The Death of Indian Culture Exposed in The Jewel In the Crown
The Jewel in the Crown, by Paul Scott, is a postcolonial novel about the realism of the interracial love affair between Daphne Manners and Hari Kumar, the subsequent rape of Daphne Manners, and the after effects on British and Indian relations. At a time when British and Indian affairs were strained, at best, the rape of Miss Manners is significantly metaphoric of the British rape of Indian land and culture. British colonial sentiment became a primary influence in India, when the revolt of 1857 led to the reorganization of British influence. The British felt that India could not rule itself, that they (the British) would govern India as its benefactor, bringing modernization to an inferior culture. The Indian economy was transformed into a colonial economy, whose nature and structure was determined primarily by the needs of the British economy. Britain's policies, in effect, ruined India's urban and rural industries, which caused a great pressure on the land, as the development of India's industry could not keep up with British needs.
The Jewel in the Crown focuses on how British colonialism affected the relations between native Indians and the British English, and the affects on Indian culture seen through the tragedy of the unique triangle formed by Hari Kumar and Ronald Merrick, at two opposing points (English vs. India), and Daphne Manners (the catalyst) connecting them both. The story is significant in understanding the historical aspects of British colonial rule, and the subsequent destruction and transformation of Indian culture. Through the eyes of the characters, we get several very distinct and personal stories about the values and custo...
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...e history unfolds itself, as the personal lives intertwine with social and historical attitudes of British India and its ideology of benevolent governance. In a metaphorical sense, the personal tragedies of Hari Kumar and Daphne Manners represent the inability of two clashing distinctly different cultures to mix in creating an atmosphere of modern unity. The fact that Daphne Manners dies in childbirth, a birth that would have represented such a unity between these two cultures, idealizes the very nature of the problems associated with the rights and wrongs of colonialism, and represents perhaps the very death of native Indian ideology and culture.
Works Cited
Agatucci, Cora. "Jewel in the Crown Study Guide Timeline" English 103, Spring 2001.
Scott, Paul. The Jewel in the Crown: The Raj Quartet:1. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. C. 1998.
James, Lawrence. Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India. New York: St. Martin's, 1998. Print.
"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden is a poem about a how the author is recalling how his father would wake up early on Sundays, a day which is usually a reserved as a day of rest by many, to fix a fire for his family. The mood of this poem is a bit sad. It portrays a father, who deeply cares for his family but doesn't seem to show it by emotions, words, or touching. It also describes a home that isn't very warm in feelings as well as the title" Those Winter Sundays" The author describes the father as being a hard worker, in the line "…with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday…", but still even on Sundays--the day of rest, the father works at home to make sure the house is warm for his family. The "blueblack cold described in the poem is now warmed by a father's love. This poem describes the author reminiscing what did not seem obvious at the time, the great love of his father, and the author's regretting to thank his father for all that he did.
In "The White Women's Burden,” Josephine Butler Campaign Against Contagious Disease is dissected throughout this reading as a means of exemplifying the rise of imperial feminism and the attitudes of the early British suffragist who bore its “imaginative, no no less hegemonic feminist world order” (301). In this way, Burton uses Butlers campaign and its intersection with the British Empires agenda for India to show how integral Indian women were for British women’s progress. While, Burton sights that the intensions of Butler’s ideologies and purpose for working “behalf of Indian women” came from genuine misperspections about what women were robbed of in Indian cultures, just as we saw in last weeks reading there were an ulterior benefits to
'Colonial literature,' Abdul JanMohammed writes, 'is an exploration and a representation of a world at the boundaries of "civilisation," a world that has not (yet) been domesticated by European signification or codified in detail by its ideology. That world is therefore perceived as uncontrollable, chaotic, unattainable and ultimately evil' (18). In the wake of the Indian Mutiny of 1857, Dickens' fictional response to that event, "The Perils of Certain English Prisoners," reflected both a culture of desired vengeance against the mutineers, and Dickens' sympathy with that viewpoint. This stance entailed a rejection of the then Governor of India Lord Canning's call for an initial period of discipline, followed by 'discrimination' to be shown toward the mutineers in the form of clemency (Oddie 3), and of Disraeli who 'spoke with considerable sympathy of the Mutiny as a justifiable Indian protest against British harshness' (Hutchins 80). Joining the vitriolic criticism of this viewpoint expressed by The Timesand the majority of the public, Dickens dismissed the governing forces in India for procrastinating and failing to protect British subjects in India (Oddie 4). The Mutiny was a direct threat to Victorian values transposed to India, embodied in the aforementioned British subjects: consider the 'almost universal demand for bloody revenge on the mutineers'(Oddie 3), for their reported brutality toward British women and children, which 'was the most direct outrage imaginable against the whole Victorian concept of women as pure and violable, the source of the sanctity of hearth and home' (Oddie 6).
“A Passage to India” is a film released in 1984; however, the film was set in the 1920s. The film shows India under the British Raj during a time of animosity and the Indians’ anti-imperialist attitude. Furthermore, the film displays themes of prejudice and India on its journey of becoming its own independent nation. “A Passage to India” has a powerful message of the racism in India during the time of the British Raj and the message shines through vivid imagery and a thrilling plot. A short synopsis of the film is two educated British women travel by boat to India. When they arrive in India one of the women, Adela, feels as if she is not experiencing the “real” India. Adela wants to meet and converse with the Indians, which many other British people did not wish to do. In addition, the film illustrates the obvious class difference between the British and the Indians in India. The British are dressed in beautiful, expensive clothing and participate in activities such as, afternoon tea served by the Indians. Moreover, the class difference is predominantly shown in the film; consequently, the two main female characters, Adela and Mrs. Moore are uneasy by it. Thus, unlike their other British counterparts they want to have interaction with the Indian people and want to learn about their culture. Additionally, another issue that is prevalent is, it shows how the Indians have to change their lifestyle to fit with the British rather than the British trying to fit into Indian culture whilst living in the Indians’ home country. This illustrates the lack of consideration the British had for India during the time. India was nothing more than just a colony to the British.
Scott, Paul. The Jewel in the Crown. (1966.) Vol. 1 of the Raj Quartet. Rpt. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1998.
Many writers use powerful words to portray powerful messages. Whether a writer’s choice of diction is cheerful, bitter, or in Robert Hayden’s case in his poem “Those Winter Sundays,” dismal and painful, it is the diction that formulates the tone of the piece. It is the diction which Hayden so properly places that allows us to read the poem and picture the cold tension of his foster home, and envision the barren home where his poem’s inspiration comes from. Hayden’s tumultuous childhood, along with the unorthodox relationships with his biological parents and foster parents help him to create the strong diction that permeates the dismal tone of “Those Winter Sundays.” Hayden’s ability to both overcome his tribulations and generate enough courage
Crane, Ralph J. Inventing India: A History of India in English Language Fiction. London: Macmillan, 1992.
"The development of the story in A Passage to India is thus in many ways the development, or rather the deterioration, of the relationship between rulers and ruled in the sub-continent between 1912 and 1922: perhaps the most formative decade in Indian history". ( A Passage.P.74).
Indian literature in English which is accessible to us in the West, still has its roots in colonial literature and the tensions between East and West. A European naturalism is often present; a concern to posit India as an arena within which Western readers can identify realities is inherent within much of this writing. The following are three examples of the progression of post-Independence literature.
Mulk Raj Anand(1905-2004) pays close attention to linguistic imperialism in his first three novels which were published between 1935-37.Marked as ‘Epic of Misery’ by the noted literary critic Saros Cowasjee(1977),these three novels are Untouchable(1935),Coolie(1937) and Two leaves and a Bud(1937) which deal with both sides of linguistic imperialism-the linguistic hegemony as it is planned by the colonial rulers and also the ‘linguistic suicide’ committed by the colonized through their slavish admiration for the angrezi tongue. This two-way traffic consolidated and reaffirmed the pre-eminence of English in the colonized country.
---. “A Conversation with Githa Hariharan.” Interview by Arnab Chakladar. Another Subcontinent: South Asian Society and Culture, 2005. Web. 8 July 2013.
A Passage to India is a portrayal of India during the control of the British Raj in the 1920’s. The narrative tells the story of a young British woman, Adela who falsely accuses an Indian Doctor, Aziz of attempted rape. When this progresses to a court, during the trial she withdraws her lawsuit and admits she was mistaken. As a result of her false accusation, the trial and the retraction of her charge there is a further and deeper divide created betw...
A Passage to India, inspired by Forester’s experience in India, focuses on the relationship established by the British colonies and the Indians in Chandrapore and draws attention to the difference between the European and Indian way of thinking. In this particular novel, Imperialism dominates both cultures’ ways of life. Imperialism favors the British better than the Indians, and white superiority motivates the main characters. The novel explores the ways in which imperialism informs the human value, or rather, human character under The British Raj, both its derogatory and unifying effects. The ghost of the Colonial Other comes to per...
A Modern novel, Jewel in the Crown, by Paul Scott, depicts the latter stages of imperialism's erosion and explores it through the lives of individuals and their relationships as symbolic of larger societal conflicts and political events. Jewel was written well into the 20th Century and employs thematic concepts and literary forms characteristic of Modernism, as well as being significant in its literary-historical context of the decline of British Imperialism/post- colonialism in India.