Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site sftri.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!mhuxm!sftig!sftri!rajeev From: rajeev@sftri.UUCP (S.Rajeev) Newsgroups: net.nlang.india Subject: 'Jewel', British India, and us Message-ID: <374@sftri.UUCP> Date: Tue, 12-Mar-85 19:28:25 EST Article-I.D.: sftri.374 Posted: Tue Mar 12 19:28:25 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 13-Mar-85 04:02:07 EST Distribution: net Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Summit N.J. Lines: 82 While I admit it's interesting to speculate on the impression Americans gain of India by seeing 'Jewel in the Crown', 'Passage to India', 'Far Pavilions', 'Heat and Dust' and so on, I think the real issue is what we, as educated young Indians, gain in the way of historical perspective regarding events that most of us view as having taken place in some remote, almost mythical past. My first reaction on seeing them was horror and humiliation that my countrymen and women had been subjected to such contempt and treated like subhumans. In fact I wondered if the facts were grossly distorted, as has often been the case in reports and movies about India. I guess I had been conditioned by years of what might charitably be called British P.R. (after all they had gotten to write the history books and describe themselves as benevolent, if firm patriarchal figures) and I found it almost impossible to believe that such things had happened only 40 years ago. It was virtual apartheid, almost as bad as in South Africa now. Bigots like Gen. Dyer of Jallianwallah Bagh were more the rule than the exception. And when Dyer was dishonourably discharged for his crime, he was presented with 26000 pounds by the British public. I think we should neither get emotional over this nor pretend it never happened: it is something that we have to come to terms with. We are what I think Naipaul called the Fourth World, the formerly colonized. Essentially without roots, a lost generation in some sense, we are trapped between two cultures. We aspire to be westerners, (like Hari Kumar), but cannot ever be fully assimilated because we carry the emotional baggage of our Indianness, and of course there is the small matter of skin colour. (And if you dont believe this matters, I think you're deluding yourself: we should know; we are, along with Egyptians, perhaps the most colour-conscious people on earth.) To a greater or lesser extent, we despise India, Indians and Indianness: there are many among us who take pride in not speaking any Indian language well; and we measure each other by our ability to speak English and by the pucca-ness of our accents. We are in limbo, and I think we'll never be truly comfortable anywhere: too Indian to be a good American, and too Americanized to be a good Indian. Those who stay on here will probably face real or imagined discrimination because of their Indian-ness at some point; those who go home will be discriminated against because of their caste, language, and the fact that they are snooty 'foreign-returneds'. Those who stay overseas have two options, and people take them to extremes: denounce India and Indian culture (for instance, V.S. Naipaul and Nirad Chaudhuri) or become zealously and aggressively Indian, and maintain romantic notions about the motherland (I cant think of any prominent Indian who has done this, but this has been done by, for example, Irish-Americans). Doomed as we are to this sort of cultural schizophrenia it behooves us to devote some thought to who and what we are. In any case, I think 'Jewel' has served very well if it makes us do a bit of soul-searching to try and figure out where we're coming from, and where we're going. Furthermore, as pure entertainment, it is a pretty well-made series. And the Indian characters are much better drawn than in 'Passage' where all the Indians are faces in a crowd, except for Victor Banerjee. But there is still the nagging feeling that it really has nothing to do with India: it's just a story of some British people, and could have been made in Timbuctoo just as well -- an exotic locale is all that's necessary. The book is worth reading, though, partly because Paul Scott neither tends to be the colonial (like Joseph Conrad or Kipling or good old Naipaul) nor sympathetic (like William Faulkner in his stories of similar oppression in the American South) but objective, a mere narrator. This gives it a feeling of authenticity somewhat lost in the TV series. Finally, while it is true that the British, like almost all previous marauders, came strictly for plunder (and did pretty well at that) there is ironically enough some poetic justice in this whole sorry mess. Here was India with its caste system and its colour consciousness, denying humanity to many of its children via caste taboos; and who do we get but the British, with an even more inhumane caste system and extreme colour-sensitivity (it's amusing how often the words sallow, brown, coffee-coloured, black, etc. are used in the Raj Quartet!). Perhaps an India that could dream up the caste system, surely the worst aspect of our culture, deserved no better than the British. -- ...ihnp4!attunix!rajeev -- usenet ihnp4!attunix!rajeev@BERKELEY -- arpanet Sri Rajeev, SF 1-342, Bell Labs, Summit, NJ 07901. (201)-522-6330.