Pandurang Hari, published in 1826, is an Anglo-Indian novel belonging to the pre-Kipling era. The novel was written by an English official named William Browne Hockley. It contains a scathing criticism of Indians in general and Marathas in particular. Hence, scholars have readily recognized it as a colonialist work. What remains unnoticed is the fact that the novel also criticizes aspects of British rule in India. Focusing on this, the present article tries to show how the novel at times subverts the very discourse of colonialism it seeks to foster. William Browne Hockley (1792 – 1860) was a pioneer in the field of Anglo-Indian literature . He is remembered today mainly for his novel Pandurang Hari. Drawing on Elleke Boehmer’s classification, one may claim that Hockley was a ‘colonialist writer’. His works, written for Englishmen at home, reflected the imperialist’s point of view. It contained an apologia for British rule in India; as a reviewer of Pandurang Hari mentions, “If we have done nothing else for India, we have made such a state of things as is described by Pandurang Hari simply impossible.” (The Saturday Review 728) This aspect of Pandurang Hari has drawn attention of many scholars. What remains unnoticed is that the novel also contains a criticism of the praxis of British rule in India. The aim of this article is to highlight that aspect of the work. A brief introduction to the author is necessary. Unfortunately, not much is known about Hockley’s life. In his “Introduction” to Pandurang Hari Sir Bartle Frere only informs that William Browne Hockley served in a judicial station at Broach, and then under the Commissioners of the Deccan, before leaving service “under a cloud.” (Frere xv) Udayon Misra’s ac... ... middle of paper ... ... Udayon. The Raj in Fiction: A Study of Nineteenth Century British attitudes Towards India. Delhi: B. R. Publishing Corporation, 1987. Print. Oaten, E. F. A Sketch of Anglo-Indian Literature. London: Kegan Paul Trench Trübner & Co. Ltd, 1908. Print. Rev. of Pandurang Hari. The British Quarterly Review 58:115 (July 1873): 252. Print. Rev. of Pandurang Hari. The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art 35:918 (31 May 1873): 727 - 728. Print. Singh, Bhupal. A Survey of Anglo-Indian Fiction. London: Oxford University Press, 1934. Print. [Taylor, Philip Meadows]. “Administration of India.” British and Foreign Review or European Quartely Journal 11: 21 (July 1840): 151 – 210. Print. Taylor, Philip Meadows. Letters of Philip Meadows Taylor to Henry Reeve. Ed. Sir Patrick Cadell. London: Oxford University Press, 1947. Print.
James, Lawrence. Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India. New York: St. Martin's, 1998. Print.
O'Connor, Teresa F. Jean Rhys: The West Indian Novels. New York: New York University Press, 1986.
The Effects of British Imperialism in India One could approach this topic from two points of view: the British and the Indian. One could choose either party and find very different opinions. When British colonizers first arrived in India, they slowly gained more and more control in India through many ways, the most prominent being trade and commerce. At first, they managed India’s government by pulling the string behind the curtain. However, soon they had acquired complete rule over India, converting it into a true British colony.
Damrosch, David, et al., ed. The Longman Anthology of British Literature: Vol. B. Compact ed. New York: Longman - Addison Wesley Longman, 2000.
Damrosch, David, et al., ed. The Longman Anthology of British Literature: Vol. B. Compact ed. New York: Longman - Addison Wesley Longman, 2000.
...ived from England, he was uneasy about many of the central pillars of the British will to power in India, such as the police, government, and missionary church. Kipling is guilty of a middle-class tendency to romanticise private soldiers and racial stereotypes, such as Mulvaney, or the "woild" and "dissolute" Pathan. Yet he should not be dismissed as unworthy of further study, and the common critical tendency that consigns him, along with Edmund Burke, to the dustbin of right-wing writers is intellectually weak, unquestioning and manifestly uncritical
4 # Stein, Burton (2001), a History of India, New Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. xiv, 432, p.222
The decision to grant independence to India was not the logical culmination of errors in policy, neither was it as a consequence of a mass revolution forcing the British out of India, but rather, the decision was undertaken voluntarily. Patrick French argues that: “The British left India because they lost control over crucial areas of the administration, and lacked the will and the financial or military ability to recover that control”.
Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, published in 1980, was perhaps the seminal text in conceiving opinions as to interplay of post-modern and post-colonial theory. The title of the novel refers to the birth of Saleem Sinai, the novel’s principal narrator, who is born at midnight August 15th 1947, the precise date of Indian independence. From this remarkable coincidence we are immediately drawn to the conclusion that the novel’s concerns are of the new India, and how someone born into this new state of the ‘Midnight’s child’, if you will, interacts with this post-colonial state. To characterise the novel as one merely concerned with post-colonial India, and its various machinations, is however a reductive practice. While the novel does at various times deal with what it is to be Indian, both pre and post 1947, it is a much more layered and interesting piece of work. Midnight’s Children’s popularity is such that it was to be voted 25th in a poll conducted by the Guardian, listing the 100 best books of the last century, and was also to receive the Booker Prize in 1981 and the coveted ‘Booker of Bookers’ in 1993. http://www.bookerprize.co.uk/
Scott, P. (1966). The Jewel in the Crown. Vol. 1 of the Raj Quartet. Rpt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
“’You are so very much like everything else in this country, inefficient, dirty, indifferent,’ he murmured”. (P. 178 l. 6-7). Sir Mohan Lal is the protagonist in Singh’s short story “Karma”. He appears very selfish; he likes to look himself in the mirror, and praise himself. He is a well-educated man, with a tie from the University of Oxford. He makes sure that there is a copy of ‘The Times’ next to him, so if passers should doubt that he is British, the English paper will surely convince them. He is determined to be as clean as possible, by using both soap and eau de cologne. He is not a man, who wants to smell like the rest of the mob. He is yearning for the British to come to him, so they can realize that he is as articulated as them. He is certain that he resembles a true English-man, and can see no difference between him and them. As a graduate from Oxford, he must be in their league, so he assumes that whomever he meets will accept him, and take him as an educated man. Sir Mohan Lal have been to England for five years, and in that time, he attended the University of Oxford. He has grown very fond of England; he sees it as a more sophisticated country than India. He identify India with filth, and feels pity towards the country, due to lack of elegance and finesse.
Kopff, David. (1969). British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance : The Dynamics of Indian Modernization 1773-1835. University of California Press. Berkeley and Los Angeles.
Nicholas B. Dirks. (2011). Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton University Press
Malieckal, Bindu. THE BANGLADESHI GENOCIDE IN ROHINTON MISTRY'S SUCH A LONG JOURNEY 28.2 (2008): 75-88. Dec. 2008. Web. 12 Nov. 2013.
Mishra, Vijay. "The Texts of Mother India." After Europe.Ed. Stephen Slemon and Helen Tiffin. Sydney: Dangaroo Press, 1989. 119-37.