concept of the refrigeration of culture. Refrigeration is to make that which is threatened with getting spoilt to last longer. A refrigerator is a machine (either electronic, solar, or otherwise) that is used to preserve a commodity. On the other hand, culture is life. It subsumes the whole gamut of the existence of that which lives. According to Edward Taylor, “Culture is the totality of the way of life of a people” (4). This portends that refrigeration of culture is the preservation of the norms, values, traditions, and cultural component-tangible on intangible of a people with a given medium. In this chapter, the concept of refrigeration of culture or cultural refrigeration is used to refer to the practice of archiving, documenting, and/or preserving tangible and intangible cultural practices, values, and norms. The need to preserve the past and locate the present for the benefit of future generations led to the establishment of spaces where the past and the present could be stored. The dearth of storage media and spaces during the Stone and Iron Ages led to the complexity of unraveling history. In other words, most historical events from time immemorial were not passed across to the postmodern era. Most historical events were decoded with fragments of evidence gotten at one time or the other. For instance, evidence of a theater tradition in Greece in the fifth-century bce came to bear with the discovery of Aristotle’s essay titled The Poetics, fragments of “plays written by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes” (Brockett, 9). The practices at this time got lost either because of natural disasters, war invasions, or most importantly, the absence of a proper medium of documentation. In Africa, history and culture were stored in numerous forms. Inscriptions on rocks served as a good medium for documenting events. “There have been cases of non-human creatures, claimed to have lived in some geographical orbits of the earth thousands and even millions of years ago” (Jennings, 127). The much-debated tales of dinosaurs, dragons, and other creatures that are purported to have gone into extinction are premised on not only the discovery of their fossils but also on their inscription on rocks and caves. Much of the history of Egypt is popular in contemporary times with the existence of the great pyramids, the sphinx, and the tombs of the ancient kings. In fact, the historical spaces of ancient Egypt are one of the most well-preserved in history. Documenting history and culture is a way of preserving them. Paradigmatically, the lost city of Atlantis, documented in Plato’s classic, The Republic, reveals that the book medium is apt in refrigerating history, a subset of culture. William Shakespeare’s historical play Julius Caesar and Homer’s poem Iliad and the Odyssey corroborate the capacity of refrigerating heroes and events with the medium of literature. Interestingly, these literary works have found themselves into the film art. Precursory to the colonial intrusion in African societies and beyond, the indigenous museum serves a veritable purpose. It was a medium with which

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cultural artifacts were stored. In precolonial Benin, the original mask of Idia and other art works were made to commemorate heroic events. In fact, shrines and festivals were also created to serve as a medium for remembering the deeds of heroes and heroines. Paradigmatically, the Emuodje festival of the Ekakpamre people in southern Nigeria served as a medium to remember the heroic deeds of the daughter Iririakpokriamre who rescued the people of Akpamre from the brutality of the giant who hailed from Olomoro. The above tale is documented in an annual festival performance. Also, Echeha, Uloho, and the Ogba-Urhie shrines in Urhobo land in Nigeria have their respective narratives behind them. The Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria have numerous festival celebrations in which heroic events of special significance are stored. The tales of Sango, the thunder god, who also served as Alaafin (King) in Oyo; Ogun, the god of iron, who paved the way for the deities; and Obatala the god of creation, among others, are located in numerous festivals celebrated in their honor. In modern and postmodern times, Nigerian novelists, playwrights, and poets have engaged the aforementioned pantheon of Yoruba gods in their literary works. D.O. Fagunwa, Wale Ogunyemi, Wole Soyinka, and Ahmed Yerima have stored the aforementioned characters in their plays and novels. In fact, the worldview of Soyinka’s dramaturgy centers around Ogun. Dance of the Forest and Death and the Kings Horseman are hinged on the concept of heroism characterized of Ogun. There is The New Afrika Shrine, a cultural center located in Ikeja, Lagos, is a popular space of cultural archive. Here, tangible and intangible cultures, including music and photo exhibition, are archived. “The vibrant and energetic spirit of Fela is kept alive with painting and art works of him around the venue. On July 18, 2018, Emmanuel Macron, president of France became the first president to visit The New Afrika Shrine” (Okoh, 1). Recall that Fela Anikulapo Kuti was a Nigerian-born musician who was well known for his songs that are characterized by a political undertone—a shot at Nigeria’s political players, his large number of wives, his pant which serves as his only costume, and marijuana smoking culture. There is also the Felaberation engagement, an annual tourist attraction event celebrated in honor of the late Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Felaberation is characterized by music, photo exhibition, and street performances, established by Yeni Kuti, Fela’s daughter. Felaberation celebrates indigenous knowledge which “is not common knowledge as other knowledge. Indigenous knowledge is unique, and only found in a specific community with cultural and territorial base. It is an integral part of the culture and history of a local community” (Fadli, Arwendria and Hasfera, 1). There is the question of accuracy in the documentation of indigenous knowledge. For instance, Oba Ovonramwen Nogbaisi, the deposed king of the Benin people in present-day Nigeria, who was deposed by the British colonial master became a subject of discourse in popular culture. Within the literary and stage

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performance discourse, dramatists such as Ola Rotimi wrote Ovonramwen Nogbaisi to capture the life and deposition of the dogged Benin monarch. His historical play, the first attempt (to my knowledge) at historicizing the deposed Oba of Benin with the medium of drama, was a success. However, his version of the history of the Oba was soon refuted by Ahmed Yerima’s The Trials of Oba Ovonramwen. Yerima’s version was more accepted by the Nigerian, especially, Benin intelligentsia. In the words of the former director of Edo State Council for Arts and Culture Osayande Ugiagbe: When you read Ola Rotimi’s Oba Ovonranwen, you understand that it does not represent what really happened. It was not written from the true perspective of the Binis or what really happened at the time. He did not place the monarch at the pedestal. It was written to suit the British people that came into Benin without any good intention. (55)

Rotimi’s play Kurunmi a valorization of the eponymous historical figure is also a counter-homily to Wale Ogunyemi’s Ijaye. The foregoing reveals the limitation of refrigerating cultures. One must understand the politics accrued to documenting historical figures and situations. Factionalization, a merger of fact and fiction also comes to play. In the Nigerian situation, while plays such as Ahmed Yerima’s Attahiru II, Ameh Oboni the Great and Emmy Idegu Attah Igala, and Tafawa Balewa’s novel Shaihu Umar are factual accounts of heroes, their doings, and discourses on predestination, some of the happenings are laced with creative indices. Such fusion of creativity is what makes these plays different from mere autobiographies. From the foregoing, it is explicit that storytelling is a major medium through which cultures, norms, and indigenous knowledge systems of minority spaces—especially those of the colonized have not only been disseminated but also stored for future reference. In precolonial times, while storytelling was passed down orally from one generation to the other, advancements in information technology and the upsurge of social networking sites have expanded the scope of the narrative. Hence, film, radio, television, print media, and social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat fully attest to this submission. CULTURAL REFRIGERATION: THE ROLE OF HOLLYWOOD AND NOLLYWOOD Film as a communication “technology has provided a great opportunity in the preservation of Indigenous knowledge” (Fadli, Arwendria and Hasfera, 5). Hollywood, the American, and Nollywood, the Nigerian, film industry have

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done a lot in capturing the past and preserving these for posterity. Or instance, Roland Emerich’s film The Patriot is a historical account of the American revolutionary war. The events in the film recount the war against the subjugation of the United States, by mother Britain. The film is contended against by film historians and critics such as Roger Ebert, for it’s a historical stand in some of the scenes. The film portrays Britain in a negative light, especially in the scene where some of the colonized are locked up in a church and burnt. The narrative of slavery is also a recurrent subject of discourse in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, an adaptation of Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave. Rome and its antiquity were not only refrigerated in Spartacus, it was also resurrected in the film. The sexual depravity of the peoples of Rome of the fifth century bce, their blood thirst, their penchant for slavery, and so on are the subject of the discourse of Spartacus. Similarly, the life of the greatest Indian of the twentieth century, Mahatma Gandhi, is refrigerated in Richard Attenborough’s 1982 film Gandhi. This film focuses on the life of Gandhi who fought non-violently for independence against the British Raj. Justin Chadwick’s Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom refrigerates the life of Nelson Mandela, the first black president of South Africa from childhood, through his 27 years imprisonment in Robben Island. It reveals Winnie Mandela’s role in the advancement of the liberation of the black South Africans from the grip of the Apartheid regime and her husband, Mandela, from detention. Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom utilizes the English and indigenous Afrikaans and Xhosa languages. The incorporation of the two indigenous African languages stems from the filmmaker’s quest for realism and the propagation of these two languages. Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States is resurrected with Steven Spielberg’s production of Lincoln. The film which captures the American civil war and the life and death of Abraham Lincoln attests to the capacity of film in making history true to life. James Cameroon’s Titanic, one of the highest-grossed films of all time, is another good example of films in the spectrum of historical documentation. The filmmaker weaves a love story around the sinking of the ship that occurred in the second decade of the twenty-first century. No other medium has been used to capture the titanic tragedy better than Cameroon’s narrative. Nollywood has also been at the forefront of cultural refrigeration. Precursory to the take-off of the film industry in 1992, the documentation of norms, values, and cultures held sway. However, while the epic film genre was recurrently explored, there was a dearth of films on the historical genre. Suffice to state that pre-Nollywood cinema of the celluloid era explored the historical genre more than the early Nollywood home video producers did. Adamu Halilu’s film adaptation of “Tafawa Balewa’s novel, Shaihu Umar in 1986, is a clear paradigm of putting histories on the big screen” (Haynes, 4) in the

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pre-Nollywood era. In the same year, Eddie Ugbomah produced The Rise and Fall of Dr. Oyenusi, a historicism of the life of the well-known armed robber, “Dr. IsholaOyenusi who terrorized Western Nigeria in the 1970s. His exploits traverse carjacking, bank robberies and heists committed during hold ups” (Osunfodurin, 190). The Rise and Fall of Dr. Oyenusi was followed by The Death of the Black President in 1983. The latter documents the assassination of the late Head of State, Major General Murtala Ramat Muhammed by Col. Buka Suka Dimka. From the rise of the home video tradition whose genesis can be traced to Kenneth Nnebue’s Living in Bondage (1992), there has been an upsurge in the historical film genre. Fred Amata, a Nigerian cineaste of the home video tradition directed the movie Anini which focuses on the life and death of the of Edo state-born criminal Lawrence Anini who terrorized the Edo populace and the police. Shina Rambo, the Abeokuta-born renowned bandit and armed robbery kingpin who was known to have terrorized southewestern Nigeria in the 1990s, has been placed in the Nigerian film space. Seun Olaiya’s 2016 film Aiye Shina Rambo reveals the escapades of the eponymous character who is not only deadly but also diabolical. Perhaps, Shina Rambo is one of the most appraised subjects in popular culture since two different films have been made on him. Sylvester Madu’s season film Shina Rambo fully shows the diabolic dimension of Shina Rambo who is believed to engage in human sacrifices and rituals. The brutal process of the intrusion of the British colonial masters into Nigeria is the subject of discourse in Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen’s Invasion 1897. The film focuses on the war between the British colonists and the Benin Empire, the deposition of Oba Ovonramwen Nogbaisi of Benin land and his forced exile to Calabar. In Imasuen’s refrigeration of history with this film, he creates a king who is resilient and ready to wade off any form of external intrusion in Benin by perceived enemies. The filmmaker captures the colonists as oppressors who are ready to go to any length to take over Benin land. Beyond the examination of the historical, the portrayal of culture also comes to play in the film. Indigenous knowledge systems form part of the content of the film. For instance, the practice of mouth covering by the queens comes to the fore. The mouths of the queens are not seen as they cover their mouths with a piece of cloth. Significance is attached to the hairstyle of chiefs in indigenous society. This comes to bear in the film where the heads of the chiefs are well shaved, with strands of it left at the front part of the head. It is pertinent to note that in contemporary times but for ceremonial purposes, chiefs in Benin have jettisoned this practice. Hence, it has become almost an experience of the past. The film is able to preserve this salient constituent of the Benin practice. Also, the traditional belief in dreams as important in foretelling future occurrences is part of the whole gamut of the narrative. Oba Ovonramwen’s

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first son, who is the heir apparent, dreams about the doom that plagues the kingdom before its occurrence. With this dream that he has, he is aware of what the future hold for Benin and his father. Hence, he alerts his father, the king. Traditional warfare and strategies are stored with Invasion 1897. The attachment of the transcendental with war is seen in the two scenes where the king’s personal doctor fortifies him with powers to defeat his enemies—the British. There is a belief in traditional African societies that there are spiritual forces that are believed to control the affairs of man. The potency of these powers is predicated on man’s intimate relationship with them. Sometimes, these powers are exercised by man in his attempt to pacify the divine, to bridge the nexus between him and the supernatural, and also in an attempt to fortify himself against the danger of the unknown and evils perpetuated by enemies. (Okpadah, 72)

This belief is documented in the Invasion 1897 and also in Andy Amaenechi’s Oduduwa. The ascension and descent with a chain of Adua, the Arabian prince who later becomes the first Ooni of Ile-Ife, southwestern Nigeria, the transcendental exploits of Esu Laroye and Obatala, the trickster god and the creation god, the scuffle between Adua-who later becomes Oduduwa and Obatala, and their final transition to Olodumare explicates the Yoruba’s belief in the supernatural. All of these, fully captured in the film include the elegant costumes and indigenous dance steps, songs, and traditional instrumentations of the Yoruba people. Biyi Bandele’s Half of a Yellow Sun, an adaptation of Chimmanda Adichie’s novel of the same title tells the story of the Nigerian civil war that raged from 1967 to 1970. With the dearth of feature film narratives that focus on the Nigerian civil war, Bandele felt it imperative to adapt Adichie’s novel that focuses on Nigeria versus Biafra on the screen. The movie is a good example of the ideal historical narrative.

CONCLUSION In Africa and beyond, minority cultures, norms, and values are gradually going into extinction in the face of globalization. This is evidenced by the universalization of Western cultures and traditions. If tangible and intangible cultures are to be preserved in the face of transnational encounters then they must be refrigerated. It is true that culture is not static. However, there is a need to preserve the past and existing norms. Although Hollywood and Nollywood have to a large extent utilized the film medium for cultural refrigeration, more still have to be done. In light of the above, I advocate

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that filmmakers should intensify their efforts in preserving existing practices. Also, adequate research should be carried out by filmmakers to ensure accuracy in their production of the historical and cultural process. WORKS CITED Brockett, Oscar. History of the Theatre. Boston: Pearson, 1977. Engelbrecht, Beate. Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage with Film: Questions of Documentation, Protection and Preservation. In: Nadja, Ljubljana (ed.), Documenting and Presenting Intangible Cultural Heritage on Film. Slovenia: Slovene Ethnographic Museum, 2015. Fadli, Bonjol, Arwendria, Arwendria, & Hasfera, Dian. Film for Preserving Indigenous Knowledge Minangkabau Culture. A Conference Paper Presented in the University of Pandang, Indonesia, 2019. Accessed December 12, 2020 from https://www​.researchgate​.net​/publication​/337162919. Jennings, Regina. Cheikh Anta Diop, Malcolm X, and HakiMadhubuti: Claiming and Containing Continuity in Black Language and Institutions. Journal of Black Studies 33, no. 2 (2002): 126–144. doi: 10.1177/002193402237221. Okoh, Lize. Fela Kuti and the New Afrika Shrine. Culture Trip, 2018 https://theculturetrip​.com​/africa​/nigeria​/articles​/fela​-kuti​-and​-the​-new​-afrika​-shrine/ Accessed December 22, 2020. Okpadah, Stephen. An Exploration of Mystical Context in Andy Amenechi’s Oduduwa. Journal of Applied Cultural Studies 3, no. 1 (2017): 71–81. Osunfodurin, Ayodele. Violent Crimes in Lagos: 1861-2000: Nature, Responses and Impact. A Ph.D. Thesis submitted to the University of Lagos, 2007. Taylor, Edward. Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art and Custom. London: John Murray, 1975. Yerima, Ahmed. Historicism, Sultan Attahiru, the European Conquest and Dramaturgy. In: Ahmed, Yerima (ed.), Fragmented Thoughts and Specifics: Essays in Dramatic Literature, 186–208. Ikeja: Booksplus Nigeria Limited, 2003.

Chapter 5

Subaltern Cosmopolitanism The “Parankis” of Postcolonial Kochi Anupama Nayar

The most important feature of Malayali social life since the earliest times was the large-hearted tolerance and mutual respect shown to each other by the different communities that accepted sKerala as their motherland. The Christian, the Muslim, the Jew, and the Konkani, lived alongside the Hindus of Kerala with perfect understanding and affection —(Panikkar, 1957: 17)

In Kerala Swatantrya Samaram, the noted historian K. M. Panikkar writes about pre-Portuguese Kerala, in which territorial affiliations were evoked over religion as the basic condition for identification as a patriotic Malayali. This is the popular narrative of the ideal society of religious tolerance in Kerala. Kerala lies on the sea coast, at the foot of the Western Ghats. The state is often represented as welcoming diverse cultures peacefully unlike the rest of India and for that reason is seen as more cosmopolitan and modern. This rather brazen claim makes Kerala, in some sense, as being always modern. Critics like Ashis Nandy contend that Kerala’s encounter with diverse cultures is a pointer to a specifically non-Eurocentric cosmopolitanism. He elaborates by calling it a “time travel to a possible self,” and describes Kochi as a rare Indian city where “pre-colonial traditions of cultural pluralism refuse to die” (Nandy, 2002: 157). He claims that for its residents, the city is “the ultimate symbol of cultural diversity and religious and ethnic tolerance” (Nandy, 2002: 158). His statements are so assured that he even rejects the possibility of a historical enquiry into its past and professional ethnography, positioning his work as the result of a more “personal, cultural-psychological journey” in which the past figures only as an “immediate, felt reality” (Nandy, 2002: 162). 65

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However, this construction of Kerala’s cosmopolitanism does not justify why some communities figure prominently and others vanish from, the “immediate, felt, reality” of the past that Nandy valorizes. This understanding of Nandy’s concept of Kochi cosmopolitanism, problematizes, according to J. Devika, a prominent Cultural Studies scholar, the question of how some community cultures like that of the Syrian Christian, the Jewish, and the Arab-Muslims in Kerala have persisted and others like that of the “Parankis” (and the “Kappiris” who got totally erased out of history) blended into the “cosmopolitanism of material life” (Devika, 2015: 2), which is so familiar in everyday Malayali life and is now hardly recognizable as a form of cosmopolitanism. She also opines that “Nandy’s reading makes it impossible for us to consider the consequences of the political framework of cultural pluralism and ‘hospitality’ he so celebrates” (Devika, 2015: 2). Devika posits that Nandy’s interpretative framework is based on the ancient, premodern Hindu kingdom’s social order of caste called the order of Janmabhedam translated as “difference by birth.” In the framework of such a society, foreigners and foreign ideas were welcomed only if they were willing to be integrated “within the terms of the highly iniquitous hierarchy of caste overseen by the Hindu rulers of medieval Kerala” (Devika, 2015: 2). She quotes a letter of the Kolathiri, the ruler of a principality in North Kerala written to the king of Portugal in 1507, that says: Certain people who I and my Nairs [the upper caste which served the feudal elite] have as slaves and belong to the two castes, viz., the Tines [Tiyya] and the Mucoas [Mukkuva—fisherfolk] should not be made Christians [. . .] For with the conversion of these slaves, conflict may arise between our vassals and these people. The Nairs derive their income from them and they do not want to lose it. (John, 1981: 347). (Devika, 2015: 2)

She concludes by stating that such narratives of local “hospitality” conceal upper-caste Hindu elitism in shaping such “cosmopolitanism”; it actually prompts us to look longingly at the West. In other words, it makes us blind to the historical shaping of this region as a “cusp culture” (a term coined by the sociologist Satish Deshpande), a place which was shaped by both western and eastern cultures. (Devika, 2015: 3)

Such elitist construction populated the official histories of Kerala’s subnational identity way into the twentieth century. This official history was instrumental in creating the popular images of the dehumanized lower-caste groups in Malayali society. They are projected as immobile, stuck irredeemably with the local and rendered invisible.

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Community and identity assertion in a caste-ridden society is possible only within the framework of caste hierarchy. Since the caste society stigmatized the “Parankis” as a product of “miscegenation, they could neither claim their complex past nor space within the history of Malayali society.” Meanwhile, there have been unprecedented literary efforts to reclaim and recover the Kochi creole and the multicultural legacy of Kochi, in the genre of fiction, especially novels by prominent writers who contributed to a unique category of novels called the “Kochi novels.” This chapter will look at two such Kochi novels: the English novel Maya (2008) by George Thundiparambil, a native of Fort Kochi, now settled in Germany and the Sajai Jose translated English work Requiem for the Living (2013), the original Malayalam novel being Jeevichirikkunnavarkkulla Oppees (2004) penned by the Paranki author Johny Miranda. The “Paranki” or the Kochi creole community is almost indistinguishable from the coastal world around it except perhaps for its underpinnings of rituals, prayers, and the remnants of a patois besides the Portuguese surnames that brand them. NATURE AND CONTENT OF CREOLIZATION IN KERALA Starting in the early sixteenth century, the colonial involvement of Portugal with Asia introduced the Portuguese language in the region. The major channels for the diffusion of Portuguese across the continent were, according to L.F. Thomaz, political domination, trade and missionary activities—to which should be added, at a later date, migratory movements of the Luso-Asian communities which were independent of Portuguese colonial and evangelizing agendas. It has been noted before that, because it was the first European colonial language to have a sustained presence in the East, Portuguese (or derivatives of it) gained wide currency in the region and functioned, in certain contexts, as a lingua franca. —(Cordoso, 2019: 345)

Historical reports state that the Portuguese overseas expansion was a highly multiethnic and, therefore, multilingual enterprise. On the one hand, the Malabar (all of Kerala) trading ports where the Portuguese first settled were, at the time, already home to a multiethnic population. In addition, Asians speaking various languages were soon employed in sailing, trade, and military activities in the service of the Portuguese. This is evidenced from preserved accounts of sixteenth-century fleets sailing for the Portuguese in Asia. João

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de Barros describes in his “Quarta Década da Ásia,” of an armada bound to attack Diu in 1530: [A general survey of the people in the armada was done on this island of Bombay, finding some three thousand five hundred men of arms, including the Captains, some one thousand four hundred Portuguese seamen including the pilots and shipmasters, some two thousand Malavares and Goan Canarijs, eight thousand male slaves who could fight, four thousand local seamen who rowed, and more than eight hundred seamen of the junks.] (Translated from Portuguese)

In a similar vein, another writer talks about the polyglot nature of the Portuguese armada that would dock at trade centers in Asia, especially south India. Pissarra’s description of an armada 1508 states: [The Portuguese armada is a babel in which some thirty languages are spoken, with a prominence of the Iberian languages, German and Flemish. The local and African languages are also well represented; and also French and English. Apart from these majority groups, we find Genoese, Florentines, Greeks and Albanians serving aboard; a legion of mercenaries and slaves with which king D. Manuel attempts to resolve the chronic shortage of manpower.] (Translated from Portuguese)

Most of the Portuguese Indian settlements had a sizable representation of non-Portuguese Europeans within the fleets in the early sixteenth century, when it came to official military ranks except in Kochi. The African contribution to the Luso-Asian creoles, in general, and those of the Malabar, in particular, is also relevant, since there is evidence of the import of a significant number of Africans into the Estado da Índia as slaves, especially from southeastern Africa. Studies reveal that displaced Africans could have contributed in two ways: as carriers of an African-formed pidgin/ creole or as direct contributors to the formation of a pidgin/creole in Asia. Some late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century text collections from Goa, Daman, and Diu suggest that, to some extent, people of African descent integrated into the Indo-Portuguese communities. The conversion of local inhabitants to Catholicism, promoted by agents of the Real Padroado Português do Oriente, is also relevant to the formation of the creoles. Missionary activities began early in the course of Portuguese presence in South Asia. Writing in 1550 from Quilon, in the Malabar, the Jesuit missionary Nicolao Lancilotto reported: And since the inhabitants of these countries are very miserable, poor and cowardly, some were baptized through fear, others through worldly gain, and others for filthy and disgusting reasons which I need not mention. [. . .] Many people come in order to be baptized, and I ask them why they want to become

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Christians? Some reply because the lord of the land tyrannizes and oppresses them, and others reply that they must become Christians because they have nothing to eat. (Lacilotto, 1550) .

Creoles, as many studies suggest, are sensitive to their formative and developmental ecology, and therefore an account of their formation should rely on a history of linguistic interaction of the demography and social structures at various points of their history. Hence, many researchers of creole languages call for the integration of carefully researched extra-linguistic data into studies of creolization. Creolization is in fact a product of cultural admixture in particular circumstances, and that is why the study of the formation and development of creole languages can never be dissociated from the formation and development of their speech communities. The formation of a creole language is predicated on the structure of its founding society, a degree of social distance between groups of speakers of the various languages involved and a power asymmetry that favored one of them. “Creolization always entails inequality, hierarchization, issues of domination and subalternity, mastery and servitude, control and resistance. Questions of power, as well as issues of entanglement, are always at stake” (Cordoso, 2019: 352) MAYA AND THE “KAPPIRI” MYTH Neelima Jeychandran, who is an Asian and African Studies scholar, has written extensively about the Kappiri myth in postcolonial Kochi. She claims in her blog that “‘Kappiri’ shrines in the coastal regions of Kerala and the local legends surrounding their worship can give us fresh insight into Indian Ocean slave trade and the lesser-known aspects of Portuguese colonialism in Kerala” (Jeychandran, 2019). Coastal Kerala’s African connection has been totally erased from history and collective memory. However, links with Africa and the forced migration of Africans to the Malabar Coast are recalled today primarily through rituals and folklore. Meanwhile, Kerala’s cultural connections with Europe are well articulated through literature, museums, and heritage sites. In the coastal regions of Kochi (Cochin) and Thrissur in Kerala, memories of forced African migration towards the southwestern Indian ports are preserved through shrines dedicated to deceased Africans or Kappiris (“black persons”). These African sacred spaces are carved and maintained by mortal beings mostly hailing from the coastal subaltern communities and they are perpetually protected by African spirit beings. While there are a few wayside shrines dedicated to the Kappiris, a majority of them are found in Hindu sacred groves or “kaavus,” where Kappiri spirits are worshipped alongside other ancestral

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spirits and guardian deities. These Kappiri shrines and the rituals and lore around them offer fresh insights into forced African migration and slavery during the Portuguese and Dutch occupation of Cochin in ways that blur historical accounts and cultural memory. Shrines for African spirits are crucial to understanding coastal Kerala’s connection with Africa, especially as the Kappiri wanders through the coastal landscape even today, bestowing his benevolence to those who recall and recognize his burdened collective histories. (Jeychandran, 2019)

“Kappiri” means “black person” in Malayalam and is a dialectical variant of the word “kaffir,” from the Arabic word “kafr,” meaning infidel or nonbeliever, which the Arabs extended to mean “non-Muslim Africans” generally. The meaning of the word was racially loaded and derogatory in the past and it is still largely unknown to the local coastal population. For the local people, Kappiri is a spectral deity, figureless and seemingly abstract; a pervasive spirit who inhabits anywhere in the coastal landscape of Kochi. They are benevolent spirits who embody a host of ambivalences about brutalities of the past and insecurities of the present. (Jeychandran, 2019) Even though mainstream discourses on colonial Cochin have neglected the arrival, survival, and violent murder of Africans during the Portuguese and Dutch rule of Kerala, the prevalent worship of Kappiri spirits sustains these lesser-known histories in the form of local lore. While there are several local stories about Africans in coastal Kerala, most locals say that Africans were brought to the Malabar Coast as slaves by the Portuguese to work as deckhands and to perform manual labour in their forts and factories. A familiar version recounts that after the Dutch takeover of Cochin, the retreating Portuguese buried their possessions in pits and murdered enslaved Africans because of superstitious beliefs that the Africans’ spirits would protect the treasure. Locals also believe that Kappiri watches over abandoned colonial treasure and, when pleased with someone, can offer them riches, as if in reward for remembering and recognizing the burdened collective past that he signifies. (Jeychandran, 2019)

The Kappiri myth manifests in interesting ways in Kerala. The Kappiris thrive as spirits in local memory and as living history for working-class people who look to them for guidance, healing, and protection. They are remembered through stories told of their sightings as cigar-smoking men, dressed in suits with a hat, benevolent figures resting atop walls or along the borders of plantations or at the thresholds of homes in Kochi. They are also brought alive in contemporary novels, films, and visual art. It is ironic that in postcolonial Kochi, European histories are monumentalized, while histories

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of enslaved Africans are preserved through subaltern processes of cultural conservation including rituals and belief practices in the Kappiri shrine. Maya, the novel by Thundiparambil, has the Kappiri myth as its underpinning. Set in the twenty-first century, postcolonial Kochi, Kappiri the spirit is a mute spectator to the gala events planned by the city corporation to celebrate the 500 years commemoration of Vasco da Gama’s arrival to Kochi. Ironically that would also commemorate the colonizer’s arrival on the Indian shore 500 years ago. He sat on the walls of his favorite haunt, the wall of the Dutch Cemetery, watching some men putting up huge platforms and stage on the beach for the event. Kappiri had been a mortal in a human body for 336 years as its obstinate tenant. “He had lived three times as a human after he stepped onto the shores of Kochi and for many generations as a homogenous mind being after he died his last human death” (Maya, 2008: 4). After having witnessed and participated in the ebb and flow of the history of the land, Kappiri is waiting for his final liberation from “gravity, memory and emotions” (Maya, 2008: 4). His moksha! He remembers his Brahmin friend, guru, and spiritual partner Thiripad’s assurance of his final delivery through Maya, the young girl who will be the vehicle of his dissolution into the ether. Wait, dear Kappiri, wait. Wait for the beginning of the next millennium. Wait for the apsara to arrive, the nymph from the kingdom of the gods, who will be different from all others. And you will tell that nymph your story. The story that led you here, to this cemetery. Then starts the last chapter of your life that ends in moksha, the liberation of your atman. (Maya, 2008: 4)

Maya, a beautiful, nineteen-year-old college girl and her family shifted into a bungalow adjacent to the Kappiri’s haunt. It was on the same day that Kappiri witnessed disgruntled young men from the city leading a “peaceful demonstration” and shouting anti-Gama slogans congregating near the event venue. A strong contingent of riot police had to cordon off the beach area. It was at that moment that Kappiri saw the car park near the recently vacated Chartered House and saw a pretty face from inside the car looking up at him on the wall and exclaiming incredulously to her mother that there was a strange man on the wall. When he felt that he was being noticed, he jumped down from the wall, which again made Maya shriek with sympathy at the thought of him being hurt and this made the uniformed driver, the cook and the watchman run to the place she was pointing to and none of them saw a man there. Her father and mother too did not see the “mad man” Maya was talking about. Thus was established the first encounter between Maya and Kappiri and the fact that only she could see him. Maya Menon, daughter of Mr and Mrs Balachandra Menon, was a second-year BA English literature student studying at the prestigious St. Teresa’s College, Ernakulam. This introduction to Maya’s qualification is a pointer to the fact that she is

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not only a high-caste Hindu but also of superior sense and sensibility with a high degree of humanism in her personality. The other details about her reinforce the idea that Maya is different from other girls and has some divine attributes that make her the right person for Kappiri’s redemption. She plays the “Veena,” a musical instrument that is usually seen in the hands of Saraswathy, the goddess of learning. She also keeps a diary into which she pours out her heart and through Kappiri’s reading of it, Maya’s character is revealed to the reader and her biggest strengths seem to be being non-judgemental, common-sensical, fearless, composed, and most importantly the ability to love unconditionally. Strangely enough, these are the same attributes that are conferred on Brahma’s consort and divine mother Saraswathy. Maya’s first notion of Kappiri as written in her diary is captured in the word “sublime,” interestingly a word that could also reveal the nature of the relationship, they share in the novel. For Kappiri, his moksha lies in narrating his story of 500 years to Maya and it is a challenge temporally as she transacts her daily routines in the mornings and her newfound pleasure of the flesh that Kappiri lovingly provides in the night. There are also the added disruptions in the household as her father unwittingly gets embroiled in a political conspiracy for sabotaging the Gama commemoration. They still make time for him to narrate his lives and experiences which is a condition for his salvation. Maya is intrigued by the stories he narrates. She becomes an engaged interlocutor of Kappiri’s historiography. Kappiri is first presented as Lam, an African youth of about twenty-five years, married to Mena and with two sons. They are not financially well off and subsist on a meager amount of money which he gets from selling honey and other produce of the jungle. He is lured into a quick money-making scheme by his own clansman Prak. Little did he know that in the ruse of helping the Portuguese sailors to poach elephants and earn good money as Lam was an expert in tracking elephant herds, Prak had sold him to Vasco da Gama as a slave. Lam remained a devoted and loyal slave warrior to the Portuguese till the end of his life. He becomes a cook and later the master slave directly appointed by Gama in the Gama mansion and the fort at Kochi. He befriends the elite local Malayalis, learning the language and conversing with them in Portuguese, Malayalam, and Arabic whenever required. It is in his lifetime as Lam that he meets the Brahmin Marikassery Narayanan Namboothripad, his guru who does special “poojas” (tantric rituals) for him to be reborn with the same “atman” so that he got salvation in the new millennium. He had converted to Christianity and lived together with a Hindu fisherwoman Jani who bore him his son, Kannan. Jani his Malayali wife, who could speak Portuguese fluently, did not convert to Christianity nor was Kannan baptized. However, inside the Portuguese fort, Kannan was considered Christian and was fondly welcomed as one of them and Lam’s son.

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The Journal of the First Voyage of Vasco da Gama 1497–1499 is attributed to Alvaro Velho who traveled as part of the 150-strong Portuguese crew that embarked on their Indian expedition on July 8, 1497, from Lisbon and reached Calicut on May 20, 1498. The “Muster-Roll of Vasco da Gama’s Fleet” does not directly mention the list of African slaves. But the journal writer, while narrating the fleet’s contact with Mosambique (Moçambique), speaks of the slaves. As per his entry, the day was the 24th of March (1498), the eve of Lady Day. After dinner we started in our boats, in the hope of being able to make a few prisoners, whom we might exchange for the two Indian Christians whom they held captive and the negro who had deserted. With this object in view we chased an almadia, which belonged to the sharif and was laden with his chattels and another in which were four negroes. The latter was captured by Paulo da Gama. . . . The negroes we took on board our ships. (Ravenstein, 1998: 2)

Lam the Kappiri continues his narration to Maya of the African slave warrior uprooted from his homeland by Gama, his destiny to prove his worth and work out his salvation in an alien land, fighting alongside Duarte Pacheco Pereira in Fort Kochi, evangelizing with Francis Xavier as Antonio Kannan Pereira, and being burnt at the stake by the inquisition and finally as the dark, handsome slave Ajay in the Gonzago family, supping with Luiz de Camoes and sacrificing his life for his master in Goa while the Dutch closed in and befriending a Brahmin tantric who promises him his liberation from the cycle of birth and rebirth. All this is in the background of political and religious intrigue in modern-day Fort Kochi, where plans are on to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Gama’s coming, and Maya’s father is embroiled in it unwittingly. It is as Antonio Kannan Pereira (Kannan is a vernacular name of the Hindu deity Krishna) that the process of creolization is consolidated in the Kappiri genealogy and identity formation of his descendants. Kannan is trained by Thiripad in all tantric rituals and Sanskrit Vedic texts. He is also trained in Ayurveda and Kalaripayattu, the martial art form of the Malayali high caste. He is also sent to the Gama fortress in his early adolescence by his mother and is formally educated in the Christian school run by the Portuguese Padre and schooled in catechism as well. There is a hybrid notion of morality between Lam and Jani, when they discuss marriage. Lam tells her he will come back from the fort to marry her in the church before going there to start working as Gama’s cook. Jani gives him a passionate discourse on the concept of marriage from her social position and milieu. She tells him: In the community I come from marriage means very little, how a woman felt with a man was more important. I had as many as five husbands at a time and

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none of my husbands ever quarrelled over me because they all knew I was doing each one of them a great favour. What use was there of five husbands when none of them would make me happy? (Maya, 2008: 96)

Jani’s empowered stand, regarding the institution of marriage, is directly in conflict with the Christian understanding of marriage and is also open to the powerful Portuguese society’s censure. Yet between Lam and Jani, there is a tacit agreement to pursue their relationship in the way Jani wants it and there is no social stigma attached to Kannan’s parentage, as he is accepted by both the fisher community at the beach and the Portuguese society in the fort as Lam’s son. This cultural fluidity helps Kannan after Lam’s death to gain restricted social status and his end at the stake is due to his alleged Hindu identity, where he dares to utter a blasphemous statement against Jesus Christ. This is also a pointer to the precarious life that marginalized creoles faced despite their rank and position. They still remained slaves. Kappiri then proceeds to tell Maya of his last human life and his descent into the mythical Kappiri of Fort Kochi. He tells her: The enemy pounded the fort walls incessantly. News finally arrived . . . the new faction had taken over the Kochi throne. Cries of desperation in the Portuguese camp were drowned in the boom of the cannons. It was then that Estevao came down to the cellar. Ajay, the time has come to prove your loyalty to the Gonzago house-hold by protecting our family treasure. The treasure hidden in the small room belongs to my little child Maria. She will come to claim it from you one day and you will have to oblige. I have to kill you now, here, so that you will always be here to protect the wealth. He bowed down to his master and stretched his neck. Estevao raised his sword and brought down the sharp blade. The head rolled down and the body shuddered a few times as blood oozed out of it. Ajay experienced death as a mild shock, especially when he saw his own head rolling on the floor. Then it all came back. . . . It then became apparent he had become a spirit without a body. He had become pure mind but a mind with a memory, so he could feel and move about as he wished. (Maya, 2008: 280)

Kappiri thus becomes the guardian spirit of the Gonzago treasure for Maria and posterity. In Maya, the Kappiri myth takes a new turn, with the guardian spirit watching over history and at times being reborn to play his role at different stages. But basically, the Kappiri in Maya is the mythical guardian spirit as he is believed to be the Portuguese treasure. He sits on the wall of the Dutch Cemetery of Fort Cochin hiding the Portuguese treasure often in a leather bag inside Van Dyke’s gravestone in the same cemetery. Finally, he hands over the treasure to Maya for safeguarding before he vanishes into nothingness.

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Historically when the Portuguese set up colonial trade in Kerala in the early sixteenth century, they were rejected by the powerful Zamorin of Kozhikode. The Portuguese then joined forces with the rival ruler of Kochi, who was unhappy at being a vassal to Kozhikode, and set up their first trading center in Fort Kochi. The power play between Kochi, Kozhikode, and the Portuguese continued, till 1503, Kochi was taken over by the Portuguese. The Dutch, however, in the seventeenth century joined Zamorin of Kozhikode in taking over Kochi, and by 1663, a much weakened Portuguese government had to hand over Kochi to the Dutch, who placed it once again under the power of the Zamorin. The historical aspect of the Kappiri myth memorializes one of the numerous battles and confrontations in the history of Kerala. While all other battles are relegated to oblivion, Kochi singles out and faithfully preserves the 1663 encounter that gave the Dutch an easy victory when they overthrew the political presence of the Portuguese. The graphic descriptions of the battle and its aftermath abound in the streets of Kochi in various tangible and intangible forms. It is also fascinating to observe that Kochi does not remember the atrocities committed against the loyal African slaves but remembers them with deep affection and as a paragon of mutual trust between the masters and their servants. The Kappiri myth turns out to be a deification of an oppressed community and a celebration of a sacred relationship. The Kappiri for the denizens of Kochi is not a frightening and malevolent power, but a cigar-smoking, arrack-drinking, and kaldo-eating benign protectors. The Portuguese have gone from the land of Kerala (Malabar) but the place chooses to remember the friendship in a strange way and celebrates it through the fascinating Kappiri myth. Maya ends with Maya Menon’s diary entry. She writes about the Gama celebrations being canceled and her personal tryst with the Kappiri and her feelings about it. She writes about her feeling of emptiness without the Kappiri and how sometimes even she cannot accept the fact that he was a reality for her alone and never for her parents and her friends. They refused to believe her account of him. She lovingly recalls the nights of sexual bliss they shared and writes that had she been pregnant, then, Kappiri would have been real to many. She finds out that she is a virgin and in a conscious choice of words, appropriates the foreign, hybrid slave as the Hindu god Krishna, who was the eternal lover to his many girlfriends and would indulge in the “Raslila” or the erotic play with each one of them on the banks of the Yamuna. Tired and happy the women would wake up the next day to realize that they were still virgins. Maya writes, Kappiri was a vision, the essence of my favourite god Krishna, whose other name, Achutha, literally means “one whose seeds do not fall” . . . Kappiri wasn’t

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a dream, . . . he lives on in my heart as my divine lover, as my own! (Maya, 2008: 302)

Maya’s appropriation of the Kappiri is analogous to the subaltern appropriation of the African slave spirit into the Hindu pantheon. The Kappiris and their spectral presence in Kochi serve to remind that African slaves, too, belong to the vernacular cosmopolitanism of Kochi. While Maya establishes the history and genealogy of the Parankis of Kochi, Requiem for the Living is a chronicle of the lived reality of the community in the twenty-first century. COSMOPOLITANISM OF EVERYDAY LIFE IN REQUEIM FOR THE LIVING Osha Pereira (creolized version of the Portuguese name Jose), a sacristan of Kochi-Creole origin, leads a soulless life in a coastal village near Kochi, mired in a past blending fantasy and insanity. He happens to find a gold key from a freshly dug grave that puts him on an incessant and obsessive hunt for its lock, which he feels may have answers for his befuddled existence. He is in awe of his family’s background which was secure and prosperous in the past, before his birth, in the security of the community under the watchful eyes and guidance of the empowered and powerful matriarch Juana Mammanji (Cochin Creole version of Mamae). Osha’s grandmother is not only the center of her family but also the whole community. She secures the economic stability of her family through her enterprising activities (she gets her family members to sell homemade savories by the side thus adding to the family income) and keeps traditions and rituals of the local faith robust with her prescriptions and regulations which appear to be a hybrid of Catholic practices and local Hindu oracle-worship and is, in general, the repository of the community’s knowledge. Osha’s father meanwhile symbolizes the community’s anxiety of being caught between two origins. He wages a silent, self-destructive, fruitless battle against the Catholic Church and the faith, thereby reducing it to mere Christianity ignoring its hybridity. He also abuses Christianity by stealing from the church and loudly calling the Christ icon “Jooda kazhuvery,” “Jooda” referring to Jesus’s Jewish birth, and “kazhuvery” a derogatory word which literally means, “a criminal condemned to die at the stake.” It is to be noted that the mothers are assimilated into the community’s hybrid traditions, both religious and social, and do not share Osha’s father’s discontent. His mother, a young and extremely beautiful woman who came from an affluent family with a good dowry to her in-law’s house, had to contend with a wayward and irresponsible husband who squandered her money and reduced her to penury. So she rebelled against her formidable mother-in-law by seeking out lovers with money, “turning to evil ways” as

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Juana Mammanji put it, and against her husband who was incompetent, weak, and violent by giving him scant respect and not acknowledging his existence, and she leads her immature daughter Ida into a catastrophic relationship which pushes Ida into lunacy and later death by her own father’s hand. Osha is unmoved by the plight of his raging mad sister out on the streets and is obsessively bent on finding a lock for his golden key. His indifferent narration goes: I had come to know that Chitta was roaming the city streets day and night. What could I have done [. . .] I too had been wandering aimlessly with my chaavi [. . .] Like the fat, shiny, white maggot that comes out when a grave is dug, [the lock] keeps crawling through my brain and mind. (Requiem, 2013: 29)

He marries Jacintha who is not a Paranki and moves in with her according to coastal Latin Catholic community practice but this change also does not offer him succor. His quest for the lock continues making it impossible for him to consummate his marriage. Like most women in the novella, Jacintha takes things into her hand and initiates a sexual relationship, which Osha never refuses but never takes a lead in. He is plagued by nightmares after the sexual union. In a recurring dream, he sees a pig man buried in a pit for slaughter, and its entrails explode as it suffocates to death underground. The dream becomes a metaphor for his anxiety about moving away from the community and being helpless in reforming it just as he is able to do nothing to improve his sexual prowess and perform as a man. Jacintha, however, comes across as an understanding woman because she is already a victim of a father who had abandoned the family and went away to the holy shrine of the Virgin Mary at “Velamkkanni” (a pilgrim center), seeking refuge for his sins. She is experienced therefore with the mad quests of menfolk. Right from the early days of their marriage, Jacintha disliked the key and persuades Osha to give it to her and when she finally obtains it, she immediately gets rid of it by selling the gold for money. Osha cannot forgive her for this deed and when he gets to know that she is pregnant, he keeps away from her house, living in the chapel veranda instead. He likens pregnant women to “Yakshis,” women who died violent deaths and whose spirits wander around. He believes that Yakshis and pregnant women represent unfulfilled wishes. Therefore, they wander as lost and malevolent spirits. They also represent unrealized promises as well. The golden key emerges from one such grave of failed hopes of a pregnant woman. Ironically, his grandmother died about the same time that he found the key. The death of the grandmother causes a total collapse for the women in the family in terms of security and well-being and they become easy prey to seduction and betrayal. His mother elopes with his sister’s lover and Ida his sister betrayed by her lover returns home like a lost female soul rising up

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from the grave, as a Yakshi. Caught up as he is in his obsessive search, he watches out of the corner of his eye as she descends into madness and depravity and is finally hacked to death by their father. Osha’s mother returns completely transformed and slipping easily into the matriarch’s role. She inherits Mammanji’s legacy and takes up her role in the community as the oracle, soothsayer, and custodian of its knowledges and practices. Osha’s mother is the only character in the novella who could re-enter the community and pick up its reins, leaving behind her earlier self completely. Osha seeks the key again and when he is unable to retrieve it, he experiences a deep sense of loss which is aggravated by his father’s death and the news of his grandmother Juana Mammanji’s sainthood. His anguish reaches a crescendo when the novella ends, with Osha’s search ending in futility, and the community submerging within the Catholic Church through the canonization of Juana Mammanji. Struck immobile and dumb, the paralytic Osha comes under his wife’s tender care. Juana Mammanji the oracle and the soothsayer is to become a Catholic saint, canonized by the Vatican, and this achievement of the community is brought about by its powerful women and the community’s epistemology, rituals, and practices that they preserve. The social reform of the community is brought through by women who preserved its hybrid non-modern knowledges. CONCLUSION In both Maya and Requiem for the Living, it is possible to discern the hybrid culture of the Paranki community as a substratum of Hindu casteism. Both novels represent the politics of caste-community identity assertion in Kerala. Maya and Requiem for the Living are novels of a particular community, the Parankis, focusing on hybridity and subalternity, at the heart of its identity. Both the novels explore the peculiar cosmopolitanism that the Paranki culture represents. From a postcolonial position, both novels seem to articulate a cosmopolitanism that Devika describes as the forgotten or ignored cosmopolitanism of everyday life of the past and present—of objects, material life, cuisine, fabrics, architecture—the give-and-take of which has shaped and continues to shape what we perceive to be essential to narrower identities and cultures. Requiem for the Living offers a rare view of an “actually existing” historically-shaped cosmopolitanism of everyday life. It depicts, albeit unselfconsciously, the intermingling of European, Malayali, and South-East Asian elements in the totality of Paranki life, which implicitly privileges the hybridity that makes it impossible to isolate these elements from each other and from the whole. Given that increasingly narrow nationalisms and sub-nationalisms encourage the purging of elements deemed “foreign” and/or

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“low,” Miranda’s account is politically valuable as well. But most importantly, it alerts us to the possibility of finding traces of both the “foreign” and the “low” in all communities in Kerala. (Devika, 2014: 15)

Only pursuing such connections that make up the givens of everyday life and lived traditions will eliminate essentialized constructions. It is a reminder of the constantly changing and multiple connections to the world outside. Cosmopolitanism has been criticized as essentially elitist, but the novels of Thundiparambil and Miranda allow imagination of a subaltern cosmopolitanism that is worth unearthing. REFERENCES Cardoso, Hugo C. “The Indo-Portuguese Creoles of the Malabar: Historical Cues and Questions.” In India, the Portuguese, and Maritime Interactions, eds. Pius Malekandathil και Lotika Varadarajan & Amar Farooqi. New Delhi: Primus Books, 2019, 345–373. Print. De Barros, J. Quarta década da Ásia-Dos feitos que os Portugueses fizerão no descobrimento, e conquista dos mares. N.p. Print. Devika, J. “Cochin Creole and the Perils of Casteist Cosmopolitanism: Reading Requiem for the Living.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 51, no. 1 (2016): 127–144. Web. 15 October 2016. Jeyachandran, Neelima. “Kappiri Shrines and Memories of Slavery in Kerala.” ALA (അല). N.p., 30 Μarch 2019. Web. 5 July 2022. Miranda, J. “Requiem for the Living.” Trans. Jose, S., 2013, n. page. Print. Nandy, A. “Time-Travel to a Possible Self: Searching for the Alternative Cosmopolitanism of Cochin.” In Time Warps: Silent and Invasive Pasts in Indian Politics and Religion, ed. A. Nandy. London: Hurst, 2002, 157–209. Dissertations and Theses. 04 October 2016. Panikkar, K. M. Malabar and the Dutch. Mumbai: DB Taraporevala, 1931. Print. Pissarra, J. V. A. “Chaul e Diu: 1508 e 1509.” Tribuna (1508): 69–70. Print. Ravenstein, E. G., ed. A Journal of the First Voyage of Vasco da Gama 1497 – 1499. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1998. Thundiparambil, George. Maya. Puducherry: Gauli Publishers, 2008. Print. Werbner, Pnina. “Vernacular Cosmopolitanisms.” Theory Culture Society 23 (2006): 496–498. Web. 18 October 2016.

Chapter 6

Unseen, Unheard, and Unacknowledged An Eco-Cultural Reading of Benyamin’s Goat Days in the Age of the Anthropocene Risha Baruah

The notion of culture as a social discourse finds its roots in ancient history which had gradually sharpened the increased detachment of humans from their immediate physical environment. This was subsequent to the disassociation of the spirited and pantheistic idea of nature that eventually paved way for a mechanical view of nature. Such a cultural shift has been an outcome of science, technology, industrialism, capitalism, and modernity that maintained an oppositional and conflicting relationship with the ecological world. This tensional equation within culture when attached to other situational parameters throughout history led to a blinded ideological chase for power, authority, and dominance that were often manipulated by social agencies that acted as motivated mechanisms to generate dualism across cultural categories. This continuity of tension across society in the contemporary society makes us realize that there has never been a single dominant structure of culture that was fully overarching at any given time and situation. In fact, in the Anthropocenean, it has often been observed that social parameters like classism, sexism, anthropocentrism, speciesism, ageism, naturism, and racism that contested for power and hegemonic dominance have frequently been questioned, challenged, and reshaped as considered appropriate and necessary to the changing milieu of a given culture at a given time. Toward this consideration, Donna Landry claimed that the “foundation of culture, and the validity of ideologies that naturalise social inequity [are often] based upon class, gender, race, sexual orientation, and species identity” which have fixed sections in society to identifiable groups where the concept of marginality could be applied and traced. These factors have often played significant roles in 81

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curating the defined notions of popular culture through the idea of associated dualisms which were framed through the dichotomized equations of othering that generally resulted in the subsequent stereotyping and discrimination of the targeted community. This consequently marginalized certain minority groups as “animalistic, atavistic and subhuman” (Landry 27 and Ratelle 33). Such an approach continues to prevail in the contemporary society, despite increasing efforts of “inclusiveness” in the globalized period. To this end, we witness a complex play of bio-power politics through the manipulation of ideologies that attempt to harness dichotomized relations so as to maintain a superior identity, culture, and history that often becomes a mainstream version in popular culture; while negating and undermining the presence of other indigenous communities and cultures that may have access to greater naturalized knowledge that often remain untouched, unheard, and unacknowledged in our technocratic world. Acknowledging this lopsided social framework, recent efforts by many scholars have not only aimed to trace and address several cultural deprivations but also include them in mainstream cultures where reforms and mobilization for progress, equality, secularism, pluralism, and liberalism could be observed. In most of these efforts, a detailed interrogation of traditionally constructed binaries had been undertaken, as seen in the cases of men-women by feminism and masculinism, culture-nature by ecocriticism and Anthropocene, west-east by postcolonialism, rich-poor by classism and Marxism, adults-child by ageism and children literature, mananimal by speciesism and animal studies, and humans-nonhumans by posthumanism, to name a few. In these cases, the inferior categories (women, nature, east, poor, child, animal, and nonhumans) are often suppressed, abused, and reduced to an inhumane identity that often strips them of their fundamental dignity, rights, presence, and entitlements. These efforts narrow cultural positions mainly into two rigid categories while disregarding the presence of any other possibility of existence, narrations, and representations. Subsequent to this rigid and conformist attitude, much of the real world remains tainted and neglected which tends to slide society into a cultural paralysis that often threatens the holistic harmony and equilibrium required for sustenance and survival of the ecosystem as nothing exists in isolation. This highlights the interconnectedness of all social and natural components in the ecology that are linked to the larger web of life and existence. These realizations have accelerated in the postnatural period wherein socio-political crises have multifold. Such a situation has led to the subsequent reshaping of traditional ideas and philosophies in radical ways. Amid this, several theoretical approaches had been remapped along with the emergence of new counter possibilities and challenges of the contemporary society. Following this, the twenty-first century witnessed mobilization within literary and cultural binaries that attempted to blur and expand the earlier notions maintained in the

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rigid dualist relationships by allowing counternarratives to be included in the social and environmental history. Despite this flexible and progressive attitude, the concept of cultural dualism continues to linger in society for it has been deeply situated in our social agencies and discourses that gradually and habitually aim to legitimize conformities and discriminations as naturalized responses. Although culture may be an inherited concept of Culture Studies, it has spread its tentacles to most academic disciplines as an integral parameter. In this chapter, an attempt shall be made to explore the dualism of culture-nature and man-animal by applying the concept of “subhuman” which shall highlight the probable crossing of speciesism as a variant of anthropocentrism. As a concept, it has been applied to several theories while addressing the deprivations of the inferior categories within the binary. However, in recent years, this notion has increasingly been associated with the engagement of bio-power in ecological and animal studies through the concept of speciesism which was introduced by Richard Ryder in his work Victims of Science (1975) where he advocated against vivisection, exploitations, and maltreatment against nonhuman animals. Following Ryder’s claims, Peter Singer popularized the idea in his seminal work Animal Liberation (1975). Seen as a variant of anthropocentrism, speciesism celebrated humans in a superior position from the rest of the nonhumans. Such a distinction was maintained by humans who had biologically evolved to possess greater attributes of reasoning, language, and emotions. In this consideration, humans have often considered nonhumans as a category both outside and opposite them. This polarization seems to have been generated from the fundamental lack in animals who are often categorized as “mute, non-rational, instinctive, amoral” that resembled nothing while humans have been regarded as “uniquely rational, self-conscious, (and) free” (emphasis added) (Blake 2). Such rigid stereotyping further resulted in the negligence and exploitation of the nonhuman world; of which humans have largely been dependent on; and to maintain their equilibrium and sustenance. The situational lapse that resulted from the human-nonhuman binary had been realized through generations in scattered efforts up until the 1960s that saw a major theoretical shift with the sidelining of New Criticism that subsequently witnessed the emergence of post-structuralist tendencies that appeared to aid pedagogical mobility for inclusion of non-anthropocentric presences and narratives. While this marked the “ethical turn” in the critical and academic world which gained greater momentum with the realization of the “dying” earth; it also the acute condition of the ecological crisis that had drastically and dangerously altered the environmental and human world (Love 3 and Glotfelty xix). Amid this, ecocriticism gained popularity as the contemporary Anthropocenean period witnessed an innumerable series of environmental catastrophes. This was because ecocriticism essentially aimed to understand the relationship between

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humans and their environment in literary narratives and theoretical efforts by overlapping its borders with other mainstream theories. Such a practice not only lead to the eventual “greening” of the academic and critical world but also allowed ecocriticism to continuously evolve as a relevant idea that often engaged “in the process of contesting paradigms and considering conditions of knowledge as well as the purpose of such knowledge” (Rueckert 107). In this regard, ecocriticism attempted to investigate the response and effects of culture on nonhumans as maintained through the institutionalized hegemonic structures of our society. Such an attempt not only aimed to generate awareness of the acute ecological crisis but also urged us to accept and appreciate all the components of the ecological world which maybe different from the human world. In this regard, Neil Evernden in his essay titled “Beyond Ecology: Self, Place, and the Pathetic Fallacy” emphasized on the dangers and self-destructive tendencies of humans’ anthropogenic actions as they seem to trigger endless exploitation and misuse of the nonhuman. This was because there is “no such thing as an individual, only individual-in-context, as a component of place, defined by place” (103). In fact, such an approach has further helped in the holistic interrogation of power structures, oppression, and discrimination that have been normalized in society. Taking this into consideration, ecocriticism has opened its avenues to include animal studies in both theory and practice as both of the approaches essentially are forums of resistance and defiance to oppressive and discriminatory agencies that attempt to trace the anthropocentric and speciesist tendencies that had shaped and manipulated the biased attitude toward humans who have often been attached with intrinsic values, while the rest of existence has been relegated as an inferior category with instrumental values. Adding to this, Callicott and Frodeman also stated that human interests always trumped over “the interests of nonhumans and the environment” that have been largely reduced as a means to human ends (58). These realizations during the 1960s and 1970s led to the emergence of several anti-discriminatory camps for nonhumans that attempted to extend morality, rights, ethical responsibility, and welfare to them. Such efforts were channelized through global protests, movements, and legislations that aimed to reshape human perceptions and responses toward non-anthropocentric entities. This renewal of critical interest in animal studies accelerated with its growing associations with other mainstream theories. In this regard, the most forceful collaboration had been between ecocriticism and animal studies that grew through the second wave of ecocriticism as marked by Cheryll Glotfelty, Ken Hiltner, and Scott Slovic. However, the most significant contribution toward it was attempted by Lawrence Buell in his seminal work The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination (2005) that attempted to expand the boundaries of ecocriticism

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by including readings of associated mainstream theories from cultural, literary, and theoretical praxis. Addressing the intertwining frame of ecology and animals, Greg Garrard advocated that “without animal justice, the cause for environmental ramifications would be lopsided” and incomplete as both these forces are integral parts of the ecosystem (106). Keeping this in consideration, attempts had been made to understand the complex relationship between humans and animals which subsequently lead to foregrounding nonhuman narratives in literary and theoretical efforts. With a visible growth of scholarly interest in animal studies pedagogy, the idea of animal has no longer been limited to its natural existence. In fact, it has expanded to include the social conditioning attached to the idea of animal as the constructed “other” while also including the problematic relationship and interaction of humans with them which have largely been centered with “misanthropic, xenophobic and sometimes even genocidal attitudes.” A similar dichotomy seems to have been extended toward “groups of humans who are othered by virtue of their ‘inhumane’ treatment” to nonhuman beings as well as marginalized subalterns (Welling and Kapel 113). This reductive social identification shall be explored in this chapter as an attempt to redefine and reimage the human-animal discourse through the idea of subhuman as it attempts to promote the worldview of the Anthropocene. To this end, the idea of a subhuman could be seen as a hybrid identity that seems to raise several pertinent questions within the ecological and imperialistic framework. In this sense, it appears to merge ecological narratives with postcolonial and Anthropocene studies and to generate a sense of urgency, awareness, social justice, and “added” ethical responsibility to cause no further damage to the ecosystem. Despite this ethical stance undertaken by ecocriticism, Anthropocene, and animal studies, there have been limited reforms and productive changes for the non-anthropocentric entities. This was because deep anthropocentrism or “human-centered elitism” as a central humanistic ideology through generations has virtually created as a road-block for a genuine “ethical turn” in literary and cultural efforts that attempts to look beyond humans (Westling 25). In fact, the contemporary notion of anthropocentrism coupled with industrialism, urbanism, technology, capitalism, imperialism, and globalization has intensified the tension, challenges, and vulnerabilities of the human-nonhuman discourses. Through these social mechanisms, we seem to have engaged with othering relations to idolize humans from their potential “others.” This trend highlights the supremacy of human egoism and exceptionality that has been reinforced by anthropocentrism and speciesism that celebrated human(ity) in the nature/culture and human/animal binaries. To maintain this claim, human(ity) has been placed in extreme polarity with animal(ity) through which humanity attempts to draw its defining attributes

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of difference and supremacy. In this context, “animality” could be seen “as an essential difference from human beings” as it lacked the capacities to reason, language, and emotions (Blake 1). However, such a rigid proposition seems to have been deconstructed in the postnatural world of the Anthropocene. This has been made possible by the process of dehumanization of humans and humanization of animals. For this purpose, the literary and social mechanisms of anthropomorphism and theriomorphism would be traced in Benyamin’s Goat Days (2008) wherein humanity as well as animality have “always [been] there, as a threat to humans, who risk falling back into a primordial ‘beastly’ condition” (emphasis added) (Tonutti 187). In this context, attempts have been made to recognize animal’s actions and responses, which are often done by engaging characteristics in animals that are “in terms of [human’s] conscious motives.” Such a practice seems possible through the literary technique of anthropomorphism that seems to attach human attributes to animals. In this, animals are generally placed as a mirror view to humans as it allows us to have a partial bond with the nonhumans on the basis of familiarity with the creatures while also attaching beastly and negative aspects of human behavior onto them. In the binary of human/nonhuman, animals “have always been used to map out constitutive features of human culture” through representational techniques like anthropomorphism and theriomorphism as humans “needed animals [as well as the uncivilized and animalistic] to assure both themselves and others of their humanity” (Huggan and Tiffin 5, T. Clark 184). Such a hegemonic framework has substantially played an influencing factor in justifying the systematic and institutional exploitation of animals by marking them as silent, passive automata. This trend has not only reduced the possibility of our real understanding of the animal agency but also has led to the derogative (mis)representation of nonhumans that subtly seems to man’s cruel treatment and exploitation on them. In this regard animal(ity) could be considered a divergent pointer from humanity (Lulka 72 and Bleakley 57). While anthropomorphism may have been a common trend in the human-animal discourse, the idea of theriomorphism is also gaining trend in the contemporary studies as it allows us to dehumanize humans from their superior status. As an idea, theriomorphism is a social and literary mechanism that aimed to attach animal characteristics to humans. While this method allowed the mobility in social discourses to subvert the conventional concepts of humanity, anthropocentrism, and speciesism which had been upheld through generations, the analogical references also led to reductivism. This was because such references were often limited to the subordinate sections of our society who have been culturally marginalized as they attempt to transgress habitual conformity and social legitimization. Such a conflation of human inferiority and animality made certain humans “more animalistic than others” (Ratelle 33). In fact, such

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identification has often been applied to categories like slaves, women, and equine; an idea that Benyamin attempt to explore through the diasporic journey of the protagonist of Goat Days, Najeeb who remained an abused Malayalam migrant in Saudi Arabia throughout the narrative. In this context, Najeeb could no longer be seen as a dignified man who left his pregnant wife for a better job and lifestyle opportunities for the future of his family. In fact, his migration to the “oil kingdom” was an outcome of his desire to achieve his dreams and aspirations. However, soon after his arrival to Saudi Arabia, he was confronted by the anger and hatred of his unruly arbab, who for Najeeb was “the custodian of all [his] dreams, the visible god who would fulfill all my dreams” and under whose armor Najeeb’s “life was safe and secure” (Benyamin 48 and 52). This preconditioning of Najeeb highlights the general trend of psychological colonization among laboring natives and forced migrants to keep them in a hopeful illusion under the empire. In fact, such narratives seem to be a common trend in colonial discourse through which the imperial power seeks to consolidate their power and magnanimity as commissioned by the west/east binary. Such an equation could be seen in the relationship between Indian migrants and their Arabic arbabs as reflected by Benyamin in Goat Days. Such a trend could be seen through Najeeb as he considered the arbab not only as his superior but also as his custodian, God, and hope despite the arbab’s mistreatment, oppressions, and injustices. This highlights our deep conditioning of imperialism which forces migrants like Najeeb to continue living under the exploitative captivity and inhumane conditions conferred by the arbab. Such a practice extends our investigation to understand the concept of “coloniality” of power, an imperialist tool by colonialism to explore the domineering relationship between different sections in society. Further, the dilution and overshadowing of a migrant’s struggles and the regressive attitude of the natives toward the migrants have been addressed by Benyamin through Najeeb as he considered the aggressive responses of his arbab as “strange,” for he was unprepared for it. This was because the tales of hospitality of Arabic arbabs circulated among the Malayalis in their homeland didn’t include stories of oppressions, deprivations, and injustices. This highlights the politics of selective representation of our social history that has often unacknowledged myriad tales from the culturally marginalized subalterns. In this regard, the account of Najeeb appears significant for it provides a counter-response to the established order of justified colonization wherein the master colonizers are often seen as agents with general goodwill as they intent to uplift the social deprivations of colonized men. In defiance to this imperialistic assumption, we see Najeeb as a prisoner in the new foreign land of Saudi Arabia where he had been forcefully captivated in his arbab’s masara like most migrants; namely Hakeem, Ibrahim Khadiri,

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and Hameed who like Najeeb traveled from their homelands to Saudi Arabia for better opportunities and lifestyle. Caught in this situation, they were not only deprived of freedom, humanity, health care, and minimal dignity but also stripped off their identity and authenticity like most laboring migrants, as their arbabs often took the laboring migrants’ passports on arrival as seen through the innumerable cases of illegal migrants mentioned in the novel, who after their escape for their oppressive master end up in the central jail wherein they live a transit life as they wait to return to their homeland but with an uncertain future with no security and dignity ahead of them which makes them anxious and belittled. These cases of illegal migration also indicate the underplay of global corruption and international smuggling of bonded laborers, who are often overworked and abused beyond exhaustion. This is, despite the fact that most of them arrive with legally approved visas for dignified work. In addition to this, Najeeb’s case in the novel raises several pertinent questions about human trafficking and kidnapping of helpless migrants by unruly arbabs. Further, Najeeb’s experience also foregrounded the inhumane atrocities faced by the laboring migrants from the marginalized sections in society. In fact, Najeeb as an abused migrant and a bonded labor was forced to hybridize into a different person as he was compelled to learn and adapt to the regional language and culture of the arbab. This, consequently further distanced Najeeb from his homeland which triggered his inevitable identity and social crisis which subsequently made him accept his ill-fated destiny. Such situations made him a submissive, passive, and insignificant migrant who was caught in an “unfamiliar” terrain. In fact, in his enslavement, the domineering arbab often kept a vulture’s eyes on Najeeb and the workings of the farm, and who on any wrongdoings growled like an “angry wildcat” who pounced on Najeeb like an animal who do, without ever missing his punches nor forgetting his belt on Najeeb’s fragile body (Benyamin 54 and 114). To this end, the arbab acted like a “panopticon” guard who wielded all power and luxury in his “sultan’s palace” which was placed in starling opposition to the discomforts that Najeeb and the farm animals were exposed to and whose presence was largely unseen, unheard, and unacknowledged (Benyamin 81). The extremity of the arbab with his negative and malevolent attributes positioned him as a diabolic creature with imperialistic tendencies that subsequently led to his dismemberment from humanity and thereby making him lurk in the border of the human-animal binary. In this regard, the arbab could be seen as an identification of a “subhuman.” This is because of his inhumane treatments that were not only limited to Najeeb but extended to his farm animals whose life, death, emotions, relationships, and sexuality were controlled by him for capitalistic value and gains. To this end, both the animals and the laboring migrants have been reduced as bonded property and slave that have been scaled down into refrigerated cultural category. Caught

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in this deprived situation, Najeeb largely remained an oppressed migrant/ slave in his initial days in the masara. However, as the novel progressed, we could see Najeeb attempt to master his role and position over the farm animals through abuse, skill, and patience. Such a tendency highlights a distinct hierarchy of bio-power as commissioned by the hegemonic structures of anthropocentrism and speciesism. Adding to this idea, Foucault considered animalization as a political and social strategy to rationalize and legitimize violence against the marginalized both within and outside human societies. For this purpose, Benyamin liked Chrulew and Wadiwel applied the logic of anthropocentrism and speciesism to understand the basic structure and power politics of oppression (4). In fact, Najeeb’s inability to understand the spoken language of the arbab not only disturbed the communication and expression interchange between them but also became a medium through which Najeeb was relegated as a marginalized inferior with no significant voice and opinions. In this sense, his situation became akin to the animals that he herded for the arbab. To this end, both Najeeb and the farm animals could be considered as “mute automata” subalterns. Caught in this position, Najeeb soon felt like a “rabid dog” who was always “wagging [his] tail” to blindly follow the commands of his arbab without any sense of freedom and individualist recognition of the self. Despite this, in a few instances, we see a potential shift of power between the arbab and Najeeb. In fact, one of the most notable exchanges could be considered as the heavy rain episode in the desert, where the arbab hid from the rain like a “coward,” following which he also needed the comforts of Najeeb. In this situation, Najeeb for the first time in his captivity felt confident and endowed with the urge to escape but failed to do so as he had habitually been conditioned into a slave, even in his own thoughts and actions. Despite it, he readily flouted the rules dictated by the arbab, as he was overcome by an intense urge to violate the dictatorial control of the arbab. For this purpose, Najeeb went to visit Hakeem in the neighboring masara as he soon realized that his fears for the arbab had vanished for he had grown accustomed to his oppressions, abuses, and discriminations. The rain incident along with the shearing of sheep episode highlighted the insignificance, anxiety, and discomfort of the arbab for new machines against which he helplessly protested. Adding to this, the revolt of Najeeb after the billy goats attacked him could be seen as another important episode for his opposition and resistance had shocked the arbab. In this episode, Najeeb vehemently objected to continue his daily chores as he was in deep pain which was overlooked by his insensitive arbab. While expecting blows and beatings from the arbab for yelling at him and sleeping thereafter, Najeeb was surprised that he was left unharmed and alone. These episodes reiterate Michel Foucault’s concept of power as a mechanism that cannot be possessed but needs to be exercised within the

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frame of binary equations. Further, these incidents could be seen as counternarratives to imperialism thereby adding nuances of postcoloniality to the character and the novel. Despite these episodes of resistance and defiance, Najeeb largely remained a victim of cultural displacement who was further dismembered of human(ity) which resulted in his dehumanization into a subhuman and whose presence had been neglected and overlooked throughout the narrative. This furthered the process of double marginalization of Najeeb which subsequently left him in a worsened state of psychology, emotions, and physicality. In fact, Najeeb’s animalistic tendencies could also be seen as an immediate and prolonged exposure to the farm animals which made him enter and engage in the process of “in-becoming” with the animals that he was assigned to control and herd. To this end, the disfigured condition of Najeeb becomes significant as it further enabled him to the “process of animalization by which animality [was] identified, isolated and excluded from humanity” (Parry 31). In this category of “otherness,” Najeeb transgressed the borders of rationality which thereafter excluded him from the conformities of “rational categories of ‘adult,’ ‘sanity,’ ‘civilized,’ and ‘masculine’” (Bleakley 71). Placed outside the core resemblance of humans, Najeeb was a denial of rights, morality, entitlements, and ethical responsibility in his service in the masara seems to be partially justified as devised by imperialistic discourse. These attributes further placed him both outside and opposite human(ity) like in the case of nonhuman animals. Treated “like an animal,” Najeeb’s human(ity) was degraded and abused as he was forced to live in extremely unhygienic conditions along with social, physical, and emotional abuses that not only triggered a multitude of miniature metamorphoses in him but also threatened his human(ity) and the potential will to survive. In his helplessness, Najeeb’s identity was further diminished with uncertainties that were sparked off by the sudden bouts of anger and sexual urges toward the animals that he tended to. In this, Najeeb kept lurking and “returning to animality for questioning it about its own origins and its own nature” (Dufourcq 70). The alterity in Najeeb was not only an outcome of his intimate exposure to animals but also was due to the inhumane and dreading treatment meted on him by his malevolent arbab, who had habitually marginalized him into a subaltern that was beyond any legitimized categorization. Further, Najeeb’s minimal contact with the human world in the masara where he lived with animals provided him with the possibility of an interspecies space that allowed him to cross the boundary of human(ity) so as to enter the space of a “subhuman” with hybrid psychology, emotions, and sexuality. In this new but complex situation, Najeeb often associated his struggles, experiences, and exploitations with the farm animals with whom he shared a filial relationship in his limited days in the masara. In this regard, he often saw himself akin to sheep and goats, while his life was reduced to

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that of a “goat’s life” (Benyamin 73, 140, 160 and 253). In his physical metamorphosis, Najeeb transformed into an animalized state as he was covered with long hair and a beard, while his unwashed body was covered with dust and blisters that made him appear like the farm animals whose bodies often “become a pest reserve. Lice and bugs formed a crust on my skin” (Benyamin 160). This enabled Najeeb to transgress into a “primitive man,” a “strange creature” who had “completely ceased to resemble a human being.” Unable to recognize his own self, he appeared like a “wild man” and an “undisciplined creature” that was “always found on the periphery of civilization” as he was “denied the possession of a fully human selfhood” which localized him “both a threat and a fascination.” In this regard, Najeeb appears to have become a “human being in-waiting” (Bishop 211, 218 and 225 Benyamin 235 and 239). In fact, in his animalized state, Najeeb was reduced to an inferior who lacked cultural and linguistic capacities which are seen as the essential features that separated humans from the nonhumans. This situational lapse has been a common experience among migrants who are exposed to a new life in an unfamiliar cultural terrain. Further, not being contained in any particular identity and role assigned by society, Najeeb was able to take up multiple roles like that of a migrant, midwife, parent, herder, sexual confidant, and emotional companion with the farm animals whom he often considered as his extended family of brothers and sisters for they provided him with comfort and companionship in his acute loneliness and sadness, even as human(ity) failed him. In this, Najeeb appeared as an example of in-becoming and companion species who successfully co-existed and co-evolved with increased sensibilities for the farm animals in the masara. Here, Najeeb could be seen as a neutral presence where nature, culture, and nonhumans merged. In this regard, he also became a curious study of “new” anthropocentrism as advocated by several scholars of Anthropocene like Jedediah Purdy, Clive Hamilton, and Robert William Sandford, to name a few, for they claimed that there was no pure category of nature as nothing has remained untouched by culture. Consequently, they propose the idea of “natureculture” or “postnature” which could be applied to Najeeb to a certain degree. Through this idea, Anthropocene has attached additional responsibility of humans for the ecosystem which has been drastically altered by anthropogenic actions that have placed humans among other geological agents as humans’ invasive and regressive imprints seem to accelerate the present geological evolution. In this sense, Najeeb could also be seen as a resistant and defiant presence in the narrative as he didn’t fit into any of the socially constructed categories which made his subhuman identity appear as a cultural extension of subaltern through which several elementary concerns have been raised in the nature/ culture and human(ity)/animal(ity) binaries. Although subhuman references have been found in literary and critical efforts, they have often been relegated

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as a negligible presence with minimal rights, morality, and ethical responsibility attached to them as “they are figured as inhuman monsters, beasts, or dogs” (Oliver 45). Keeping these assumptions in consideration, it has been observed through Najeeb that humanity neither emerges from animality nor is cut off from it. In fact, both ideas appear entangled in each other’s conceptuality and processes. In this context, it could be stated that animality and humanity cease to be separate and distinguishable concepts as it has been made evident with the ability of Najeeb “to shift back and forth in and out of [his] [a]nimality” (J. J. Clark 178). In this state, Najeeb does not appear as an individual entity but becomes an agent of “transversal relations with other animals, with humans, with landscapes and with every known and unknown reality that presents itself” (Desblache 131). This further allowed the rethinking of human(ity) and animal(ity) with an aim to contest and dismantle social construction and thereafter allow the effective mobility and crossing between species boundaries which becomes pivotal in the critiquing of anthropocentrism and speciesism. Such a tendency allowed humans to include and respect nonhuman interests and concerns by navigating a new interspecies space for re-evaluating the complexities of political, cultural, legal, and literary encounters with animal, animality, and animalization. Such an exercise opens the scope for an interdisciplinary attitude which favors cross dialogues across borders by deconstructing traditional positions of humanism and thereafter mark a shift toward post-humanist inclinations that would allow a radical re-evaluation and redefining human(ity) and animal(ity) through inclusion of nonathropocentric narrations in literary as well as theoretical efforts. WORKS CITED Benyamin. Goat Days. Translated by Joseph Koyippally. Penguin Books, 2012. Bishop, Rebecca. “Forms of Life: The Search for the Simian Self in Ape Language Experiments.” In Animals and Agency: An Interdisciplinary Exploration, edited by Sarah E. McFarl and Ryan Hediger. Brill, 2009, pp. 207–228. Blake, Charlie, et al. “Introduction.” In Beyond Human: From Animality to Transhumanism, edited by Charlie Blake et al. Continuum, 2012, pp. 1–10. Bleakley, Alan. The Animalizing Imagination: Totemism, Textuality and Ecocriticism. Macmillan Press, 2000. Buell, Lawrence. The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination. Blackwell Publishing, 2005. Callicott, J. Baird and Robert Frodeman, eds. Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy, Volume 1. Gale Cengage Learning, 2009. Chrulew, Matthew, and Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel. “Editors’ Introduction: Foucault and Animals.” In Foucault and Animals, edited by Matthew Chrulew and Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel. Brill, 2017, pp. 1–15.

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Clark, J. J. “The Slave Whisperer Rides the Frontier: Horseface Minstrelsy in the Western.” In Animals and Agency: An Interdisciplinary Exploration, edited by Sarah E. McFarl and Ryan Hediger. Brill, 2009, pp. 157–180. Clark, Timothy. The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment. CUP, 2011. Desblache, Lucile. “Writing Relations: The Crab, the Lobster, the Orchid, the Primrose, You, Me, Chaos and Literature.” In Beyond Human: From Animality to Transhumanism, edited by Charlie Blake et al. Continuum, 2012, pp. 122–142. Dufourcq, Annabelle. “A Phenomenological Approach to the Imaginary of Animals.” In Thinking about Animals in the Age of the Anthropocene, edited by Morten Tønnessen et al. Lexington Books, 2016, pp. 55–72. Evernden, Neil. “Beyond Ecology: Self, Place, and the Pathetic Fallacy.” In The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. University of Georgia Press, 1996, pp. 92–104. Garrard, Greg, editor. Ecocriticism: The New Critical Idiom. Routledge, 2007. Glotfelty, Cheryll. “Introduction: Literary Studies in an Age of Environmental Crisis.” In The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. University of Georgia Press, 1996, pp. xv–xxxvii. Hamilton, Clive. Defiant Earth: The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene. Allen & Unwin, 2017. Huggan, Graham, and Helen Tiffin. Postcolonial Ecocriticism Literature, Animals, Environment. Routledge, 2010. Landry, Donna. The Invention of the Countryside: Hunting, Walking and Ecology in English Literature, 1671–1831. Palgrave Macmillan, 2001. Love, Glen A. Practical Ecocriticism: Literature, Biology and the Environment. University of Virginia Press, 2003. Lulka, David. “Consuming Timothy Treadwell: Redefining Nonhuman Agency in Light of Herzog’s Grizzly Man.” In Animals and Agency: An Interdisciplinary Exploration, edited by Sarah E. McFarland Ryan Hediger. Brill, 2009, pp. 67–87. Moore, Byran L. Ecology and Literature: Ecocentric Personification from Antiquity to the Twenty-first Century. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Oliver, Kelly. Animal Lessons: How They Teach Us to Be Human. Columbia University Press, 2009. Parry, Catherine. Other Animals in Twenty-First Century Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Purdy, Jedediah. After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene. Harvard University Press, 2015. Ratelle, Amy. Animality and Children’s Literature and Films. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Rueckert, William. “Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism.” In The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. University of Georgia Press, 1996, pp. 105–123. Sandford, Robert W. The Anthropocene Disruption. Rocky Mountain Books, 2019. Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation. HarperCollins, 2002.

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Tonutti, Sabrina. “Anthropocentrism and the Definition of ‘Culture’ as a Marker of the Human/Animal Divide.” In Anthropocentrism: Humans, Animals, Environment, edited by Rob Boddice, Brill, 2011, pp. 183–199. Welling, Bart H., and Scottie Kapel. “The Return of the Animal: Presenting and Representing Non-Human Beings Response-ably in the (Post-)Humanities Classroom.” In Teaching Ecocriticism and Green Cultural Studies, edited by Greg Garrard. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 104–116. Westling, Louise. “Literature, the environment, and the question of the posthuman.” In Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies: Transatlantic Conversations on Ecocriticism, edited by Catrin Gersdorf and Sylvia Mayer. Rodopi, 2006, pp. 25–47.

Chapter 7

The Idea of Minor Literature by Deleuze and Guattari with Reference to Naga Identity, Psyche, and Victimization of Indigenous Communities in Temsula Ao’s These Hills Called Home: Stories From a War Zone Sindhura Dutta and Asijit Datta

The Government of India Act (1935) was passed making the Naga Hills district an “excluded” area within Assam and was administered by the Governor of Assam. Soon after the Naga conflict began with the independence of India eventually leading to the formation of the Naga National Council. It led to the formation of underground paramilitary forces which operated against the Indian Army in demanding independence from the mainland. Jawaharlal Nehru the then would be prime minister of India dismissed the Naga demand for autonomy in a future postindependent India ascribing Nagaland the status of a weak territory between two magnanimous countries that are India and China. This rendered the Naga territory the image within the mainland of being insufficient and incapable of “stand by itself politically or economically” (qtd in Hazarika 66). It is to be noted that the national consciousness of belonging to India was never present among the Naga at least as can be seen from Naga National Council (NNC)’s submission of their memorandum to the Simon Commission in 1929. The Naga aimed to seek back the status they had before the British colonized them which essentially meant that they didn’t want to be included in the Indian Union. They identified Indians as foreigners and this triggered their want for independence. As the British force 95

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started to retrieve from the region rebellion was the pending indispensable. The closing paragraph of the memorandum states: We pray that the British Government will continue to safeguard our rights against all encroachment from other people who are more advanced than us by withdrawing our country that we should not be thrust to the mercy of other people who could never be subjected; but to leave us alone to determine ourselves as in ancient times. (qtd in Hazarika 64)

Previously Assam Maintenance of Public Order Act (1953) was imposed on the Naga territory, a draconian law to administer the Naga Hills followed by the implementation of the Disturbed Areas Act (1956). Later the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), 1985, was passed which empowered the Indian Army of countering any form of paramilitary activity in the disturbed areas under the act. Sanjoy Hazarika writes: The assault by the Indian Army on the rebels took the shape of a massive crackdown against ordinary villagers, their families and homes, their livestock and granaries. . . . The bitter lore of those events lives on—of rape and massacres, of torture and extortion, of the burning of entire villages, strafing of towns, displacement of tens of thousands of rural folk. (Hazarika 205)

The Shukla Commission set up in 1996 concluded that the Northeast region suffered from four deficits which were a deficit of “basic needs,” “infrastructural deficit,” a deficit of “resource,” and a “two-way deficit of understanding with the rest of the country which compounds the others” (207). Hazarika notes that the story of the Northeast particularly of Nagaland is undoubtedly a “wretched” one “for which amends have not been made.” Hazarika’s opinion resonates throughout Temsula Ao’s preface “Lest We Forget” in These Hills Called Home. Ao’s aim is to express the anxiety of a generation, of a culture, and of a land that came to be as an outcome of the brutal violence meted out on the common citizens of Nagaland caught between the crossfire of the Indian Army and the underground paramilitary. Ao born in Assam writes extensively about Northeast India’s anxiety about identity, an identity that illustrates a sense of isolation from the mainland representing her own people and their problem. She aims to give the closest possible account of the complex social and political dynamics in the region, particularly in Nagaland. The enormous number of deaths that have taken place after AFSPA was imposed resulted in psychological disruption of the numerous tribal communities and villages of Nagaland. After years of turbulent ambiance in 1963 Nagaland was established as a separate state of India. The possibility that lack of cultural representation in the national consciousness makes Northeast India part of the minority community isn’t unrealistic.

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The Naga psyche that the people of this region proudly embrace and cultivate is scarred by the violent air of the insurgency period. Long before the insurgency, Christianity had started with its persistent attempt to remove Nagaland’s indigenous religion, cultural symbol, and any kind of representation that embodied Nagaland’s native ethnic culture. Literature of the minor takes form through indulgence, the act of seeking, and speculation and it is not a straightforward road to recognition whereas literature of the major finds relatively easier means of expression. This newness immanently present in all literary voices of the minor is the crossing of boundaries. This new voice must emerge to speak and to notify that it exists behind the penumbra of the major’s literature. Whereas having overcome the process of “becoming” the literature of major establishes forms that all literary groups must adhere to in their process of becoming. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their work Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature write about Kafka’s works which are to be essentially read as minor literature. In the process of establishing his works as part of the literature of the minority they point out three key elements that make literature minor literature and it is not just arbitrary designation of texts within the domain of the minor that makes them minor. Deleuze and Guattari talk of “deterritorialization,” “politics,” and “collective consciousness,” which makes a work a literature of the minor. This chapter looks at Temsula Ao’s collection of short stories These Hills Called Home: Stories From a War Zone in reference to Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of minor literature. The themes of Ao’s work relate to politics and collective consciousness, something that Deleuze and Guattari tell is present in a minor literature. Politics reside in the power dynamics between the Indian Army and the underground army alongside Assam and Nagaland power conflict affecting nearly all villages in Nagaland and the matter of collective consciousness is to be found in the patterns of such violent past connecting the predicaments and victimization of innocent villagers. Ao attempts to raise the question, “What is a legitimate identity” of being a Naga in a post-insurgency and counterinsurgency world in “Lest We Forget”? The memories belonging to a past most often disorderly and traumatic are trickily positioned in their conscious. Some are sieved out for convenience and some are retained as lessons for the future. The preface fittingly voices Ao’s perspectives of the pain that her homeland and her fellow tribes had been put through during the AFSPA terror of the Indian Government and the underground army. Understanding the agony of a victim isn’t easy work and empathy plays an important role in such understanding. Sometimes acknowledgment is necessary such that acknowledgment being facets of voice lending, appreciation of pain, and expression of grief on realizing what the victim had been put through during such turbulent times. Acknowledgment particularly regarding Nagaland tells a lot about humility and remorse of the

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village burning, women raping, and mass killing which was done by the then Indian Government on innocent people who fell prey between the government and the underground army. Therefore the motif of writing These Hills Called Home was not to segregate the good from the bad because it cannot be done. The motif is to speak of the time and the people who have remained frozen in a chaotic past embedded with violence and have been conveniently forgotten as people in history who had once been put through war massacre. This collection of short stories by Ao ends with only a reminder “there are no winners, only victims” (Ao Preface). Naga nationalism saw an inundation of overwhelming identity establishment and self-determination which was technically justified given the proliferated tribes with distinct values, beliefs, and language. Naga Psyche and its understanding become an important element in the quest of understanding all about the identity issue pertaining to the people of Nagaland. A historical understanding of how they have lived in the past by resisting all dominant forces of other communities is necessary. Therefore an attempt to understand Ao’s These Hills Called Home and the problem of the Naga psyche and identity has to be done by perceiving this text as a text belonging to the domain of the literature of minority community. Saoba meaning idiot in Ao language literally becomes Imtimoa’s name in the story “Saoba” because of his slow and illiterate stance. Being slow in his head he mostly expresses himself through “gestures and grunts” (Ao ch.2). Saoba settles in the household of Imlichuba referred commonly to as Boss. Boss was a creation of the government and was seen as an allied force capable of countering the rebel forces because of his presence and rise in the region. By the end of the story, one day the Boss intoxicated and frantic kills Saoba after which the orphan boy is never mentioned again. No one asks about him, and his life remains as meaningless as it was before his death. This short story is named “Saoba” of course after the orphan boy but more than so as a means to show insightfully what happens to insignificant human beings under the heavy weight of powerful men. Saoba embodies an animal-like behavior because of his orphan state but is treated no differently although he is after all a human being. Because words cannot do him justice, he resorts to speaking mostly through gestures. “The Curfew Man” is illustrative of the hostile atmosphere during the insurgency period in Nagaland. Satmeba is hired as a constable in Assam Police because of his excellent football skills. Having been injured badly in his knee he soon fails to perform his usual job in the police consequently compelling him to retire prematurely. Satmeba and his wife Jemtila leave for their village in Nagaland to fend for themselves. Jemtila is soon hired for household work in a government official’s house. Satmeba is thereafter hired by the Sub Divisional Officer (SDO) as an informer after which Satmeba’s predicament increases, questioning the motif of doing such an odd job and the consequence if he rejects to do such jobs for a government

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official. It is only after he injures his other knee that he secures “freedom from a sinister bondage.” “The Pot Maker” was first published in Tribe, Culture, Art: Essays in Honour of Professor Sujata Miri. It is a story about a girl Sentila and her mother Arenla’s epiphanic skill of pot-making that transforms their relationship forever. Arenla initially disapproves of her daughter’s interest in pot-making, which Arenla herself excels in. She favors weaving over pottery because weaving work fetches more money than pottery and doesn’t require physical strength to dig up clay from hills and afterward give them shapes like in pottery. However, Sentila’s passion for learning pottery soon overcomes Arenla’s disapproval. The story ends with Arenla’s death and Sentila emerging as an excellent potter just like her mother. This story ideally forms part of Nagaland’s cultural image-making. As readers learn more about northeastern culture, a part of this land gets identified for the first time as a unique culture similar and yet diverse to other states of India. Stories like “The Pot Maker” or “The Last Song” gives the readers a glimpse of Nagaland’s cultural ethos. Weaving and pottery are not only means of making a living but are inherently embedded in the cultures of the different ethnic groups of the region. With modernization and religious conversion, Nagaland’s ethnic uniqueness has adapted to changing times leading to cultural disorientation and These Hills Called Home is only partly an attempt to remember and take pride in the “Home” and its culture lost in transition, migration, and war. “A New Chapter” opens a new perspective on the living condition of people in Nagaland around the mid-sixties when the insurgency air around was slowly settling down. This is a story of Nungsang’s character development from an honest army contractor to a corrupt one switching meat-on-hoof with pumpkins ending with Nungsang’s election as an assembly member. Nungsang’s party symbol is coincidentally a hornbill which is quickly employed by Imrong a new contractor to attract a crowd for the election procession. Imrong’s intention to paint the hornbill onto election flags is to sway public opinion and likewise vote in Nungsang’s favor. Hornbill is known as tehra in Angami and is commonly referred to as the bird of paradise sent to earth also considered as a harbinger of good fortune. Its feathers are collected for ceremonial headdresses for the tribes of the land giving it exclusive access only to tribesmen proven to be authentic warriors. Another common symbolism of the bird’s feather is to represent the unity of all tribesmen (Eastern Mirror Nagaland). Therefore Imrong’s employment of these “legendary birds stirred something elemental in their racial memory” (Ao ch.10). The goal was not to represent only Nungsang’s party’s symbol but to evoke in all townsmen their collective consciousness of their common culture and glorious tribal past fittingly perfect for Nungsang’s political agenda propagation. The ploy employed by the group of contractors and party workers to sway public votes for Nungsang worked by creating an image of a man in Nungsang who was here to represent the townsmen and their culture in totality.

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“The Last Song” narrates the story of Apenyo and her mother Libeni living in a village as common as any other village around which other short stories in this collection revolve. Apenyo is undoubtedly a born singer; as a child, she participated in community singing with “loud shrieks and screams” (Ao ch.3) and was later inducted into the church choir. This village where the motherdaughter lives is also a jeopardized village under threat and compulsion of paying taxes to the underground army and ready to be raided by government soldiers “determined to ‘teach’ all those villages the consequences of ‘supporting’ the rebel cause by paying ‘taxes.’” On one such day when the village community is busy inaugurating the new church building the “arrogant Indian army” as Ao herself describes raids the village to indoctrinate the villagers against funding or supporting the underground rebel army. Apenyo during such a tense moment burst out singing accompanied by her choir members which was seen as an act of defiance was retaliated by the Indian army. However, toward the end of the helter-skelter among the villagers, Apenyo and her mother are both raped and killed by the captain of the soldiers. He knocks Libeni unconscious until dead and later uses her lungi (loincloth) to wipe himself. This band of soldiers who had happened to commit such treacherous acts ensured that no witness of the rape would survive and therefore opened fire and burned down the church in which the escaping villager-witness had taken shelter from the firing. What later remained of them were piles of charred bones. As for Apenyo, a piece of her shawl remained from which the mother and daughter could be identified lying dead side by side. Paradoxical remaining after destruction; the presence in the absence is the unique presence of Apenyo through this shawl that holds such great significance in Naga communities and her presence continues years after she has died ending the story with her song that is still audible. A line I have often heard “wars are fought on bodies of women” is perfectly fitting to this story and true for all wars that have broken out on all continents in time. “The Last Song” narrates the story of Apenyo and her mother Libeni living in a village as common as any other village around which other short stories in this collection revolve. Apenyo is undoubtedly a born singer; as a child, she participated in community singing with “loud shrieks and screams” (Ao ch.3) and was later inducted into the church choir. This village where the motherdaughter lives is also a jeopardized village under threat and compulsion of paying taxes to the underground army and ready to be raided by government soldiers “determined to ‘teach’ all those villages the consequences of ‘supporting’ the rebel cause by paying ‘taxes.’” On one such day when the village community is busy inaugurating the new church building the “arrogant Indian army” as Ao herself describes raids the village to indoctrinate the villagers against funding or supporting the underground rebel army. Apenyo during such a tense moment burst out singing accompanied by her choir members

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which were seen as an act of defiance was retaliated by the Indian army. However, toward the end of the helter-skelter among the villagers, Apenyo and her mother are both raped and killed by the Captain of the soldiers. He knocks Libeni unconscious until dead and later uses her lungi (loincloth) to wipe himself. This band of soldiers who had happened to commit such treacherous acts ensured that no witness of the rape would survive and therefore opened fire and burned down the church in which the escaping villagerwitness had taken shelter from the firing. What later remained of them were piles of charred bones. As for Apenyo a piece of her shawl remained from which the mother and daughter could be identified lying dead side by side. Paradoxical remaining after destruction; the presence in the absence is the unique presence of Apenyo through this shawl that holds such great significance in Naga communities and her presence continues years after she has died ending the story with her song that is still audible. A line I have often heard “wars are fought on bodies of women” is perfectly fitting to this story and true for all wars that have broken out on all continents in time. Ao writes: The inheritors of such a history have a tremendous responsibility to sift through the collective experience and make sense of the impact left by the struggle on their lives. Our racial wisdom has always extolled the virtue of human beings living at peace with themselves and in harmony with nature and with our neighbours. It is only when the Nagas re-embrace and re-write this vision into the fabric of their lives in spite of the compulsions of a fast changing world, can we say that the memories of the turbulent years have served us well. (Ao Preface)

Temsula Ao’s attempt to invoke the conscious sieving of the political impact of the turbulent times can be realized not in individual experience but through “collective experience.” This collectiveness being an essential aspect required to be a part of the journey of “becoming” as Deleuze and Guattari mentions in their book is one of the quintessential aspects in the making of literature of the minority. An individual predicament or an individual’s discrimination cannot be alarming or related to minority deprivation but resides always in collective identification as the deprived community. The phases of partisanship occur in clusters in all cultures and nations within which the struggling voices of isolated communities emerging from the deafening noises of the community of the major is then a process toward establishing grounds for the collective minority consciousness. Re-embracing requires re-embracing all Naga traditions that shall not wane away with delusional terms like modernization and globalization. Temsula Ao talks of rewriting their collective narratives into the “fabric of their lives” and this fabric take us back to Libeni’s weaving skills in “The Last Song.” She is the best weaver in the village and the shawl she weaves is always in great demand. The shawls that Libeni weaves here in the text or any other

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Naga woman in reality weaves are intricately stitched into their cultural consciousness. The art of weaving is a matter of great pride for the people of Nagaland, and Apenyo learns this art from her mother marking the passing on of a Naga tradition. Ao’s book is therefore a bundle of thread; a collection weaved together marking an awakening of the Naga consciousness. The idea of religion among the Naga population is complex. They primitively followed animism and most people were 1872 onward converted to Christianity. The matter of religion in Nagaland is complex given the fact that the area is resided by several different tribes, with each tribe having unique religion, diverse rituals, beliefs, and customs. C. Walu Walling notes that for the Ao tribe in Nagaland religion is denoted as yimsu. Yim means village and the resident of the village and su mean “shawl,” cumulatively means “village shawl” (qtd in Baishya 143). Shawl then signifies the binding element holding together the village community of the Ao tribe. Therefore when Temsula Ao mentions the shawl weaving in “The Last Song,” it is not a simplified device of narrative expansion but has an important meaning and significance. “The Last Song” is special among all stories in the collection because other than the signifying shawl, the mode of this story is in oral storytelling tradition, an important part of Naga culture; the tradition which has in time lost its glory and immortality through Christianization, insurgency, and modernization. A recent raid of an underground hideout yielded records of all such collections of the area and the government forces were determined to “teach” all those villages the consequences of “supporting” the rebel cause by paying the “taxes.” Unknown to them, a sinister plan was being hatched by the forces to demonstrate to the entire Naga people what happens when you “betray” your own government. (Ao ch.3)

Similar outrageous raids ending in barn burning or people killing were common during the time and this is a common counterinsurgency ploy that has formed the background theme of many stories in These Hills Called Home. To simplify what is wrong with such blatant abuse of power we may go back to Kafka, the author about whom Deleuze and Guattari talk of in their work. Kafka’s book The Metamorphosis is relevant here all the more because he was primarily drawing attention to what was inherently wrong in a pro-leftright bureaucratic society and how people as insignificant as K (The Trial) gets trapped in the webs of paperwork, protocol trap so much so that not only does their voices go unheard but is ultimately forgotten and never mentioned again. Gregor immanently represents the insignificant existence of people like him or people who are not of great importance within the network of the governmental bureaucracy. The Metamorphosis is open to different interpretation and so I have taken liberty to give a new interpretation of such verminlike post-humanization of humans into unforeseen array of bureaucracy. In

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an absurd world which is the dominant theme in Kafka’s works, The Metamorphosis is really disconcerting even to the point where one questions his own existence in the real world. The question of his fate hangs dry when he turns into an insect and a disconsolate grief clouds his mind. People like Saoba, Satmeba, and others who are treated as they are treated in both These Hills Called Home and in the real world are unquestionably how people treat insects. Although it may ethically be wrong because such treatment involves a “violation of human rights” nevertheless is a reality in all war-ridden zones. The identity of the minority community is constructed in spaces of the majority by using a major language. This is a phenomenon that Deleuze and Guattari term “deterritorialization” (16). This phenomenon is embedded within the process of constructing minor identity where the language of the major is no more restricted for use to the group belonging to the major but has now become part of its territory. The Jews of Prague, for example, are a minority and yet excluded conveniently from it; writing in Prague-German is an elongation of their longing to return home, that is, to their “primitive Czech territoriality” (16). Prague German as Deleuze and Guattari compare is a deterritorialized language used by the writer of minor literature to carve out a space for the minor within spaces of the major. The deterritorialization of a major language is akin to how writers of the African American community have used English which is, without doubt, the language of the major to convey and write the plight of the minority community in which they belong and consequently form a space within the realm of the major. Kafka was a Jew in Germany whose language of instruction in school was German. German was the language of the major in Germany, when Kafka wrote his novels, it was his deterritorialization of the language where he used the language of the major to draw attention to the predicament of the minor. Amit Baishya points all people of Nagaland particularly probably the Nagas only are seen as “peripheral” and “marginal” (92) within national narratives which have been done by recurring dissemination of their primitive cultural symbols and practices, almost as the same as making their image in the country an exotic one similar to what the West has perceived of the East in their preconceived notion of racial supremacy about the “self” and otherizing cultures of the East. There is also an invisible demarcation between the hill and valley populations legally separated by the inner line but because Nagaland was once a part of Assam before it became a state on its own, Assam held a “hegemonic position in the colonial and post-colonial polities often representing the hill tribes as a primitive other” (94): Assam having its tribes played a crucial role in otherizing all tribes who belonged to the “hill spaces” of Nagaland. Dialects are formed out of cultural affiliations and influences over the major language whereas creoles are formed for the need of making an umbrella language out of various small languages. In the case of Nagaland, all tribes speak

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different languages and so these languages have been put together and lexified by the Assamese language in turn leading to the birth of Nagamese. The birth of Nagamese as a language representative of Nagaland was essentially done for making communication easier for people in markets and offices in Nagaland. Writing in English for Temsula Ao is the English-ization of her mother tongue that has been hiding with its tribal existence under communal subjugation in India. The indigenous quality that is attached to each language of the different tribes of Nagaland like the Aos using Ao language, Angamis using Ngami language, Chakhesangs using Chokri language, and many others is lost in the process of attaining national recognition, that is, in the process of creating “Nagamese.” Nagamese is after all a hybrid construction in itself; a creole lexified by the “Assamese” language. This sort of hybrid language formation under the shadow of a major language, Assamese being the major language in Northeast India, particularly in the Assam-Nagaland power dynamics, is the same as the formation of the dialect Prague-German out of German; German being the major language. The orders of established forms are often broken in domains of minor literature. Because there are no preconceived forms or structures for constructing the literature of the minor, it is a beginning of the beginning; a building of the “shattered forms” into the literature of their own that has no identity right from the moment it is conceived but is just a path paved for identity building. Literature is doubtless “a collective machine of expression” (18) giving each text the essence of the author’s being, for the author of the minor it is the being in discomfort trying to make a place through patios having been born in a “country of a great literature.” Kafka has to write in German although he is a Czech Jew, therefore, resorting to the deterritorialization of German. The language of the major is now up for a share, to be claimed by the minor in the act of “becoming.” Once the aim is reached, the becoming stops and the minor becomes the major. It is only in the process of becoming the major that one is recognized as a minor. Having deterritorialized the major language, the minor literature appeals to all readers with the specter available in its form and content. For example, Kafka’s work appeals to readers, not through copacetic contents but through the miserable context in the world of Kafka’s protagonists. These Hills Called Home appeals to readers, not because of copacetic narratives but because for the first time we are heeding stories of people whose struggles and distresses have not only been not acknowledged but have been not been a topic of concern earlier. When the rest of the country was living in peace after India won its independence from its colonizer this northeastern part of the country was plunged into an era of darkness that only saw hostility from a government that wanted them to be part of it. How can the death of Saoba or Apenyo be justified? They were innocent citizens of a state drowned in the insurgency period and triply colonized: first under

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British rule, second under Assam, and third under the Indian Government. People in the region did make a living out of jobs provided by the government and their overall standard of living had improved but in the process, many lives were lost. A longing to return to a place that can be called home is essentially a desire joined with a desire to find who one really is in the literature of the minor. Language forms an important part of one’s identity, a hybrid language such as Prague German or Nagamese lacks the essence of being at home or rather lacks all cultural symbols and ethnic beliefs that make a language mother tongue. Such hybrid languages with the ambiguity of existence cannot express the complete emotion of the inner psyche. Deleuze and Guattari write: The sound or the word that traverses this new deterritorialization no longer belongs to a language of sense, even though it derives from it, nor is it an organized music or song, even though it might appear to be. We noted Gregor’s warbling and the ways it blurred words, the whistling of the mouse, the cough of the ape, the pianist who doesn’t play, the singer who doesn’t sing and gives birth to her song out of her nonsinging, the musical dogs who are musicians in the very depths of their bodies since they don’t emit any music. (21)

Hybrid languages or deterritorialization often creates bouts of expression that are nonsensical, the inability to express meaning fully justifying the initial thought. Like Kafka, we see Ao’s characters like Saoba, Apenyo, or Merenla resorting to the expressions of gibberish in order to speak. Saoba can barely ramble a few words to start with and Merenla employs her dramatic destruction of the pumpkin to express her anger and her feeling of being betrayed by her cousin Nungsang. She couldn’t have done it better in any other way, particularly through language. Apenyo, on the contrary, to Gregor’s “warbling” blasts out in her song that forms her identity of who she is or for what she is known. Her language or mode of expression is taken as an act of defiance eventually leading to her rape and death. “The animal does not speak ‘like’ a man but pulls from the language tonalities lacking in signification” (22) making it impossible for people of the minority community who are otherized into an animal-like existence by the majority to speak in clear language that is easily understandable. Instead, the minor needs to learn the language of the major if he/she wants to be heard. The “cramped space” (17) of minor literature compels individuals to connect almost immediately to everything related to politics. Each story as Deleuze and Guattari write may be an individual narrative but collectively vibrates from within “magnified” into a common point that addresses the common concerns of those minor individuals collectively creating chains of common purpose at different narrative sites. Untangling such political

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discord is the “purification of the conflict that opposes father and son” (17), a priority in the process of “becoming.” Minor literature often takes the magnanimous task of solving conflicts between the major and minor not to be seen as “Oedipal phantasm” but as a political program of setting a dialogue between the father and the son. In our case, the dialogue is to be set between pan India and Northeast India. How can one speak of one’s own collective community identity if not by speaking with the “father” or the “major” to draw attention to the child’s demands and complaints of being dissolved away from the father’s attention? These Hills Called Home is the child with its ambiguous past calling for attention from the government in power toward the unexplainable trauma of the insurgencies and the indelible notoriety of communal discrimination it receives in the country after what has been done to it during years of violence between the two armed forces. The Many That I Am edited by Anungla Zoe Longkumer is a collection of stories and narratives told by Naga women writers made as an attempt to create a space for these writers in a patriarchal Naga culture. My interest was sparked by two important elements that she mentions in this book: tattoo tradition and oral tradition. Oral tradition as I have mentioned earlier was the sole basis of narration in “The Last Song,” passing down the story of Apenyo, the young girl who was raped and killed by some Indian soldier gone rogue. Her songs are still audible in their ghastly recurrence from amidst the pasts of her village. Longkumer writes in the “Introduction” that the oral tradition of her culture is not a plain storytelling method but also documents their history, language, religion, belief, customs, and tradition. It embodies the essence of being a Naga and the “slightest change” in the tradition of passing down literature of their culture to future generations (Longkumer5) will render their literature that is Naga literature “weak and incomplete.” She writes it must be conveyed that all written literary attempt by the writers from the area is a new phenomenon not perceived in the past and therefore lacks the vastness of other kinds of literature found in other states of India. As far as the tradition of tattoo making is concerned, with fast-paced modernization and the dawn of Christianity, tattoos were to be considered “a sin to mark thy skin” (3). Of course, a new religion would forbid anything reminiscent of the former religion. This alien religion in Nagaland which is Christianity had replaced all indigenous customs and so the passing down of clan tattoos through generations was disrupted. “Take these (pointing to the tattoos), take them as far away as you can,” Longkumer recalls a tribe grandmother telling her while she was visiting Ao villages. Passing down Naga tradition as a whole irrespective of the different traditions that each tribe followed was a necessary act that she tried to conceive in her book The Many That I Am. She recalls her days at the convent school in Shillong where she had grown up. Her school forbids them to speak their mother tongue which was replaced by

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English. After years of the persistent spread of English, it is likely, that the Naga culture which was dominated by several languages of the tribes would be difficult to be deciphered even by their people who had a similar experience like Longkumer. No doubt a mother tongue would remain the mother tongue but the native literary traditions and cultures would eventually fade or be lost in time. This would make it indispensable to reconstruct whatever was left of historic memory of the ethnic groups and writers of the region to be documented in English, the language of the major. The Many That I Am edited by Anungla Zoe Longkumer is a collection of stories and narratives told by Naga women writers, made as an attempt to create a space for these writers in a patriarchal Naga culture. My interest was sparked by two important elements that she mentions in this book; tattoo tradition and oral tradition. Oral tradition as I have mentioned earlier was the sole basis of narration in “The Last Song,” passing down the story of Apenyo, the young girl who was raped and killed by some Indian soldier gone rogue. Her songs are still audible in their ghastly recurrence from amidst the pasts of her village. Longkumer writes in the “Introduction” that the oral tradition of her culture is not a plain storytelling method but also documents their history, language, religion, belief, customs, and tradition. It embodies the essence of being a Naga and the “slightest change” in the tradition of passing down literature of their culture to future generations (Longkumer5) will render their literature that is Naga literature “weak and incomplete.” She writes it must be conveyed that all written literary attempt by the writers from the area is a new phenomenon not perceived in the past and therefore lacks the vastness of other kinds of literature found in other states of India. As far as the tradition of tattoo making is concerned, with fast-paced modernization and the dawn of Christianity, tattoos started to be considered “a sin to mark thy skin” (3). Of course, a new religion would forbid anything reminiscent of the former religion. This alien religion in Nagaland which is Christianity had replaced all indigenous customs and so the passing down of clan tattoos through generations was disrupted. “Take these (pointing to the tattoos), take them as far away as you can.” Longkumer recalls a tribe grandmother telling her while she was visiting Ao villages. Passing down of Naga tradition as a whole irrespective of the different traditions that each tribe followed was a necessary act that she tried to conceive in her book The Many That I Am. She recalls her days at the convent school in Shillong where she had grown up. Her school forbids them to speak their mother tongue which was replaced by English. After years of the persistent spread of English, it is likely, that the Naga culture which was dominated by several languages of the tribes would be difficult to be deciphered even by their people who had a similar experience like Longkumer. No doubt a mother tongue would remain the mother tongue but the native literary traditions and cultures would eventually fade

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or be lost in time. This would make it indispensable to reconstruct whatever was left of the historic memory of the ethnic groups and writers of the region to be documented in English, the language of the major. Deleuze and Guattari find that K’s life is of eternal enslavement into “unlimited postponement” (52) of a mixture of bureaucratic concoction building up the narrative structure of any common man who forms part of the minority representing the voiceless stuck in the trap of the infinite chambers of the directorate. The element of infinite postponement or enslavement by proliferating laws of government organization is also present in stories like “The Curfew Man” or “A New Chapter.” Satmeba and Nungsang are indeed eternally fallen, trapped in the crossfire between the Indian Army and the underground rebel army. Both try to evade the gripping of the army violence, resisting being allured by either side’s trickery to outwit the other. Both protagonists have their pitfalls and somehow manage to restore their integrity but they are not alone in this web of insurgency all other characters get involved and therefore no story is an individual quest to forge voices of their own but to forge a collective voice of the victimized community in times of insurgency. These Hills Called Home isn’t any different from Kafka’s attempt to show what happens to people in the “Penal Colony.” The word colony comes with the predetermined idea of slavery, bondage, and unfair laws, and The Penal Colony embodies the exact notion of such a colony with its unjust laws and judicial system. The apparatus that the officer glorifies and looks up to is similar to apparatuses found in governments that punish their citizens or unrelated people for crimes of others. The existence of the “apparatus” that the officer takes pride in is questionable but such apparatus exists nevertheless in real life. This apparatus is a product of the old commandant condemned by the new commandant in The Penal Colony which may also be read as a metaphoric existence. The matter of concern regarding the apparatus and its killing method is secondary but the primary focus should be on the reason for the death penalty and the grounds on which a prisoner is condemned guilty. The condemned in The Penal Colony is neither aware of his crime nor is given a chance to put forward his explanation; such a situation where the prisoner or the accused is disposed of by the judiciary without a proper chance of representation isn’t new in Kafka’s works but is the dominant theme in The Trial. However, The Penal Colony differs from The Trial in the freedom of the condemned that isn’t an option for K. The ethical concern in The Penal Colony is situated in the traveler’s empathy toward the condemned but his indifference toward the officer giving the text an ambiguous justice that is embedded in question whether the traveler’s indifference toward the officer is correct because the condemned’s death in the apparatus would be as unethical as the officer’s death in the apparatus but the travelers doesn’t stop the officer anyway. However, both the survivors and the dead

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who were victims of AFSPA, the Indian Army, and the underground rebels in Nagaland remained frozen as clusters of “condemned” people who never got the chance to be set free. WORKS CITED Ao, Temsula. “The Letter.” The Many That I Am: Writings from Nagaland, edited by Anungla Zoe Longkumer. Zubaan, 2019, pp. 77–85. Ao, Temsula. These Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone. Zubaan, 2014. Baishya, Amit R. Contemporary Literature from Northeast India: Deathworlds, Terror and Survival. Routledge, 2019. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. “What Is Minor Literature?.” Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, translated by Dana B. Polan, by Gilles Deleuze et al. University of Minnesota Press, 2016, pp. 16–27. Devy, G. N. A Nomad Called Thief: Reflections on Adivasi Silence. Orient Longman, 2006. Hazarika, Sanjoy. Strangers No More: New Narratives from India’s Northeast. Aleph Book Company, 2018. Kafka, Franz, and Joachim Neugroschel. The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories. Simon & Schuster, 2003. Longkumer, Anungla Zoe. Introduction. The Many That I Am: Writings from Nagaland, edited by Anungla Zoe Longkumer. Zubaan, 2019, pp. 1–8. Nagaland, Eastern Mirror. “The Great Hornbill: Harbinger of Good Tidings.” Easternmirrornagaland.com, 2016, easternmirrornagaland.com/ the-great-hornbill-harbinger-of-good-tidings/. Kafka, Franz, and Joachim Neugroschel. The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories. Simon & Schuster, 2003. Longkumer, Anungla Zoe. “Introduction.” In The Many That I Am: Writings from Nagaland. Zubaan, 2019, pp. 1–8. Nagaland, Eastern Mirror. “The Great Hornbill: Harbinger of Good Tidings.” Eas​tern​ mirr​orna​galand​​.com, 2016, easte​​rnmir​​rorna​​galan​​d​.com​​/the-​​great​​-horn​​bill-​​harbi​​ nger-​​of​-go​​​od​-ti​​dings​/.

Chapter 8

The Influence of West Indian Cultural Values on Collective and Individual Identities in Brown Girl, Brownstones and Praisesong for the Widow Renée Latchman

Paule Marshall was a female African American writer who was concerned with the issues of African American and Caribbean migrants’ integration into Western society, especially women, and their ability to retain a connection with their African roots as a tool in maintaining their identity. Brown Girl, Brownstones, Marshall’s first novel, is set in Brooklyn, New York, after the First World War when many West Indians were seeking refuge from their homelands because they experienced ill-treatments from British colonizers. In the novel, Marshall presents the conflict of community identity versus individual identity in an environment where a disavowal or embrace of cultural values plays a significant role in self-development. Dorothy Hamer Denniston, in The Fiction of Paule Marshall, points out the conflict which lies in community and individual identity that is fused, stating Brown Girl, Brownstones is “a text about individual development that is inseparable from the development of the collective body” (7). Praisesong for the Widow, the second primary text in this research, is Marshall’s third novel, which recounts a widow’s quest for identity that culminates in a physical and metaphorical journey in the final book of the narrative. Praisesong takes readers on a voyage over land and water to a place where community and culture are essential to one’s being. The collective community is lauded for its support system and nurturing ability in the text, and readers are led to examine the value of belonging to a community versus focusing on individual identity. Additionally, the role of cultural identity in the novel is highlighted by Thelma Ravell-Pinto in her review of Praisesong as she concludes: 111

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[t]his novel shows how important cultural identity is to the spiritual well-being of an individual. We come to realize that physical exile is as significant as the cultural alienation human beings are subjected to when they are deprived of their history and heritage. (511)

particularly in spaces where one’s culture is not valued. Edward Said speaks directly to the issue of identity for the colonized or “the Other” in Orientalism. Although the term “Orient” initially referred to Eastern societies, Said later extends the term to all cultures that were governed by a dominant culture (Said 331). The United States of America represents a dominant culture in which Marshall’s West Indian characters, “the Other,” migrate to America, the Occident, and in which Marshall’s African American characters are victims of forced migration leading them to become “the Other” in America. Moreover, Said’s discourse addresses the misrepresentation of “the Other” in postcolonial literature—an inaccurate image that has marred their identity in postcolonial discussions. He argues, “[t]here were—and are—cultures and nations whose location is in the East, and their lives, histories, and customs have a brute reality obviously greater than anything that could be said about them in the West” (Said 5), revealing the tacit acknowledgment “the Essential”—the dominant culture—gives to “the Other.” Said therefore petitions Orientals to write their own stories (Said 166) which would provide a veridical image for readers. Marshall answers Said’s call when she writes the story of “the Other,” in Brown Girl, Brownstones and Praisesong for the Widow. To unpack the significance of Marshall’s works in underscoring the relevance of preserving cultures in hegemonic spaces, Said’s theory of Orientalism will be used to unveil the role of women as cultural curators, as well as to analyze their efforts to sustain their cultures and identities via rituals, collective community, and language in American society as depicted in Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones and Praisesong for the Widow.

RITUALS In a discussion concerning the importance of preserving cultural diversity in the midst of globalization, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) hosted a convention in 2003 surrounding the theme “Intangible Heritage.” The world organization noted the magnitude of rituals in maintaining culture and in endorsing identity saying: Social practices, rituals and festive events are habitual activities that structure the lives of communities and groups that are shared by and relevant to many of

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their members. They are significant because they reaffirm the identity of those who practise them as a group or a society and, whether performed in public or private . . . are closely linked to a community’s worldview and perception of its own history and memory. (“Social Practices, rituals and festive events”)

The fact that the UNESCO deems cultural preservation so important the organization holds a convention in its name speaks to the weight of the issue and the endangered nature of indigenous cultures, rituals, and cultural preservation practices midst globalization and imperialist hegemonies. Indeed, for indigenous cultures, immigrant, and transnational groups cultural conservation is key to identity building. Like UNESCO, Marshall is aware of the connection between rituals and identity sustenance; thus, she utilizes rituals in both texts as survival tools for the ethnic communities represented. To a greater extent, though, the rituals portrayed in Praisesong for the Widow are typical of historical rituals and festive events that UNESCO classifies as “[d]istinctive social practices that are specially relevant to a community and help reinforce a sense of identity and continuity with the past” (“Social Practices, rituals and festive events”). Throughout Praisesong, rituals function as agents that shape and maintain the cultural identity of Avey, the protagonist, and her husband, Jay. Avey practices many rituals as a child, including going to the Hudson River with her family every summer, spending August with her Aunt Cuney in Tatem, and observing the ritual dance Ring Shout performed by the elders in Tatem. Her engagement in these cultural events heightens her awareness of her cultural heritage and reinforces her sense of belonging, which is key to her identity development. As an adult, however, it becomes increasingly difficult for Avey to practice her cultural rituals as her attention is turned toward economic uplift in America. Avey’s inability to maintain her cultural practices sends her into a downward spiral as she loses her cultural grounding. UNESCO emphasizes, “Processes such as . . . individualisation can have a negative effect on cultural practices” (“Social Practices, rituals and festive events”). Individualization changes the focus of cultural group members from a communal one to an individual one that excludes community members and abstains from communal cultural practices. Furthermore, individualization is single-minded in its trajectory. When Avey and her husband are faced with economic pressures, their drive to survive propels them to focus on material gain and on a path of individualization. Notably, their obsession with achieving material success stifles their identities and causes a rift in their relationship, as they are no longer acting as one unit but as two individuals seeking personal uplift and who are operating outside of a community that normally fortifies their sense of self in occidental America. Marshall presents their loss of identities and the breakdown in their relationship as a direct consequence of their decision

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to sacrifice their cultural practices to achieve upward mobility (124). Barbara T. Christian, in “Ritualistic Process and The Structure of Paule Marshall’s Praisesong For The Widow,” posits, “[i]n accepting and achieving the American dream, [Avey and Jay] dishonor themselves, as Black, as woman and man” (74) because they forsake their culture and family rituals to achieve the American dream. Based on the outcome of the characters, Marshall clearly endorses cultural ritualistic practices as a method of keeping individuals connected to their roots and believes that Africans in the Diaspora will experience a disconnect that can lead to personal destruction as exemplified by Avey, who feels alienated from society, and Jay, who overworks himself and has a heart attack. Cultural Rituals that Preserve: Before their cultural disconnect and martyrdom of rituals to pursue economic advancement, Avey and Jay practice New World Black cultural rituals that keep their family together and ground them culturally (Marshall 116). Music is one of the ways in which they enjoy each other as a family and which strengthens the union between the couple. Avey fondly remembers Jay’s daily practice after returning home from work; he turn[s] up the volume on the phonograph which would already be playing their favorite records . . . he would . . . close his eyes, and let Coleman Hawkins, The Count, Lester Young, . . . The Duke—along with the singers she loved . . . work their magic . . . on him. (94)

Jay uses music to release all the stresses of the workday. He has inherited his record collection from his father, and he takes great care in preserving the black traditional music that reminds him of his culture and gives him relief from white American society. After saturating his mind with black music, Jay is ready to serenade his wife and dance with his children. These rituals of playing and listening to music daily, as his father did, and allowing it to soothe his soul before he interacts with his family reinforce a spirit of love and unity despite the family’s poverty. But the musical ritual ceases when the family, through wealth acquisition, assimilates into mainstream America, and the couple abandons their cultural heritage. Another ritual sacrificed for upward economic mobility is the Johnsons’s yearly visit to the Tatem house bequeathed to Avey by Aunt Cuney. Avey usually takes Jay to the Landing and shares the story of the Ibos with him. An indigenous leader from a nongovernmental organization in Peru pragmatically stated, “[w]omen in indigenous communities are important producers and reproducers of family life, thus carrying out a significant role in transmitting cultural values to future generations” (Kosec para 1). Aunt Cuney fulfills this role as a member of the Ibo community and as a cultural transmitter. She intentionally passes the baton to Avey when she repeatedly

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recounts the stories of their heritage to her. Avey continues the tradition as an adult by sharing the stories with her husband and family. By doing this, Avey was fulfilling her role of storytelling and passing on oral history. Additionally, through her storytelling, Avey resists the assimilation of mainstream American cultural values and refutes postcolonial Occidental discourse about women as “willing to be dominated” (Said 6). In the words of the indigenous leader from Peru, “[women] are the ones who preserve our identity” (“Kosec para 1); so like Aunt Cuney, Avey has a responsibility to maintain her identity and that of her family’s, and she fulfills this role for a while. However, after a fight between her and Jay one Tuesday night, the rituals of going to Tatem, visiting friends in Harlem, and going to dances cease (Marshall 116) and are replaced by study manuals and other materials that provide economic uplift for the family at the expense of their family life and cultural identities. Moreover, when Avey and Jay stop going to Tatem, visiting their friends in Harlem, and spending time with each other, they cut off their lifelines to their African communities and by extension, their heritage. They alienate themselves from cultural practices that preserve their spirits and their lives begin to wane. According to Christian: Praisesong insists that New World Black rituals are living and functional, and that they contain .  .  . an essential truth: that beyond rationality, the body and spirit must not be split by the “shameful stone of false values,” that we must feel, with humility, the nurturing ground from which [we] have sprung and to which [we] can always turn for sustenance. (83)

Christian describes the Johnsons’s downward spiral as “a kind of spiritual suicide, for they give up their music, heritage, sensuality, their expression of themselves” (77) to avoid poverty and to achieve the American dream. As Avey and Jay accept the “shameful stone of false values” (77), they fall victim to the Occidental culture which seeks to destroy any Oriental culture it encounters. The Carriacou People: Catalysts of Change: The indigenous community of the Carriacou people are significant to the story not only because they facilitate Avey’s healing but more so because they are not conquered by Western ideals, and they reflect the power of cultural community and cultural continuity. Missy Kubitschek, in “Paule Marshall’s Women on Quest” posits, “[r]ituals reenacting past events with necessarily contemporaneous actors emphasize the characters’ awareness of their heritages and their own importance” (45), a truth depicted in Marshall’s presentation of the Carriacou people. Every year, the Carriacou poeple ritualistically observe the Carriacou Excursion, a weekend of historical tribute to their ancestors when they dress in their cultural colors, speak their cultural language—Creole—and have festivals

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where they eat their cultural food (Marshall 164–165). The function of the Carriacou Excursion in the novel is trifold because it nurtures the spirits of the Carriacou people and maintains their connection with their heritage, while simultaneously facilitating Avey’s rediscovery of her identity. Mr Joseph— a Carriacou—is proud of his heritage. In his conversation with Avey, he describes one of the first rituals he performs when he arrives in Carriacou: The first thing I do the minute I reach home is to roast an ear of corn just pick out from the ground and put it on a plate for them. And next to the plate I puts a lighted candle. Everybody does the same. Next thing I sprinkles a little rum outside the house. They likes that. (165)

The reverence in Mr Joseph’s voice is reflected in his description of the ritual. He and the other Carriacou people show great respect for their rituals, ancestors, and desire to please their ancestors. Their respect for their heritage reminds Avey of her childhood days in Tatem when she would watch the elders perform the Ring Shout and sing in unison to their ancestors with the same reverence (Marshall 34). The Carriacou ancestral rituals also remind its people of their nation. Thus, there is a greater sense of one’s identity as Marshall subtly elucidates that Africa is not a country, it is a continent with many nations. Mr. Joseph proudly tells Avey about the dances that are representative of each nation and that every nation has a dance, which each person from Carriacou must dance for the Long-time People (166). “I’s a Chamba! From my father’s side of the family . . . My mother now was a Manding and when they dance her nation I does a turn or two out in the ring so she won’t feel I’m slighting her. But I must salute the Chambas first” (166). Mr. Joseph’s description is followed by his questions about Avey’s identity, “And what you is? . . . What’s your nation?” (167). These are two of the most provocative questions in the novel because they force Avey to confront herself and her dissonance with her African identity. Of course, Avey does not know which nation she is from and replies, “I’m a visitor, a tourist, just someone here for the day” (167). Avey’s response points to her loss of connection with her cultural roots—a consequence of her decision to change her focus to Western ideologies of wealth acquisition, without the maintenance of her cultural identity. Nevertheless, it is Avey’s eventual decision to go to Carriacou with Mr Joseph and participate in the ancestral rituals that help her regain her identity. Mr Joseph serves as an example to Avey of how one can remain connected to his or her heritage, even if he or she is geographically separated from the cultural source. Although Mr Joseph does not reside on the island, he is conscious of his identity because he stays connected with his past through the excursion, the rituals, and his visit to the place of his ancestors and of his birth. As the oldest surviving member of his community, his presence is key

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in setting an example for the younger generations. Indeed, his self-confidence and connection to his past remind Avey of Aunt Cuney and her beliefs. Turning the focus now to the Barbadians in Brown Girl, Brownstones, Marshall represents yet again, but on a smaller scale, rituals as a social practice in preserving cultural identity. In this chapter, Marshall illuminates how female West Indians use their weekend rituals of cooking to maintain their Bajan identity. Silla, one of the main characters in the novel, is the host of the weekend cooking ritual. Every Saturday, Silla and her friends meet in her kitchen while she is preparing Barbadian dishes. Via these meetings, the women encourage each other with cultural values that help sustain their West Indian identity. Every Saturday, Silla’s kitchen was filled with fragrances, for Silla made and sold Barbadian delicacies: black pudding, which is the intestines of the pig stuffed with grated sweet potato, beets, animal blood and spices until it is a thick sausage, then tied at the ends and boiled; also souse, which she made by pickling parts of the pig; and coconut or sweet bread, a heavy bread with coconut running in a rich vein through the center. (Marshall 55)

Cooking, for these West Indian women, is a cultural skill whereby delicious Bajan foods are prepared with recipes passed down from generation to generation. The women in this novel, therefore, maintain their roles as transmitters of cultural values by cooking indigenous foods for and with their children, and cooking becomes a survival tool for these women in retaining their identities in white America. Communal cooking not only helps these women preserve their food culture but also upholds other cultural practices that keep them connected to their Bajan community. During their “meetings” in Silla’s kitchen, the women share their experiences and pass on cultural traditions about child rearing and surviving harsh colonial realities, which help them to persevere in an overpowering Occidental society. Marshall depicts a typical Saturday kitchen conversation, when Silla shares her struggle to discipline her children. In response to Silla, Florrie, Silla’s friend, replies, “You got to wash their tails in licks. You remember what the old people home did tell us: hard ears you wun hear, own-ways you’ll feel” (Marshall 56). Iris, another member of the communal kitchen conversation, rejects Florrie’s suggestion, offering her own: “[b]ut c’dear, I don does have no trouble with mine. Maybe if you two would send the children to church” (Marshall 56). Florrie and Iris exhibit two cultural disciplinary practices of West Indian women: beating their offspring and sending them to church. Not assimilating Occidental disciplinary measures such as “time out,” Marshall displays the extent of the women’s lack of acculturation in American society. Furthermore, along with maintaining traditional cooking and eating, the women’s rejection of Western cultural

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values in disciplining refutes postcolonial Occidental discourse that presents women as “willing to be dominated” (Said 6). COLLECTIVE COMMUNITY From a sociopolitical perspective, the Barbadian Association functions as an organized and politicized collective community in Brown Girl, Brownstones. Its presence in the novel is indicative of how the Other can mobilize itself as a unit to subvert the Essential in Occidental society. Importantly, the Barbadian Association is central to the upholding of other cultural rituals and practices that are crucial to its members and the validation of their identities. This organization is formed out of the desire of the first-generation immigrants— the parents in the novel—to provide a better life for their children through collective effort and to uphold a collective community, which would pass on Bajan culture, maintain Bajan identity, and create financial security. By forming this association, the Bajans create a community, within a dominant community, that sustains itself and its traditional cultural identity. Even the motto of the Barbadian Association: “It Is Not The Depths From Which We Come But The Heights To Which We Ascend” (Marshall 188) uses the collective pronoun we twice, emphasizing the collective identity. The Barbadian Association is a self-help organization that creates a safe space for Bajans to express themselves. In the meetings, the Bajans are able to eat Bajan, talk Bajan, and reinforce Bajan goals, cultures, and values. Marshall describes the association as “no longer individuals .  .  . but a puissant force, sure of its goal and driving hard toward it . . . a sign that a people are banded together in a spirit of self-help” (190). Homi Bhabha, in The Location of Culture, calls this type of community a hybrid community. Bhabha describes the hybrid community as “the strategic reversal of the process of domination through disavowal .  .  . the articulation of the ambivalent space where the rite of power is enacted on the site of desire” (as qtd. in The Critical Tradition 1882–1883). Via the association, the Bajans create their own source of economic power in America, providing financial support within the group, allowing community and personal uplift and the achievement of higher social status. Moreover, the Bajans’ attitude toward success is demonstrated through the use of words such as Depths, Come, Heights, and Ascend—words that constitute their motto “It Is Not The Depths From Which We Come But The Heights To Which We Ascend”—which signify forward movement (188). Marshall’s narrator lists the accomplishments of the association, including “the ‘Fund’ to which all members contributed and which in turn made small loans to members [as well as the] bigger plans .  .  . to set up [their] credit

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system . . . [their] own little bank” (188). The financial infrastructure of the Barbadian Association acts as a vehicle for collective uplift by providing financial support within the community without the high-interest rates of the Occidental society. Because the association inspires uplift, the meeting does not end without a reminder that “[the members are] small timers .  .  . [b]ut [they] got their eye on the big time” (189). The “big time” that the narrator mentions is the personal and social upward mobility that the Barbadian Association seeks to provide for its members and for the association as an institution. Moreover, projecting “big time” for the Bajans boosts their psyche as they are projecting to have future successes, a hope that the Occidental society does not readily offer to them. In addition, using the word Barbadian as a part of the name for the association can be considered a hybridized word, since people from Barbados do not refer to each other as Barbadian but as Bajans, a shift that occurred shortly after their independence (Sean Carrington 20). It can therefore be argued that using the obsolete noun Barbadian mimics the formation of the noun American and is symbolic of the Bajans creating their own nation within a nation. Such mimicry is deemed impossible by the Essential, chiefly because the Essential, in their discourse about immigrants, renders the Other as a foreign entity without real values (Said 38–39). Yet, Marshall writes back, allowing her characters to develop strong ethnic communities, with their own values and sense of politics, that do not assimilate into or correspond with the Essential paradigm. Significantly, the creation of the Barbadian Association also assists in facilitating uplift in the novel that helps maintain identity. All the women attend the association meetings except Suggie, the prostitute, whose means of personal uplift is rejected by the Bajan community because it is regarded as morally degrading. Miss Thompson—another member of the Bajan community—and Silla urge Selina, Silla’s teenage daughter and second-generation immigrant, to go to the meetings because they believe it will help her find her identity and attain personal uplift. Marshall presents Selina as having a confused and dislocated state of mind because of Selina’s rejection of her community, her Bajan identity, and by extension, her African roots. Miss Thompson, in her role as a cultural vehicle, tries to persuade Selina to desist from ostracizing herself from her Bajan community and instead welcome it. But it is not until the end of the novel when Selina finally accepts her collective community that she is able to embrace her cultural roots, achieve cultural identity, and begin self-actualization. In Praisesong, the collective community is expressed in the form of the Carriacou people, and as previously mentioned, this collective community is crucial in aiding Avey to reconnect with her cultural identity. Avey’s interaction with the Carriacou people is accidental as she is on a cruise but plans to

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leave the cruise ship and return home to New York via a flight from Grenada. However, when she gets to Grenada, she is unable to get a flight on the same day and is forced to stay at a hotel. While there, Avey witnesses hundreds of people at the port, the “out-islanders” (Marshall 75–76) in brightly colored clothes with smiling faces, speaking an unfamiliar language. Avey’s alienation from these people is expressed in her description of them as she ponders how “[f]or the first time in the three years that she had been coming to the islands, she experienced that special panic of the traveler who finds himself sealed-off, stranded in a sea of incomprehensible sound” (70). And yet, Marshall allows Avey to be mistaken for a Carriacou woman. The man, a Carriacou out-islander, in recognizing his error, tells Avey, “Don’ ever let anybody tell you, my lady, that you ain’ got a twin in this world!” (72). This is ironic because although Avey feels alienated from these people, she is mistaken for one of them. Unexpectedly for Avey, it is the collective community of the Carriacou people that induces her healing process and quest for identity. In observing the Carriacou collective community, Avey is reminded of a collective community of which she was a member. As a child, Avey’s collective community and extended family are embodied in Aunt Cuney, who tells her stories about her ancestors. When Avey moves to New York, she becomes far removed from the memory of her dead aunt and cultural ties to Southern America and to Africa. However, on her visit to Grenada and on the sight of the Carriacou people, she is reminded of Tatem through the language of the Carriacou people. When Avey hears them speak Patois, she remembers Tatem because “[t]here had been the same vivid, slightly atonal music underscoring the words” (67). Avey also remembers the trip she usually took with her family to the Hudson River and how connected she felt to everyone there. When Mr. Joseph leaves her on the wharf to go find a boat, Avey reminisces about the trips to the Hudson river as the scene in front of her also vaguely called to mind something from her own life . . . the surging crowd, the rapidly filling boats, the sheen of sunlight on the water were reminiscent of something. And slowly it came to her, drifting up out of the void she sensed in her: the annual boat ride up the Hudson River to Bear Mountain! (188)

Before visiting her Aunt Cuney, Avey and her family would go on a trip to Bear Mountain Park on an excursion, similar to the Carriacou Excursion, sponsored by the neighborhood social club. While standing in the midst of the Carriacous at the wharf, bustling about her in excitement about their excursion, Avey recollects the same atmosphere of exhilaration shared by her family and her neighbors going to Bear Mountain. Coincidentally, Avey’s

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mother would wear a bright floral print dress, resembling the dresses of the Carriacou women (188). Avey compares the unity she feels with the people at the Hudson River with the sensation she feels when she usually watches the elderly folk perform the Ring Shout as a child. She describes “what seemed to be hundreds of slender threads streaming out from her navel and from the place where her heart was to enter those around her” (190). Surprisingly, Avey feels this same connection as she stands in the midst of the Carriacou people awaiting their boat to take them across the water. She feels like threads went out not only to people she recognized from the neighborhood but to those she didn’t know as well, such as the roomers just up from the South and the small group of West Indians whose odd accent called to mind Gullah talk. (190)

These threads metaphorically join her to the Carriacous and allow her to feel the same sense of safety she felt among the group at the Hudson River. The threads of union Avey begins to feel toward these people intensify when she arrives in Carriacou and meets Mr. Joseph’s daughter Rosalie Parvay. Avey spends her first night at Rosalie’s house tossing and turning from nightmares. Rosalie attends to Avey like her own child, checking on her constantly through the night (216). When Avey awakens, Rosalie bathes and massages her entire body, singing to Avey as she tries to soothe her (218). When Rosalie performs the healing ritual on Avey, she recollects a similar tub in Tatem to Rosalie’s bathtub. Here, Marshall draws on similar rituals in Avey’s past while portraying the rituals of the Carriacou community, illuminating cultural continuity across geographical regions and using memory to foster Avey’s rebirth and renewed identity. Additionally, Marshall is highlighting the effects of cultural values passed on from generation to generation, since the rituals Avey witnesses and participates in as a child are similar to the rituals performed by the Carriacou people. These rituals help Avey remember who she is and where she is from. Practicing these rituals in two different geographical regions is meaningful, signifying the unity of Africans throughout the Diaspora. Marshall is showing the power and strength of cultural continuance, as well as common threads among Africans in the Diaspora that create a single community distanced by physical location but not by cultural practices, roots, and identity. The connection to one’s past implies the idea of collective identity, which Said argues is integral in fighting the Occidental’s effort to destroy Oriental culture (38–39). Therefore, Avey, like Selina, does not find her identity until she embraces her history and identifies with the collective community that shares the same values and culture reminiscent of her past.

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LANGUAGE Whereas language served as a form of cultural expression primarily during the Carriacou Excursion in Praisesong, in Brown Girl, language as a form of cultural identity is articulated on a daily basis among the characters. Marshall has personal experience with the power of language and women using it as a method of self-expression. Her essay “From the Poets in the Kitchen” discusses how her mother and other Bajan women use language as a tool of self-expression, to remember their homeland, and to make themselves visible in a society in which black, female foreigners suffered a triple invisibility (27). Marshall points out that her mother and her mother’s friends took refuge in their language because it was the only tool that kept them connected to their homeland while they experienced a disconnect in America, an observation she made during her childhood (26). Marshall therefore attributes her success, writing skills, and love for language to her mother and the other Bajan women who met in her mother’s kitchen and shared social commentaries on the economic and political atmosphere of the 1930s. Additionally, in an interview with Felicia Lee of the New York Times, Marshall applauds the language of the women who gathered in her mother’s kitchen, describing it as a “kind of poetry in their West Indian dialect, the language that they had managed to mold out of what was imposed on them” (C1). It is therefore no surprise that Marshall’s women use language as an agent in preserving their identity, displaying Bajan Creole, the language of the women, as flexible in its usage and applicability as a dialect of praise, instruction, admonition, and sentiment in the novel. By retaining their language, these Bajans are maintaining their identity specifically since language is a tool of classification and indicates loyalty to a group. Most of the Bajans in the novel speak Bajan Creole with the exception of Selina, the protagonist, who is on a journey of self-discovery. Notably, Clive, who is a secondgeneration Bajan like Selina, is ostracized by the Bajan community but still tries to maintain his identity and connection to the community by speaking Bajan Creole especially when talking to his mother. In speaking Bajan, Clive is showing his loyalty to the Bajan community even though the members of the community discriminate against him because of his career choice to be an artist. Said argues that the Essential use language as a tool to strip the Other of their cultural identity. However, the Bajans in Brown Girl, Brownstones do not allow their interactions with the Essential to drown their cultural practices, particularly their language. In maintaining their language, the Bajans are defying the Essential and exemplifying Toni Morrison’s argument that “cultural identities are formed and informed by a nation’s literature” (39),

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since the women’s discourse can be seen as oral literature, passing their stories orally from one generation to the other. The second-generation Bajan children do not all share the same sense of pride in the Bajan dialect as their parents. Selina renounces her Bajan language as a part of her rejection of the collective community, which Marshall links to Selina’s inability to acquire her identity. Selina does not learn to speak Bajan Creole even though everyone in the Bajan community does. Furthermore, Selina’s refusal to communicate in Bajan Creole isolates her from joining in cultural oral exchanges. Even in her more intimate relationships, Selina shows distaste for her cultural language. In her interaction with Clive, her boyfriend, she becomes “unnerved . . . by his slight accent” (220) whenever he speaks Bajan Creole with his mother. Not even Selina’s close relationship with her father motivates her to communicate with him in the cultural language, even though Deighton speaks to her only in Bajan Creole and assigns her the Bajan pet name—“lady folks” (9). Obstinately, Selina upholds the American Standard of English, denying the language of her collective identity. Japtok, in “Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones: Reconciling Ethnicity and Individualism,” posits that some of the characters in the novel are resisting the idea of ethnic community and replacing it with individualism, as seen in Selina (3). However, Japtok supports Marshall’s stance that ethnicity is far more important than individuality in developing one’s identity. Bhabha, who views cultural communal identity as a type of identity preservation and as a disavowal of the colonial authority (as qtd. In The Critical Tradition 1885), also supports language as an agent in maintaining an identity.

CONCLUSION In Brown Girl, Brownstones, Marshall illustrates how female immigrants in America use their West Indian heritage to form collective communities, maintain their language, practice cultural rituals, and gain personal uplift in developing their identities. In Marshall’s depiction of immigrant female identity development, she portrays the women in Brown Girl, Brownstones as strong women, maintaining and passing on their cultural identities via cooking, speaking Bajan Creole, and forming the Barbadian Association—a cultural community that passes on social, political, and economic values to future generations. Marshall also shows the problems of the generation gap in passing on cultural values and practices through Selina. In Praisesong for the Widow, oral history, cultural rituals, and collective community are topics used to discuss how West Indian cultural practices aid in Avey’s identity formation and reclamation. Marshall traces Avey’s development from childhood

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to adulthood, focusing mainly on her adult life. Although Avey is initially portrayed as having deep cultural roots, she loses her cultural identity in pursuit of the American Dream. Like Selina, Avey’s self-discovery occurs only when she begins to embrace and acknowledge her cultural practices. In Said’s Orientalism (1979), he outlines several areas in which the Other and the Essential are in direct ideological opposition, calling for a rewrite of the inaccurate presentation of the Other in literature. Marshall answers this call on various levels as demonstrated in the novels under examination. First, Said proposes that the construct of the Orient—“Other” is the inferior opposite image of the West (39)—and calls for the Other to write their own stories presenting an authentic representation of their identity. It is in this vein that Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones and Praisesong for the Widow seem to answer Said’s call, as she presents the Other, in this case, West Indians, as inhabitants in the West (American/Occidental society) from the perspective of the Other, rather than from the typical, political Occidental position. Second, Said also speaks of the Occidental presentation of Oriental women as voiceless but exotic (6). Undoubtedly, Marshall rewrites the images of Oriental women in their domestic roles as strong and determined, as well as cultural vehicles in Occidental society. Third, Said further states that “the Essential” presents the Other as a foreign entity without real values. Marshall writes back by allowing her characters who are presented as the Other to develop ethnic communities in the West that do not conform to the Occidental paradigm. Fourth, Said’s arguments from Orientalism suggest that the Occidentals apply their perceptions of the Other to all Orientals regardless of geographical, ethnic, educational, and cultural differences. Marshall reworks a veridical Oriental, portraying the West Indian community as specific and unique in its value systems and methods of adaptation despite its Western education. Marshall aptly demonstrates Said’s proposal that only the Other can write about themselves by reconstructing the images created by the Essential as she reshapes her characters not as Orientals dominated by a superstructure but as characters who employ their cultural values as coping tools in Occidental America and most importantly, as instruments of identity preservation. After an examination of Brown Girl, Brownstones and Praisesong for the Widow, two things become distinctly clear: Marshall is calling on the peoples of the African Diaspora to realize that their original roots are in Africa, since Marshall allows Selina and Avey to accept African-based cultural practices, and both novels use female protagonists who exemplify Marshall’s call for black female agency in American society to move away from mainstream America’s preconceived notion of black immigrant women as the Other, in an effort to what can easily be construed as Marshall’s strong belief in cultural preservation.

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WORKS CITED Bhabha, Homi. Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994. Christian, Barbara T. “Ritualistic Process and the Structure of Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow.” Callaloo 18 (1998): 74–84. Denniston, Dorothy Hamer. The Fiction of Paule Marshall: Reconstructions of History, Culture and Gender. University of Tennessee Press, 1995. Japtok, Martin. “Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones: Reconciling Ethnicity and Individualism.” African American Review 32 (1998): 305–315. Kosec, Katrina. “The Ones Who Preserve Our Identity: Women, Children, and Plan Colombia.” Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine 26, no. 4 (2002): 46–48. Kubitschek, Missy Dehn. “Paule Marshall’s Women on Quest.” Black American Literature Forum 21, no. 1 (1987): 43–60. Lee, Felicia. “Voyage of a Girl Moored in Brooklyn.” New York Times 12 Mar 2009, late ed.: C1. Marshall, Paule. Marshall. Brown Girl, Brownstones. Kindle ed. Reading Essentials. ———. “From the Poets in the Kitchen.” Callaloo 18 (1983): 22–30. ———. Praisesong for the Widow. Plume, 1983. Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Vintage, 1992. Ravell-Pinto, Thelma. “Rev. of Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall.” Journal of Black Studies 17, no. 4 (1987): 509–511. Richter, David. The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, Bedford, 2007. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1979. “Social practices, rituals and festive events.” United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization: Intangible Cultural Heritage, Accessed https://ich​ .unesco​.org​/en​/social​-practices​-rituals​-and​-00055. Retrieved December 1, 2020.

Chapter 9

Mainstreaming the Marginal Cultural Extermination and Tribal Resistance in Ranendra’s Lords of the Global Village Asis De

It is a truism that the academic discipline of cultural studies in the twenty-first century has been permeated with the notion of globalization1 and its cognate ideas. The eminent American sociologist George Ritzer, in The Blackwell Companion to Globalization (2007), offers a composite definition of globalization as “an accelerating set of processes involving flows that encompass ever-greater numbers of the world’s spaces and that lead to increasing integration and interconnectivity among those spaces” (1). As the all-pervasive spatiality of the term “globalization” is apparent both in the cultural and the extra-cultural (political, historical, economic, and even the emotional) domains and debates so the geography and the counter-geography of globalization find precise exposure in ideas like “global village” (McLuhan 1962) or “global city” (Sassen 2005). In her article “The Global City: Introducing a Concept” (2005), Saskia Sassen observes that the spatiality of globalization is not just confined within the cultural models of international corporations but engages broader geography of places and people: “Recapturing the geography of places involved in globalization allows us to recapture people, workers, communities, and more specifically, the many different work cultures, besides the corporate culture” (32; emphasis mine). By “different work cultures,” Sassen probably refers to the plurality of cultures, a nexus of economic, political, cultural, and subjective factors shaping both the individual and community live alongside the shrinking regulatory role of the state as per one of the agenda of globalization. Unlike the concept of “global city” which mostly stands for the “localized” urban spatiality of globalization, the idea of the “global village,” first coined by Marshall McLuhan,2 implies an absence 127

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of boundary, and therefore, an infinite space. Ranendra (February 10, 1960–), multiple award-winning Hindi writer and the director of Dr Ram Dayal Munda Tribal Welfare Research Institute in Ranchi of Jharkhand, talks about a different “global village” in his novel Lords of the Global Village (2017), which has been translated into English from its original Hindi version3 by Rajesh Kumar for publication by Speaking Tiger Books in 2017. Ranendra’s idea of the “global village,” as depicted in the novel, is quite unlike McLuhan’s notion, and very much a finite space, with a specific border including some tribal villages in the remote region of Jharkhand in India. Ranendra’s idea of the “global village,” in a rather exciting way, goes close to Sassen’s idea of the “global city,” both of which could be seen as “localized” spatial contexts upholding several cultural and extra-cultural agenda of globalization: the power of corporate economy in mainstreaming the “different work cultures” and cultural diversity of people; the extermination of the identity of the marginal tribal people in the name of modernity and development. In his Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (1996), the eminent scholar of cultural studies and anthropology Arjun Appadurai offers a reasonably acceptable idea of culture: “Culture is not usefully regarded as a substance but is better regarded as a dimension of phenomena, a dimension that attends to situated and embodied difference” (12–13; emphasis mine). The phenomenological dimension of culture, emphasizing “situated and embodied difference,” is the crucial factor in interpreting the binary of the center and the periphery, the urban and the rural, and the mainstream and the marginal. In a notable essay entitled, “The Local and the Global: Globalization and Ethnicity,” Stuart Hall offers his clear proposition that “in our world, marginality has become a powerful space” (34). Though Hall puts his idea of “marginality” in the context of the globalized postmodern world while clarifying the position of the minority culture/s there, his notion of cultural empowerment of the local/marginal appears quite fitting in the Indian context of tribal culture/s: “Discourses of power in our society, the discourses of the dominant regimes, have been certainly threatened by [this] de-centered cultural empowerment of the marginal and the local” (34; emphases mine). What Hall means by “the discourse of the dominant regimes” can be paralleled with the doctrine of cultural mainstreaming of the tribal communities4 in postindependence India. With an inclusive vision to modernize India, the first Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru emphasized industrialization and prioritized national unity5 along with adopting a pro-Adivasi developmental policy. Nehru noticed that the British administrators “purposefully segregated the tribes from Indian society and projected them as different from mainstream civilization” (Rath 2006, 67), and he considered this as a hurdle toward an organic development of the Adivasi people or tribal communities. To formulate his tribal policy, Nehru sought the support of the

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British missionary-turned-anthropologist Verrier Elwin and urged him to model an inclusive framework for the gradual integration of the Adivasis into the Indian mainstream population. After extensive field research, Verrier Elwin observed that the tribal scenario in different parts of India is not at all homogeneous and the “tribal history is rather a story of economic exploitation and cultural destruction” (Rath 2006, 67). Elwin suggested a “selective and voluntary accommodation” of industry, scientific education, and culture with the Adivasi culture and formulated an approach popularly known as the “leave them alone” or “national park” approach (Vaditya 148). Nehru was not happy with such isolationist formula that may leave the Adivasi people as an anthropological specimen in a “national park,” and his idea of the Panchsheel6 came out to be very effective in helping Elwin revising his stand: “Elwin, in fact, found much similarity between the contents of his isolationist-turned-integrationist approach and the principles of Panchsheel” (Rath 2006, 77). The Elwin-Nehru formula is considered the first decisive national policy for tribal development in India since its political independence from the British Raj. From a liberal-humanist perspective, this inclusive approach of cultural mainstreaming of the tribal marginal people may appear substantially positive for national unity, but simultaneously it paved the way for the extermination of unique tribal cultural identities in the face of an aggressive industrial economy. In the Indian context of the rural and agrarian economy, the political economy of globalization and industrialization with its rhetoric of modernization and development has relatively obscured the lines between the “marginal,” which have an immediate attachment with the local, and the “mainstream” having an imaginary attachment with the idea of the center/national. The spatiality of the “village” is contextual of the locality, which is theoretically opposed to the idea of the urban global and is primarily relational with the immediate annexations of the economic and the sociocultural contexts of rural community lives. The material transformation of everyday subjectivities in the lives of the marginal people is more than something one may call cultural modernization. In reality, the lure of easy life and material development is rooted in the politics of power, creating new avenues in which the interests and aspirations of the individual or community crisscross those of the nation-state. The activity of “mainstreaming” or cultural homogenization is not exclusive to this age of economic globalization but has its history in different spatiotemporal contexts across the world. Be it the case of European colonization or even the earlier imperial expansions in different continents on this planet, cultural homogenization has been conducted mostly successfully after the instructions of the ruler or the state. However, an essential difference between the earlier forms of state-sponsored cultural homogenizations (in many cases, ethno-religious homogenization) and the sort of cultural

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mainstreaming in this present age of globalization is that the regulatory role of the state finds a partial replacement with the corporate agencies. In the names of socioeconomic development and easy life, corporate agencies invest and engage in rapid urbanization and ruthless industrialization under lucrative catchphrases like “Special Economic Zone.”7 These areas marked as “special” economic zones are basically the localized counter-geographical sites of the global cities, where cultural politics responds only in relation to economic power and in favor of cultural extermination. Without any regard to the history of the place and ethnocultural identity of the people inhabiting there, the corporate agencies attempt to alter the demography by intervening in the autonomy of cultural activities at the local level. The intervention aiming at the erasure of unique cultural identity and diversity often rises to conflicts and resistance, resulting in violence. The literary case study used in this article, Ranendra’s novel Lords of the Global Village, tells a tale of tribal resistance against the cultural politics of totalitarianism which is enormously absorptive and located in the increasingly powerful grip of the capitalist economy. The novel upholds how corporate industrial expansionism subsumes the ways of life and the cultural identity of the tribal Asur8 community in a part of the bauxite-rich Chotanagpur Plateau9 in rural Jharkhand. Ranendra’s Lords of the Global Village straddles the aggressive march of the capitalist economy of industrialization and the eventual marginalization of the Asur people leading to cultural extermination. The locale of the narrative is a cluster of forest-clad tribal villages like Sakhuapaat, Bhaunrapaat, Ambatoli, or Koelbigha inhabited by the Adivasi people of the Asur community, and there is hardly any regular transport connectivity with the urban towns of Jharkhand or Odisha. The novel is divided into 26 chapters, of which the very first one contextualizes the narrator—a non-tribal young man in his twenties, who comes to join a residential tribal girls’ school “in some damned miserable place called Bhaunrapaat in the Koelbigha block” (Lords of the Global Village [LGV] 1): I came to Bhaunrapaat . . . clumps of forest now and then and fallow, barren fields stretching in all directions, dotted with open-cast bauxite mines. . . . Not a single civilized soul was in view. Silence reigned supreme at the onset of dusk. (LGV 3–4)

This god-forsaken hinterland becomes the “global village” of the title of Ranendra’s novel, as the global corporate agencies and multinational companies are interested in the bauxite reserve under its soil. The “Lords” of this “global village” are not the Deora10 of the Asur people nor any religious deities of the tribal people inhabiting the plateau but the mining companies and industrial groups looking aggressively for “abundant ore, most of the land, profuse forests, the resources of water and electricity, plenty of

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factories, a plethora of products and full profits” (LGV 153). However, the newly appointed teacher’s initial mood of dejection is gradually replaced by curiosity, and the comparatively urban, university-educated young teacher— already popular by the name of Master Sahib—himself finds drawn toward the place, the Adivasi people, their unique history, and cultural identity: “My yearning to find out about the Asurs had now grown stronger” (LGV 15). From the second chapter to the end of the narrative, the focus is centered on the Adivasi cultural space of the Asur tribe—their cultural history, the gradual decline of their legendary status from an ancient community of iron-smelters to petty landholders and laborers, their socioeconomic plight and exploitation, and finally their resistance against the aggression of cultural mainstreaming, though meek and almost mute. As the narrator is a middle-class, non-tribal Hindu youth by birth, the mystifying name of the “Asur” being portrayed in ancient Hindu scriptures and myths as demons and enemies of gods immediately draws his attention. Master Sahib recounts his initial conception of the Asur people as demonic and his subsequent disillusionment in the second chapter: I had already heard that the region was inhabited by Asurs, but had always thought they would be dark-skinned giants with protruding teeth and horns growing out of their heads .  .  . Lalchan’s looks dispelled that myth. (LGV 8; emphases mine)

The demystification of the appearance of real-life Asur people as not something like the mythical “dark-skinned giants with protruding teeth and horns growing out of [their] heads” enchants the narrator, and he becomes involved with these people with a deep interest in their culture. On meeting Rumjhum Asur, a university-educated youth having “an Honours degree in Sanskrit” (LGV 13) and the son of a schoolteacher, as Master Sahib asks him about his ethno-cultural identity—“The second name of your people is really astonishing, Rumjhum Bhai” (LGV 17), Rumjhum offers him two options: One is the stories of giants, demons and fiends heard during one’s childhood. . . . The other is the photographs of loincloth-wearing Asur men and bare-breasted women in the 1926, 1946 and 1966 anthropology books. (LGV 17–18; emphases mine)

The first option is the mythical representation of the Asur people in the childhood storybooks, while the other is a quasi-mythical tribal identity as primitive and declining hunter-gatherers. Both these identities appear subtly different from what Master Sahib finds as precisely real. The narrator-protagonist of Ranendra’s novel understands that both these sub-human identities have been ascribed to these Adivasi people—the demonic identity imposed

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by the non-tribal caste Hindus and the vulnerable primitive identity observed by the anthropologists. The mainstream non-tribal society has successfully made the Asur people marginal but to remember that these “ascribed” identities essentially lack any cultural orientation of the real-life Asur people. The rich cultural legacy of these Adivasi Asur people earning a livelihood from small agricultural resources and the jungle has been made a forgotten history. Ranendra’s Lords of the Global Village critiques the sociocultural discrimination of the Asur people by emphasizing the rich cultural heritage of this marginal, vulnerable tribal population. The fictional character of Rumjhum Asur—an honors graduate in Sanskrit—is useful in shedding light on the “complex riddle” in relation to the mythical “struggle between the Surs (gods) and the Asurs (demons)” (LGV 19) found in Hindu scriptures. Rumjhum delves deep into the religio-historical and cultural connections of the “Asur” people with ancient civilizations: In the ancient Assyrian-Babylonian civilization, “Asur” meant a “strong man” . . . Sayanacharya has called the Asurs mighty, enlightened foe-slayers and protectors. Around 150 shlokas in the Rigveda treat the Asurs as gods. (LGV 18)

The historical annexing of the religio-cultural legacy of the Asur community with both the “ancient Assyrian-Babylonian civilization” and the Indic civilization by a Sanskrit graduate is convincing, and at the same time, it unravels the process of gradual marginalization, which probably started with an age-old conflict of interests and power politics of possession. As Rumjhum further explains quite authoritatively by applying his knowledge of Sanskrit Linguistics that the “stem ‘Su’ means ‘production,’ and is included in ‘Sur’” (LGV 19), it becomes evident that the Sanskrit word “Sur” also stands for the producer/cultivator and “Asur” for the hunter-gatherer: “Therefore, was it a fight between the forest-razing, cultivator-producers on the one hand, and the iron smelters dependent on the charcoal made from sakhua trees on the other?” (LGV 19). Apart from the mythical battle between the “Sur” and the “Asur” represented in the Hindu scriptures, here is a hint which insists on a more rational community-conflict between the forest-dwelling tribal and the mainstream non-tribal “cultivator-producer” people dependant on agriculture. This is also the point from where the process of marginalization starts. If the reader takes this religio-historical exploration of the Asur people’s cultural identity as a simple elaboration of a specific tribal cultural heritage, it may lead to confusion. In fact, the novelist Ranendra appears tactful in treating the central issue of power politics, the conflict between the mainstream Indians and the Adivasi tribal people, the encroachment of the tribal space by the rather powerful non-tribal agencies which finds its religio-cultural root in the age-old mythical battle: “The battle that had commenced in the Vedic Age,

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the same battle that thousands of Indras had not been able to end, had now been won by the deities of the Global Village” (LGV 156). In Lords of the Global Village, Ranendra’s choice of the Asur community is exclusive as these Adivasi people do not belong to any simple huntergatherer tribal community without any art of their own: they are historically credited with being the first tribal community of iron-smelters in India. In an article entitled, “The Asur Adivasis, India’s first metallurgists, now struggle for daily wages in Jharkhand’s Mines,” Anumeha Yadav finds the Asur people as “one of the smallest Adivasi groups in Jharkhand”11 (n.p.) and laments the dwindling status of this Adivasi iron-smelting community: “Asur inventors, the kings of the forest kingdom, have become daily-wage workers in their ancestral land” (n.p.). He further points out: “New mining technologies and forest laws that restrict the forest-dwelling Asur from burning wood to produce the charcoal used in their smelting work have slowly made their traditional means of livelihood redundant” (n.p.). It is interesting to note after Yadav’s information in the article that since “the last eight years” (n.p.), the Asur Adivasi families living in the villages of Ghorapahad, Sekuapani, and Amtipani in Gumla district of Jharkhand are working at Hindalco’s bauxite mines. The names of the villages and the mining company mentioned in this real-life, report-based article show striking similarity with the names of the villages in Ranendra’s narrative: Sakhuapaat and Ambatoli (resembling Sekuapani and Amtipani) and the fictional name of the mining company of “Shindalco”! However, it becomes evident from this “real” newspaper article that the Asur people are experiencing stampeding poverty in this age of global economy, which Ranendra has clearly represented in the fictional depiction of their economic condition: “The families whose men went to work in the mines somehow managed two square meals a day, but in less fortunate homes, the members had to scour the jungle to make ends meet” (LGV 29). Ranendra’s narrator-protagonist Master Sahib feels enchanted as he notices that these wretchedly marginal Adivasi Asur people are not indifferent to their cultural practices of singing and dancing even within severe poverty. However, one may remember Jawaharlal Nehru’s words on the importance of “a receptive attitude to the tribal people” (578) as he finds some Adivasi communities as “people who sing and dance and try to enjoy life; not people who sit in stock exchanges, shout at one another and think themselves civilized” (578). Ranendra’s narrator-protagonist in Lords of the Global Village applauds the Asur people’s way of life and their close attachment to nature during cultural celebrations. How the tribal festivities of the Asur community connect humankind with nature and enliven the forest, the hillocks, and the rivers has been represented in the novel with exquisitely poetic ambiance.

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Master Sahib’s observation of tribal festivals, the magic, and music of the Asur people’s cultural practices finds expression in an enticing language: On the festival days of Sarhul, Hariyari and Sohrai,12 the maandar would beat there the whole night. . . . The moon would skip to the tunes of Jhoomar and Jadura . . . kaner and the amaltas would dance a waltz. The rivers, cataracts and hills would dance. (LGV 32)

The cultural performances of the Adivasi Asur people are so enlivening that the entire nature surrounding their villages contributes to the mood of festivity. Trees like “sakhua” and “palash,” flowers like “kaner” and “amaltas,” and natural forms like “rivers, cataracts, and hills” all exclusive to tribal space in the Chotanagpur plateau join in harmonizing the unique cultural identity of the Asur people. The references to “ballet” and “waltz” certainly add a “global” dimension alongside the typically “local” beating of the tribal drum “maandar” and the rhythm of tribal dances like “Jhoomar and Jadura.” With their religious faith grounded in animism, the Asur Adivasi people relate themselves to nature through cultural performances. As these performances continue through “the whole night,” Master Sahib feels surprised by their intense passion and level of energy: “Like its deity, Sing-Bonga, the primitive Asur community never tired” (LGV 36). It is not just the Asur men who are exceptionally strong and powerful, but the women of the Asur community are also exclusively dignified. In a reflective observation, the narrator Master Sahib compares the social honor of an Asur woman with another from the Hindu caste society: In this community, women were called siyani—worldly-wise—not janani. The word “janani” was parochial, binding them to the role of begetters of progeny; on the other hand, “siyani” symbolized their vast experience and wisdom. (LGV 28)

This type of exclusive cultural practice in this tribal community glorifies its women and honors the entire society with a certain level of dignity. The claim of sociocultural superiority often made by the mainstream caste society sounds hollow and insubstantial. However, the incident of the murder of Lalchan Asur’s uncle, presumably in the hands of a powerful non-tribal clan of the “Singh,” provokes the narrator to ponder over the question of “otherness” inside the geopolitical border of the same single country: “What was it that had changed a community into the ‘other,’ made them ‘different,’ an enemy?” (LGV 44). It is not particularly a case of personal enmity, but the murder is organized after racial strife between the tribal and the non-tribal clans over the rights of a piece of land. Master Sahib questions this practice of exercising ruthless violence over the

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marginal tribal community of iron-smelters and finds that there is nothing but “bad spirit” which motivates the non-tribal people in organizing such acts of butchery: “Why did some of us take the discovery of fire and metals, and the art of smelting ores in such a bad spirit that this race of artisans had had to face continual assaults and retreats?” (LGV 44). He finds certain similarities between this Indian practice of racial killing of the tribal people and the wellknown instances of genocide from Western historiography, as he relates this “local” and “marginal” case of violence with the erasure of civilizations in other spatiotemporal frames across the world: I was reminded of the Incas, Mayans, Aztecs and the hundreds of Native Americans from Western history. . . . Like them, only a handful of the Asurs survived, leading a wretched life sans culture, sans language, sans literature, sans religion. (LGV 44)

Nonetheless, Master Sahib strangely notices a rather “liberal” difference between the Western and the Indian way of approaching the history of racial violence, cultural annihilation, and erasure of civilization: The Americans were generous enough to preserve the literatures and ruins of the Incas, the Mayans, the Aztecs and the Native Americans . . . the liberal and tolerant Indian culture had spared not even that much space for the Asurs. (LGV 44)

This eye-opening comparison between the American and the Indian way of responding to the histories of massacres and preserving the cultures of exterminated communities subtly insists on the temperament of the concerned mainstream civilizations in power. Arguably, the presence of cultural artifacts or historical demographic data of already vanquished communities in any museum or archive may not be much helpful as the people themselves do not exist. However, the gesture of honoring a bygone civilization inside the museum or the cared maintenance of “the literatures and ruins” of an indigenous community’s cultural life in an archive only emphasizes the spirit of generosity in commemorating the devastation. The “national” indifference in preserving the cultural life of communities, who erstwhile used to inhabit the geopolitical territory of the nation, is itself an act of cultural violence. The narrator keeps on apprehending an impending annihilation of the Asurs in the course of time and history: “I heard the sobs of a vanquished race jolting the portals of time, beyond the pages of history” (LGV 45). Indeed, the nature of violence exerted on the people of the Asur community appears not so severe when compared to the historical massacre and racial genocide of the indigenous people in the West. However, history per se, gradual cultural annihilation has already led to the extermination of

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tribal minority communities. Devastations take place not only with genocide but also with the deterioration of values and cultural codes. In Lords of the Global Village, Master Sahib observes that the “lifestyle of the Asur girls who worked in the houses of the mine mates, munshis, clerks and officers” (LGV 53) alter with time, as they often earn money indulging in sexual relationships with those people: “Their prettiness had become their nemesis” (LGV 71). The narrator-protagonist finds a well-known folk song of the Asur community, which cautions the Asur girls with an alarming note: “The Asurin has gone to sell wood/ . . . / She is coy with the Munshi/ For lucre’s sake she has ruined her family/ For money’s sake she has stained her caste” (LGV 53; emphasis original). While reviewing Ranendra’s novel, Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, himself an eminent tribal writer hailing from Jharkhand, observes that “not every Asur woman surrendered to her circumstances” (n.p.), but the indigenous women do not have a choice for sure: “The author presents this reality in a matter-of-fact, yet poignant, manner in the novel when he shows how Asur women, driven by poverty, are letting themselves be exploited by men of dominant groups” (n.p.). Resistance against this gradual contamination of the community is almost impossible as the Asur people are both socially and economically marginal. But as the mainstream socioeconomic and political culture further constricts their social and economic space, the tribal people move to united resistance, which is an exclusive mark of their cultural identity. However, as represented by Ranendra in Lords of the Global Village, the multinational companies and corporate agency people visit the tribal villages only when there is any event of resistance or when they attempt to snatch some land from the illiterate Asur people for illegal mining. A long-standing demand of the tribal people of Bhaunrapaat is “related to the filling of the abandoned open mines” (LGV 91) to avoid the dangers of landslide and even cerebral malaria, for these mines were breeding places of mosquitos after each rainy season. As a meeting is arranged to solve this issue along with another demand of setting up a small hospital in the village, the corporate authorities of the mining companies temporarily agree to the demands but ultimately do nothing after the spirit of public resistance subsides: “The fact of the matter was that they did not consider the paat people (tribal people) human beings. . . . They were only concerned with their profits” (LGV 92). It is not the fact that the profit-harvesting corporate houses do not make any development anywhere, but as the tribal villages are concerned, the corporate agencies remain indifferent to the basic needs of public health and hygiene of the Adivasi people. The global economy does not bother about the site of production. Naturally, the mining regions stay in darkness, whereas the capital finds its social investment somewhere outside the mining region. The experience of deprivation reaches its apex as, alongside the multinational corporate

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houses, the nation-state also takes part in alienating the tribal people from their land, their forest, and even from their culture. Things go worst, as the Forest Department serves the notice of establishing a sanctuary for wolves in an area of 37 tribal villages rooting out the people. The narrator-protagonist has subtly pointed out the irony of the situation in unequivocal language: The Forest Department had always considered the Asurs and other tribals encroachers on its land .  .  . the fact that people had been living in the forest villages for hundreds of years, and that the Forest Department is the real encroacher. (LGV 119)

Moreover, behind this conflict between the Forest Department—a state agency—and the dispossessed tribal people of the Asur community, there is another story in the guise of a “national” project: “The contract for providing the barbed wire fencing of the proposed sanctuary had been bagged by a multinational company called Vedang . . . The company was actually a foreign one, but it had taken up a very Indian name” (LGV 119–120). In the name of heightening the standard of the lifestyle of the impoverished Asur community, the multinational business corporations intervene in the sociocultural and economic life of the tribal people. The state remains indifferent to the marginalization of the peasant tribals and even adds to their plight by deciding over a sanctuary for the wolves, vacating nearly 30 tribal villages. As a mark of protest and simultaneously to gain the attention of the most powerful personality in the Indian Democratic system, the young tribal named Rumjhum Asur plans to write a letter to the Prime Minister’s Office that describes the plight of the Asur community in the face of the corporate aggression: Sir, .  .  . there are hardly eight to nine thousand Asurs left alive now. We are scared. We don’t want to become extinct. The wolf sanctuary will save the rare wolves, Sir, but it will wipe out our race. (LGV 126)

Though this letter ultimately remains undelivered, the message it carries stands as proof of the tribal people’s fundamental rights to life and existence as citizens of India. Amid a steaming tension around the tribal villages, when the people decide over peaceful picketing in the nearby police station, the police unleash fire on the unarmed assembly of tribal people and kill six young men, including Balchan, Bhima, and Rumjhum, the leaders behind the tribal resistance. As the tribal “concept of territory is generally holistic and constitutes the hills, the rivers, the natural resources, the mineral resources,” they “treat their non-human surroundings, especially their land, water and forest .  .  . as an extension of themselves” (Bodhi & Raile 2019, 15–16). This holistic

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vision of the society and surrounding nature comes in a sharp conflict of interests with the mainstream people who attempt to erase the unique cultural identity of the tribal people. With all its state power and agencies, the nation encroaches on the tribal space without any regard to their cultural and territorial identity. The final three chapters of the novel show successive deaths of tribal people of the Asur community, all planned and implemented after the desire of the “lords of the Global Village,” the people controlling the economy of any place on earth, any nation-state: They know well that . . . resources belong only to them. Naturally, when they see the loin-clothed Asur-Birijia, Oraon and Munda tribals, Dalits and Sadaans around the mineral resources and the jungles, they get irritated. (LGV 142)

A final, planned explosion of landmines leads the remaining few Asur people to attempt a negotiation on the issues of compensation and rehabilitation to complete annihilation and “Absolute Death,” leaving their land in the aggressive hands of the “lords.” The legacy of the age-old war between the tribal Asurs and the deities of the “Global Village” has been left for Sunil Asur, who staying miles away in his university hostel, could only witness the inevitable repetition of history in wiping out the weak, the marginal: “The Asurs of the forest villages, Kherwar-Sadaan—everyone was on the edge” (LGV 154). The chilling conclusion of the novel foregrounds the strength of the Asur Adivasi people, whose never-to-perish identity is grounded on their culture and their indomitable history. The liminal subject position of the tribal Asur people is not their vulnerability but adds to the glorious past of tribal cultural identity in relation to their emancipatory struggle for freedom.

NOTES 1. The first known usage of the term “globalization” can be traced back to the publication of Oliver Leslie Reiser and Blodwen Davies’s book Planetary Democracy: An Introduction to Scientific Humanism and Applied Semantics (1944), where the authors coin terms like “globalize” and “globalism” to envision the new economic and political world order. In academic literature, Roland Robertson’s essay “Interpreting Globality” (1983) is the first notable attempt to emphasize modernization on the global scale. However, the specific term “globalization” was used quite occasionally before the 1980s [one notable example is Theodore Levitt’s essay “The Globalization of Markets” (1983)]. 2. In his book The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962), the Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan attempts to foreground the idea of “global village” by exploring the issue of human connectivity across the globe with

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the help of the new media: “The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village” (31). 3. The original Hindi version of Ranendra’s novel Lords of the Global Village is Global Gaon Ke Devta, published in 2010 by Bhartiya Gyanpeeth. Remarkably, Ranendra allows the English word “Global” in the original Hindi title. 4. Tribal communities are anthropologically considered the autochthonous population of India, who have been distinguished from the native Hindu population quite systematically (though the British colonial administrators and European missionaries differentiated tribal population from the caste Hindus from the end of the nineteenth century) in the postindependence period by the Anthropological Survey of India under the “People of India Project.” Though the term “indigenous” has gained certain impetus in the Indian academia after 1993 (the year 1993 had been declared the International Year of the Indigenous People), the use of the word “tribe” is more effective in the identification of the Adivasi people and their minority culture. In one of his articles entitled “Tribes as Indigenous People of India” (1999), the eminent sociologist and tribal studies expert Virginius Xaxa opines that the “tribal identity now gives the marginalized peoples self-esteem and pride” (3589). 5. Bhikhu Parekh identifies “seven national goals” which Nehru wanted to include as policies of “national philosophy” in modernizing India. This seven-point Nehruvian agenda includes—“national unity, parliamentary democracy, industrialization, socialism, scientific temper, secularism and non-alignment.” (For further details, please see Parekh, Bhikhu: 1991.) 6. The Nehruvian idea of the Panchsheel stands for the five principles of peaceful coexistence, which promote national unity. (For details, please see Guha, Ramchandra: 2001, 268.) 7. The economic policy of SEZ or “Special Economic Zone” came into existence in India on April 1, 2000, with the prime objective to attract and enhance foreign direct investment. As a geographical site of foreign capital investment, the SEZ has economic laws different from the national economic laws. The SEZ sites are enclaves for regional capitalist alliances where there is hardly any role of the state as the regulatory authority. 8. Thirty-two tribal communities inhabit the Indian state of Jharkhand, including nine primitive tribes scheduled as the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTG) by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Government of India. These nine Adivasi communities are known as—Asur, Birjia, Birhor, Hill Kharia, Mal Paharia, Sauria Paharia, Korwa, Parhaiya, and Shavar. The tribal people of the Asur community live in an area known as the Santal Parganas of the Chotanagpur Plateau. 9. Sandwiched between the Indo-Gangetic plain in the north and the Mahanadi Basin in the south, Chotanagpur Plateau is mostly a forested, hillock-clad hinterland with hardly any fertile agricultural belt. It is mainly a mineral-rich reserve of approximately 60,000 square kilometers in size, divided into 5 states—Jharkhand, West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh in eastern India. 10. The people of the Asur community call their religious guru in the name of Deora, who performs the animistic rituals related to their faith.

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11. One may find the history of the Asur tribe as the ancient iron-smelting community of India in K. K. Leuva’s book entitled The Asur: A Study of Primitive Ironsmelters (1963). Anumeha Yadav’s article wonderfully captures the present plight of the Asur community in the face of the industrial, corporate economy. Yadav cites the reference of a real-life man known as Pusa Asur who “works at the New Amtipani mine” and “still remembers watching his forefathers ‘smelt iron out of stone.’” Pusa Asur tells Yadav: “There are still two to three men in Ramdharia hamlet who know how to smelt stone and extract metal. Any tool you can think of, they could make.” In his article, Yadav points out the gradual cultural decline of Asur people, as their language also faces cultural extermination: “Asuri, their language, is on the verge of extinction, with less than 8,000 people speaking it.” The Adivasi people of the Asur community are presently victims of socioeconomic exclusion and experiencing cultural isolation from the mainstream civilization. 12. Sarhul, Hariyari, and Sohrai are tribal festivities followed by the Asur people in their annual cultural calendar. “Sarhul” is their New Year festival, whereas “Hariyari” is the harvest festival and “Sohrai” is another cultural celebration when the outer walls of the tribal cottages are decorated with paintings of natural forms.

WORKS CITED Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Bodhi, s.r and Raile r. ziipao. 2019. “Land, Words and Resilient Cultures: Laying the Context and Frame.” In Land, Words and Resilient Cultures: The Ontological Basis of Tribal Identity, edited by s.r. Bodhi & Raile r. ziipao, 1–23. Hyderabad: Tribal Intellectual Collective India. Guha, Ramchandra. (1999) 2001. Savaging the Civilized: Verrier Elwin, His Tribals, and India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Hall, Stuart. 1997. “The Local and the Global: Globalization and Ethnicity.” In Culture, Globalization and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity, edited by Anthony D. King, 19–39. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar. “Book Review: A Novel for Our Dark Times.” National Herald (June 29, 2017), accessed December 16, 2020, https://www​.nationalheraldindia​.com​/news​/book​-review​-a​-novel​-for​-our​-dark​-times​ -a​-timely​-book Leuva, K. K. 1963. The Asur: A Study of Primitive Iron-smelters. New Delhi: Bharatiya Adimjati Sevak Sangh. McLuhan, Marshall. (1962) 2011. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto and London: Toronto University Press. Nehru, Jawaharlal. (1963) 2017. Jawaharlal Nehru’s Speeches: Volume Two: 1949–1953. Publications Division: Ministry Of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India.

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Parekh, Bhikhu. “Nehru and the National Philosophy of India,” Economic and Political Weekly 26, no. 1/2 (1991): 35–48. Ranendra, 2017. Lords of the Global Village: A Novel. Translated by Rajesh Kumar. New Delhi: Speaking Tiger. Rath, Govinda C, ed. 2006. “Nehru and Elwin on Tribal Development: Contrasting Perspectives.” In Tribal Development in India: The Contemporary Debate, 65–91. New Delhi, Thousand Oaks, and London: Sage Publications. Ritzer, George, ed. 2016. The Blackwell Companion to Globalization. Providence, Rhode Island: Wiley Blackwell. Sassen, Saskia. “The Global City: Introducing a Concept.” The Brown Journal of World Affairs 11, no. 2 (2005): 27–43. Vaditya, Venkatesh. 2019. “Discourse on Adivasi Development: Nehru and Elwin’s Perspectives.” In The Problematics of Tribal Integration: Voices from India’s Alternative Centers, edited by Bodhi s.r. and Bipin jojo, 141–155. Hyderabad: The Shared Mirror. Xaxa, Virginius. “Tribes as Indigenous People of India.” Economic and Political Weekly 34, no. 51 (1999): 3589–3595. Yadav, Anumeha. “The Asur Adivasis, India’s First Metallurgists, Now Struggle for Daily Wages in Jharkhand’s Mines.” Scroll. In (February 16, 2017), accessed: December 16, 2020, https://scroll​.in​/roving​/827128​/the​-asur​-adivasis​-indias​-first​ -metallurgists​-now​-struggle​-for​-daily​-wages​-in​-jharkhands​-mines

Chapter 10

Passing and Caribbean Identity in America in No Telephone to Heaven by Michelle Cliff Denise M. Jarrett

Caribbean people come in different hues, especially because of colonization and forced migration of different races and ethnicities. Jamaica’s motto is “Out of Many, One People” and the idea of “callaloo” to describe the different cultures and peoples in Trinidad transmit a homogenous culture. Kelly and Bailey refer to Jamaica’s motto as “the perpetuation of nationalism as contemporary salience of this national origin myth is Jamaica’s nationstate motto: ‘Out of Many, One People.’” However, the classification of blacks with different hues, who are obviously products of miscegenation, results in colorism and classism in the region. It is often noted that “[s]ince White women were scarce, many White men sexually exploited the African women” (Charles 377). Colorism became prominent during slavery as blacks were categorized based on their skin pigmentation caused by their genetic mix, and blacks of lighter skin hues were given the perceived positions of less aggressivity as household slaves and skilled slaves and were even freed. “Light skin color was the determining factor for working in the plantation ‘great house.’ The majority of the household staff in the ‘great house’ consisted of Mulattoes— the offspring of White men and captive African women” (Charles 377). Postcolonial Caribbean nations have continued this practice using skin color to pit the darker group of people against their lighter counterparts despite having the same history and being from the same country or region. Colorism is then ‘‘the process of discrimination that privileges light skin people of color over their dark skin counterparts. Colorism is concerned with actual skin tone, as opposed to racial and ethnic identity” (Hunter 237). In Jamaica, colorism can be juxtaposed with the conflicting notion of the people who are referred to as Jamaican whites. Jamaican whites do not see 143

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Jamaicans with darker skin hues as their equal and are most critical of them. They often act like Massa Brackras (white slave owners) by employing the less fortunate usually the very-dark-hued people to labor for them without showing any form of humanity—more like chattel slavery in the Americas that was steeped in racism. However, Charles explains that “[c]olorism is related to race but different because racism discriminates based on race and colorism discriminates based on complexion” (376). Hence, colorism is referred to as quasi-racism in this chapter because it mimics racism. W. E. B. Du Bois explains the problem in America as “the color line” and Derrick A. Bell’s praxis identifies race categories as constructed by society. In applying migration, race, and postcolonial theories, the writer will investigate how lack of harmony and reconciliation among various immigrant cultural groups, even when cohabiting, results in passing and identity crisis because of racial and ethnic tensions.

RACIAL TENSION IN JAMAICA In spite of common romanticized mythical explanations of Jamaica’s people’s origin and their tendency to dismantle social boundaries in order to fuse the diverse populations to create a nation-kinship, expressed in the motto, “Out of Many, One People,” Jamaica’s historiography contains disillusioning veracities that counter such narratives. While Jamaica is often casted as a non-racial society which suffers more from classicism, there is an underline tone of quasi-racism that occurs with its more prudent description referred to as colorism. The different hues in the Jamaican society are marked by an extensive history of population movement, including ethno-racial admixture, from the colonial period forward (Kelly and Bailey). The advent of colorism in Jamaica stems from the uniquely diverse ethno-racial populations. The people’s origins span the globe through histories of European conquest and subordination (including genocide) of indigenous peoples, the importation of millions of African slaves for planation economies, and international labour migration, including from Asia. (Kelly and Bailey) While the admixture between the Europeans and indigenous peoples has been ignored because of the sin suggested by miscegenation between these two groups, since the Europeans came to Christianize the “heathen,” the mestizos (offspring of whites and indigenous peoples) found in many Latinx and Caribbean countries were/are not even classified as such in Jamaica. The Jamaican classification system of population admixture leaned heavily on gauging skin color as hues between shades of black to white. Unfortunately, the blacker skin color was deemed inferior to the whiter skin color. Skin color variation has become a quasi-racial content that has evolved into colorism

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affecting blacks to different degrees in and outside of the Jamaican society. During the eighteenth century, the system that categorized and tracked the varied degrees of admixture was noted as follows: • Negro: child of negro and negro • Sambo: child of mulatto and negro • Mulatto: child of white and negro • Quadroon: child of white and mulatto • Mustee: child of white and quadroon • Mustifino: child of white and mustee • Quintroon: child of white and mustifino • Octoroon: child of white and quintroon. (Samuel) The evolution of hues of skin color from Negro to Octoroon has given rise to a trajectory where individuals that are deemed as having more “white blood” are at the higher spectrum in the Jamaican society and are commonly called Jamaican white. The possibility existed even during slavery because Mulattoes were more accepted in places where enslaved blacks would be rejected because the plantation hierarchy deliberately socialized the enslaved blacks to accept subservience and captivity (Bodenhorn). Although the Jamaican white is distinctly different from the white Jamaican or expatriate which refers to European Jamaicans who migrated to the island, along with their offspring who are of pure Anglo-Saxon bloodline or Caucasians, these two groups have a common denominator as they are the upper class of the Jamaican society who often live and/or socialize together. Jamaican whites also believe that they are not really black or of African descent. This idiosyncrasy by Jamaican whites can be explained because George J. Sefa Dei clarifies that “Blackness is more than racial identification. It is knowledge about Black culture, politics, and an understanding of the history of black and African Peoples’ experiences.” After slavery, these classifications led to overt interracial conflicts within the black race on the Caribbean islands. Blacks in Jamaica realize that the lighter hue black people or Jamaican whites, like the white Jamaicans or European whites, are more fortunate and have more privileges; hence, many lighter skin hue people in Jamaica are financially more stable, so they form an elitist classist group. The Jamaican whites enable colorism as they pattern Europeans or expatriate whites who have made Jamaica their homes. The mimicking of European ideas and the scorning of many things African have led to an interracial tension that is a component of colorism. Colorism is referred to as “an offshoot of racism” (Charles). Hence, “[o]ne of the legacies of the European colonization of the New World is colorism—a function of racism and social stratification” (Charles 376).

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BLACK AND WHITE RACIAL TENSION IN AMERICA IN THE SIXTIES AND BEYOND Racial tension in the United States just like in the Caribbean became compounded during slavery and like in the Caribbean started with the power the European whites displayed as they forced Native Indians from their lands, exiling them in reservations where the Indians suffered. However, prolonged racial tensions between blacks and whites prevailed into the 1960s and beyond in the United States. While the racial profile and characterization were much like the one mentioned about Jamaica earlier, unlike in Jamaica, the term “white” was reserved only for Caucasians. Thus, until the 1960s, blacks lived with the Jim Crow “separate but equal” laws even after the Brown vs. Board of Education case in 1954 that overturned the “separate but equal” rule in schools, ushering in desegregation in America. Despite the anti-segregation sentiments in the 1960s, racism was rampant especially in the southern states where many whites were still trying to hold unto the power they felt that they had over blacks in the segregated Jim Crow era. While the 1960s was still fraught with lynching and other atrocities meted out to blacks by whites, from that period until the current time in 2020, “Black disposability, particularly, the apparent state’s disregard for Black Peoples’ welfare and aspirations, concerns about the ways how Black lives are wasted through incarceration, a dysfunctional educational system, and additional forms of state sanctioned violence” (Dei) have persisted. Similar to the black experience in America in the 1960s, Henrika McCoy explains that “state sanctioned violence and racial terror against Blacks, the boiling over of racial tensions” forces “America to reckon with its endemic racism, anti-Blackness, and state-sanctioned violence against Blacks.” What is being referenced in McCoy’s description of Blackness in America is the systematic racism of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in postcolonial America. COLORISM AND MISFITS VS. RACISM AND PASSING In Jamaica colorism creates a privileged space. Thus, Jamaican whites are not accustomed to the struggles that affect blacks in America and different regions of the world. For instance, blacks in the United States are constantly degraded because of their color even if they are Octoroons since they are not regarded as being white according to the “one drop rule” that exist in the United States even today. Hence, unless the Octoroon passes, he or she will be rejected as non-white in the United States that has no pity for any person of color even if their color genes are in the minutest form. Thus, in Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven, in realizing that his family was in a country

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fraught with racial tension after they migrated from Jamaica to the United States, the character, symbolically called Boy, a reference to an enslaved male who never grows mentally to the colonizing white world, passes as the direct descendant of European white plantation owners from Jamaica but fears that his wife and especially one of his children who are slightly darker would unfold his true identity as a Jamaican white in America. Cliff’s novel’s plot is filled with flashbacks as it is nonlinear, but colorism, racism, and passing are put together to create a Caribbean conscience that calls for a national identity but perpetuates division. The concept of passing is influenced by colorism and racism. The definition of “passing” is paramount to this discourse as [t]he genealogy of the term passing in American history associates it with the discourse of racial difference and especially with the assumption of a fraudulent “white” identity by an individual culturally and legally defined as “Negro” or black by virtue of a percentage of African ancestry. (Ginsberg)

America’s racism is presented as a macrocosm of racial tension juxtaposed with Jamaica’s microcosm of interracial tension created by colorism. Fearing the rising crime in Jamaica, especially, on the upper-class people, “Boy Savage finally got his wish for a new life and embarked with his family for America—in 1960” (Cliff 53). Boy quickly realizes that his elitist Jamaican white family is just another black family in America and is not immune from the atrocities that blacks face on a daily basis in the United States. Cliff quickly points out the irony where Boy is running away from violence that might occur in Jamaica but drifts into a country where violence on black bodies is the norm. His first encounter with a threat of violence is also his first encounter when he realizes that he has lost his Jamaican white privilege and happens within 24 hours after he landed in the United States. The first reminder of blacks being prosecuted in America was the sign on the abandoned NAACP office that reads, “A MAN WAS LYNCHED YESTERDAY.” In trying to protect his children who grew up as privileged Jamaican whites, Boy lies about the meaning of lynching because he does not want to awaken racism in their thoughts, so he refuses to admit the current relevance of the sign by dating it as “one old sign” (Cliff 55). Although Boy tries to evade racism in the social and political climate in America, it becomes impossible as it affects and threatens his and his family’s life directly which led to his passing. Bland iterates that “[r]acial passing is as much a political act as it is a personal act. Narratives about racial passing reflect cultural attitudes about the power of race as a social construction.” Therefore, in using a motel for a rest stop in Georgia, Boy does not only chooses to pass but he realizes that his family can be endangered if their true racial identity is revealed, so at first, it is reasonable to conclude that he passes to protect his

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family. Boy also shows some awareness of the region’s treatment of blacks as he goes alone to seek accommodation, making it easy if he needed to retreat quickly or giving his family a chance to escape if he were to be attacked. While his phenotype might have given him white privilege in America, Boy’s accent would have made him suspect of not being pure white genetically. Boy is questioned about his race by the innkeeper when Boy describes his family as “recently arrived from Jamaica” (Cliff 55). Boy realizes that the art of survival in the south was to denounce his black roots which, as a Jamaican white, was easy to do. He declares, “I am a white man. My ancestors owned sugar plantations” (Cliff 57). Boy alludes to chattel slave-holding history to normalize his relationship with the racist innkeeper as he wants the best for his wife, Kitty, and daughters, Clare and Jennie, in a place that acknowledges that the white people are racists on the bold sign, “YOU ARE IN KLAN COUNTRY” (Cliff 58), which acknowledges allegiance to the notorious racist group, the Ku Klux Klan. On encountering the racist innkeeper, Boy’s awareness heightens as he realizes that America is different from Jamaica since there is no privilege for black people who are of a lighter skin hue even if their whiteness cannot be differentiated from a southern white in America. The choice to pass is then impressed upon Boy and his family by black Jamaican relatives in New York. Passing is iterated as a conduit to a better lifestyle even up north where Jim Crow segregation laws did not affect the lives of blacks although they still had to contend with racism. When Boy and his family started settling in New York, they were told outrightly to pass to ensure a better standard of living. Winston and Grace, darker relatives of Kitty, housed the Savages until they became independent, meaning having their own space to call home. The Savage’s host was described as being the darker side of Kitty’s family. Winston introduces the topic of passing with the statement: “[u]nnecessary struggle is for fools” (Cliff 61). Grace explains the statement to the Savages, saying, “Winston speak true. Pass if you can, man. This not a country for us. No bother with the aggravation for them love to give aggravation” (Cliff 61). In the conversation that encouraged passing, Boy is described as “silent” (Cliff 62). However, it is Boy’s actions that show that he has not only passed but has totally rejected his culture for hiteness. Boy decides that his skin color will allow him the privileges garnered by whites in America, and he feels that he has to assimilate totally into the American society even if he is rejected by his neighbors from other races and has caused tensions in his family. Boy’s total disregard for blacks starts with his rejection of Grace’s proposed visitation. Hobbs explains that passing in the Jim Crow era meant launching a new identity in a new life, which often means abandoning one’s original family and community. However, the benefits and associated prizes are hefty because they include forfeiting, alienating, and isolating others for the many privileges of whiteness (Hobbs). While Winston and

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Grace suggested that the Savages pass, the expectation was to use it as a tool for economic and social uplift, but Boy manipulates passing turning it into a rejection tool where he disassociates with everything and everyone Jamaican. Winston verbalizes Boy’s change to rejection in his comment to his wife about the Savages; “Look like dem tek we advice, Grace” (Cliff 62), a reference to his idea that the Savages should pass, when he becomes aware that Boy does not want to associate with them. It is also reported that “Boy had no visible problem with declaring himself white. It was a practical matter he told his wife” (Cliff 62). What Boy should have done is to create a hybrid space where he would enjoy the best of both worlds. John Lye contends that hybridity is an important concept in post-colonial theory, referring to the integration (of, mingling) of cultural signs and practices from the colonizing and the colonized cultures (“integration may be too orderly a word to represent the variety of stratagems, desperate or cunning or good-willed, by which people adapt themselves to the necessities and the opportunities of more or less oppressive or invasive cultural impositions, live into alien cultural patterns through their own structures of understanding, thus producing something familiar but new”). The assimilation and adaptation of cultural practices, the cross-fertilization of cultures, can be seen as positive, enriching, and dynamic, as well as oppressive. (qtd in Seneviratne 30)

Instead, Boy deconstructs miscegenation and uses it as the narrative to prove that his forefathers were truly white men who owned plantations (Cliff 62) to claim his whiteness. The narrative Boy creates to reflect his whiteness totally rejects blackness as a race similar to what was done in the deep abyss of slavery. In completing his rejection of his blackness, Boy and his family live in an Italian neighborhood with the hope of passing as whites even if they are not recognized as a “high class” in America. However, the Italians also reject the Savages. In one such incident, Boy is told that he is like an eggplant, a particular reference to the dark color on the outside and the white inside. The Italian explains that “the smooth purple skin of the fruit—came from the ‘islands’” (Cliff 64), referring to Boy as that fruit; thus, the Italian rejects Boy as a white man. However, Boy is not fazed because he realizes that the Italian is like him, an immigrant, who poses no great harm to Boy’s true identity as the Italian’s “whiteness” is also questioned by white Americans. PASSING AND KITTY’S ALIENATION On the contrary, while Boy passes and assimilates into the white dominant society, creating a new identity, his wife refuses to relinquish her Jamaican

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roots and culture and refuses to live like a prisoner in the racist American society, which creates a major conflict in the family because she feels imperiled and alienated. Boy was “making himself at home. Settling in. Branching out. Getting his information at the local bar where he stopped each evening” (Cliff 75). In fact, Kitty has not accepted America where she is treated like a persona non grata. Thus, it is stated that “[s]he lived divided, straining to adjust to this place where she seemed to float” (Cliff 75). Like many immigrants, Kitty accepts her migration as an economic move as she plans to go back to Jamaica in a better economic status since her husband had gambled all their money, and while they belonged to the monied group in the island, ironically, they were “broke,” which is a more realistic reason why they departed suddenly from Jamaica to avoid exposure of her husband’s indebtedness. First, through her disassociation with her Italian neighbors and her acceptance of Jamaicans in another part of the city, she keeps her cultural heritage alive. Kitty realizes that she must hide her true identity as she travels a little distance to keep in touch with Jamaicans. While she must also muzzle her Jamaican accent at work, she freely expresses herself to “the [Jamaican] shopkeepers of Bedford-Stuyvesant” (Cliff 75). Kitty visits Bed-Stuy in another part of the city to stay acquainted with other Jamaicans. Hence, even when Boy objects, Kitty did not cease her visits to her home away from, home, but she limited them and did not talk about them, not telling Boy when she went, not taking the girls along with her, not bringing food from home, home to them. (Cliff 75)

Kitty did not reject her culture as she satisfies her nostalgia by socializing with Jamaican people and eating Jamaican foods. In observing Kitty’s unction to maintain her Jamaican gustatory delights, food is presented as one aspect of preserving the Jamaican culture. It is expressed that she felt the most nostalgia for Jamaica when she brushed the loose dirt off the yam-skin, imagining its origins in the bush, stroked the rough green lips where the cho-cho split, stuck her finger in the sap where the mango had been joined to the tree, remembering how it could bum and raise a sore. (Cliff 65)

Therefore, one of her main reasons for traveling to Bedford-Stuyvesant is not just to socialize but to buy Jamaican foods that are not readily available in her predominantly Italian neighborhood. “Kitty mastered the route by subway and returned with mangoes, yams, cho-cho, saltfish, plantains, callaloo, goat-meat, and Jamaican curry to rub it with” (Cliff 65). However, while Kitty found delight in these Jamaican delicacies, these foods identified her as not white. Even in a neighborhood riddled with foreigners, like her and her

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family, albeit Europeans, the Italians are repulsed by the smell of the highly seasoned Jamaican cuisine with its many herbs and spices. The rejection of Jamaican food shows a form of racism. Zizek expresses that “a hatred of the particular way the Other enjoys” depicts the essence of postcolonial/modern racism. The racist Italians shout insults to express their disgust when Kitty cooks Jamaican curry. Hence, she tries to stifle the smell from her Jamaican dishes by using Air-Wick (Cliff 65). She is accosted about her Jamaican foods, but she romanticizes this aspect of her culture that keeps her rooted in Jamaican which for Boy is vis-à-vis accepting blackness. Finally, she rejects racism and becomes a phantom activist in rejecting racial inequalities. Even Kitty’s job stifles her as she has to pass, so she is doubly rejected by African American co-workers because she is not classified as black and the Italians employ her because they do not recognize her as wholly white. Bland explains Kitty’s racial and social position by referring to the distinction “that light skin and ‘white’ features have historically been valued while people who are multi-raced have often pejoratively been seen as culturally illegitimate and unauthentically black” nor white. Ironically, in America, her other job offers and her current position places her in servant mode; however, these jobs are akin to that of a house slave because of her color where she feels a sense of privilege, but her life feels meaningless. Kitty is aware of the privileges of passing as Broady et al. elucidate these stating, “[t]he preference for lighter skin in the Black community is derived from concrete social advantages associated with lighter complexions in the wider society. Black people care because America makes skin shade matter.” Privileged in the position, Kitty serves little purpose as she was supposed to do “clerical work, of which there was actually little” (Cliff 72). A description of her tasks is more domestic than clerical since it involves “catching water from the tap in the basin in the one washroom to make coffee for the boss” and “fetching him doughnuts from the bakery two blocks away,” and “dusting the confectioner’s sugar from the desk” (Cliff 72). These tasks do not allow Kitty to become competent in any area or to learn new concepts or skills, so she feels oppressed and that her life as a white person in white America is meaningless. Thus, when Kitty is given one hint of responsibility at her job, she uses it as a platform to fight racial injustices in America. Lye asserts that [p]ostcolonial theory is built around the concept of resistance, of resistance as subversion, or opposition, or mimicry—but with the haunting problem that resistance always inscribes the resisted into the texture of the resisting: it is a two-edged sword. (qtd in Seneviratne)

Kitty’s assignment to write helpful laundry tips to the predominantly white clients gave her the opportunity to deconstruct white oppression. Instead of

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“laundry hints,” she addresses white oppression and racism by bringing the issues to the forefront for the white clients. Of course, Boy is diabolically opposed to Kitty’s actions which eventually leaves her jobless. Boy is so “white” that he is not able to think that there were even white people, abolitionists, who opposed racial discrimination during slavery, so Kitty would not necessarily, through her actions, expose him as a black man. Kitty, however, feels a sense of worth as an activist. Her activism leads her to request a divorce from her “white husband” whom she refers to as “busha” (a name for a white slave master) (Cliff 82) and from the white man’s land, as she cherishes her culture and homeland, then gratifies herself by returning to Jamaica with her darker toned daughter. In rejecting passing as white person, Kitty boldly states, “Mrs. WHITE IS DEAD, MY NAME IS MRS. BLACK, I KILLED HER” (Cliff 83). PASSING AND REJECTION: COLORED OR WHITE Clare Savage, the older of the two girls, is left with her father in America after her mother returns to Jamaica and is now expected to live a farcical life in promoting her father’s passing as a white man in America, but Clare refuses to become subjected to white oppressor rules, which are also perpetuated by her father. Hence, Clare begins her quest to develop and understand her own identity and homeland. The dichotomy of her parents’ choices is confusing to Clare who realizes that she has to find herself. Boy has recreated his persona as a white man, and Kitty has reconnected with her roots in her homeland. As an adolescent, Clare has to find her own niche but is forced by her father to accept whiteness and white America which belittles her. After her mother left, Boy confines Clare to a Brooklyn apartment to secure his identity as a white man. However, Clare is enlightened by movies that she watches and makes comparison between Jamaica and America. She remembers classicism and colorism in Jamaica when she was chided by her father because she played with the young black gardener while American child, Shirley Temple was encouraged to dance with the butler, an old black man, even if it is in a movie. The acceptance of the two races shown in the movie allows Clare to realize that both races can unite and that as a biracial girl, she wants to foster this type of relationship even though she identifies herself as black. Bhabha suggests that “[t]he negotiation of cultural identity involves the continual interface and exchange of cultural performances that in tum produce a mutual and mutable recognition (or representation) of cultural difference.” Despite Clare’s realization, Boy tries to pass Clare as a white adolescent to get her into high school, but he is reminded that in the United States , the Jamaican white privilege is not present. Boy was told that as advanced as Clare was in

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her studies, “Children from underdeveloped countries develop at a different rate from American children” (Cliff 99). Clare’s identity as a Jamaican renders her lower than any American. To compound her status, Clare’s identity when her father gives her race as “white” leads to further humiliation when the high school principal calls her a “white chocolate” and expresses that “there is no place for in-betweens” (Cliff 99). Clare, although looking as white as her father, is ridiculed for passing which leads to her need to separate from him. Passing creates “invisibility and secrets. Self-effacement. Blending in. The uses of camouflage” (Cliff 100), which she is inept to handle or unwilling to learn. Therefore, to seal her rejection of whiteness which her father practices through his passing, Clare is further prompted to abscond when she receives a letter from her mother that reminds her to “never forget who [her] people are” (Cliff 103). Ironically, while initially Boy tried to hide the ugly head of racism from Clare, she becomes buried in it which sparks her quest to depart from America. After her racist encounter with the school principal, Clare becomes aware of one of the most racist acts of the 1960s in America—the bombing of the church, killing four young girls in Birmingham, Alabama. Clare is exposed to racial violence by the oppressive whites. “Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as persons-not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognized” (Freire 55). Clare also realizes that she is prone to violence despite the lightness of her skin. While Boy accepts whiteness as goodness, he is disgusted by Clare’s interest in injustices against blacks, so he asks her if “she wants to labor forever as an outsider?” (Cliff 102) which is a reference to her showing interest in the injustices meted out to blacks because she continuously looks at the picture of one of the dead black girls that was bombed. Clare’s interest in these injustices places her in the black race which is opposing Boy’s passing as he tells Clare that she is “not to ponder these things so . . . they give us home” (Cliff 102), a clear reference to white America. However, Clare was enlightened about the Civil Rights Movement despite her father’s rejection of blackness and her education on racism in America. Therefore, Clare’s obvious rejection of “her father and white supremacy personal resistance takes the form of a denunciation of the ‘white, imperial, patriarchal authority her father represents’” (Moynagh 117). Boy outrightly condemns blackness when he calls Clare a “nigger lover” by totally ignoring that white America classifies him like the rest of his family by genetics—a “nigger,” even when he denounces his race. Boy thinks Clare warrants this name because she did not openly mourn when she hears that her mother has passed, so he retorts; “[y]ou callous little bitch. I suppose you have more feelings for niggers than your own mother” (Cliff 104). It is ironic that Boy accuses his wife and child of abandoning him by choosing to remain true to their heritage instead of passing as another race.

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Boy is projecting because he has abandoned his family for whiteness even with his choice of an Italian woman and the rejection of Jennie, his younger daughter, because of her even darker skin tone and her love for Jamaican food (curried goat) when she returns to America (Cliff 106). While Jennie wanders into oblivion in New York, Clare wanders to England then Jamaica, after rejecting whiteness through passing and white America, generally. Like her mother, Clare dies. Unfortunately, both Clare and her mother die in their homeland, while her father continues to bask in his whiteness, ignoring his youngest daughter, who has bend under the pressures of a race-divided America when she returns to America after her mother’s death. Cliff must have been inspired by Nora Larsen’s characters Clare and Irene in Larsen’s novel Passing because the nature of both characters are so overwhelmingly similar. Boy is akin to Clare, the protagonist, and Clare to the protagonist’s friend, Irene, whereby Bland notes that if there is a racial element to Irene’s judgment of Clare, it is that Irene, at least to her way of thinking, has remained loyal to her race. Irene passes when she feels compelled to only as a way of subverting the limitations of legalized segregation. As Irene sees it, Clare’s passing is more pernicious because she has acquired her place in society by leaving her race behind and living her life—married to a racist, no less, who is unaware of Clare’s African American heritage—as a white woman.

On the contrary, Bland notes that “Irene sees her racial consciousness as diametrically opposed to that. Irene sees herself as a staunch supporter of race consciousness, racial aspiration, and traditional values of racial advancement.” CONCLUSION: COLORISM, RACIAL PASSING, AND RACISM-JAMAICA AND AMERICA In spite of the physical nonexistence of the white colonizers in Jamaica, the colonial structure persists with the discrimination of the darker skin black Jamaicans by those who regard themselves as white Jamaicans. Consequently, colonization has embedded a legacy of separation using color and class in the country. However, Jamaican whites lose all privileges in America where they are seen as black even when they are phenotypically ambiguous. Colorism practiced in Jamaica where the lighter-skinned black people are elevated to the upper class is not practiced in America. Additionally, passing in America causes fear of being exposed as black and consequently punishment. While Boy sees whiteness and white America as saving his life from poverty and crime in Jamaica and America, his denouncement of his Jamaican and black

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roots in passing affects his family negatively. Boy’s choice might be understandable since according to Bell, [b]ecoming white meant gaining access to a whole set of public and private privileges that materially and permanently guaranteed basic needs and, therefore, survival. Becoming white increased the possibility of controlling critical aspects of one’s life rather than being the object of others’ domination. Paradoxically, Kitty dies even though she returns to her roots and gains back her privilege space in Jamaica; she was enlightened about racism. However, she lost her family because she rejects racism and other injustices. Clare, on the other hand, comes into awareness although she identifies herself as black and not as a racial hybrid individual. Her light skin in Jamaica makes her feel secure because her color and class give her favors, but in America, she is alienated and rejected just like her mother. Even in passing in New York, Clare recognizes that “she is redefined as black and unprivileged” (Agosto 115). Clare is affected by the movies she watches even if they falsify and glamorize historical racial relationships; they provide an alternative to black life. In this literal and figurative journey, Clare experiences racism from a white person—the high school principal, the racial bombing of the church in Georgia killing the five black girls as well as her father’s passing. Hope is daunted in the climate of the text, so the title No Telephone to Heaven suggests hopelessness because there is a disconnect from heaven although heaven suggests hope, happiness, and everlasting life which eventually eludes Clare. WORKS CITED Agosto, Noraida. Michelle Cliff’s Novels: Piercing the Tapestry of Memory and History. Peter Lang, 1999. Bell, Derrick A. “Who’s Afraid of Critical Race Theory?” University of Illinois Law Review 4 (1995): 893–910. Bhabha, Homi. “Homi. “The Liminal Negotiation of Cultural Difference.” http:// www​.postcolonialweb​.org​/poldiscourse​/bhabha​/bhabha2​.html Bland, Sterling Lecater. “The Secret Life Within: Race, Imagination, and America in Nella Larsen’s Passing.” South Atlantic Review 84, no. 2–3 (2019): 55–73. EBSCOhost. Bodenhorn, Howard. “The Mulatto Advantage: The Biological Consequences of Complexion in Rural Antebellum Virginia.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 33, no. 1 (2002): 21–46. JSTOR. Brathwaite, Edward. The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770–1820. Clarendon, 1978. Broady, Kristen E., et  al. “Passing and the Costs and Benefits of Appropriating Blackness.” Review of Black Political Economy 45, no. 2 (June 2018): 104–122. EBSCOhost. doi: 10.1177/0034644618789182.

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Charles, Christopher. “Skin Bleaching and the Prestige Complexion of Sexual Attraction.” Sexuality & Culture 15, no. 4 (December 2011): 375–390. EBSCOhost. doi: 10.1007/s12119-011-9107-0. Cliff, Michelle. No Telephone to Heaven. Plume, 1987. Dei, George J.Sefa. “‘Black Like Me’: Reframing Blackness for Decolonial Politics.” Educational Studies: Journal of the American Educational Studies Association 54, no. 2 (January 2018): 117–142. EBSCOhost. Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868–1963. The Souls of Black Folk; Essays and Sketches. Chicago, A. G. McClurg, 1903. Johnson Reprint Corp., 1968. Freire, Paulo, 1921–1997. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum, 2000. Ginsberg, Elaine K., ed. Passing and the Fictions of Identity. Duke University Press, 1996. Hobbs, Allyson. A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life. Harvard University Press, 2014. Hunter, Margaret. “The Persistent Problem of Colorism: Skin Tone, Status, and Inequality.” Sociology Compass 1, no. 1 (September 2007): 237–254. doi: 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2007.00006.x. Kelly, Monique D. A. Kelly, and Stanley R. Bailey. “Racial Inequality and the Recognition of Racial Discrimination in Jamaica.” Social Identities 24, no. 6 (September 2017): 688–706. DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2017.1381835 Larsen, Nella. Quicksand & Passing. Serpent’s Tail, 2001. McCoy, Henrika. “Black Lives Matter, and Yes, You Are Racist: The Parallelism of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries.” Child & Adolescent Social Work Journal 37, no. 5 (October 2020): 463–475. EBSCOhost, doi: 10.1007/ s10560-020-00690-4. Moynagh, Maureen. “The Ethical Tum in Postcolonial Theory and Narrative: Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven.” Ariel 30, no.4 (1999): 110–131. Samuel, Raphael, ed. Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity. Routledge, 2016. Seneviratne, Kalinga. Countering MTV Influence in Indonesia and Malaysia. IEAS, 2012.

Chapter 11

“American Dream Versus Nightmare” Migration, Minority Culture, and Magic in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices Munira Salim

In many of the literary and critical perspectives “migration” and “diaspora” are used interchangeably in the context where globalization plays a pertinent role in embarking consciousness toward the emergence of culturally and politically ethical global community. In this regard, the theory of postcolonialism offers social consciousness to imagine the transformation of rigid boundaries into a space more flexible, inclusive, and pluralistic to the world as a whole. Issues of migration arising due to globalization since the second half of the twentieth century, while paving way for sociocultural and civilizational inclusiveness, have in a way affected the idea of “nativism” as redundant. According to Edward Said “nativism is not the only alternative. There is the possibility of a more generous and pluralistic vision of the world” (Culture and Imperialism 230). The idea of this utopian global society quite often gets obliterated due to many crucial factors, one of them being, in Said’s words: “Who owned the land, who had the right to settle and work on it, who kept it going, who won it back, and who now plans its future” (xiii). Thus, the crucial diasporic issue pertaining to the material politics of land, along with many other factors like economic and ethno-religious, disturbs the natives to the extent that the possibility of acculturation becomes difficult. However, Said hands over the responsibility of engaging in such dialogues to the literary narratives where “these issues were reflected, contested, and even for a time decided” (xiii) and even superimposes the narrative over the national power “nations themselves are narrations” (xiii). According to Said’s explanation, a narrative has the ability to shift a nation’s assumptions of personal insecurities 157

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to global mutual human trust and solidarity. Said quite substantially underlines the power of narratives as a social torchbearer in the following way: Most important, the grand narratives of emancipation and enlightenment mobilized people in the colonial world to rise up and throw off imperial subjection; in the process, many Europeans and Americans were also stirred by these stories and their protagonists, and they too fought for new narratives of equality and human community. (xiii)

Said’s concept of appropriating narratives and grand narratives in the global space, particularly in the affluent nations of America and Europe, announces the scope and validity of narratives from the “postcolonial nations” to hope for global peace and cultural plurality. This idea of Said being the most conspicuous point of contention in this chapter will be dealt with special emphasis, taking the diasporic “narrative” The Mistress of Spices (1997) written by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. This chapter will elaborate upon how the protagonist Tilo, bearing a postcolonial identity works her way selflessly to fulfill the “American Dream” of the numerous Indian immigrants who migrate to the great nation, hoping for harmonious assimilation. To trace the historicity of the culture that the protagonist represents, the intriguing aspect of “magic” and “herbal healing” would be dealt with special emphasis, which further would prove how such common practices in India become a “refrigerated culture” in the host nation where Tilo ultimately migrates. This chapter would also set some examples of the native/s of the host countries who contribute toward cultural assimilation and are the harbingers of peace and harmony in the contemporary society. Divakaruni’s identity as an immigrant in the United States brings life into her writings with her lucid experiences of an “Indian” by birth and “American” by choice. In her debut novel The Mistress of Spices, Divakruni’s adaptation of the literary technique of Magical Realism and myth acts as the refrigerated culture atypical to Indian identities that she uses to soothe the pain of dislocation associated with a “migrant’s” identity. Divakaruni’s personal interactions with her Indianness and her identity as an immigrant supplemented by her creative skills give birth to the protagonist Tilo, who is the figurative representation of the “mistress of spices.” Thus, Tilo from her refrigerator of Indian culture that she has transported to Oakland, California, brings out the magic of spices to cure the emotionally ailing expatriates. In S. Monika’s words: “Tilo provided spices not only for selling, but also for homesickness and alienation that the Indian immigrants in her shop experienced” (“Quest for Identity in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices” 4). The central figure of the narrative fiction is Tilo, short for Tilottama meaning sesame seed, but the name also contains symbolic relevance, meaning

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“the most beautiful apsara of Rain-god Indra’s court. Tilottama most elegant of dancers, crest-jewel among women” (The Mistress of Spices 42). Tilo is depicted as a self-willed woman to whom gender biases of the society couldn’t pull down. She is born in a village to simple folks whose “faces were heavy with fallen hope at another girl-child, and this one coloured like mud” (7) and was fed “milk from a white ass” (7). However strong might be the society’s distaste for a girl child, Tilo is confident enough to dare to dream of a life full of self-control and choice. Breaking the Indian cultural stereotypes, she quits her village and lands on the mysterious island where she learns from the “First Mother” the magical powers of spices to cure the ailing heart due to migration. Also by her choice she names herself Tilottama in the magical land and is adamant enough to opt for herself California despite First Mother’s sincere insistence to choose any other country instead of California: “Better you should choose an Indian settlement, an African market town. Any other place in the world, Qatar Paris Sydney Kingston Town Chaguanas” (55). The First Mother knew Tilo is choosing the “city that has too much anger in it already” (235), but Tilo, as usual with her adamant self, walked into the fire of Shampati1 only to be reborn in a new country, California. With the aim of bringing solace to the hearts of Indian immigrants, Tilo starts her shop in Oakland. The metaphorical use of spices to heal personal ailment adds to the literary prowess of the author where Magical Realism in Stephen M. Hart’s words has the power to transform and rejuvenate reality: “The realism of the real is permeated by magic just as the world of the magical is underpinned by the real” (“Globalization of Magical Realism: New Politics of Aesthetics” 4). The use of “spices” in the present narrative possessing special power may symbolize the author’s understanding as well as deep cultural embeddedness toward her native country. Tilo, as the mouthpiece of the author, once admits “the spices of true power are from my birthland, land of ardent poetry, aquamarine feathers .  .  . every Indian spice that ever was—even the lost ones—gathered here upon the shelves of my store” (The Mistress of Spices 3). The argument could be substantiated by Wendy B. Faris’s observation in the Introduction to his book Ordinary Enchantments: Magical Realism and the Remystification of Narrative on the relevance of Magical Realism typically suited for the postcolonial narratives: “Combination of realistic and fantastical narrative, together with the inclusion of different cultural traditions, means that magical realism reflects, in both its narrative mode and its cultural environment, the hybrid nature of much postcolonial society” (1). Thus, Divakaruni’s narrative offers a repertoire of the cultural environment of her native land that has some connectivity with the historicity of the host nation, among the immigrant identities. This seemingly coherent connection could lead to “multicultural literary sensibility” (1) arising from the marginal

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or minority culture belonging to the diasporic identity. Magical Realism, therefore, could be assumed as a body that “represents innovation and the reemergence of submerged narrative traditions in metropolitan centers. In turn, that phenomenon can be understood in part in the context of literary globalisation as writing back from the peripheral colonies, but only in part” (2). In the similar manner, the “magical” “Indian” spices and herbs are the quintessential element arising out of the “peripheral colonies” and asserting their cultural space in the “metropolitan,” Oakland and Tilo stand as a diasporic identity that makes these traditional elements work according to her biding, just for the sake of peaceful and harmonious assimilation of multicultural ethnicities in an affluent nation like the United States. Tilo, though headstrong and self-willed, at times, faces multiple psychological dilemmas pertaining to her identity, quite similar to those of many expatriates. Her dilemmas further elevate when she is lured to explore the American world outside her “Spice Bazaar” but her limits as a migrant pull her back to abide carefully, the role of a person belonging to “minority culture.” While learning about the magical powers of spices and herbs, she was strictly instructed by the First Mother not to trespass the limits of her “spice shop,” lest she would lose the power of being the mistress of spices. Another crisis that Tilo faces is about her identity. Frequently she addresses herself boastfully as “I Tilo,” but is taught by the First Mother that “self” identity doesn’t hold any importance in the place where being “selfless” holds prominence: “‘You are not important. No Mistress is. What is important is the store. And the spices’” (The Mistress of Spices 5). With the ardent wish of upholding whatever knowledge she has gained from the island, Tilo feels in the “corners” of her spice shop “accumulated among dustballs, exhaled by those who have entered here, the desires. Of all things in my store, they are the most ancient” (4). Her learning about people’s suffering supplemented by her own identity as an immigrant makes her understand “without words their longing for the ways they chose to leave behind when they chose America. Their shame for that longing, like the bitter-slight aftertaste in the mouth when one has chewed amlaki to freshen the breath” (4–5). Tilo too feels the bitter-sweet emotion after leaving her land where each day still is melted sugar and cinnamon, and birds with diamond throats sing, and silence when it falls is light as mountain mist. Left it for this store, where I have brought together everything you need in order to be happy. (7)

However, her journey is toward cultural assimilation, where she could treat her own “people” providing a magical balm to the immigrants’ restlessness and for others “they must go elsewhere for their need” (68). Tilo serves every Indian immigrant who comes to the store to buy groceries. But those with ailing hearts are treated especially who come “After

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darkness. They will knock on the shut door of the store that smells of their desires and ask” (6). She would earnestly let them into the inner room “the one with no windows” (6), where she keeps “the purest spices” (6) the ones she gathered “on the island for times of special need” (6) and then she would use all those herbs and spices and chant her magical spells to “remove sadness and suffering as the Old One taught” (7). For immigrants, Indian, in the present context, smooth settlement in the host nation is quite difficult, as quite often they have to face hostilities from the other side, who fear multilayered insecurities from the new settler’s side, one of them is thus expressed: “‘Bastard foreigner taking over the country stealing our jobs’” (62). Fearing violence from the native’s side Divakaruni states: “A self-indulgence dangerous for a brown people who come from elsewhere, to whom real Americans might say why?” (5). Thus, the “American” dream and the hope for peaceful assimilation in the affluent nation become a nightmare. Amartya Sen in the Prologue to his book Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny engages with the similar human condition related to the multiple classifications that become the dominant reason responsible for leading to such traumatic “nightmares.” He states: “Our shared humanity gets savagely challenged when the manifold divisions in the world are unified into one allegedly dominant system of classification—in terms of religion, or community, or culture, or nation or civilization” (xiii). The classifications, suggested by Sen, are the ubiquitous chasms that not only make assimilation difficult but divide humanity into fragments. However, Tilo is the queen of peaceful dreams, she is the “architect of the immigrant dream” (The Mistress of Spices 28), with her magical spices she can make things happen like “green cards and promotions and girls with lotus eyes” (28), the dreams that quite often bring people from elsewhere to America. Tilo’s visitors in her Spice Bazaar are of varieties with different problems pertinently related to their identities as immigrants, the sorrow and plight of whom Tilo understands to her core and treats them from the spices and magical spells that she has so profoundly secured in the refrigerator of her culture. People of both sexes visit her shop with different religious and ethnical backgrounds and she treats them with equal vigor because for her being an Indian is more important than any other factor. Haroun, a Kashmiri Muslim, Jagjit, a Sikh boy, are regular customers among others who belong to “minority” religion and “culture” from India, they are regarded with the same estimation by Tilo as other Indian immigrants. In the narrative, the character of Haroun depicts the identity of a person who is constantly in a state of flux, first being a “Muslim” from Kasmir and second an immigrant in America. He stands as a person who faces discrimination and its resultant hostility twice. First, having ancestral roots in Kashmir, with his father’s reluctance to leave the land because of the constant threats by

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the “rebels,” “Toba, toba, where will we go, this is the land of our ancestors” (The Mistress of Spices 27). Haroun has to undergo severe trauma due to the loss of his father and grandfather within a single moment, he picturizes the heart wrenching scene thus: “‘One night rebels. In our lake village. Came to take the young men. Abbajan tried to stop them. Shots. Echoing over water. Blood and blood and blood. Even grandfather who was sleeping. Red silk of shikara turning redder. I wish I too I too—’” (27). In the second incident, after migrating to America, he falls prey to the atrocities of the American miscreants who injure him severely, “Crusted on his forehead, his face. Deep red like carbuncles. His blood” (229). He is a taxi driver and at that time was hired by the miscreants, the actual identity of whom he did not know. After leaving them to their demanded destination, they stopped him and hit him on the head with “the rod a bent black thing” (229) and took all the money from his pocket and left him severely injured. However, after such traumatic situations, Tilo relieves him with the help of the soothing power of spices, she gives him “a small silk sachet with dust of lotus root, herb of long loving” (279), so that he lives a happy and comfortable life with his newly acquired wife Hameeda. Another character that attracts the atrocity of the Americans is Jagjit, a Sikh lad with a “turban” and knows only “Punjabi.” Jagjit belongs to those fresh stock of immigrants who is constantly ridiculed by the Americans. “Jagjit” which literary means “world-conqueror” is bullied by his American classmates as “asshole.” He is ridiculed to the extent that his identity as a Punjabi is bruised severely, “In the playground they try to pull it off his head, green turban the colour of a parrot’s breast. They dangle the cloth from their fingertips and laugh at his long, uncut hair. And push him down” (38). Jagjit here stands as a person who belongs to “double” minority culture, that of a “Punjabi” and an “Indian,” his unique characteristic feature becomes the butt of the American perception. Tilo has her magical balm to soothe his ailing identity. She uses her spices and magical power to make assimilation effortless for him: “Cardamom which I will scatter tonight on the wind for you. North wind carrying them to open your teacher’s unseeing. And also sweet pungent clove, lavang, spice of compassion” (39). She even tucks cinnamon “unseen” in his turban, as it has the power of a “friend-maker” (40) and would help him to find, as she imagines, “someone who will take you by the hand, who will run with you and laugh with you and say See this is America, it’s not so bad” (40). Wishing smooth assimilation in a new country, Tilo is an Indian ambassador propagating “non-violence” and “harmony” from the contemporary twentyfirst-century perception of global peace. Despite, Tilo’s selfless compassion for all the Indian immigrant customers coming to her shop, she has a deeper understanding toward the women who come to her. In this case, the author’s position as a woman of diasporic

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identity stands clear. In almost all the cases, female authors, in their literary articulations, determine their special understanding and solidarity toward the female characters in their text. They lay special emphasis on the gender roles, tanled between multiple social and familial factors. In the similar way, Ruvani Ranasinha in her book Contemporary Diasporic South Asian Women’s Fiction: Gender, Narration and Globalisation substantiates: In diverse ways these authors problematise divisions between local and diasporic settings by representing the challenges women face in how to bear the weight of culture and how to maintain self-hood amid ever changing ideas of how to be a woman whether in the West, East or the interstitial spaces between. (18–19)

Ranasinha’s observation of the problems based on the situatedness of women in the diasporic context is quite similar to that of the women in the present narrative. They are often, as James Clifford posits: “Caught between patriarchies, ambiguous pasts, and futures. They connect and disconnect, forget and remember, in complex, strategic ways” (qtd in Ranasinha 18). A similar crisis of identity is found in the women who visit Tilo’s shop, namely Lalita and Geeta, even Tilo, to a large extent is entrapped in the ambiguous web of socially constructed polarities that together determine her past and future. She clarifies her understanding of a woman’s stereotypical gender role that society determines to forge for them, and to seek refuge from these stereotypes many women prefer to die instead of submitting themselves to such oppressions. Tilo thus states: Because death is easier to bear than the ordinary life, cooking and washing clothes and bathing in the women’s lake and bearing children who will one day leave you, and all the while remembering her, on whom you had set your heart. (The Mistress of Spices 34)

Quite in a similar vein, as theorized by Clifford, Lalita also is split between the “ambiguities” related to her past and future. Tilo prefers to call her “Ahuja’s wife” instead of her proper name “Lalita,” despite the fact that “Lali-ta, three liquid syllables perfect-suited to her soft beauty” (The Mistress of Spices 14), because according to Tilo neither does she have an identity of her own nor she seeks to stand up for herself and claim her rightful place in a society which is now so alien to her, as an immigrant. She quite wilfully restrains herself from the meager means to a happy life, Tilo thus points out: She comes every week after payday and buys the barest staples: cheap coarse rice, dals on sale, a small bottle of oil. . . . Sometimes I see her hold up a jar of mango achar or a packet of papads with hesitant wanting. But she puts it back. (14)

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She even has to give up her gift of stitching, she thus admits before Tilo, “‘I used to a lot, once. I loved it. In Kanpur I was going to sewing school, I had my own Singer machine, lot of ladies gave me stitching to do’” (15). But what happened to her happens to numerous young girls in India, Ahuja is a “watchman at the docks” in California, he had married her showing his photograph of the time when he was quite younger and had arrived in India to marry just “three days before the wedding” (100). The stereotypical patriarchal role, like violent sex, checking on her by calling her from work every “twenty minutes,” and the rising loneliness within Lalita, as she had not borne a baby yet, encourages her to kill herself, when she finds no other consolation, she even can’t reveal her condition to her parents. Indian tradition weighs down a woman’s role in the way Lalita expresses, adding the case where parents too become helpless: Who sensed her sorrow but were afraid to ask Daughter what is wrong, because what would they do if she answered. And she seeing that fear kept her silence kept her tears, for she loved them too, and hadn’t they done the most they could for her already. (102)

Thus, sacrificing a girl for the sake of superfluous tradition that most of the middle-class Indians behold. However, Tilo’s magic works here too, though more than the work of spices or magical chants, Tilo’s words of encouragement pave a path of self-assertion for Lalita and instill love and respect for herself. Lalita finally leaves her home after being badly beaten by her husband and shifts to another city, thus breaking the barriers that traditions had held so tightly and realizing “if my parents do not love me enough to understand, I thought, then so be it” (271) and eventually joins rehabilitation center for “battered” women. Tilo, as the protagonist, is quite different from women like Lalita. She is quite self-willed and headstrong. Back in her native village, her parents had named her Nayan Tara “Star of the Eye” (7), but the coldness of her parents toward her for being a girl made her realize that her name also means “Flower That Grows by the Dust Road” (9). The feeling of being unloved by their parents supplemented by her restless and free spirit to explore what lies beyond made her ardently wish for the sea pirates, about whom she had heard just stories. They did actually come, burn her village to ashes, and later made her the queen of pirates and named her “Bhagyavati, Bringer of Luck” (19) for indeed she was a “sorceress” who brought substantial wealth by plundering ships. A chameleon by nature, she couldn’t still satisfy herself by being “Bhagyavati” expecting to look “into the years ahead” and see “the same, wave upon inky frozen wave” (21) sends another calling, this time her fate hands her over to the sea serpents “who sleep all day in caves of coral” and

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“who ascend to the surface only when Dhruva, star of the north, pours its vial of milk-light over the ocean” (23). From them, she learnt about the “island” where the “Old One” lived and imparted her precious knowledge about the magical power of spices only to the girls who plan to remain determined and honest only to the spices. She even deceives the sea serpents for a further adventure into the mysterious island. The magical and mystical element instilled in the narrative highlights the characteristics of an immigrant whose identity is in a constant flux. These elements help to reconnect to their past experiences in their home countries. Divakaruni’s own experience as an immigrant makes her connect these dots and understand “immigration” as a movement that “really only ends when there’s a corresponding movement back to the home country” (Divakaruni in an Interview with Sarah Anne Johnson 60). Thus, Divakaruni, with the newly acquired identity of the one belonging to a minority culture, takes out from the refrigerator of her Indian cultural roots in the following way: **“I did research on how in our ancient texts a number of herbs and spices are mentioned which are lost now. . . . In my book there are some of those spices, such as the spice that makes Tilo young” (Emphasis 60). She further revisits her cultural storehouses and brings to life the old Indian legends and fables. She enumerates thus: I drew on a number of legends and on the feel of legends. There are a number of legends about women healers in my language, and there are other legends about serpents who can guide you in your journey to light, who can act as a spiritual guide. There are other legends about islands where only women live. (60)

Divakaruni’s representation of herbal healing and Ayurveda to soothe intercultural conflicts, therefore, comes from those mummified cultures that become her intellectual and spiritual guide. The narrative fiction The Mistress of Spices with multiple diasporic layers and dimensions not only extricates the nightmares suffered in the process of assimilation but also portrays peaceful and harmonious acculturation of people from varied cultural backgrounds in the multicultural melting pot of “America.” Moving ahead, the narrative closely examines the juxtaposition of the layers of immigrant societies with regard to the process involved with their assimilation. For the immigrants belonging to the middle-class or lowermiddle-class families, harmonious assimilation is rather difficult and quite contrary to the higher-class immigrant societies. The higher-class societies are “Westernized” quite as soon as they land in America. Tilo, in this regard, observes: “The rich Indians descend from hills that twinkle brighter than stars, so bright that it is easy to forget it is only electricity. Their cars gleam like waxed apples, glide like swans over the potholes outside my store” (75). Their “mimicry” of the natives of the host nation and their

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pretense of cultural sophistication are well established by Tilo: “The rich Indians rarely speak, as if too much money has clogged their throats” (75). However, their pretense is only in public space, their ‘Indianness’ and their familial attachment typical to Indian culture, is revealed in private and domestic space. Tilo’s heart fills will humility for them as well, when she finds one of them “at the end of a day of corporate video conferences sits by his mother’s bedside to rub her arthritic hands” or a woman “who sells million-dollar houses and sends money to her sister in a battered women’s shelter” (77). Tilo seems to observe and contemplate each immigrant visitor in her spice shop and ultimately is an epitome of strength and vitality who is ever ready with her magical healing. However, she is not as consistent as a researcher working on the narrative would expect. She too has her part of “human” flaws and weaknesses. Just like the biblical “Eve,” she too is lured by the curiosity of what lies beyond her segregated realms that eventually leads to deepen dilemmas with her ownself. Before submitting to the Shampati, on the island, each mistress was strictly ordered to follow the First Mother’s command that they were forbidden to enter into the newly migrated land but to remain at the confined walls of the space which might be a “store or school or healing house” (40), they should never come in physical contact with anybody, they should leave their passion behind, and they should never to use spices for their own needs. However hard she tries, yet couldn’t resist the lure to behold what lies beyond her shop. Finally, she breaks the barriers of self-control and falls in love with a man called Raven. Raven, an American resident, with an American father and Indian mother, fascinates Tilo to the extent that she gets ready to sacrifice all her gifts just to feel, for a few moments, the mysteries of love. Tilo’s necessity to obey the commands of the First Mother is metaphorically the old Indian cultural norms where moving out of one’s nation was traditionally prohibited. While in conversation with Johnson, Divakaruni points out the reason behind the such representation of culture and gives contemporary understanding to such old beliefs by rationalizing Tilo’s instincts to go beyond the limitations ebbed out for her by saying: She is responding to a life impulse, which is to move on and not to stagnate. If she stays inside the door, the status quo is preserved, but she is stagnating as a human being. She is responding to a very necessary impulse. In terms of the old culture, stepping outside is a taboo, and she has to pay a price for it. (62)

Divakaruni further justifies Tilo’s choice by generalizing her plight as a common human instinct where cause and effect is a natural process: “For all our choices, even the ones that are important and positive and necessary, we

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do have to pay a price” (62). Thus, when Tilo is found stronger and more self-controlled than other women in the narrative, she has weaknesses quite equivalent to Geeta’s. Geeta is another woman from a family of Indian immigrants, whose grandfather comes to Tilo’s shop seeking help to get Geeta rid out of her affair with a “Chicano” man. For the grandfather and his old Indian beliefs, Geeta’s marriage to a Chicano is a prospect forbidden in Indian communities. However, Tilo finds herself quite in the same circumstance as Geeta, she confesses thus: “Geeta, like you I too am learning how love like a rope of ground glass can snake around your heart and pull you, bleeding, away from all you should” (The Mistress of Spices 92). Like Geeta, Tilo feels the irresistible fascination to love wholeheartedly without sociocultural biases. But for Tilo, love has different levels of commitments, being a mistress, she is forced to love only spices or else she would forfeit all her magical power and will have to be “recalled,” according to the First Mother’s advice, in such cases “warning will be sent to her, and she will have three days only to settle her affairs. Then Shampati’s fire blazes for her once more” (56), and she would vanish from that shop to wherever spices decide. Falling in love with Raven, Tilo chooses to risk everything but experience its pleasure even just for once. However, looking at her power and capability to love without much demand for the self, she is forgiven by spices and is allowed to live with her lover for the rest of her life, though her appearance changes into a middle-aged woman. After spending her last night, as she believed, Tilo commits herself to the fire of Shampati that she ignited in her spice shop for her permanent departure from California, but Raven comes to her rescue after the locality was suddenly hit by an earthquake followed by fire. Wishing for a harmonious future Raven plans to take her to what he calls “earthly paradise.” But Tilo, with so much experiences of life knows there is no “earthly paradise” except what human beings can do to turn that earthquake and fire-hit areas into once more habitable space. She blaming herself for bringing such a disaster wants to help people cope with the material and physical loss. Raven here, bearing the identity of the one belonging to the host nation, shows tremendous will that not only is a friendly gesture to love so deeply and marry Tilo, an “Indian” immigrant, which seems to be one of the most harmonious and unbiased way to cultural assimilation. He also compromises his dream to live with Tilo in the “earthly paradise” and work for those people, along with Tilo, affected by the natural disaster back in Oakland, thus setting an example of selfless service toward society, irrespective of any concern for the difference in cultural background or nationality. Despite many troubles and crises involving the assimilation of a person belonging to a minority culture, integration is possible when the two ends meet, that is, when harmony and understanding of humanity from the

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immigrants as well as the people from the host nation’s side is extended. This integration of cultures is asserted very strongly by Divakaruni, in her interview when she says: “I feel very strongly that some process of integration must happen, including your view of yourself and the relation of your culture to the larger culture” (61). Therefore, from the perspectives of both the cultures, the immigrants, and natives, their assimilation would make human understanding better, so as to learn and experience human solidarity at a higher level. This integration would give substantial opportunities to extract whatever is best from both the culture and discard those values which are redundant and negative, thus making the process of cultural assimilation smooth and humane for the immigrants from any nation. NOTE 1. “Shampati” is a word perhaps derived from the “Pali” language. In the context it means a “bird of myth and memory who dived into conflagration and rose new from ash” (The Mistress of Spices 56), very close to the classical mythical bird “phoenix.”

WORKS CITED Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee. The Mistress of Spices. London: Black Swan, 1997. Hart, Stephen M. & Wen-chin Ouyang, eds. “Globalization of Magical Realism: New Politics of Aesthetics.” In A Companion to Magical Realism. Woodbridge: Tamesis Publishing, 2005, pp. 1–27. Johnson, Sarah Anne. “Writers are Great Eavesdroppers.” In Conversations with American Women Writers. Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 2004, pp. 55–67. Monika, S. “Quest for Identity in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices.” The Journal for English Language and Literary studies V, no. ii (AprilJune 2015): 1–8. Ranasinha, Ruvani. “Postcolonial Feminism and Globalisation.” In Contemporary Diasporic South Asian Women’s Fiction: Gender, Narration and Globalisation. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 1–47. Said, Edward W. “Introduction.” In Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books, 1993, pp. xi–xxviii. ———. “Resistance and Opposition.” In Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books, 1993, pp. 191–281. Sen, Amartya. “Prologue.” In Identity & Violence: The Illusion of Destiny. New York & London: W.W. Norton, 2007, pp. xi–xiv.

Chapter 12

Coloring Culture, Cosmopolitanizing Identity Shades of “Otherness” in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah Maitrayee Misra

Nearly six decades ago, Ralph Ellison, in his renowned novel Invisible Man (1952), depicted racial discrimination, segregation, and otherness through his nameless narrator. The same strain can be found in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970), where the Breedloves, being “black” and ‘poor,” had to live in a storefront. If Ellison had discussed the politics of invisibility directly, Morrison did it in a roundabout manner by projecting the politics of visibility. In the Prologue to the novel, Ellison’s protagonist laments about his being invisible, saying: “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me . . . when they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and anything except me” (3). This reveals how his African American identity or black identity or self is deliberately overlooked or ignored or segregated by the people belonging to the mainstream American culture. In her narrative The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison portrays the visible “ugliness” of the Breedloves by highlighting their “small eyes,” “narrow foreheads,” “irregular hairlines,” “heavy eyebrows,” “crooked noses,” “insolent nostrils,” and “high cheekbones” (38) which helps one to understand how the African Americans are looked through the white supremacist lenses of difference and discrimination in general. The two aforementioned references are both mid-twentieth-century texts that project the challenges of being unseen/seen differently and the challenges of being an African American in the cultural space of America. In comparison to Ellison’s and Morrison’s narratives, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013) is very much an early twenty-first-century novel, which points out a hierarchical ladder in America where “if you’re white, you’re alright; if 169

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you’re brown, stick around; if you’re black, get back!” Hence, Adichie’s narrative presents the post-dislocated non-American Black’s plights in the same geo-cultural space of America. Whatever may be the temporal gap between these three texts, one cannot deny that the experiences shared by the three authors are centered around the common ground of discrimination based on “color” or being “black,” further redrawing the focus on the politics of “othering,” race and the formation of minority culture. In the annals of human history, migration or the urge to move to a better place/s has been a widespread phenomenon. The immediate context behind every migration is the lack of a suitable living condition, which is a basic human necessity. In the last three decades, due to the proliferation of the economic and cultural traits known as globalization, the interconnectedness of the global economy, the easy and seamless capital mobility, and the augmentation of the digital media can be perceived. As a result, in the twentyfirst century, routes rather than roots have obtained greater importance, causing the porosity of the national boundaries, which consequentially leads to cross-border mobility or intercontinental migration. These forms of mass movement or migration are seen through the lenses of social sciences and are often termed as “diaspora” or “transnational” movement. In this process of global migration, “a new cadre of African immigrants” who “constitute the antinomy of those Africans who were forcibly removed from Africa during slavery” (Falola and Afolabi 3) are found to participate actively. At this juncture, it should be mentioned that these transnational diasporic movements leading toward the “West,” either to America or any European country, are usually contemplated as hallmarks of achievements or success by the erstwhile colonized countries. The “New” African diaspora is an outcome of this. The “West,” especially America for them, is an ideal urban space, facilitating “all sorts of unique freedoms, unique ways of pursuing desire and self-expression” (Koch and Latham 1), a space of liberal cosmopolitanism. Migrating to the new cultural space of America, the African migrants are soon disillusioned as they realize that migration, along with much hope, “always brings its costs and dangers” (Manning and Trimmer 8). The African migrants’ notion of America as a place of opportunities agitates the American citizens, that is, the “white” Americans. They assume that the migrants have arrived to encroach upon their fundamental rights. Consequentially, “they oppose migration in general and assume that migrants are people who take jobs, bring crime, and access services that are better held for the native-born” (Cohen 1). It is at this same phase that the people of the host cultural space of America start treating the African migrants as “other” or as outsiders to justify that they are different; they do not belong and also “deviate from the mainstream standard” (Mullin-Jackson 46). Henceforth, the African migrants or diasporic communities are referred to as representing the

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minority culture. William Safran, in his seminal essay “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return,” while explaining the terms “diaspora” and “diasporic community,” refers to their minority status: Today, “diaspora” and, more specifically, “diaspora community” seems increasingly to be used as metaphoric designations for several categories of people— expatriates, expellees, political refugees, alien residents, immigrants, and ethnic and racial minorities. (83; emphases added)

The problem lies in the connotation of the term “minor” or “minority.” Whenever the term is used to indicate the status of a specific group or its culture, a mathematical implication of the smallness of the group is presumed. Whereas, in reality, “minority status has more to do with the distribution of resources and power than with simple numbers” (Healey 8; emphases added). This very concept of a minority group has been more comprehensibly discussed by Charles Wagley and Marvin Harris in the book Minorities in the New World: Six Case Studies (1958). The two significant aspects that they explain are that the minority group experiences inequality and lots of disadvantages; they have certain visible features that project them as different or “other.” These visible features are determined by their cultural (the language they speak, their pronunciation, their dressing sense, etc.) and physical (complexion, facial structure, etc.) traits. These visible attributes are enough to make the African diasporic community suffer “multiple forms of discrimination,” also ensuring their experience of a “lack of social, economic, political opportunities and a lack of recognition/representation” (Croisy 1) within the geopolitical cultural space of America. However, to survive in the American cultural space, the African migrants “strive hard for cultural assimilation .  .  . in a credible manner” (Misra and Shrivastava 187). Still, the color politics and their “black” identity make them the stakeholders of minority culture and complicate their cultural status in the American urban space. To elaborate the argument further, this chapter selects Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s third novel Americanah (2013) as a case study, in which the author has “provided insightful reflections on the topic of race in the US and increasingly in American politics” (Tunca xii). This chapter would explore the fictional protagonist and the female immigrant Ifemelu’s experiences of being identified as an “outsider-within” in America and how her own cultural identity is refrigerated and transformed into a minority. What makes Americanah unique is Adichie’s strategic reversal of the “traditional migrant narrative” (Ndigirigi 199) by choosing a female character to cross the national boundary of Nigeria. Not only does she depict the African diaspora along with the vulnerable status of the dislocated African migrant but also presents how they are overburdened with the thoughts of being an “outsider,” and how “the need to simply belong and to succeed is marred by

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the dynamics of race, class and gender” (Sackeyfio 214). A further reversal in the traditional migrant narrative can be pointed out in the presentation of “return” migration in the novel. Before depicting her protagonist Ifemelu’s diasporic experiences in America, Adichie represents the religious corruption in Nigeria, the hypocrisy of the Nigerian society, the worst education system, the political upheavals, strikes, and joblessness to elucidate why Ifemelu and the Nigerian youth of her time feel compelled to cross the borders of their country. Such crossborder sojourns signify the notion of “forced migration.” For instance, long before her dislocation, Ifemelu had seen the parents of her close friend Ginika and her own Aunty Uju dislocate in America. Ginika’s parents, who were university professors, were impelled to organize strikes apart from their teaching and had to bear the problem of unpaid salary and were detached from their research works. Thus, they had to decide on their dislocation. Their exasperation with the system is expressed when Ginika’s father explains how they are treated as sheep and how they are compelled to behave like sheep. The sudden death of Aunty Uju’s oga, the general, who used to fund her education in Nigeria, forces her to move to America to pursue her medical studies. The temptation of the American dream generates the urge to migrate to America, adding up to these sociocultural and political problems. In the novel, Ifemelu and her friends think of America as the future and consider the American passport as the most alluring thing. Even America is a place giving easy access to fashionable dresses. Ifemelu is mesmerized by America shown in the popular TV serials like The Cosby Show, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and A Different World and desired—“for the lives they showed, lives full of bliss, where all problems had sparkling solutions in shampoos and cars and packaged foods, and in her mind they became the real America” (AM 113). It gets evident that a foreign country, like America, becomes “the economic and cultural epicenter of their ambition to replicate and transform their lives” (Arthur 5). In her Cartographies of Diaspora, Avtar Brah explains, “If the circumstances of leaving are important, so too are those of arrival and setting down” (182). Dislocation from the cultural space of origin ultimately leads the individual toward relocation to the new cultural space. After moving beyond his/ her known comfort zone, as the individual involves him/herself in the process of relocation in the unfamiliar space, s/he faces a “sense of disorientation, a disturbance of direction, in the ‘beyond’: an exploratory restless movement . . . here and there, on all sides, fort/da, hither and thither, back and forth” (Bhabha 2; original emphasis). Ifemelu’s initial experience after setting foot in America is all the same. To her, America has always been an “Overseas” country, a place that is cold and snowy, “covered in a high-shine gloss” (AM 103–104), and all her imaginary notions are upturned the very first day she

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encounters the scorching American heat wave and also discovers that everything in America was “disappointingly matt” (AM 104), lacking any shine and luster. Not only does the matt-colored mundane reality but also the lack of warmth and liveliness in the impetuous and careless hug of her Aunty Uju surprises Ifemelu. Her bafflement increases in knowing that she has to make her bed on the floor of her Aunty’s one-bedroom apartment in America and that even after doing three jobs, things are not easy to manage for Aunty Uju. Ifemelu also realizes that the glory and affluence of America are all make-believe ideas. She is astounded to discover that while talking to the white Americans or in the presence of the white Americans, her Aunty Uju’s accent undergoes a quick transformation; it becomes nasal and sliding. Ifemelu is also annoyed by her decision of relaxing her hair to look professional in the interviews. When she could not suppress her indignation and questions Uju, Ifemelu gets her first practical lesson regarding the reality of struggles to survive in the American space: You are in a country that is not your own. You do what you have to do if you want to succeed. (AM 119)

It is a truism that the African migrants are often “bounded by a restrictive or exclusive definition” (Arthur 10). This restrictive definition posits them as “outsiders” or “others.” As a result, their cultural identity is at stake. Just after her arrival in America and during her stay with Aunty Uju, Ifemelu had already understood the difference between the real America and the America she had imagined back home in Nigeria. The illusion is further wiped out by Aunty Uju, who borrows the social security card and driving license of some Ngozi Oknokwo for Ifemelu and advises her to make full use of those for job applications. Although using an unknown person’s identity card is illegal, while Ifemelu has no apparent physical similarity with that person, Aunty Uju convinces Ifemelu by saying, “all of us look alike to White people” (AM 120). On the one hand, this consolation reflects Uju’s experience of racial discrimination and, on the other hand, shows how the American cultural space had forced her to accept a generalized identification as a minor. “Race,” according to Henry Louis Gates, “pretends to be an objective term of classification, when in fact, it is a dangerous trope . . . of difference” (216). Racism is also intended to distinguish “different human groups on the basis of physical appearance” (Reilly et al. 5). Using the security cards of Ngozi Okonkwo, when Ifemelu goes for a job interview and unconsciously utters her name, she loses the opportunity of getting the job. Her friend Ginika, in a similar manner to Aunty Uju suggests her something that not only lays bare the predominant racism in America but also exposes the politics of making the African migrants invisible by thrusting upon them a common minority culture and identity:

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You could have just said Ngozi is your tribal name and Ifemelu is your jungle name and throw in one more as your spiritual name. They’ll believe all kinds of shit about Africa. (AM 131)

It becomes too painful for Ifemelu to accept that in this country, her very Nigerian name which means “beautifully made,” is generalized as a “jungle name” and equated with “shit.” In America, the issue of “Colorism” is often concealed within the racial discrimination process. This concept of “Colorism” “involves both prejudice and power” (Tharps 19; emphasis added), and white supremacy or white racism is considered as the “fundamental building block of colorism” (Hunter 2). The trope of “Colorism” by emphasizing the white supremacy represents the inferiority of the dark-skinned people (in this case, the African migrants). In the novel Americanah, due to her dark skin tone, Ifemelu is stereotyped as those outsiders who have foreign accent. At the time of registering at the university, Ifemelu comes across Cristina Tomas at the registration desk. Cristina is the woman who belongs to the mainstream American culture, a woman defined by her “washy blue eyes, faded hair and pallid skin” (AM 133; emphasis added). Her way of instructing Ifemelu with certain pauses after every word she uttered is worth noting: “I. Need. You. To. Fill. Out. A. Couple. Of. Forms. Do. You. Understand. How. To. Fill. These. Out?” (AM 133). This made Ifemelu sympathetic toward Cristina as she assumed that Cristina might be suffering from a severe disease. However, immediately Ifemelu understands that it was because of her foreign accent and her complexion that Cristina deliberately chose to speak in that unusual manner. The actual conversation between the two reflects how Cristina anticipates Ifemelu’s inefficacy in understanding American accents from her skin tone. The conversation also reveals how the American space nurtures the binary of the superior-inferior, insider-outsider: “I speak English,” she said. “I bet you do,” Cristina Tomas said. “I just don’t know how well.” (AM 133; original emphasis)

Ifemelu, who had spoken English all her life and represented the debating team in her secondary school, is perplexed and feels cornered to learn that— “rats” are “mouse”; the word “fat” was abusive as it had connotations of being “stupid” or “bastard’; being “slim” is being “thin’; and what she feels to be cacophonous and noisy is “heavy rock.” The innate human desire to “belong” cannot be refuted, as “belonging stands for social inclusion” (Strath 36). To belong, or to be part of the host cultural space, the dislocated individual initially has to face the challenges of cultural differences and to survive, s/he has to negotiate. Ifemelu, after such

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humiliations and breathtaking experiences, acquires the knowledge of her new identity as an “outsider” and gets acquainted with her minority status. Her process of negotiation can be witnessed in her desperate urge to learn everything about America and “to wear a new, knowing skin right away” (AM 135). She starts practicing American accents, reading about America’s mythologies, knowing the concepts of tribalisms, racism, and ideological practices in America. Her effort reminds us of Bhabha’s notions of “mimicry” and “translation,” which insist on the “performative nature of culture communication” (326). The individual in a diasporic cultural space, in this case, Ifemelu, tries to translate and mimic the culture of the “Other” and wishes to become “almost the same” (86). This newly acquired knowledge makes her accept the academia of America that she once felt uncomfortable with her and boosts up her spirits to participate in the classroom discussions and debates. This spirit and urge of Ifemelu to grasp the history of the American society and understand the cultural dimensions is nothing but a participation in the American urbanity—a willingness to discuss America provides the authority of an insider. It is because of this negotiation that Ifemelu has to refrigerate her ethnic and cultural identity. She perceives that to obtain a favorable position in the new s/place and even to circumvent any cultural antagonism, the process of negotiation is beneficial for the dislocated individual. Gradually Ifemelu becomes more conscious of the hardships in the host country when she sees her rising tuition bills, house rent, and continuous rejection from the jobs of a waitress, bartender, and cashier. The hardship of American space proves fatal to her when she had to provide escort service to a tennis coach to meet out her bills. As a result, she is so depressed that she cuts off her connection with the outer world and, out of guilt, starts avoiding her love, Obinze, in Nigeria. Through her condition, Adichie’s narrative brings forth the question: “What is the real America: the land of tolerance and opportunity to the sinkhole of narrow mindedness and inequity?” (Healey 5). In reality, it is not “a land of milk and honey” (Muchiri) but a space that can swallow and engulf one in nothingness. This feeling of nothingness confides how the mainstream American culture transforms the African migrant’s culture into the stature of a minority culture. The eminent Caribbean author and critic Caryl Phillips, while discussing the process of dislocation and dislocated individuals, remarks: The journey involves loss; it always involves loss. You’ve left a place; you’ve left people behind you; left memories behind you. But there seems to me a process of reinvention. (117)

Through her female protagonist Ifemelu, Adichie skilfully voices the pains and sufferings of diaspora, leaving one’s home country, being in exile, and

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adapting to a different cultural space. Moving to different metropolitan spaces in America, Ifemelu gets a chance to encounter several Americans and immigrants and discovers that they are “unable to relate to her except through her race and her ‘Africanness,’ and [who] never have a clue how insulting this can be” (Androne 237). She perceives that in this culturally “American” realm of white Americans and black Americans, her identity is that of a nonAmerican black, which she had never imagined for herself. Ifemelu’s minority status, signified by her newly acquired identity of a non-American black, is further denoted in her two successive relationships with Curt and Blaine. None of the relationships proves successful, but both men make her mature and more conscious about her insignificant status as an “other.” Ifemelu realizes that her relationship with Curt, who is a handsome and rich white man, is questionable as well as surprising to his friends and even strangers: When Curt said, “This is my girlfriend, Ifemelu,” they looked at her with surprise, a surprise that some of them shielded, and some of them did not, and in their expressions was the question “Why her?” . . . She had seen that look before, on the faces of white women, strangers on the street. . . . The look of people confronting a great tribal loss. (AM 292)

When Curt’s Aunt Claire exaggeratedly talks about her safari in Kenya, about the grace of Nelson Mandela, and about her fascination for the music of Harry Belafonte, and moreover gives assurance that she likes black people, Ifemelu feels different and simultaneously disgusted. This assurance also signifies that black people are not “liked” in general; instead, some exceptionally sympathetic and good white Americans like them. Ifemelu’s plight in America explains that cultural differences create a disturbance, anxiety, and a sense of disorientation, but a step toward negotiation provides a solution. To compromise with such situations, Ifemelu, like her Aunty Uju, straightens her hair to look professional. In defense of her decision, she explains that in order to look professional one needs to straighten the hair, “but if it’s going to be curly then it has to be white kind of curly .  .  . never kinky” (AM 204), which depicts the white standards of beauty again. Her decision to mimic the white is an attempt to be on the part of the insider. She does not understand that this process of straightening hair and imitating the looks of white Americans is what the critic bell hooks suggests to be “exclusively a signifier of white supremacist oppression and exploitation. . . . This need to look as much like white people as possible, to look safe, is related to a desire to succeed in the white world” (2). Ifemelu’s decision proves to be fatal, as the strong chemicals affect her hair and lead to a massive hair loss. Her friend Wambui tries to convince her that “relaxing your

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hair is like being in prison. You’re caged in. Your hair rules you” (AM 208). On her insistence, Ifemelu cuts her hair short. Initially, she succumbs to the “system of racial domination” (hooks 5), which makes her feel that women of color are not beautiful and not acceptable in this society. Adichie focuses on Ifemelu’s mental condition after the loss of her hair in an anti-climactic way: She was all big eyes and big head. At best, she looked like a boy; at worst, like an insect. (AM 208)

When she feels almost frustrated to learn that her short hair represents the difference and raises a question about her political concern, she resigns from her job, the website HAPPILYKINKY.NAPPY.COM becomes her savior. The website shows various black women who have created a “virtual world” where everything appears “natural” and carefree, where “coily, kinky, nappy, woolly hair was normal” (AM 212). Fashion is another instance in the novel which projects the politics of “Colorism.” As Susan B. Kaiser says, “Fashion is also about producing clothes and appearances, working through ideas, negotiating subject positions (e.g., gender, ethnicity, class) and navigating through power relations” (1), Ifemelu’s keen observation of the American fashion magazines shows how at one hand white supremacy is established, and on the other, the secret powerplay generates. She finds that white women are the iconic models of these magazines and the beauty tips inside are not meant for those who are black. A question may arise at this point, whether Ifemelu did not show any resistance to such situations? Adichie craftily alloys this issue of resistance through the virtual space of blogging. Ifemelu craves for a solution to all these “unsaid and unfinished” (AM 296) bitter experiences regarding identity, race, color, culture, and wanted listeners and “longed to hear the stories of others” (AM 296). To express all her “raw and true” (AM 295) experiences, she chooses the virtual space of blogging, naming it “Raceteenth or Curious Observations by a Non-American Black on the Subject of Blackness in America.” This blogosphere enables her to assert her identity in the virtual space of the digital world and unmask the hypocrisies of the so-called urban liberal Americans. Here in this narrative, Ifemelu uses the virtual space as a window that she keeps open to discuss issues related to racism, mostly between the blacks. In one of her blog posts, she addresses any diasporic African by saying, “When you make the choice to come to America, you become black” (AM 220). She also refers to some derogatory and abusive catchphrases like “watermelon” or “tar baby” used by fellow white Americans to highlight the issue of racial identity active in the sociocultural space of her once-idealized dreamscape of America. She even writes an article in her blog entitled “To My Fellow NonAmerican Blacks: In America, You Are Black, Baby.” She never forgets to mention those African women who relax and straighten their hair to have a

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professional look. She resists this attitude and tries to keep her hair ethnically “natural.” She raises her voice for “natural kinky hair,” “Afros,” “Cornrows,” “Braids” in her blog post- “A Michelle Obama Shout-Out Plus Hair as Race Metaphor.” Often, the citizens of America’s host cultural space consider the Africans to be “impoverished and destitute . . . and portray these immigrants as helpless people, economic migrants, or refugees” (Arthur 13). Ifemelu feels outraged when she hears the white Americans saying that the Africans need sympathy and depend on charity as they are inferior beings. She actively negates the black positionality of the Africans at the receiver’s end and wants to be “from the country of people who gave and not those who received” (AM 170). She tries her best to provide logic because race is not something related to genetics or science. Instead, it is a human ethno-cultural invention, and she treats this invention in her blog as a “Racial Disorder Syndrome” (AM 315). Undoubtedly, this virtual space provides Ifemelu with “incredible power to question authority” (Joyce 3), henceforth making Ifemelu “The Blogger” with an increased readership and a thousand fan-following. But does this virtual voice really help her to evade the minority status? Blogging definitely leads her to meet her second boyfriend, Blaine. But ultimately, we can see that “her identity gets shaped under his influence, too” (Androne 239). Impressed by his intellectuality, she used to show her blog and reshaped the posts according to his views. When Ifemelu wants her blog to be “observations” and not “cultural commentary,” Blaine reminds her of her responsibility to be serious and suggests her not to make the posts mere “entertainment” (AM 312). Blaine’s sister Shan, who is an activist and writer, reflects a snobbish attitude toward Ifemelu and also considers her blog to be vague. According to Shan, Ifemelu’s African identity as well as her current positionality in the cultural space of America enables her to write these blogs and get invitation for talks. Moreover, she is of the view that Ifemelu has no real-life experience with whatever she writes. Thus, Shan assesses Ifemelu’s blogs to be vague. In a similar strain when Blaine accuses her, reminding that the blogs written by her are actually like any game, a form of entertainment, to fill up her credits, Ifemelu, from his manner of accusation, makes sense of the insider-outsider binary thrust upon her. As an “outsider” in reality, she never wanted to criticize the American cultural space in her blog. Instead, her effort was to become an eye-opener to show how “systemic racism impaired human relationships, and cut off opportunities and made it impossible to bridge racial and class divisions” (Androne 240). Surprisingly enough, she becomes a victim of all such discriminations and her relationship with Blaine is frozen. When Ifemelu is a successful blogger, a fellow of Princeton University, and the owner of an apartment at Princeton—Adichie surprises her readers with Ifemelu’s decision to close the blog and return to Nigeria almost after 13

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years. We have seen Ifemelu always trying to understand the cultural space of the host country and adapting it, forming a transcultural space of her own. However, the issues of race, class, and even misbehavior from her near ones in America had shocked her and formed a sense of discontentment which now propelled her to move to her home country. Estrangement from home for a long period may make an individual suddenly discover a “new sense of attachment to home” (Stefansson 11) that again foregrounds the issue of return migration. To face Lagos after 13 long years of her diasporic stay in America was quite challenging for Ifemelu. She could quickly realize that she is “falling into the new person she had become, falling into the strange familiar” (AM 385; emphasis added). She allowed the American sensibility to grow under her skin to such an extent that every small thing in Nigeria now seemed ugly, irritating, and unprofessional. She confesses that she misses the American low-fat soya milk, NPR, and the fast Internet service. During her stay in America, she was now and then reminded of her non-American black identity, which tormented her constantly. However, she had to face the same situation in Nigeria when a house renter said that he does not rent to Igbo people. She is forced to accept her ethnic identity and discrimination once again. The idealized notion of the home where she felt she could “sink her roots” (AM 6) became the “blurred place between here and there” (AM 117). Ifemelu understands her particular identity in Nigeria as an “Americanah,” full-blown with urbanity. This “new” self presents her as an outsider-insider. Apart from the conspicuous happiness and excitement, homecoming has also got “unsettling consequences for returnees” (Stefansson 4). Generally, when the dislocated individual undergoes specific changes through syncretism in the host country, during his/her prolonged non-presence, the sociocultural and political scenario of the home country changes simultaneously as “change is necessarily temporal . . . temporality implies change” (Bates 145). For this reason, we can find in Ifemelu’s homecoming, the “elements of rupture, surprise, and, perhaps, disillusionment” (Stefansson 4). It is a perfect instance of how “ “dediasporization” can thus lead to “rediasporization” (Stefansson 4). The strong urge to escape to America can well be noticed in Ifemelu after her return to Nigeria: Warm, humid air gagged the room, and soon Ifemelu was tossing in the wetness of her own sweat. A painful throbbing had started behind her eyes and a mosquito was buzzing nearby and she felt suddenly, guiltily grateful that she had a blue American passport in her bag. It shielded her from choicelessness. She could always leave; she did not have to stay. (AM 390)

This instance surprises the readers as Ifemelu has every chance to escape from the “home” where she thought she could sink her roots deep down to the

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place from where she fled. In her book Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics bell hooks gives us an elucidated concept of home: Home is no longer just one place. It is locations. Home is that place which enables and promotes varied and ever-changing perspectives, a place where one discovers new ways of seeing reality, frontiers of difference. (148; original emphasis)

That is the reason Ifemelu feels fragmented when she is categorized as an “Americanah” in Nigeria and fails to fit in the Nigerpolitan Club in Lagos. Talking over the issue of “Nigerpolitanism” also needs a discussion on the politico-cultural term “Afropolitanism.” In the twenty-first century, when cosmopolitanism is grounding in, another similar urge is noticed to position and prioritize the African identity in the global scenario through the tenor of “Afropolitanism”—a concept developed by the Nigerian-Ghanaian author Taiye Selasi. Selasi’s motto was to present the Africans as not the “citizens, but Africans of the world” (521). Simon Gikandi more broadly explains the term: to be Afropolitan is to be connected to knowable African communities, nations, and traditions; but it is also to live a life divided across cultures, languages, and states. It is also to embrace and celebrate a state of cultural hybridity—to be of Africa and of other worlds at the same time. (9)

Gikandi’s explanation of the term “Afropolitan” is certainly satisfactory from the point of critical theorization, but if one considers the term “Cosmopolitan” as a condition of universal humanity not particularly attached to any identifiable place on earth nor is fixed within a binary polarization of Africa in one hand and the rest of the world on the other, this idea of “Afropolitan” appears to fall short in comparison of the width and application. In Americanah, Adichie sharpens her critique of the notion of such “attached cosmopolitans” and concentrates on a new coinage: “Nigerpolitans.” Adichie skilfully depicts and criticizes the concept of Nigerpolitans in the novel. She projects them as “Been-to . . . bunch of people who have recently moved back, some from England, but mostly from the US [?]” (AM 405), people who always lament for the lack of comfort in Nigeria and busy in discussing what Nigeria lacks. They nurture their comfort zone in marking out the difference. However, the desire for multi-locality inspires some of them to connect with both “here” and “there” to follow both the “routes” and “roots.” To her, as to me, this belonging to anywhere, in any part of the world is more emphasized by the idea of “Cosmopolitanism” rather than “Nigerpolitanism.” Both seem to appear as “urban” attitudes of the individual self, but the idea of cosmopolitanism speaks more positively about liberal humanism than the notion of “Nigerpolitanism,” which is mainly a regional way of looking at the

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issue of global humanity. Instead of cultural plurality, the idea of “Nigerpolitanism” implies a binary. The term “Nigerpolitanism” indicates that the absolute elimination of racial identity is implausible, as the term signifies the geopolitical space of Nigeria with a shadowy boundary around it. At this point, kindling up the awareness of transculturality and the spirit of cosmopolitanism enables the individual to become “receptive” and at the same time display an “open attitude towards the other” (Kendall et al. 1). Her stay of 13 long years in America has seasoned Ifemelu into a transcultural being, and so she is unable to accept many aspects of Nigerian reality. To her, the Nigerpolitans represent a confined self, which is pretty unwelcome to her. Kwame Anthony Appiah, in his seminal book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, considers cosmopolitanism as living with differences: [c]osmopolitanism shouldn’t be seen as some exalted attainment: it begins with the simple idea that in the human community, as in national communities, we need to develop habits of co-existence: conversation in its older meaning, of leaving together, association. (ix)

Supporting the presence of differences, Appiah avows that one of the aspects of cosmopolitanism is the “recognition that human beings are different and that we can learn from each other’s differences” (3). Appiah’s emphasis on “co-existence,” “association,” and on the process of learning from each other reflects on the idea that cosmopolitanism allows the individual in going beyond the borders of his/her own cultural space, having “multiple affiliations” (Vertovec and Cohen 12) and perceiving “what is human in humanity” (Appiah). From the novel Americanah, it gets evident that Adichie is unwilling to negotiate with any “single story” as the single story is often able to create stereotypes. The concept of being an “Americanah” or a “Nigerpolitan” negates the notion of being anywhere. The racial discrimination, colorism, or experiences of being a representative of a minority culture in America made Ifemelu create a space/voice of her own and also reject it. However, her return to Nigeria and being stereotyped by her countrymen make her conscious about her transcultural cosmopolitan self, and it regenerates her willingness to connect with the world through another blog—The Small Redemptions of Lagos. This time her voice is not of protest. Instead, it becomes the voice of conscience, telling us that to reduce people only to racial or ethno-cultural identity is an act of dehumanizing them; it also becomes the voice of consciousness, reminding us that living “meaningfully in a globalized world does not mean giving up what we are, it means adding to what we are” (Adichie). The more we believe in the “single story,” the more we indulge in the process of discrimination and refrigeration of culture. With the rejection of the “single story,” “we realize that there is never a single story . . . we regain a kind of paradise” (Adichie, 00:18:17).

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WORKS CITED Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Americanah. London: Fourth Estate, 2013. ———. “The Danger of a Single Story.” Ted Talks, 2009. Web. 1 January 2021. https://www​.ted​.com​/talks​/chimamanda​_ngozi​_adichie​_the​_danger​_of​_a​_single​ _story​?language​=en ———. “What Forms the Core of Igbo Society.” The Trent: Nigeria’s Internet Newspaper. 25 June 2014. Web. 20 February 2016. http://www​.thetrentonline​.com​ /chimamanda​-adichie- forms-core-igbo-society-must-read/ Androne, Mary Jane. “Adichie’s Americanah: A Migrant Bildungsroman.” In A Companion to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ed. Ernest N. Emenyonu. Martlesham: Boydell & Brewer, 2017. Appiah, Kwame Anthony. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006. Arthur, John A. African Diaspora Identities: Negotiating Culture in Transnational Migration. Plymouth: Lexington Book, 2010. Bates, R. Stephen. “Making Time for Change: On Temporal Conceptualizations with (Critical Realist) Approaches to the Relationship between Structure and Agency.” Sociology 40, no. 1 (2006): 143–161. doi: 10.1177/0038038506058430> Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture (1994). London and New York: Routledge, Second Indian Reprint, 2009. Brah, Avtar. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities (1996). London and New York: Routledge, 2005. Cohen, Jeffrey H. and Ibrahim Sirkeci. Cultures of Migration: The Global Nature of Contemporary Mobility. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011. Croisy, Sophie, ed.“Globalization and “Minority” Cultures: Introductory Comments.” In Globalization and “Minority” Cultures: The Role of “Minor” Cultural Groups in Shaping Our Global Future. Netherland: Brill, 2015. Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York: Signet Books, 1952. Falola, Toyin and Niyi Afolabi, eds. African Minorities in the New World. New York and London: Routledge, 2008. Gates, Henry Louis. “Writing Race.” In The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, eds. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Gikandi, Simon. “On Afropolitanism.” Foreword. In Negotiating Afropolitanism: Essays on Borders and Spaces in Contemporary African Literature and Folklore, eds. Jennifer Wawrzinek and J.K.S. Makokha. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2011. Healey, Joseph F. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender. California: Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of Sage, 2012. hooks, bell. “Straightening Our Hair.” Avant-Garde Z Magazine, 1988. Web. 18 May. 2019. https://scholar​.google​.co​.in​/scholar​?hl​=en​&as​_sdt​=0​%2C5​&q​=straightening​+our​+hair-​+bell​+hooks​&btnG= ———. Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics. Boston: Boston South End Press, 1990.

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Hunter, Margaret L. Race, Gender, and the Politics of Skin Tone. New York and London: Routledge, 2005. Joyce, Mary. “Blog for a Cause: The Global Voices Guide to Blog Advocacy.” Hivos. 30 January 2008. Web. 19 May 2019. https://advox​.globalvoices​.org​/wpcontent​/ downloads​/gv​_blog​_advocacy2​.pdf Kaiser, Susan B. Fashion and Cultural Studies. London: Bloomsbury, 2012. Kendall, Gavin, Ian Woodward, and Zlatko Skrbis. The Sociology of Cosmopolitanism: Globalization, Identity, Culture and Government. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Koch, Regan and Alan Latham, eds. Key Thinkers on Cities. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2017. Manning, Patrick and Tiffany Trimmer. Migration in World History. New York: Routledge, 2020. Misra, Maitrayee and Manish Shrivastava. “Dislocation, Cultural Memory & Transcultural Identity in Select Stories from The Thing around Your Neck.” In A Companion to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ed. Ernest N. Emenyonu. Martlesham: Boydell & Brewer, 2017. Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye: A Novel (1970). New York: Vintage International, 2007. Muchiri, Jennifer. “The Elusive Search for the American Dream.” Standard Digital. 21 September 2013. Web. 18 May, 2019. https://www​.standardmedia​.co​.ke​/article​ /2000093969​/the​-elusive​-search​-for​-the​-american​-dream Mullin-Jackson, Angela. Racial and Cultural Otherness: The Lived Experiences of Korean Descent. Diss. Florida: Boco Raton, 2010. Ndigirigi, Gichingiri. “ ‘Reverse Appropriations’ & Transplantation in Americanah.” In A Companion to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ed. Ernest N. Emenyonu. Martlesham: Boydell & Brewer, 2017. Phillips, Caryl. “Other Voices: An Interview with Caryl Phillips.” By Stephen Clingman. Salmagundi 143 (2004): 112–140. Reilly, Kavin, Stephen Kaufman and Angela Bodino. Racism: A Global Reader. New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 2003. Sackeyfio, Rose A. “Revisiting Double Consciousness & Relocating the Self in Americanah.” In A Companion to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ed. Ernest N. Emenyonu. Martlesham: Boydell & Brewer, 2017. Safran, William. “Diasporas of Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 83–99. Selasi, Taiye. “Bye-Bye Babar.” Callaloo 36, no. 6 (2013): 528–525. Stefansson, Anders H. “Homecomings to the Future: From Diasporic Mythographies to Social Projects of Return.” In Homecomings: Unsettling Paths of Return, eds. Fran Markowitz & Anders H. Stefansson. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2004. Strath, B. “Belonging and European Identity.” In Identity, Belonging and Migration, eds. Gerard Delanty, Ruth Wodak and Paul Jones. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008. Tharps, Lori L. Same Family, Different Colors: Confronting Colorism in America’s Diverse Families. Boston: Beacon Press, 2016.

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Tunca, Daria, ed. Conversations With Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2020. Vertovec, Steven, and Robin Cohen. “Conceiving Cosmopolitanism.” Introduction. In Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context and Practice, eds. Vertovec and Cohen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Chapter 13

Passing Trauma and Technique—An Inquisitive Reading of Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and Passing Prachi Behrani and Vinaya Kumari

If the roots of mortals reside in the realms they’re birthed in, it would not be wrong to say that the roots of the African American community emerge from the soils of slavery. Captured, seized, and enslaved, many Africans had barely any other choice but to follow their white masters. Beginning from the early sixteenth century, countless Africans were transported from the coast of Africa to the American colonies. “An African slave could be bought for life during the late 1600s for about $150. This is the same amount it would cost to buy an English indentured servant for seven years!” (Sanders 22). The inability of the slaves to escape, the atrocious slave codes, the lack of redressal laws, and the dearth of means of escape resulted in centuries of torture, trauma, and the enforcement of the Africans to live as slaves on unfamiliar lands. During the 1770s, multiple Africans signed up to become minutemen alongside their white counterparts in the American Revolutionary War, hoping that the flight of freedom for Americans would also result in freedom from slavery. However, when the war was over, the African Americans realized that they weren’t being treated equally at all. “Many laws that the new government wrote did not value the rights of African Americans, whether they were free or slaves” (Sanders 42). In addition to this, multiple laws segregating the races also played a major role in adding to the vast vessels of discrimination. Out of fear, suppression, and the terrors of racial violence, the blacks were forced to follow these oppressive laws. Even after the Emancipation Proclamation issued by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, the Civil War had ended and the era of Reconstruction had begun, many African Americans didn’t know of any other way of life apart from living like a slave: 185

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But many who had only known slavery all their lives didn’t know what to do with their freedom. They couldn’t read or write. They hadn’t been allowed to think for themselves. They were suddenly free, but weren’t sure what to do. How would they find work? Where would they live? What would they eat? (Sanders 155)

After 10 years of Reconstruction when the African Americans were finally given citizenship rights with the 1866 Civil Rights Bill which was extremely disliked by the previous slave owners and the plantation owners. The majority did not want to see the black minority as an equal and thus, it produced Black Codes to strip away their status. “These segregation laws kept people separated in schools, libraries, restaurants, hotels, hospitals, prisons, bathrooms, sidewalks, drinking fountains, and on trains or streetcars” (Sanders 172). The Jim Crow Laws that were affixed with the separation of the blacks from the Americans legally ordered and told the blacks where they could live, eat, sleep, walk, or travel legally. The term (alluding to the theater character depicting African Americans and their culture) seems to originate with reference to discrimination in 1881 when “the legislature of Tennessee enacted a law requiring railroads to provide separate cars or compartments for the use of Negroes” (Folmsbee 235). Even though the African Americans were now free, they weren’t liberated from oppression. Segregation laws, violence, discrimination, lynching, and constant oppression forced many groups to migrate from the South of America to the North in hope of relief. This Great Migration brought along with it, what is known as the Harlem Renaissance, originating in New York City with an explosion in the cultural, artistic, and musical capabilities of African Americans. This chapter, with the backdrop of the vast African American history and culture, seeks to delineate the troubles of the community and to study the possible reasons why the minority of multiracial ancestry might have had to “pass” as white during the Harlem Renaissance, even though legally, they were free and no longer enslaved. Through the intense reading of two popular texts by Nella Larsen (a wellknown novelist on the Harlem Renaissance) Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929), this chapter seeks to study the efforts to escape the agonies of racism and to assimilate with the white majority, even if it was at the cost of one’s own identity, ancestral roots, and cultural ties. Quicksand begins with the description of the protagonist, Helga Crane’s beauty, elegance, and sophistication. She is described with words like “delicate,” “attractive,” “sensitive”; her body parts with phrases like “wellturned,” “sensuous,” “delicately chiseled”; and her skin is compared to “yellow satin” (Larsen, Quicksand 2). Her description cleverly avoids aligning

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with any particular racial undertones, but nevertheless, hints at her multiracial categorization. She is both “delicate” like a “white” American woman, and “sensuous” like an “exotic” “Black Woman.” Though simple words, both are jammed with racial undertones. The skin color “yellow,” however, resists any black or white categorization. Ann Rayson refers to Deborah McDowell’s observation that Naxos, the place Helga teaches in, is the anagram of Saxon and states that it “epitomizes the black bourgeoisie’s desire to become white by acting white, a pattern that Helga despises yet emulates” (Larsen, Quicksand 89). Thus, alluding to the fact that Helga, a black woman with multiracial ancestry, passed off as white like many others of the age. However, was the reason for this “passing” merely a social climbing desire? Or was it a fight to subvert the power that whites carried? Or was it a means to camouflage in order to avoid any racial hurls and feel at home? Helga recounts the sermon spoken by the white preacher of the state. Though trying to portray himself as a man of virtue, and the state as an egalitarian one, his speech has undertones of immense racism. He believes with a sense of pride the school was one of the finest schools for Negroes anywhere and was even better than schools for most white children. This comparison immediately draws a line of separation where the “inferior negroes” were taught as good as their own “superior whites.” He states that the reason Negroes in Naxos faced no racist troubles was because “they knew enough to stay in their place” and were making “progress” (Larsen, Quicksand 2). Meaning that the African Americans here knew that they were below the social status of the whites and tried to become like their way of life. Lacan talks about the effect of mimicry and states that it is “camouflage, in the strictly technical sense. It is not a question of harmonizing with the background but, against a mottled background, of becoming mottled—exactly like the technique of camouflage practised in human warfare” (99). Thus, both the whites and the blacks knew that there was a sense of mimicry, an adoption of mannerism, a mask of race and color, and a desire to be accepted that the minority was aiming toward. Crane compares the community which had changed from being a school to a machine, “a showplace in the blackbelt, exemplification of the white man’s magnanimity, refutation of the black man’s efficiency” (Larsen, Quicksand 4). What does such a community do, if not adapt to the white man’s way in order to merely survive? How much can the people be blamed for trying to adopt a new identity when their own is constantly diminished vis-à-vis the other? Miss MacGooden, the dormitory matron, clearly expresses her disdain for the Negro children. Calling them “savages from the backwood” and chiding them for not being taught any manners at home (Larsen, Quicksand 12). Her assumption that the black children lacked culture, values, and etiquette shows her ignorance and her belief in white superiority. Words like

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“exotic,” “savage,” foreigner,” and “outsider” continue to define Helga for most of the text. Even in Copenhagen, she is treated like a mere object for the consumption of the white people, a treat for the eye, an exotic other but not a human to be respected or to be feared from. The Dahls, her uncle and aunt, dress her in bright clothes, she is constantly told that she is told “you’re a foreigner, and different” and that she must wear “striking things, exotic things. You must make an impression” (Larsen, Quicksand 68). Rayson states that Aunt Katrina is clearly reinforcing a certain stereotype that Helga may be ambivalent about (90). Eventually, the readers notice that her aunt was successful in her motives and Helga actually felt like “a veritable savage” (Larsen, Quicksand 69). Not only this, she feels like a strange dog who was proudly exhibited, like she had horns or three legs. Helga notices that not only is she more exposed than anyone else but is also gazed at by many men and despite that no woman was insecure or jealous because probably they believed that a woman like her was not to be taken seriously. “True, she was attractive, unusual, in an exotic, almost savage way, but she wasn’t one of them. She didn’t at all count” (Larsen, Quicksand 70). The use of such words from early childhood, the constant reinforcement, and discrimination on the basis of these what has led to the continuation of racial demarcation despite the abolition of oppressive legal laws. “Accordingly, a series of traits linked to whiteness (civi​lized​/inte​llige​nt/mo​ral/h​ardwo​rking​ /clean) and blackness (sava​ge/in​stinc​tual/​simpl​e/lic​entio​us/la​zy/di​rty) have been concatenated in the service of specific social hierarchies” (Rottenberg 437). In other words, stereotypes have played a major role in separating the minority and the majority forcing the marginalized to either subvert the power structures or submerge in them. When the famous painter Alex Oslen has been arranged by her uncle and aunt to paint her portrait, Helga refers to herself as a “decoration,” ‘a curio,” and a “peacock.” She knew that she was objectified and that her identity was limited to being a mere treat for the eyes. She was nothing but “Den Sorte,” or a black person for them, a foreigner (Larsen, Quicksand 73). Olsen uses derogatory language in pursuing Helga for marriage and says that she might “have the warm impulse nature of the women of Africa” but she had the “soul of a prostitute.” He also asks her to “sell” herself to the “highest buyer” referring to himself. Helga rightly tells him that she wasn’t for sale, especially to a white man. She didn’t want to be owned. Olsen’s presumptive remarks were not just an insult to her but to all the people of her race. Just like her portrait that he had drawn for her, she was a mere sensual object, to be gaped at and then bought. However, her rejection apart from his attack on her dignity also stems from her fear. She was afraid that someday he’ll be ashamed of her and would begin to hate not just Helga but “all the dark people” (Larsen, Quicksand 88–99). Hutchinson rightly gives words to her feelings and states, “Black pride is a defense mechanism

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against Olsen’s attempt to own her sexually, but it also sublimates, obscures the more intimate sources of her loneliness” (“‘Quicksand’ and the Racial Labyrinth” 557). Meaning that due to her personal history that runs in her family, she believed that someday, he being a white man, would abandon her and would be ashamed to call her his wife. In order to avoid the pain that might await her, she completely denied herself the pleasure in the present by putting on a mask. Passing to be fine. Larsen’s take on the fact that the Americans yapped loudly of race, of race consciousness, of race pride, and yet suppressed its most delightful manifestations, love of color, joy of rhythmic motion, naive, spontaneous laughter. Harmony, radiance, and simplicity, all the essentials of spiritual beauty in the race they had marked for destruction.

Again, alluding to the fact that though legally and lawfully, the people were egalitarian but unconsciously they tried to remove each and every bit of the Black culture (Quicksand 18). Helga, educated and better dressed than many women, finds it hard to get a job. This shows the lack of opportunity for black women, especially if they were educated enough. The society’s myopic view of colored women shows another example of their deep-rooted racism. Before arriving in Harlem, Helga is advised by Mrs Hayes-Rore not to tell Anne Grey that her people are white since colored people wouldn’t understand or feel at home with successors of their oppressors. Thus, a form of “passing” exists here too. Too fit among her people in Harlem, in the elite black society, Helga had to mask half of her identity and lie about her racial ancestry. Hutchinson rightly states, “The price of acceptance into their society is suffocation and self-contempt” (“‘Quicksand” and the Racial Labyrinth” 551). Helga begins to notice this suffocation creep in and her restlessness in Harlem grows. Being a woman of mixed-race, she neither felt at home in white environments nor in black atmospheres. She is extremely irked by Anne’s simultaneous hatred of the white and her constant mimicry of their culture, manners, clothes, and the ways of life. Anne thus proves that subconsciously she had accepted the superiority of the white culture. Behind the mask of her vocal hatred was the real face which wanted to pass off as white. While most mixed-race people were passing to be white, Helga was forced to pretend to appear completely unrelated to them, in order to be accepted by the people of color. However, masking identities of any kind can be suffocating. Soon enough this inflexible identity made her feel boxed, trapped, and closed up. She wanted to stop being “yoked to these despised black folk” (Larsen, Quicksand 55). She didn’t want to feel segregated and alien from her own self. If letting go her black roots was hard, letting go of the privileges that came with being white was hard too. What was harder, was the decision

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to side with one particular race when both resided with equal passions inside her. Helga at the party in the Jazz Club is marveled “at the gradations within this oppressed race of hers” (Larsen, Quicksand 59). By this mere thought, not only does she establish a firm connection, an ownership by calling the race “hers” but also shows the intensity of awe she carries looking at the diversity of complexions, personalities, appearances, and physical aspects in the people of her race since they, unlike the whites, didn’t have a uniform appearance. She was somewhere, proud of this “moving mosaic” which wasn’t a mere mimicry of the white race and was beautiful in its own existence. At the same party, Anne is furious to see a black woman, Audrey Denney, to be seated with Dr Anderson. She calls her a “disgusting creature” and hates the fact that she mingles with both white and black people. She’s angered at the Negro race for not sticking together, believing this to be the reason that people can oppress them easily. Helga wonders if Anne would despise this situation as much if the people didn’t know that Audrey was colored. Thus, introducing a possibility where the woman of mixed-race could pretend to be someone she was not in order to be accepted, a possibility for her to “pass” (Larsen.Quicksand 60). Anne’s constant dislike of the white people, yet her constant mimicry of their ways shows a kind of obsession with the white race, and a lurking self-hatred behind. The fact that she couldn’t imagine the union of both the races makes the existence of a person like Helga impossible. Her unconscious jibe at the mingling of races made the people of mixed-race a fragment of fiction. However, Helga was real, she existed and the only purpose Anne’s remarks served was to wound her miserably and to ensure that Helga tried harder to pass off as a single race. Hutchinson rightly puts it: Her name, Anne Grey, suggests the dependence of her own identity on an abject whiteness within (“Miss Anne” and “grey” both being derogatory colloquial terms for a white person). The very vehemence—panic almost—of Anne’s reaction to possibilities of interracial sexual union reveals her racial insecurity while alienating and wounding Helga. (“‘Quicksand’ and the Racial Labyrinth” 552)

Anne’s eventual plan to marry Dr Anderson further strengthens Helga’s opinion about her. No matter how much she claimed to hate the white, she was extremely ashamed to be herself. While watching Negroes dance in a theater, Helga feels ashamed and betrayed, she felt as if someone had taken a peek at something she was trying to hide. Though she also knew that the whites divined the presence of something different but the fact that they were amused to see blacks perform puts light on their opinion which considered blacks as nothing but mere objects. The incident at the theater is sure to take the readers back to the Blackface Minstrel shows when Vaudeville and the artists performing portrayed, reflected, and reinforced racism in the society.

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Karen Sotiropoulos in her book Staging Race, Black Performers in Turn of the Century America (2006) states that while the white actors portrayed buffoonish characters by wearing blackface make-up, the colored actors described themselves as “coon” artists and their acts as “coon acts” (47). As Helga describes Negro artist was “cavorting” on stage, thus strengthening another pervasive stereotype about blacks and their associations with loud, savagely, and unkept behavior (Larsen, Quicksand 83). Helga reflects on the state of America stating that the colored people here, instead of appreciating the beauty of difference in race, tried to mimic their “white overlords.” She believes, “They were ashamed to be Negroes, but not ashamed to beg to be something else” (Larsen, Quicksand 75). Thus, affirming her detestation toward the concept of passing. Of course, pretending to be a different entity clearly shows one’s inferiority and reinforces their superiority, which was exactly what most people of color were doing. She considers America to be a land where “every dark child was handicapped at the start by the shroud of color.” She considered giving birth to a black child an unforgivable sin. According to her, being black meant being exposed to indignities like lynching, discrimination, and oppression (Larsen, Quicksand 75). This shows that even years after emancipation, the souls of the black folk were not free. They may have been free of slavery, but they’d always remained chained in the shackles of oppression. Helga after a life full of suffocation and feeling trapped marries Reverend Mr Pleasant Green simply to spite Dr Anderson. She wears a mask of a happy marriage just to get back at a white man. Her faith is all that keeps her afloat. However, during her fourth pregnancy, her faith begins to wear away and so does her love for the Reverend. She masks her relief when the fourth child doesn’t survive. Her opinion about faith and religion completely changes as she states that the white man’s God must be laughing at the “great joke” that he had played on the Negroes. She finds it unacceptable that with the promises of rewards after one’s life came the miseries for the present, especially for the people of color in America. In a way, the faith that she had used as a protective guard when she had nothing to hold on to. She “passes” to be a religious woman, “passes” to be in a happy marriage,” and “passes” to be a motherly figure. Throughout the text, she passes to be someone she’s not. The only time she can actually be herself is the end of the novel, when she passes away. The text ends in an inconclusive format without gracing Helga with a feminist closure. However, depicting the miseries of the people of color in America clearly and making it explicit that passing to be someone one is not, begins due to social constrictions, lack of other choices, and alienation with one’s own people. It is also a desperate measure to seek acceptance not only into the society’s cream but also into a basic living condition. But as soon as

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one begins to pass as someone else, forgoing one’s roots, identity and bonds, one finds herself stuck in a quicksand that keeps swallowing one inside. There is no escape. Nella Larsen exemplifies the process of passing through a different lens in her Passing. The novel begins with a flashback when Irene is sipping tea in a café in Chicago, while a woman (who we later discover is Clare) persistently stares at her. It is then when she realizes that unknowingly, she had been passing for being white since Drayton was a white-only hotel. More than anything, Irene is worried about the fact that the woman might have suspected by then that Irene was “a Negro.” She worries that her “finger-nails, palms of hands, shapes of ears, teeth” or other physical features had given her away (Passing 150). This sets “passing” as the backdrop of the novel. Multiple times that Irene has been shown to apply powder to appear white (Passing 183, 193, 218). Sinéad Moynihan points out that “Face powder symbolizes Irene’s desire to lighten her ‘warm olive skin’ (Passing 183) and ‘dark white face’ (Passing 218)” (45) Thus, similar to the whites who’d paint their faces black in the Minstrel shows the colored folks began painting their faces and their personalities to the color of the white race. Irene also mocks the white people for assuming that they could tell the race of the person by looking at their physical features, meaning that race was way more than a binary concept. The fact that Irene was surprised to discover that the white woman knew her highlights the intensity of segregation between the races. She tries to recall if she had known any woman well enough to be addressed as “Rene” by them. She fails to remember any such woman. Meaning that for her any connections and relations with the white folk as a young girl were barely present. Ironically, Irene mirrors the white folk she had just met and tries to assume the race of the person merely on her outer appearance and complexion. The fact that Irene could recognize Clare the moment she laughed proves that there is immensely more to a person, her identity and roots apart from the way a person appears. The gossip, rumors, and intrigue that surrounded about Clare’s passing and the interracial mingling prove how much frowned upon such acts were. However, Clare seems to completely ignore the stigma that surrounded her and was completely satisfied being behind the mask. During the same meeting, Irene invites Clare to Idlewild for the weekend, immediately regretting her decision. Clare however, seems to understand that her presence as an apparently “white women” might cause trouble and interrogation due to the society’s resistance toward interracial mingling (Larsen, Passing 156). Clare also wonders why Irene and many other colored girls never “passed over,” especially since it was such an easy thing to do. She believes that if one appeared white being a mixed-race person, all one needed was “a little nerve” (Larsen, Passing 158). Thus, explicitly stating that though the

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racial segregation was divided into binaries, the differences weren’t as rigid as one might assume. Irene wonders if the whites never wonder about her background and her familial ties. Clare explains that due to the vast majority they are living in, barely any of them cares, and it is “easier” with the white people. In fact, the aunts of Clare which Irene assumes to be “passing” as well were actually white, illustrating that distinguishing people back in the age was almost next to impossible! One could never tell if a person was actually white or was passing to be so. Their dialogue successfully decodes the process of “passing” for the readers. People who had the benefit and the partial genetics to appear white, did so, in order to find a place in the society. This included lying to the white, forgoing one’s black roots, the way Clare felt hesitant to join black groups with Irene, a lurking fear of being discovered, and the confusion and a lack of visible distinction in people. Clare justifies her passing in the same dialogue. She states that she always knew that her aunts were ashamed of the fact that their brother had seduced a “Negro Girl. They could excuse the ruin but they couldn’t forgive the tar brush” (Larsen, Passing 159). Clare, from early childhood, was taught not to mention her race to the people, inculcating a belief system that one’s race was inferior and something to be ashamed of. Thus, when she finally wanted to marry a white boy called Jack, no one ever told him that she was colored. Passing had been instilled in her as a normal way of life, it was not something she had to adapt to. Rather, it was the only way of life for her. Larsen thus shifts the blame of “passing” from Clare to her white family. The mere fact that Clare kept trying to negotiate and find ways to meet Irene proved that she was somewhere desperate to connect with some of her own people. Probably the act of “passing” had rendered her devoid of black connections and she now felt isolated, alienated, and somewhat homesick (Larsen, Passing 162). The two friends are presented as foils to each other, while Irene is proud of her black background, Clare can’t stand any connections to her black roots and constantly hides herself behind a veil of whiteness. Gertrude, Clare, and Irene represent three different ways in which women during the Harlem Renaissance dealt with the racial segregation. While Gertrude, though married to a white man, was honest about her race, Clare constantly lied about being white even to her husband, and Irene, married to a black man, lived with the black community and passed only occasionally for cultural perks. While one of them completely camouflages herself in the white community to embrace the white privileges, one sticks to a mid-path of honesty and little opportunism, and the other holds on to her roots despite the racist struggles that came along. Another noticeable difference lies in the fact that while Clare claims to have almost “died of terror” before her daughter was born due to the fear that she might be dark and states that “nobody wants a dark child,” Irene proudly claimed to have

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a black child (Larsen, Passing 168). Gertrude’s clear detestation of giving birth to a black child not only shows the self-hatred she harbored but also that she had internalized an aspect of racism and knew for a fact that certain privileges only came with a fairer skin. She, like Helga from, Quicksand, understood that a black child was handicapped from the very start simply due to his complexion. Irene doesn’t agree with this perception and believes their opinions to be regressive. These friends also talk about Claude Jones, their old acquaintance. They laugh at him for being tall, lanky, and having a mustache like a thin line of “soot.” They joke about him being crazy because he converted into a “Jew.” They consider him “too funny” for words, and that one might “die laughing” if they saw him (Larsen, Passing 169). Laughing at someone who was a part of another minority brings to light their self-hatred and racism. Also, laughing at him fed their superiority complex and made them feel like they had an upper hand over at least one person. Irene, however, seems to believe that he could’ve changed his religion sincerely and not for personal gain unlike the both of these women, thus, mocking their constant veil. Clare’s husband, John Bellew, represents the typical kind of white people who couldn’t stand the sight of a single black person. To begin with, he calls his wife Clare “Nig” as a joke, assuming her to be white. He, however, makes it clear that he draws a line at that, and wouldn’t allow any “niggers” in the family. Not only does he dislike Negroes but explicitly hates them. He says, “They give me the creeps. The black scrimy devils” (Larsen, Passing 172). Ironically, not just his wife but all the three women sitting at the table while he expressed his utter abhorrence toward the race were colored. Bellew even relies on the multiple stereotypes that surrounded the blacks and assumes that all the people of the race were “always robbing and killing.” (Larsen, Passing 172). The representation of blacks as criminals, murderers, and through other stereotypes has colored his opinion about the entire race. However, Bellew doesn’t even spare a second’s thought to the fact that any one of them could’ve been black. As Catherine Rottenberg states, “Racial identity and classification seem to be constituted through skin color” (439). Though Bellew tries to joke around, everyone else at the table knows that the joke is on him, ironically. The power of jokes and humor is brought to light. While Bellew joked at the cost of black inferiority, Clare kept giggling constantly to repress her lie. Clare’s laughter also comes off as a joke on one’s own self. She might be pretending to be white but of course, she knew she wasn’t, and laughing despite that is a form of self-deprecatory humor. Clare believed herself to be inferior to the white identity she had been using as a mask. Irene and Gertrude laughed at the mere irony of the situation and to release the anger that had been built inside them through all the insults. Bellew also tries to be nice and asks Irene if she likes staying in the Drayton, which was obviously

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a whites-only hotel and didn’t allow the colored folk. His oblivion insults almost the entire race through Irene. The impact of this racism was so intense that Irene seems to remember it even after two years when the narrative has shifted back to the present. Her loyalty to her race is visible in the fact that even though the word “nigger” wasn’t directed at her, she took offense. Even after two years when Irene receives a letter from Clare, she holds the fact that Clare never defended her own people against her. She believes that since Clare had sacrificed all the connections to her roots for the white privileges, she shouldn’t be trying to “nibble” at the cake of other people. In other words, she considered Clare to be an opportunist who was trying to have the best of both worlds. This shows the plight associated with the act of passing. One makes a conscious choice of either to let go one’s own people to avoid the oppression and the racism that existed or to stick to one’s own identity and to let go of the privileges that one could have easily obtained. While Clare chose the former, Irene chose the latter. Sami Schalk dissolves Clare of any blame by stating, “While it is difficult to fully valorize Clare for her individualistic worldview, it is also impossible to condemn her for transing the oppressive either/or binary system in such a complex and intimate fashion” (157). Meaning, that since hiding behind a veil was all she was taught as a child, and as she knew how to avoid oppression, she simply made use of her skin. She could, so she did. Larsen, through Irene, beautifully sums up the concept of passing, she says, It’s funny about “passing.” We disapprove of it and at the same time condone it. It excites our contempt and yet we rather admire it. We shy away from it with an odd kind of revulsion, but we protect it.

Brian attributes it to the biological nature and the “instinct of the race to survive and expand” (Larsen, Passing 186). The characters are extremely selfaware about the idea of hiding behind the veil, and some don’t even support their counterparts doing the same. Brian believes that most people trying to pass remain unsatisfied and find a “way to urge and slip back,” suggesting that one can’t ever completely forgo one’s roots (Larsen, Passing 185). Proving him right soon enough, Clare begins to feel lonely in the white environment. She tells Irene that she has been extremely alone since she had none of her people around (Larsen, Passing 196). Irene’s decision to organize the Negro Welfare League Dance shows her dedication, commitment, and loyalty to the people of her race. However, Clare’s shock at the fact that Hugh Wentworth might attend the dance exhibits segregation during the Harlem Renaissance (Larsen, Passing 197). Larsen, herself a writer of the movement portrays the era as a magnificent hub with flourishing black art and culture with the presence of extreme racial diversity.

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Clare refers to the year “1927” as a year when many such people such as Hugh Wentworth promoted the welfare causes for the blacks. Clare also mentions Brian’s prediction that so many white people came to such events that soon “the coloured people won’t be allowed in at all or will have to sit in Jim Crowed sections” (Larsen, Passing 198). The reference to Jim Crow Laws shows the constant fear that inhibited the minds of the colored folk. Despite having legal freedom, support from the influential whites and a basic standard of living, the constant fear of repression surrounded the entire race. Larsen’s description of the mixed crowd at the Negro Welfare League Dance proves the diversity of the people gathered at the same place. Interestingly, it is not just the skin color that she uses to demarcate them, making complexion trivial for racial segregation. Hugh’s and Irene’s conversation about white women being attracted to dark-skinned men is rather interesting. While Hugh believes that it is the mere complexion, Irene clarifies that it could simply be a form of excitement. Meaning, that since society had always demarcated the sections into two, the people found a thrill in breaking these power structures. Both of them also discuss the idea of passing. While Hugh makes it clear that he could never tell the race of a person by simply looking at them, Irene says that it is comparatively easier for the black to pass as white than for white to pass as black (Larsen, Passing 204–206). It would not be wrong to state that if the black community was looked down upon, a mimicry of their ways would be a form of humorous mocking, just as one could see in the black-faced comedy of the Minstrel shows. Larsen compares passing to a form of veil or a mask when Irene seems to find Clare’s face “masked” (Larsen, Passing 220). However, she resists the urge to tell Bellew about Clare’s black ancestry despite her hatred toward her. Her refusal stems from immense racial loyalty and solidarity with a fellow black woman, no matter how detested. Irene is in a constant dilemma. Thus, the act of passing renders not only the person herself but also the other members of the race in a quicksand of trouble. The novel brings to light the heart-wrenching incident of a colored person being lynched as per the news report. When Brian and Irene’s son asks them innocently the reason why the people “only lynch coloured people,” Brian calmly replies, “Because they hate’em, son” (Larsen, Passing 231). Meaning that though the white and the colored folk were mingling together and were friends with each other, some even had integrated families; they were not in complete harmony with each other. No matter how progressive Harlem was a threat of violence constantly lurked over the heads of the colored folk. Irene’s need to protect her son from the racial slurs contrasts with Brian’s idea to make him aware of the real truth. Their conflicting opinions show the dire state of the colored parents, concerned with the physical and mental well-being of their children. Their worries run parallel to Helga’s anxieties

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about never wanting to give birth to a black child since he could be exposed to violence, lynching, and other indignities (Larsen, Quicksand 75). The end of the novel brings John’s violent racism to light, yet again. He storms into the party, full of rage and screams at Clare, “So you’re a nigger, a damned dirty nigger!” (Larsen, Passing 238). His outburst affirms that no matter how much the society tried to “pass” as an egalitarian one, such acts of racial discrimination and rage could not be avoided. John is the voice of all the white people behind racial slurs and violence. It is ironic that right before Clare’s death he addresses her as “Nig,” referring to her real identity behind the mask, an identity he was oblivious to. George Hutchinson’s opinion that Quicksand and Passing represent a satire of both the colored and the white people’s obsession with “racial integrity” clearly depicts the soul of both the novels (“Nella Larsen and the Veil of Race” 344). Larsen’s stance in Quicksand about the “slavish imitation” of the traits of the white people by the blacks and their constant pleas to be considered as “exact copies” of other people captures the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance (83). Fredrick Douglas’s 1852 speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” provides a backdrop to the partial freedom that the colored folks carried even until the twentieth century. Though the United States was apparently independent, Douglas forcefully asks the meaning of this independence for the black American. He clearly states, The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me (34).

Meaning that it was only the white Americans who were enjoying the fruits of independence and the entire celebration of the same is nothing but a mockery to the black Americans. He remembers the tragedies of slavery and states, “Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them.” In addition to this, he believes that to the black Americans that this day of celebration is a reminder of the injustice and the cruelty faced by the blacks at the hands of the whites and that all the parades are nothing but means of fraud, deception, and hypocrisy. He believes it to be “a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages” (37). Douglas thus, dissociates himself from the sham of independence, reminds the nation of the traumas faced by the blacks, and blames the entire country for “passing” to be kind, “passing” to be equal, “passing” to give freedom to its citizens, and “passing” to be independent.

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Even after seven decades of the speech, the conditions seemed to prevail similarly. Though the people were legally free, their souls were enslaved. It is easy to notice through the texts of Nella Larsen that fears such as the segregation based on race, isolation in social cultures, extreme racial violence, lynching, discrimination ,and lack of opportunities clouded the minds and hearts of the colored people during the Harlem Renaissance. It would be safe to conclude that while some people like Clare “passed” in order to fit into the society and to obtain benefits of the multiplicity of the privileges associated with being “white,” many like Helga Crane “passed” as being completely unassociated with “whites” in order to feel at home with the people who hated their oppressors. Some people also seem to be stuck in the quicksand of a middle ground of confusion—Anne Grey “passes” to hate the whites and yet mimics them, Clare lives a life of lies and still keeps trying to find a way to mingle with her own race. The people, especially the women in these texts exhibit what passing meant to different social groups during the Harlem Renaissance. It was a technique to seek refuge from the atrocities that surrounded racial discrimination, and it was a result of the constant trauma faced by the ancestors of the people.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Davis, Patrick. “The Origins of African American Culture and Its Significance in African American Student Academic Success.” Journal of Thought 40, no. 1 (2005): 43–59. JSTOR. Folmsbee, Stanley J. “The Origin of the First ‘Jim Crow’ Law.” The Journal of Southern History 15, no. 2 (1949): 235–247. JSTOR. “Frederick Douglass: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” The Black Scholar 7, no. 10 (1976): 32–37. JSTOR. Hutchinson, George. “Nella Larsen and the Veil of Race.” American Literary History 9, no. 2 (1997): 329–349. JSTOR. Hutchinson, George. “‘Quicksand’ and the Racial Labyrinth.” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 80, no. 4 (1997): 543–571. JSTOR. Kasinitz, Philip. “Becoming American, Becoming Minority, Getting Ahead: The Role of Racial and Ethnic Status in the Upward Mobility of the Children of Immigrants.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 620 (2008): 253–269. JSTOR. Lacan, Jacques, et al. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. Norton and Company, 1998. Larsen, Nella. Quicksand & Passing. Serpent’s Tail, 2014. Martin, Ben L. “From Negro to Black to African American: The Power of Names and Naming.” Political Science Quarterly 106, no. 1 (1991): 83–107. JSTOR. Moynihan, Sinéad. “Beautiful White Girlhood?: Daisy Buchanan in Nella Larsen’s ‘Passing.’” African American Review 47, no. 1 (2014): 37–49.

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Rayson, Ann. “Foreign Exotic or Domestic Drudge? The African American Woman in Quicksand and Tar Baby.” MELUS 23, no. 2 (1998): 87–100. JSTOR. Rottenberg, Catherine. “‘Passing’: Race, Identification, and Desire.” Criticism 45, no. 4 (2003): 435–452. JSTOR. Schalk, Sami. “Transing: Resistance to Eugenic Ideology in Nella Larsen’s Passing.” Journal of Modern Literature 38, no. 3 (2015): 148–161. JSTOR. Smythe, Hugh H. “The Concept ‘Jim Crow.’” Social Forces 27, no. 1 (1948): 45–48. JSTOR. Sotiropoulos, Karen. Staging Race: Black Performers in Turn of the Century America. Harvard University Press, 2006.

Index

African literature, 11 Afropolitanism, 180 alienation, 46, 191 Americanah, 171, 179–81 Anglo Indian, 28–29, 33, 36 Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 44, 96 Asur community, 130, 132–33, 135, 139–40 becoming, 97, 101, 104, 155, 187 Caribbean, 143–44, 146; Caribbean conscience, 147 Carriacou, 115–16, 120–21 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 171–72, 175, 180 collective community, 46, 106, 111, 118–20, 123 colonialism, 18, 21, 87; colonial administration, 14, 16, 21–22; colonial agenda, 19–20, 22; colonial master, 12, 15–16, 21, 23, 61; Portuguese colonialism, 69 colored, 152, 189, 191–92, 194, 196–97; colorism, 143–47, 154, 174, 177, 181 cosmopolitan, 65, 180; cosmopolitanism, 65, 79, 180– 81. See also Afropolitanism; Nigerpolitanism

culture: African culture, 12, 17–20, 22; cultural assimilation, 13–14, 19, 20, 29, 158, 168; cultural displacement, 12, 18; cultural encounter, 12; cultural genocide, 2, 12–14, 24; cultural homogenization, 129; cultural identity, 35, 56, 117–18, 122, 130, 134, 138; cultural preservation, 113, 124; cultural repression, 16, 23; homogenous culture, 143; mainstream culture, 26–27, 32, 82; minority culture, 1, 6, 128, 160, 167, 170–71, 175; natureculture, 91 deterritorialization, 97, 103–5 diaspora, 157, 170–71; diasphoric community, 170–71; diasphoric identity, 160 discrimination, 2–3, 31, 82–84, 101, 154, 171, 178, 181, 185–91 East Indians’ Petition, 34 ecocriticism, 83–84; animal studies, 83–85; anthropocene, 85–86, 91; anthropocentrism, 83, 85–86, 89, 91–92; anthropomorphism, 86; speciesism, 81–83, 85–89, 92 extermination, 128–29, 135

201

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fictionalism, 11, 14–15 Genocide Convention, 13 globalization, 6, 31, 55–56, 62, 127–30, 157, 170; global city, 127–28; global village, 127–28, 130, 138 Harlem, 186, 196, 198; Harlem Renaissance, 186, 193, 195, 197–98 hybridity, 31–32, 149 identity preservation, 123–24 Ilbert Bill, 34 Indian nationalism, 44, 48 industrialization, 45, 128–30 insider-outsider, 174, 178 Jamaican Whites, 143, 145–46, 154 Jawaharlal Nehru, 43, 46, 95, 128–29, 133 Jharkhand, 128, 130, 133, 139 Kafka, 97, 102–5, 108 mainstream, 82, 128–29, 132, 134, 136, 138. See also culture, mainstream culture Manipur, 43, 44; Manipuri poetry, 43, 46–49, 52–53 marginality, 81, 128; marginalization, 30, 36–37, 130, 132, 137 Meira Paibi, 44, 50 Meitei, 44 militant resistance movement, 43, 53 minority, 1–5, 31–40, 55, 59, 82, 97, 101, 103, 108, 171, 187–88, 194. See also culture, minority culture Nagamese, 104–5 national identity, 45, 147 nationalism, 2–3, 31, 43–46, 53 Nigeria, 58, 61, 180–81; Nigerpolitanism, 180–81; Nollywood, 56–62 northeast, 44, 46, 48, 96. See also Manipur

oral literature, 123; oral storytelling, 102 orient, 15, 112, 124; oriental, 112, 121, 124 othering, 32, 82, 85; the essential, 112, 118–19, 122; otherness, 169 passing, 147–54, 187, 189, 191–98. See also becoming postcolonial, 3, 15, 29–46, 85, 112, 117, 151; postcolonial literature, 11–12, 112; postcolonial writers, 11–12 posthumanism, 82 post-nature, 91 race, 3–4, 13, 30, 45, 143–45, 173, 185, 187, 192–98; racial tension, 146–47; racial violence, 185, 198; racism, 3, 81, 144–48, 151–52, 173, 174, 189, 194–95 refrigerated culture, 3, 158 repression, 196 resistance, 11, 14, 44, 50, 84, 130–36, 177 rituals, 6, 17, 35, 67–76, 102, 112–22, 139 segregation, 148, 169, 186, 192, 198. See also discrimination Sharmila, Irom Chanu, 44, 50 slavery, 6, 60, 108, 143, 145–46, 184, 191 state terrorism, 44 subaltern, 12, 15, 18, 24, 44, 71, 76, 79, 85, 98 subhuman, 82, 85, 88, 90–91 surreal, 46, 48–49, 53. See also Manipur, Manipuri poetry theriomorphism, 86 transcultural, 31; transculturality, 181 tribal, 3, 96, 99, 128–30, 132–40. See also Asur community UNESCO, 56, 112–13 West Indian Community, 124

About the Contributors

Risha Baruah is a PhD research scholar from Cotton University, Department of English. She was engaged as a former part-time faculty in the Department of English at Cotton University and the Department of English at B. Barooah College. She was also formerly engaged as the academic counsellor to the Department of English at Indira Gandhi National Open University. Her areas of interest are ecocriticism, Anthropocene studies, Indian literature, animal studies posthumanism, and literary theory. She has authored several chapters for national and international books as well as written scholarly articles for national journals. She has also written academic content for Krishna Kanta Handique State Open University and Institute of Distance and Open Learning. At present, she is an editor-cum-reviewer in the Editorial Board of Aesthetique International Literary Journal (AJILE). She has been engaged as a coordinator and a judging panel to Headway Intel Club working in collaboration with the esteemed newspaper The Assam Tribune under the banner of Insight Plus. Prachi Behrani is a PhD Scholar and a guest faculty in the field of Literature. She is pursuing her doctoral degree from Amity University, Uttar Pradesh. Her research interests include African American Studies. Women Studies and Humour Studies. Her PhD research investigates the role of humor in the writings of the Harlem Renaissance. She has presented her research papers at three International Conferences and has published in one national journal of repute so far. She published her first book of poetry Somewhere in My Heart with Partridge Publishing—A Penguin Random House Company in 2014, while her second book The Unsaid was published in 2016 with Shubhi Publications. 203

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About the Contributors

Medha Bhadra Chowdhury completed her graduation in English Honours from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata, and her postgraduation in English from Jadavpur University. She enrolled as junior research scholar at Jadavpur University, Department of English, and is presently continuing with her PhD. She is due to submit her PhD thesis very soon. Her area of specialization includes gender and memory studies and she takes an interest in women’s writing and feminist theory. She is currently working as assistant professor in English at the Faculty of Arts and Social Studies, St. Xavier’s University, Kolkata. Asijit Datta is currently working as assistant professor and Head of English at The Heritage College, under Calcutta University. In July 2021, he was selected as an advisory board member for the School of Liberal Arts and Management Studies at P P Savani University, Gujarat (India). In addition, he is also employed as assistant editor at the Journal of Posthumanism (Transnational Press, London). He has previously taught at Presidency University, Vidyasagar University, Ramakrishna Mission, Narendrapur, and Bethune College. He completed his MA in English from Presidency College in 2009 and received his PhD from the Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University, in 2017. His academic interests pertain to posthumanism, Beckett studies, modern European theater, world cinema, and psychoanalysis. He has also published several academic papers on Beckett studies, disability studies, posthumanism, and film criticism in reputed books and national and international journals. For the last two years, his evolving project has been building up an independent academic channel on YouTube for students, academicians, and teachers (https://www​.youtube​.com​/channel/​ UCz​xb2h​TWGN​NCOB​ fcXSgFb2g). He has received critical acclaim and multiple awards as theater director and scriptwriter. Asis De is associate professor of English and Head of the Department of English (UG and PG), Mahishadal Raj College (NAAC Accredited “A” Grade), West Bengal, India. In several publications and conference presentations in Asia (India, Nepal, and Bhutan), Africa (Egypt and South Africa), and Europe (Belgium, Germany, England, France, Scotland, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, and Austria), he has worked widely on the issues of cultural identity, transnationalism, tribal studies, ecological humanities, animal studies, kinship studies, and disability studies in Anglophone Asian, Caribbean, and African and Australian literatures. In 2019, he was awarded a Major Research Project on family sociology in Indian diasporic literature under the IMPRESS-ICSSR. His latest publication is an edited volume entitled Mapping South Asian Diaspora, published by Rawat Publications (Jaipur, India) in 2018. His forthcoming volume entitled Amitav Ghosh’s Culture Chromosome is in press with

About the Contributors

205

Brill. He acts as PhD supervisor and examiner/external of research dissertations. He is a member of several research organizations like IACLALS (life member), EACLALS, PSA, SIEF, MESEA, and GAPS. He also acts as the editorial member of several e-journals and print journals in India and abroad. Sindhura Dutta is currently an MPhil Research Scholar at Vidyasagar University, India. She is currently researching on eco-spiritualism. She has done her master’s in English from the University of North Bengal. Her other research interests are ecocriticism, post-modernism, gothic literature, psychoanalysis, and posthumanism. Denise M. Jarrett is assistant professor, specializing in Caribbean Literature in the English and Language Arts Department at Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland. She has a special interest in Caribbean literature, postcolonial literature, ethnic and cultural studies, Black cultural productions, and adolescence literature. Her scholarship includes several publications: “Identity Development and Survival Strategies in Selected Novels by Michael Anthony and Cyril Everard Palmer,” “Carnival and Southern Games: National Tradition and Personal Identity in Michael Anthony’s The Games Were Coming,” and “Reading ‘Black’ Poverty in Postcolonial Caribbean Young Adult Fiction: Michael Anthony’s The Year in San Fernando and Cyril Everard Palmer’s The Cloud with the Silver Lining.” She also has an extensive record of presentations at several national and international conferences, including West Indian Literature, Children’s Literature, College Language Association, Howard Conference, and Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association Conferences on diverse Caribbean writers, themes, and theories. M. Anjum Khan is working as assistant professor of English in Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women, Coimbatore. She has 8 years of teaching experience and 10 years of research experience. Her research experience includes guiding M Phil and PhD candidates and working on research projects. Her areas of research have been British literature, immigrant Canadian literature, disability studies, and cultural studies. However, she is interested in teaching subjects like history, literature, disability studies, and literary theories. She is the author of two books— Ethnic Silhouettes, M. G. Vassanji in the Light of New Historicism and Narrating Bodies, Reading Anosh Irani. She has also coedited a volume of essays published by Lexington Press America. She has published several research articles in reputed national and international journals, chapters in books and presented papers in national and international conferences and has conducted

206

About the Contributors

workshops on journalism and assistive technology. She has also delivered academic and motivational lectures in colleges and corporate institutes. Shubhanku Kochar is currently working as assistant professor at the University School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi. He has been teaching since 2012. His areas of interest include African and African Diasporic Literature along with ecological literary criticism. He is also a member of MELOW the society for Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the World and IACLALS known as the Indian Association of Commonwealth Literatures and Language studies. He has written a novel titled Everything Will Be Alright, and his other publications include Treatment of Violence: A Reading of Toni Morrison’s Selected Fiction and An Eco-critical Reading of Alice Walker’s Selected Works, both published by Lambert Academic Publishers of Germany. He has also published 19 research papers in national and international journals. He has also presented various research papers at national and international conferences. He has contributed book chapters for publishers like Lexington Press, an imprint of Rowman and Littlefield, Vernon Press, Maria Grzegorzewska University Press, Routledge, and Cambridge Scholars Publishing. He has published his latest book Environmental Post-Colonialism: A Literary Response 2021 with Lexington Press, an imprint of Rowman and Littlefield. Vinaya Kumari is currently working as associate professor of English at Amity Institute of English Studies and Research (AIESR), Amity University, Noida. She has been teaching English language and literature in the universities of India and other countries like Libya, Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, and Tashkent. As a seasoned academician, she has published numerous research papers in various national and international journals. Dr. Kumari is associated with several organizations of academic repute. Renée Latchman is an English lecturer at Shortwood Teachers’ College in Jamaica, West Indies. She is from Jamaica, West Indies, where she gained her BA degree in Linguistics and French from the University of the West Indies, Mona. She completed her MA and PhD at Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland in English Language and Literature and has a special interest in multicultural, Caribbean, and postcolonial literature. Dr. Latchman has taught at Coppin State University, Baltimore, MD, Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD, and Howard University, Washington, DC. Her publications on the Caribbean, women’s, and migrant literature include “the Impact of Immigration on Mother-Daughter Relationships and Identity Development in Six Novels of the Caribbean Diaspora” and “the Tradition and Ramifications of Testing in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory.” Forthcoming

About the Contributors

207

publications cover topics such as Environment and Postcolonialism, Transnationalism, Children Literature. Saji Mathew is MA, MPhil, PhD from the University of Hyderabad. He has taught at MS University of Baroda and Kannur University. Currently, he is assistant professor in the School of Letters at Mahatma Gandhi University. He was on deputation to the Kerala State Higher Education Council, Trivandrum, as research officer for some time. He has attended more than 70 conference presentations which include one at Oxford University and another one at the University of Stendhal, France. He has translated Vyasa and Vighneswara, a novel by Anand into English. He has contributed translations for Oxford anthologies of Malayalam Dalit writing and Malayalam literature. He has published more than 25 research papers at national and international levels. He is the recipient of UGC Research Award for 2012–2014. His areas of interest include cultural studies, translation studies, minority discourse, postcolonial studies, film studies, and Indian literature. Maitrayee Misra is assistant professor of English at the Department of English and Foreign Languages, Guru Ghasidas Vishwavidyalaya (A Central University) in Chhattisgarh, India. She is also the research associate in an IMPRESS-ICSSR Major Research Project of MHRD, Government of India. Her research interest is the area of postcolonial Anglophone literature and culture studies. In her publications and conference presentations in Asia (India, Nepal, and Bhutan), Europe (Germany, Spain, Austria, and the UK), the United States, and Egypt, she has worked in the areas of diasporic dislocation, cultural memory, cultural space, and transculturality. Alongside several journal publications and book chapters, she has published a chapter to her credit in A Companion to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2017). She was awarded the Junior Research Fellowship in 2015 by the University Grants Commission. She is a member of research organizations like PSA, EACLALS, IACLALS (life member), SIEF, and GAPS. Anupama Nayar is faculty, Department of English, and director, Centre for Concept Design at CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bangalore. She worked in the area of Joycean Studies for her doctoral thesis. She has a Postgraduate Diploma in English Studies from CIEFL and Personnel and Human Resources Management from LIBA. Her 18 years of experience spans teaching, counseling, material production, creative writing, research guidance, and publication in the academic field. Her other areas of interest include postcolonial cultural studies, precarity studies, pedagogic studies, and organizational behavior and culture. Dr. Anupama Nayar has national and international publications to her credit.

208

About the Contributors

Dr. Nayar offers papers in British literature, postcolonial literatures, and creative writing at the MA level. She also regularly conducts workshops on digital learning content development. She is a cultural history aficionado and uses creative writing as a stress buster. Short stories are her forte. Teaching is her passion. Neelima B. (born in 1994) is a research scholar and poet. Originally from Kerala, she is currently pursuing her PhD at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, Tamil Nadu. Her thesis is on caste identity and life narratives from Kerala. Her area of interest also includes caste studies, Dalit literature, and poetry and literature from the marginalized. In Ireland India Institute Conference, Dublin City University, Ireland (April 24, 2019), she presented a paper on affect, caste, and Dalit literature from India. She writes poetry in Malayalam language under the name Samudra Neelima. Her first collection of poems Ottaykkoru Kadal (A Sea, Alone) was published by Mathrubhumi Books in 2014. She writes poems regularly for social media. The translations of her poetry have appeared in international journals like Asymptote and Readleaf poetry India. How to Translate an Earthworm, an anthology of contemporary Malayalam poetry, has featured her poem among selected poets. Zuhmboshi Eric Nsuh is a senior lecturer in the Department of African Literature and Civilisations of the University of Yaounde I, Cameroon. His areas of research interest include postcolonial studies, critical theory, cultural studies, and the interconnections between literature and the social sciences. Stephen Ogheneruro Okpadah is a Chancellor International PhD scholar, the University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom. He has published numerous articles in international journals and chapters in books. Okpadah is a coeditor of Language of Sustainable Development: Discourses on the Anthropocene in Literature and Cinema (2021), which is a special issue of the journal Language, Discourse and Society and The Road to Social Inclusion (UNESCO/Janusz Korczak Chair’s Book Series, 2021). He is currently researching participatory theater and climate justice in the context of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. His project draws on Theatre for Development in creating community-based performances that advocate for climate justice. He won the 2021 Janusz Korczak/UNESCO Prize for Global South in the emerging scholar category, and he is also director at the Theatre Emissary International, Nigeria. Okpadah is also a nonresident research associate in Centre for Socially Engaged Theatre, University of Regina, Canada.

About the Contributors

209

Munira Salim is lecturer and head of the Department of English, Stewart Science College, Cuttack, Odisha, India. Her research interests include diaspora studies, ecocriticism, subaltern studies, and Indian literature. She has pursued her PhD from Ravenshaw University, Cuttack, Odisha. In her dissertation, she has focussed on the Selected Autobiographies of Dalit Women. She has presented papers in India, Italy, France, and Bangladesh. Recently she delivered an invited lecture at the State University of Milan, Italy. In her Conference presentations, she has presented papers on “Amitav Ghosh” “The Shadow Lines,” “On the Aboriginal Issues of Australia,” “Indian Literary Aesthetics: Classical to Postcolonial,” “Ecofeminism: From the Marginal Perspectives,” and “On the Issues of Transboundary River and the Environmental Refugees.” She has substantial publications, including an interview with the famous Dalit feminist writer and activist Urmila Pawar.