To put on their clothes made one a sahib too: Mimicry and the Carnivalesque in Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable
The character of Bakha, in Anand’s Untouchable, is drawn from the lowest caste in Indian society, that of sweeper, or cleaner of human ordure. Despite his unpromising station in life, the central figure in the novel operates at a variety of levels in order to critique the status quo of caste in India. Well aware of his position at the nadir of Indian society, Bakha is able-via his untouchability-to interrogate issues well above his station in life, such as caste and its inequities, economics and the role of the colonizer. Due to the very characteristics of the character's position, Anand is able to examine issues such as society’s revulsion at untouchablility; some local, innate societal sympathy for Bakha's plight, and the fact that in the 1930s Gandhi used his Harijans-untouchables-as a symbol for change in Indian society. This essay examines the modes by which Anand deploys mimicry and the carnivalesque to critique Indian society in the 1930s.
The author has constructed a mimic-man, fundamentally carnivalesque in the Bakhtinian sense, who is simultaneously parodic and subversive. Indeed, the linguistic similarity Bakha/Bakhtin is in itself superficial yet tempting. For Bakhtin, "Carnivalesque literature uses elements of parody, mimicry, bodily humour and grotesque display to achieve the ends of carnival, that is, to jostle ‘from below’ the univocal, elevated language of high art and decorous society".
During the course of his day, Bakha causes widespread unease, not merely at his physical presence. Although he is aware of the "six thousand years of racial and class superiority"(16) that bears down on him, as he...
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...remarkable breadth of issues, and it is only to be hoped that one day this text will be regarded as a useful tool in a past campaign, rather than as part of a continuing and unfinished project.
Useful links:
Dalit Liberation Education Trust: http://www.pcsadvt.com/dlet
The Imperial Archive. http://www.qub.ac.uk/english/imperial/imperial.htm
India Survey, Biography: http://www.indiasurvey.com/biodata/mulkrajanand.htm
Literature in English of the Indian Subcontinent in the Postcolonial Web: http://landow.stg.brown.edu/post/india/anand/anandov.html
Bibliography
Anand, Mulk Raj Untouchable London: Penguin Books, 1940
Ashcroft, Bill, Griffiths, Gareth, and Tiffin, Helen. Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies. London: Routledge, 1998.
Ashcroft, Bill, Griffiths, Gareth, and Tiffin, Helen. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 1995.
Post-colonialism expresses the opposite idea of colonialism. Hence, post-colonialism literature is a consequence of colonialism. Post-colonialism continues to be a process of hostility and reform. One scholar suggested that although most countries have gained independence from their colonizers, they are still indirectly subjected in one way or another to the forms of neo-colonial domination. (Ashcroft et al.
Post-colonialism is a discourse draped in history. In one point in time or another, European colonialism dominated most non-European lands since the end of the Renaissance. Naturally, colonialists depicted the cultures of non-Europeans incorrectly and inferior. Traditionally, the canon has misappropriated and misrepresented these cultures, but also the Western academia has yet to teach us the valuable and basic lessons that allow true representations to develop. Partly in response, Post-colonialism arose. Though this term is a broad one, Post-colonialists generally agree on certain key principles. They understand that colonialism exploits the dominated people or country in one way or another, evoking inequalities. Examples of past inequalities include “genocide, economic exploitation, cultural decimation and political exclusion…” (Loomba 9-10). They abhor traditional colonialism but also believe that every people, through the context of their own cultures, have something to contribute to our understanding of human nature (Loomba 1-20). This is the theme that Lewis prescribes in his, self described, “satirical fantasy”, Out of the Silent Planet (Of Other 77).
Roy asserts that people’s fears of upsetting the power balance based in the caste system often leads to a blind acceptance of the status quo and a continuous sense of self-deprecation by individuals at the bottom of the hierarchy. When Velutha’s father fears that his son’s affair with a Touchable will have potentially disastrous consequences for him, he serves his own self-interest and is willing to endanger is son. He exposes the affair to the grandmother of the woman his son is having an affair with, revealing the extreme degree to which caste and conforming to societal norms drive the behaviors of individuals in Indian society; “So Vellya Paapen had come to tell Mamamachi himself. As a Paravan and a man with mortgaged body parts he considered it his duty…they had made the unthinkable thinkable and the impossible really happen…Offering to kill his son. To tear him limb from limb” (242). His fear of disrupting the status quo (i.e. the Indian social hierarchy) is so great that he is willing to sacrifice his own son’s life to protect his own. Rather than considering the genuine...
In his novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding presents a conch shell representing the order of civilization. He uses this symbol to effectively portray the theme that humans are inherently evil and have savage desires, shown through the decline from discipline and peace among the boys on the deserted island. In the novel, civilization directly correlates to the boys’ past lives in England. Before coming to the island, there were adults present who maintained order by enforcing rules and punishing those who did not follow them. However on the island, the conch, representing this society, is a powerful object that demands the respect of the boys in a similar way that the adults do. As time passes, the conch’s influence over the boys weakens and ultimately all forms of civilization are rejected.
People are privileged to live in an advanced stage of development known as civilization. In a civilization, one’s life is bound by rules that are meant to tame its savage natures. A humans possesses better qualities because the laws that we must follow instill order and stability within society. This observation, made by William Golding, dictates itself as one of the most important themes of Lord of the Flies. The novel demonstrates the great need for civilization ion in life because without it, people revert back to animalistic natures.
Rajan, R. S. (n.d.). Concepts in postcolonial theory: Diaspora, exile, migration . Retrieved from http://english.fas.nyu.edu/docs/IO/10743/G41.2900fall09.pdf
Bristol's discussion of Carnival expands in order to include the theories of Bakhtin.... ... middle of paper ... ... After providing verbal expression to his notion of the carnivalesque in the grave scene, Bristol concludes his article by explaining the ultimate end of the Carnivalesque, "the dissolution, and finally the extinction of identity, the annihilation of the individual in the historical continuum" (365).
This essay will be about a comparative study of the representation of colonialism as a positive or negative force. The texts that are being used are my core text ‘Heart of Darkness’ by Joseph Conrad and ‘Collected Poems’ by Rudyard Kipling. The partner text will be ‘Swami and Friends’ by R. K. Narayan.
Many children have been diagnosed with ADHD; according to the CDC, 8.4 percent of children have been diagnosed with ADHD. Children diagnosed with ADHD have more difficulty paying at...
Prasad, Amar Nath. “Identity Crisis in V.S.Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas”. Critical Response to V. S. Naipaul and Mulk Raj Anand. Edited by Prasad, Amar Nath. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2003. Print.
Aschcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, eds. 'The Post-Colonial Studies Reader'. London; Routledge, 1995.
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy tells the story of the communist state of Kerala and the forbidden love between two castes, which changes the lives of everyone. In the novel an ‘Untouchable’, Velutha is a carpenter and works at Paradise Pickles and Preserves for much less than he deserves because of his status as an Untouchable in the caste system. Velutha falls into a forbidden love with a divorced woman, Ammu who is associated with an upper caste Syrian Christian Ipe family. Marriage was the only way that Ammu could have escaped this life, but she lost the chance when marrying the wrong man, as he was an alcoholic and this resulted in them getting a divorce. Ammu breaks the laws that state ‘who should be loved, and how and how much’, as their affair threatens the ‘caste system’ in India, which is a hierarchal structure and social practice in India in which your position in society is determined and can’t be changed. Arhundati Roy portrays the theme of forbidden love within the caste systems and shows how they are t...
Now more than 15 Billion cigarettes are being purchased every single day. Smoking causes lots of problems. More than 45,000 premature deaths occur each year because of the use of cigarettes. A human being dies every 8 seconds because of smoking. If deeply thought about, it is very bad. Smoking cigarettes is a very critical and dangerous problem that is rising everyday all around the world. (Rettner, 2013)
Every human being, in addition to having their own personal identity, has a sense of who they are in relation to the larger community--the nation. Postcolonial studies is the attempt to strip away conventional perspective and examine what that national identity might be for a postcolonial subject. To read literature from the perspective of postcolonial studies is to seek out--to listen for, that indigenous, representative voice which can inform the world of the essence of existence as a colonial subject, or as a postcolonial citizen. Postcolonial authors use their literature and poetry to solidify, through criticism and celebration, an emerging national identity, which they have taken on the responsibility of representing. Surely, the reevaluation of national identity is an eventual and essential result of a country gaining independence from a colonial power, or a country emerging from a fledgling settler colony. However, to claim to be representative of that entire identity is a huge undertaking for an author trying to convey a postcolonial message. Each nation, province, island, state, neighborhood and individual is its own unique amalgamation of history, culture, language and tradition. Only by understanding and embracing the idea of cultural hybridity when attempting to explore the concept of national identity can any one individual, or nation, truly hope to understand or communicate the lasting effects of the colonial process.
Riot (2001), Shashi Tharoor’s third novel is set in the context of a fictitious riot that has resemblance to the riot that rocked Uttar Pradesh in 1989 as an aftermath of the Babri Masjid- Ram Janmabhoomi controversy. Tharoor unravels the history of communal India from the fictional context of the investigation of the death of a twenty-four year old idealistic American girl, Priscilla Hart, who was slain in India in the riot. From its premises, Tharoor also communicates his ideas “about ownership of history, cultural collision, religious fanaticism and the impossibility of knowing the truth” (