Prathima Maramraj

Seminar in Cross‑Culture Studies

June 18, 1996

Paper Proposal

 

Using the novels Freedom at Midnight by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins and Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai, I intend to explore the relationship between the British colonizers and the Indian post‑colonialists within India during the mid-1900's. While Freedom at Midnight presents a more historical outlook incorporating numerous details and facts of the British imperialism, it still remains within the fiction genre. And the novel, Clear Light of Day (which I have not read through yet) seems to follow the traditional route of a fiction novel by portraying the story‑telling method of relaying the events of the past.

Both these novels describe the complexity of the relationship between Great Britain and India through the attitude of the characters involved. The relationship that existed between the two countries is representative of a mother/child relationship with Great Britain playing the moral, just parent over the naive, innocent India. Great Britain's initial power in dominating India, her attitude toward India's desire for freedom, and disposition after decolonization‑ all are correlated to this idea of Great Britain's emotional attachment to India. With these two novels, I hope to prove exactly how and why I derived this concept or idea about the changing nature of India's relationship to Great Britain. Also, I plan on using a few articles from The New York Times Book Review, Newsweek, and Journal of Asian Studies to support this idea.

 

 

Comparing Patriarchal Domination to Colonial Imperialism

'The road to hell is paved with good intentions.'

‑‑ Samuel Johnson (quoted from a proverb).

The various forms of oppression, over race, class, or gender, all operate with one uniform principle: a belief in their own superiority over another. Just as women have always suffered under the oppression of men in patriarchal systems, a quarter of the world, the natives of India, the aborigines of Australia, the Canadians and Africans, endured the iron hand of British rule for centuries. Using the novels, Freedom at Midnight by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins, and Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai, I will explore the relationship between the British colonizers and the Indian people, and the relationship between Bakul, an Indian diplomat, and Tara, his innocent wife. The relationships between the two countries and the married couple represent a mother/child relationship by incorporating the idea of co‑dependency. In Freedom at Midnight, Great Britain plays the role of a maternal parent that 'intends' to save India, while India appears to be a rambunctious child, needing to be tamed. Within Desai's novel, Clear Light of Day, Bakul is a self‑serving parent who sees hope in reforming Tara and 'intends' to rescue her from her primitive world in Old Delhi. While both Britain and Bakul begin with good intentions, the result of their efforts, especially Britain's', proves to be detrimental to India and Tara, respectively.

 

Main points:

I)Original motive: personal gain for the oppressors

2) Motive for submission

‑‑ India and Tara taken by the idea that they needed 'saving'

‑‑ India and Tara associated with the words child‑like and primitive (by the British and

Bakul)‑ needing to changed

 

I)Britain and Bakul used their ideals to judge and to reform: Christianity and

Industrialization

2)India and Tara feel the repression but refuse to revert to their oppressors methods

 

I)The oppressed discover they do not require mothering ‑‑India finds strength with the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi ‑‑Tara rediscovers freedoms with the help of Bim (her sister) 2)The oppressors realize their failure to oppress ‑‑Britain allows India to self‑govern but leaves India tainted with her influence ‑‑Bakul does not leave Tara but gives Tara the freedom to stay with her sister when she likes

 

 

Comparing Patriarchal Domination to Colonial Imperialism

 

by Prathima Maramraj

 

LITR 5734: Cross-Cultural Texts in Dialogue

 

July 25, 1996

 

Comparing Patriarchal Domination to Colonial Imperialism

 

'The road to hell is paved with good intentions.'‑‑ Samuel Johnson (quoted from a proverb).

The various forms of oppression, over race, class, or gender, all operate with one uniform principle: a belief in their own superiority over another. Just as women have always suffered under the oppression of men in patriarchal systems, a quarter of the world, the natives of India, the aborigines of Australia, the Canadians and Africans, endured the iron hand of British rule for centuries. Using the novels, Freedom at Midnight by Dorninique Lapierre and Larry Collins, and Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai, I explore the relationship between the British colonizers and the Indian people, and the relationship between Bakul, an Indian diplomat, and Tara, his innocent wife. The relationships between the two countries and the married couple represent a mother/child relationship by incorporating the idea of co‑dependency. In Freedom at Midnight Great Britain plays the role of a matemal parent that 'intends' to save India, while India appears to be a rambunctious child, needing to be tamed. Within Desai's novel, Clear Light of Day, Bakul is a self‑serving parent who sees hope in reforming Tara and 'intends' to rescue her from her primitive world in Old Delhi. While both Britain and Bakul begin with good intentions, the result of their efforts, especially Britain's, proves to be detrimental to India and Tara, respectively.       

In Freedom at Midnight, the British, through the East India Company, initially claim India for the economic goal to enrich the mother country, Great Britain. With the intent to improve trade with India, the East India Company begins claiming territory and governing the natives or Indians. But when the organization of the Company begins to fail, the state intercedes to prevent the British venture from becoming a cause of humiliation among other nations. Britain secures the territories held by the shareholders in the Company, ministers of the Crown, Members of Parliament, and recognizes the importance of India to the British Empire. While Kipling declares "the responsibility for governing India ... ha[s] been placed by the inscrutable design of providence upon the shoulders of the British race," Great Britain actually asserts herself as the supreme mother country, even mother of India (Collins 14).

In Clear Light of Day, Bakul also seeks out Tara for his own personal gain, before he acquires a self‑righteous attitude about reforming her. As a member of the foreign service, specializing in European languages, Bakul approaches Tara with the hope of taking a wife with him when he is transferred to Western Europe. With his own personal motives, he ambitiously chooses to acquire Tara, as Britain chose to possess India. Therefore, indirectly, the female and the Empire are connected; as Gillian Whitlock says, "the female body has always been crucial to the reproduction of Empire, and deeply marked by it," (Whitlock 349). Just as the colonized, child nation is necessary for the growth of the Empire, the female is necessary for perpetuation of the patriarchy. Bakul requires a wife, like Tara, to mirror his own ideals and produce children that will sustain such ideals, as well.

As a justification, both Britain and Bakul convince themselves that India and Tara respectively require their intervention. According to Hutchins, who outlines Indian character in his book, The Illusion of Permanence, the British view Indians as "children requiring protection" and "[lump them] together with other non‑European peoples, all of whom [are] pronounced primitive because of their lack of European culture" (Hutchins 73). Rather than admitting her own need for India, Britain excuses her domination of India by professing that India needs to be controlled. In Freedom at Midnight, the British decide to administer India in its own best interests‑ "but it [is] always they who [decide] what those interests are" (Collins 21). Bakul in Clear Light of Day also manipulates the power scheme by denying that he is dependent on Tara, a woman, and proclaims that she is only dependent upon him. Instead of recognizing his ideals as different from Tara, he dismisses them as inferior to his own. Along with his ambitions to leave India and join the Western world, he encourages Tara to believe that that is the only rational goal to possess. As motherly as Britain appeared symbolically with pudgy Queen Victoria on the throne, similarly Bakul acquired Tara with the soft appeal of a nurturing parent. In a gentle tone he declares: I must take you with me, Tara. This place is bad for you‑ so much sickness, so many worries I must take you away (Desai 71).

Within both novels, India and Tara forget their own past and true self and fall into submission under their oppressors. In Freedom at Midnight, as the British continuously pronounce to the Indians that they will "raise [them] from their ignorance and save [them] from cruel and barbarous practices," the Indians begin to believe in this inadequacy of their culture, religion, and heritage (Sharpe 100). While the British use Christianity and industrialization to reform India, the methods and tools of industrialization influence and delude India greater. Momentarily, with British imperialism upon them, mothering them, smothering them, the Indians forget that their own impressive cultural tradition and social and political institutions have survived there for centuries. And only with the help of Mahatma Gandhi, India's greatest spiritual leader, India realizes that she does not and did not ever need Britain, for India was Mother India before the British arrived. Gandhi argues that "India's salvation lies in unlearning what she has learnt in the past fifty years" (Collins 229).

In Clear Light of Day, Tara becomes the subject of male domination when she marries Bakul and allows him to suppress her true self. The young girl, who would run down the verandah steps and search for guavas or who would search for treasure and find delight even in snails, did not disappear, but only "if she [could be] sure Bakul would no look out and see" Tara would do the same (Desai 11). Bakul attempts to 'modernize Tara in the same manner Britain tries to 'civilize' India. The title of Hutchins' book The Illusion of Permanence deals with this ideghat though Britain passes her ideals onto India, India does not acquire them but only pretends to; just as Tara pretends to be a Westernized Indian woman. Though Bakul "train[s] her and [makes] her into an active, organized woman who [looks] up her engagement book every morning, [making] plans and programmes for the day ahead," she reverts back to sipping lemonade in the verandah with her sister, Bim, and her brother, Babu, discussing old memories and old poems the moment Bakul leaves (Desai 21).

As Tara rediscovers her true self, India finds strength in her unchangeabili Freedom at Midnight. Though India's relationship with Britain evolves, her own existence remains culturally rather solid, resolute. India's power to resist colonial imperialism remains in a national consciousness among India's Hindu and Muslim people that arises. In British Attitudes Toward India, George D. Bearce comments that nationalism exists in the idea that all Indian people are "tied to their castes and religions, their tribes and feudal realms, their crafts and professions" (Bearce 5). While the British ridicule the agelessness and old order of things, that tough old skin of India protects her from complete and permanent damage from the colonial imperialism. During the aftermath of the British occupation, India tries to return to the India that Kipling; wrote about as "a timeless, unchanging, and 'essential' locale, a place almost as much poetic as it is actual in geographic concreteness" (Kipling 9).

In both novels, Freedom at Midnight and Clear Light of Day, once the oppressors realize that their efforts or endeavors are failing, the relationship between them and the oppressed begins to evolve. While Bakul's and Tara's relationship experiences a minor transition, the relationship between Britain and India drastically transforms. The Indians that were once labeled as harmless, agreeable children, still remain children, but now treacherous and ferocious children. And the Britain that was once the gentle, nurturing Mother country, now holds an iron hand above India as a wicked step‑mother. According to Hutchins, Britain is disappointed with India's refusal to be submissive and claims: it [seems] vain to hope that such children would ever develop further or be in a position to dispense with the services provided by the parent nation (Hutchins 78). During this period, Britain imposes its military power over India through wars and political pressure.

While Bakul also reacts to Tara's reverting back to her old, 'primitive' ways, he does not resort to physical violence. When he insists that they go into the city and shop rather than 'vegetate' in Tara's house with her family, Tara feels torn and confused. After not seeing her family for years, she persists on staying with her older sister, Bim. Bakul does use intimidation to control her, as he declares, "you can't just sit about with your brother and sister all day, doing nothing... Of course you'll come ... There's no question about if' (Desai 11). Yet with further resistance and opposition, Tara manages to get her way. Throughout the story, Tara faces confrontation with Bakul, but handles her oppression delicately as most women do. Unlike India's silent submission from British colonialism, Tara voices her opinion and faces the consequences of patriarchal domination. But after years of subtle resistance, Tara also manages to manipulate the system for own benefit. Throughout the novel, Tara proves Kadiatu. Kanneh's comment that the "mission of female liberation ... is [closely intertwined with] the politics of ownership and control" (Kanneh 346). For only among her family and her home is Tara capable of enduring and resisting Bakul's intimidating manners. With her sister, Bim, Tara finds such security that allows her to travel into her past to rediscover her youth and her own forgotten identity. Tara even admits that she tried "to escape [her] memories as soon as [the] opportunity of marriage and a life far away from home offered itself' (Reimenschneider 200). With the help of Bim, Tara ultimately returns to her past in order to confront Bakul. By the end of novel, Tara does rise from Bakul's patriarchal domination, and she chooses to go with Bakul to the city but only because she 'wants' to visit 'her' family in the city.

In Freedom at Midnigh , India learns to oppose colonial imperialism by rejecting the very tool she acquired from the British, Western industrialization. In the novel, Gandhi challenges all the Western ideals taught to India. He argues that science should not order human values, that technology should not order society, and that "civilization [is] not the infinite multiplication of human wants but their deliberate limitation to essentials that could be equitably shared" (Collins 229). With the 'primitive' wooden spinning wheel, Gandhi proposes to fight the great mills of the industrial revolution that have been exploiting Indian labor and resources. Then with the Salt March in 1930 and then with the "Quit India" campaign, Gandhi leads a nonviolent crusade that utilizes old Indian methods, returning India to the past. Realizing that "industrialization ha[s] concentrated power in the hands of the few at the expense of many," Gandhi teaches India the old ways it had forgotten (Collins 58.

In Freedom at Midnight, the relationship between Britain deteriorated completely from any family affiliation to an enemy relationship. The novel fails to issue any blame to Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, for using his colonial power and making the decision to divide India into pieces, leaving her in a state of chaos. Instead the novel depicts Mountbatten as a just, parent who "dispensed evenhanded justice, scarcely ever erred and pressed the unruly Indian children forward to their date and destiny" (Gordon wit,‑' 703). As the book review of Freedom at Midnight by Leonard A. Gordon suggests, the novel perpetuates the myth that Britain possessed good intentions from beginning to end. v"' With the British's last intervention, colonial imperialism leaves India scarred and tainted to deal with a horrible new fate: an on‑going war between the Hindus and Muslims. Through the period of fifty years, British aspirations for India have shifted from a hope for total and immediate reform to a belief in the possibility of slow and indefinite reform, then to a view to simply "keep order." The British attitude toward their 'involvement' with India remains as Hutchins contends:

British rule seem[s] fully and intelligently adapt[ed] to meet all of India's legitimate needs.  Englishmen conceiv[e] of their own character, and of Indian character, in a fashion suggest[s] that relationship of protection and dependence [is] ideally suited for both... Indian childishness was a racial quality which did not promise an advance toward maturity, but rather was permanently linked to the menace and power of grown men‑men who could be tamed but never entirely trusted. (Hutchins 77, 200)

In the novel, Clear Light of Day, though Tara does not leave Bakul in the manner Britain leaves India, but then Bakul's oppression of Tara exists on a minor scale compared to Britain's domination over India. Throughout both novels, Clear Light of Day and Freedom at Midnight, Britain and Bakul are associated as oppressors while India and Tara are represented as the oppressed. While both Britain and Bakul begin with good intentions to help and rescue India and Tara, respectively, they both fail in their attempts. Though Tara and India originally 'allow' themselves to be dominated, ultimately they emerge from the oppression by reverting to their own past. Unlike Tara in Clear Light of Day who clearly arises victoriously from patriarchal domination, India in Freedom at Midnight experiences only momentary glory over independence and continues to suffer the repercussions of colonial imperialism.

 

WORKS CITED

Bearce, George D. British Attitudes Towards India. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961.

Collins, Larry and Dominique Lapierre. Freedom at Midnight . New York: Avon Books, 1975.

Desai, Anita. Clear Light of Day. New York: Penguin Books, 1980.

Gordon, Leonard A. "Freedom at Midnight." Journal of Asian Studies 35. (1976): 702‑703.

Hutchins, Francis G. The Illusion of Permanence: British Imperialism in India. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967.

Kanneh, Kadiatu. "Feminism and the Colonial Body." The Post‑Colonial Studies Reader (1995): 346‑348.

Kipling, Rudyard. Kim. London: Penguin Books, 1987.

Macaulay, Thomas. "Minute of Indian Education." The Post‑Colonial Studies Reader (1995): 428‑430.

Reimenschneider, Dieter. "History and the Individual in Anita Desai's Clear Light of Day and Salman Rushdie's Midnight Children." World Literature Written in English 23. (1984): 196‑207.

Sharpe, Jenny. "Figures of Colonial Resistance." The Post‑Colonial Studies Reader (1995): 99‑103.

Whitlock, Gillian. "Outlaws of the Text." The Post‑Colonial Studies Reader (1995): 349‑352.