B.A. (Hons.

) Political Science Semester- I/ II/ III/ IV

GENERIC ELECTIVE
THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY
Section : 1-5

SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING

University of Delhi

Department of English
 Graduate Course
THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY
SECTION 1: Caste/Class
1. Caste Laws P.K. Satapathy
2. Joothan P.K. Satapathy
3. Deliverance P.K. Satapathy
4. Kallu P.K. Satapathy
5. Bosom Friend P.K. Satapathy
6. Who were the Shudras P.K. Satapathy
SECTION 2: Gender
7. The Exercise Book Dr. Anil Aneja
8. Girl Dr. Anil Aneja
9. Breaking Out Dr. Anil Aneja
10. Marriages are Made Dr. Anil Aneja
11. The Yellow Fish Dr. Neeta Gupta
12. The Highway Stripper Dr. Neeta Gupta
SECTION 3: Race
13. Black Out Usha Anand
14. Telephone Conversation Usha Anand
15. Harlem Usha Anand
16. Still I Rise Usha Anand
SECTION 4: Violence and War
17. Dulce ET Decorum Est Nalini Prabhakar
18. Conscientious Objector Nalini Prabhakar
19. General, Your Tank is a Powerful Vehicle Nalini Prabhakar
20. The Dog of Tetwal Dr. Neeta Gupta
SECTION 5: Living in a Globalizing World
21. Toys Dr. Seema Suri
22. Indian Movie, New Jersey Dr. Seema Suri
23. At the Lahore Karhai Dr. Seema Suri
24. The Brand Expands Dr. Seema Suri

SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING

University of Delhi
5, Cavalry Lane, Delhi-110007
 1

CASTE LAWS
Jotirao Phule
-P.K. Satapathy
1. Introduction

Jotirao Phule is now regarded as a major social reformer of 19th century Maharashtra.
However, during his lifetime, he was often accused of fermenting hatred between the non-
brahmins with his far-fetched interpretation of Indian history and the ancient texts. His critics
made fun of his lack of command over grammar and philosophy. Jotirao Phule's acrimonious
criticism of the Brahmins, for obvious reasons, did not win him many friends in upper sections of
society or administration. But it certainly marked the beginning of a challenge to the upper caste
domination in society.
In this lesson, however, we shall focus on the extract 'Caste Laws' and try to understand
the thrust of Phule's social reforms agenda. We shall discuss the concepts Phule deploys in his
arguments and try to appreciate the alternative point of view that he brings to bear upon the caste
system.
We all know that the caste system in India (often Jati in most of North India) has existed
for ages. It exists even now though not in as acute a form in cities as in villages. The rigidity
and practice of caste may vary from state to state and region to region. But the reality of the
caste system is undeniable. A look at the matrimonial column of any leading newspaper will
reinforce these points. The recent issue of reservation for OBC's in higher education clearly
demonstrated that despite our claim to modernity, development and our aspiration to play a
leadership role in the global arena, we have failed to free our society from the obnoxious practice
of caste. Without going into the merits of the issue of reservation we can safely say that there is
a need to examine the issue of caste and, if possible, try to reform our society even more, so that
all men are treated with dignity and equality. Let us now move on and examine Phule's 'Caste
Laws'.

2. Caste Laws

It has already been pointed out that the present essay, 'Caste Laws" is an extract from the
preface to the book 'Slavery' published in 1873. This book (Gulamgiri) remains Jotirao Phule's
most influential publication till date. The title itself suggests Phule's approach to the subject of
Caste. Phule considered caste and caste laws a form of slavery. Interestingly the sub-title of the
book is "In the civilized British Govt under the Cloak of Brahminism". Further the page of
dedication in the original book reads:
Dedicated to the good people of the United States as token of admiration for their
sublime disinterested and self-sacrificing devotion in the cause of Negro slavery and with an
earnest desire, that my countrymen may take their noble example as their guide in the
emancipation of their Sudra Brethren from the trammels of Brahmin thralldom.

2.1 The subtitle and the dedication make two very important points:
a. Phule considered caste as a form of slavery perpetuated by the Brahmins and that it
flourished even under the British Govt. despite its claim to a civilized government.
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 b. The emancipation of the Sudra's and Ati Sudra can only come about by a social
movement and by the people themselves. Consequently there was a need to awaken
the people against the social domination of the Brahmins.
Further, this particular essay begins with three quotations which reinforce and add to the
points emphasized in the title and the dedication. The first quotation, from Homer,
emphasizes the dehumanizing aspect of slavery. Nothing can be worse than slavery because
it robs a man of his virtue and dignity.
The second quotation draws our attention to the fact that education in India, from time
immemorial has been used not to raise the status of the people, but to 'over-educate' a few so
that the rest are at the mercy of the learned few. The Brahmins perfected this practice by
denying education to the lower castes as well as women. And the British administration did
no better by providing education only to a few so that they could rely on these few to exploit
and suppress the majority, thus continuing with the practice of Brahminism under the guise
of civilized governance. You may do well to recall the sub-title of the Book which makes a
reference to the situation.
The third quotation, again from a British author, draws our attention to the ill effects of
Brahminical domination and the contradictions within this system. While the Brahmins boast
of vast knowledge, they jealously, perpetuate superstitious practices which degrade human
dignity. Further the author suggests that only by cutting down the brahminical domination to
size the nation can hope to move forward.

Why do you think Jyoti Rao Phule begins the essay with these quotations?

Well to begin with quotations are used to support and reinforce arguments put forward by
the author. What is interesting is that all the three quotations are from foreign authors. The
author here perhaps wants to present the readers with an outside objective view of
Brahminsm before he presents his own critique. The first quotation sets the agenda that caste
is like slavery which robs a man of his essential dignity. The next two quotations set the tone
and tenor of the critique which is sharp and pointed. It holds Brahminism responsible for the
arrest of development and suggests that by getting rid of Brahminism progress for the
common man can be ensured.

2.2 The Essay

Phule's Caste Laws may be split up into three parts:

a. The first part of the essay presented in the first paragraph places Brahminism in its
historical context.
b. The second part of the essay (Paragraphs 2,3 and 4) presents the consolidation of
Brahminism through the constitution of Caste and arrogating to themselves
unimaginable powers and privileges.
c. The third part comprising paragraph 5,6,7 and 8 analyses the continued domination of
the Brahmins and the failure of the Government to gets rid of the obnoxious practice
of caste. It also suggests ways of giving Sudras their rightful due in the country.

2.2.(i) Let us examine the historical context presented by Phule in the first part of the essay. The
main arguments presented in this section are:

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 a. The Brahmins are descendants of Aryan invaders who displaced and subjugated the
original inhabitants of India, after along and protracted battle.
b. The Brahmins retain the temperament of the Aryans who were arrogant, manipulative
and full of high notion of themselves as evidenced in the titles that they conferred on
themselves.
c. The Aryans hated the aborigines because of the stiff resistance they offered. This is
evident in the terms they used (Chandala, Sudra, Mahar) for the aborigines.
d. The struggle is chronicled in the Brahmin myths and legends in such a way as to
portray the aborigines in very poor light (as cruel, unjust, ugly, etc). For example in
the war between the Devas and Daityas, the Daitya are presented as strong but dim
witted.
e. Rakshas's are portrayed as evil in the Brahmin literature but the term Rakshas denotes
protection of the land. Thus the exaggerated accounts of the Rakshas's are only an
indicator of the intensity of their hatred.
f. After subjugating the aborigines, the Aryan subjected them to unimaginable cruelties.
This has a parallel in the modern times in the subjugation of the American Indians.
The cruelties displayed by Parasurama, a Brahmin God, hardly qualifies him as a god.
He looks more like a fiend.

Now if we look back at this section we will observe that Phule creates an alternate image
of the past. This section can hardly qualify as history but then that is to miss the entire
point. His critics have also done the same. They accused him of historical inaccuracies.
Phule was acutely conscious of the fact that it was imperative to challenge the Brahmin
view of the past and the Brahmin ideology to break their dominance. Hence he has tried
to interpret the past in terms of a Sudra perspective. His language is emotional and sharp.
He challenges the hierarchies of good and evil constructed around the idea of Devas and
Daitya's. He also tries to pitch Brahmins against every one else by subsuming all other
castes under a broad rubric of "Kshetrias". He is also able to present an alternate view of
the Devas by presenting Parasuram as a fiend. His argument is centered around the idea
that Aryans were essentially cruel and revengeful and blood thirsty. Thus we have a God
who was so blood thirsty for revenge that he wiped out the entire Kshetria race several
times over. On the other hand he presents the aborigines as brave and simple people who
were victims of unjust and cruel invaders.

2.2(ii) In the second part of the essay Phule discuses the methods used by the Brahmins to
consolidate their victory over the aborigines and to arrogate all powers and privileges to
themselves. The main argument prescribed in this section are: -

a. The deep cunning of the Brahmins is evident in the Institution of Caste. Through this
institution, the Brahmins cornered all privileges and the Sudra's and Ati-Sudras were
denied even the basic human rights.
b. The Sudra under Brahminism was reduced to the status of an animal. His life was not
worth more than a cat a frog or a dog etc. For instance if a Brahmin kills any of these
animals or a Sudra he can be absolved of his sin by performing a fasting penance. On
the other hand if a Sudra killed a Brahmin he had to pay for it with his life.
c. The Brahmin laws and ordinances embodied in "Manava Dharma Shastra"
exemplifies the cunning with which the Brahmins reduced the others to slavery. The
'Manava Dharma Shastra' is full of examples of the cunning with which the Brahmins
established their own superiority over the Sudras and others.

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 d. This system of slavery was so deep rooted and so rigid that it continued unchallenged
into the time of the Peshwas. This was achieved by duping the minds of the people
and keeping them ignorant.

2.2(iii) The third section (Para 5,6,7,8) brings us up to date with the prevailing situation during
Phule's times. Phule examines the situation which prevailed during his times and points to a
possible solution to the problem. The main arguments presented in the section are:

a The proliferation of western ideas and civilization has certainly weakened the Brahmin
dominance. Though the Brahmins of Phule's time did not have the same authority as the
Brahmins under the Peshwa, they still refused to discard the erroneous notions of their
own superiority. And as long as these notions continue, the Sudra will continue to suffer
and India will never achieve greatness or prosperity.

b. The Government is partly responsible for the crisis. The government has, for its own
interests, focused its time and resources on higher education and has done precious little
for the education of the masses. Ironically the greater, part of revenues of the 'India
Empire' comes from the working classes whereas the higher and richer classes contribute
little but corner the maximum benefits.
c. This attitude of the Government is reflected in the composition of the civil services as
well. All the higher offices in the Government have become the monopoly of the
Brahmins. The welfare of the 'Ryot' is only possible if this monopoly is broken and the
Government allowed a fair representation to the other castes in the civil service.
d. However it is important to ensure that the 'Ryot' has a fair chance by making good
education available to the common masses. The Government must pay more attention to
the education of masses because higher education can take care of itself. It will be easy to
create a body of men from the common masses, trained and well qualified and with better
'morals' and 'manners' to man the Government.
e. Finally, it is the duty of every Sudra who has had the benefit of education to work for the
upliftment of his fellow Sudra's. They should endeavour to present the true picture of the
status of Sudra's before the Government and try to emancipate themselves from the
dominance of the Brahmins. Further there should be schools in every village for the
Sudras manned by Sudra teachers and not Brahmins. It is only by emancipating the Sudra
that the country can hope to progress and prosper because Sudra's are the 'life and sinews'
of the country.

3. Summing up

This essay 'Caste Laws', as you know is taken from the preface to his book Gulamgiri.
The essay is intended to make people aware of the debilitating effect of the caste system on
society. The book was meant to raise awareness amongst the masses and galvanize them to work
against the continued existence of caste laws. Consequently the tone and tenor of the essay is
charged and impassioned. A rational style was not appropriate for his purposes. A high-pitched
style, as we find in this essay, often works well to galvanize people to action.
The second thing that Phule needed was a powerful image to bring out the suffering of
the people under the caste system. Hence he compares the caste system to slavery. Slavery, as
we all know is an extremely inhuman system. A slave is stripped off all dignity and humanity.
By equating slavery with the suffering of the Sudra's,,. Phule sends out a very powerful
message. At the same time Phule was aware that it was much more difficult to free people of

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mental slavery than physical slavery. The Sudra's were kept ignorant by denying them
education. They had come to believe what was told to them by the Brahmins. And the
Brahmins, predictably told them of a divine system which had ordained that the Brahmins were
God's favorites and that the Sudra's duty was to serve the Brahmins.
Such a system of beliefs could only be countered by providing an alternate picture of the
past. Thus Phule writes an alternate account of the past and tries to overturn the Daivya/Daitya
hierarchy. He tries to show that neither the Brahmins were Devas nor the Sudras were Daityas.
He tries to prove that these Brahmin stories are not only far fetched but also a proof of their
cunning. The Brahmin managed to convince the Sudra that he was inferior because the Sudra
was uneducated. Hence it is only through education that the Sudra can see through the cunning
of the Brahmins. But the Sudra must not be educated by the Brahmins because the Brahmins
have not been inclined to discard the notions of their own superiority. The Sudra's must be
taught by the Sudra's so that he is able to recognize himself as an equal of the Brahmin. However
this is only possible if the government changed its attitude towards the education of the masses.
Instead of spending time and resources on higher education which benefits the Brahmins, the
Government must spend time and resources on the education of the masses. If the masses are
educated then society will be free of the repugnant caste laws and there will be more harmony
and peace in society. It is only then that the country can hope to progress and prosper.

6
 2
JOOTHAN
Omprakash Valmiki
-P.K. Satapathy
1. Introduction
Omprakash Valmiki’s Joothan is an autobiographical account of his growing up
years as an untouchable in a village in UttarPradesh in the newly independent India of the
1950’s. Joothan, as I hope you all know, literally means left overs from a meal. In
another sense it also means polluted or unfit for consumption by another person. Yet for
centuries, the Dalits have been forced, under various circumstances, to eat ‘Joothan’ for
their subsistence. Thus the title of the book Joothan conveys the pain and humiliation
faced by the author and his community, which has remained at the bottom of the social
ladder for centuries. The community has been treated like ‘Joothan’, to be used and
thrown away in the dustbins by the upper castes. Valmiki’s account of his early life is an
account of the heroic struggle by a dalit boy from the sweeper caste (Bhangi, chuhra)
against impossible odds to get an education.

Omprakash Valmiki is an important figure in the Dalit movement in India. His

own struggle made him realize that the condition of the Dalits can only change through
revolutionary transformation of society and the human consciousness. Under the
influence of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Valmiki and other Dalit writers have tried to build up a
critical Dalit consciousness in their writings that allows for pride, self respect and a
vision of the future. Valmiki and others felt the need for a separate Dalit consciousness or
‘Dalit Chetna’ because Indian literature, more or less, had ignored the Dalit voice. Often
the Dalits were portrayed as villains of an unjust social system in need of saviours and the
sympathy of the higher castes. Even a writer like Premchand, felt Valmiki and others, had
failed the Dalits. Through Premchand is extremely sympathetic to the Dalits, he failed to
give them a voice or agency. The Dalits in his stories, as you must have noticed in
Deliverence suffer but hardly ever protest. In other words Valmiki and others felt that
even Premchand lacked the Dalit consciousness. His story Kafan on the other hand is
considered as anti- Dalit because the Dalits in the story are presented as lazy and drunk. It
is in this context that the contribution of Valimiki and other Dalit writers assumes
importance.

1.1. Dalit Chetna: What then is this ‘Dalit Chetna’? Valimiki, in his book Dalit Sahitya
Ka Saundarya Shastra defines Dalit as people deprived of human rights on a social
level. Thus their chetna or consciousness is ‘Dalit Chetna’. ‘Dalit Chetna’ is a
revolutionary mentality connected with struggle. It strives to make the Dalits
conscious of their ‘Dalit condition’, which is a byproduct of an oppressive caste
order. This emancipatory ideology is rooted in Ambedkarite thought. Some of the
key features of `Dalit Chetna` are:

i) It is based on the welcoming vision of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar on the question of

freedom and independence.
ii) It rejects caste system, casteism, communalism and all hierarchies of language
and privilege.
iii) It rejects Brahminism, feudalism and all notions of supremacy.
iv) It rejects traditional theories of aesthetics as elitist and motivated.

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 Consequently Dalit critics as well as writers have focused their attention on
devoting an alternative aesthetics of Dalit literature. And quite appropriately they begin
by examining the location and socio-political stance of the existing literature in relation
to Dalits. The focus is on writing that includes Dalit characters, description of Dalit life
and experience so that the Dalit is accorded a subject position. In other words the attempt
is to have the Dalit writing rather than being written about.

1.2 The Use of Autobiography

One of the objectives of this book (The Individual and Society) is to introduce
you to various kinds of writings dealing with, roughly, the same issue. In this section the
issue is Caste/Class. The idea, obviously, is to examine the way language and the choice
of the genre shapes the presentation as well as the construction of meaning in different
kinds of writing. The first text in this section is a polemical essay by Jotirao Phule. The
second text is a short story by Premchand. While Phule’s essay tries to arouse the
consciousness of the dalit by presenting rational arguments against the caste system,
Premchand presents the pitiable condition of Dukhi, a Dalit, under an unjust and heartless
caste order through the use of irony. Both the texts present a critique of the oppressive
caste system in different ways.

Valmiki, on the other hand, uses autobiography to make the same point.
Valmiki’s choice of genre is quite deliberate. But why the autobiography?
Autobiography, as you know, is a conscious literary genre that deals with the varied
dimensions of personality of the subject. The author, in this form, is able to convey a
sense of not just his whole life but also a sense of what it was like to have lived it at
several stages. In other words, the author is able to present a lived experience from his
own point of view. He is able to combine biographical facts and experiences from his
point of view and at the same time is ‘true to life’ as well. If you recall our discussion of
Dalit Chetna in section 1.1, you will recall that one of the major focus of this movement
is to present the lived experiences of the Dalit from a Dalit point of view. In other words
the focus is to present authentic Dalilt experience from a Dalit subject position.
Autobiography then, becomes the most appropriate genre to present Dalit consciousness.

2. Joothan

This short extract is taken from the book Joothan by Omprakash Valmiki. Valmiki
manages to do three things in this extract:

a) He gives a brief description of the physical as well as the psychological

space occupied by the Chuhras in the village as a matrix of their social
existence.
b) He describes, very briefly, the day to day struggle of the untouchables to
arrange two square meals for themselves. At the same time he is able to
demonstrate that the economic deprivation of the untouchables is the
consequence of the Hindu caste order.
c) He chronicles his own struggle to get an education in the village school.
His story demonstrates that it is indeed possible for the untouchables,

8
 despite the hardships and deprivations, to emancipate themselves by
persistent struggle and determination.

The first part of this extract, very quickly, paints the sub-human living conditions of the
Chuhras in the village. The Chuhras, Valmiki’s own caste, lived across the pond, which acted as
a natural barrier between the upper caste quarters and the untouchables. It demarcates not just the
physical space occupied by the upper and the lower castes, but the two different worlds of
existence. The Chuhras exist among filth and deprivation. The description of the basti gives us a
sense of the utter deprivation faced by the untouchable community. There is an all pervading
stink and one could see pigs, dogs and children roaming around in the narrow streets of this
basti. In short the Chuhras lived in a physical and social space devoid of human dignity,
obviously as a consequence of the caste system. Thus Valmiki’s early childhood is marked by
this utter deprivation and lack of dignity.

The social and psychological deprivation is compounded by economic deprivation as

well. Though every member of the Valmiki household worked it was difficult for them to
arrange for two decent meals in a day. This economic deprivation is also a consequence of the
caste order. The Chuhras did all kinds of works for the Tagas (upper caste people) and often
without pay because they dare not refuse the Tagas. Due to their lowly social position they were
often abused by the upper castes and made to work for free. They were considered polluted and
less than human. Ironically, one could touch animals but not Chuhras. Thus they were regarded
as things to be used and abused at the convenience of the upper castes.

It is within this sub-human context that Valmiki’s struggle for an education begins. The
government schools, though officially open for the untouchables, refused admission to them. It
was a generous Sevak Ram Masihi, a Christian, who took Valmiki into his open air school. But
after a tiff with Sevak Ram, Valmiki’s father took him to the Basic Primary school. After a
prolonged period of begging and cajoling, Master Har Phool Singh allowed Valmiki into the
school. It is important to remember that all this was happening eight years after India became
independent. The practice of untouchability was very much a feature of this school. The
untouchables, there were two more of them in Valmimi’s class, were made to sit away from the
others. What is heartening though is that the three untouchable children, though from different
castes, had a bond of solidarity. Despite the humiliation by fellow students as well as the teachers
the three of them persisted and continued in the school.

The experience at the school, described in these passages, highlight the cruelty and
heartlessness of the teachers and fellow students. It got worse with the new Headmaster Kaliram.
They were openly abused in the classroom by the teacher and often beaten up as well. Valmiki
takes the opportunity to highlight the fact that the Brahmin teacher in their school used swear
words on a regular basis. This is a very effective reply to the critics who frowned upon the use of
swear words in Valmiki’s stories. He has tried to point out that when swear words are used in
real life by people who are supposed to know Brahma (Brahmins) then it is legitimate to portray
that reality in creative writing as a true depiction of lived experience.

The experience at the school leaves a lasting impression on the young Valmiki. For instance
the image of the guru (teacher) that Valmiki would remember throughout his life is that of a man
who would swear about his mother and sister and who would sexually abuse young boys.
However the turning point for him as well as his father was an especially humiliating experience
forced upon the young Valmiki by the Headmaster Kaliram who seems to be a rabid casteist. He

9
orders the frail boy to sweep the school compound day after day. Valmiki suffered this indignity
for three days. On the fourth day his father discovered him with a broom in his hand sweeping
the school compound. In one decisive gesture his father, instead of quietly suffering the
indignity, confronts the Headmaster. The courage and fortitude shown by his father is indeed
remarkable. Expectedly Valmiki was thrown out of the school. But his father was not going to
give up easily. He promised the Headmaster that Valmiki would indeed study in the same school
and that he will ensure that more untouchables would follow Valmiki to the school. With dogged
determination Valmiki`s father, with the help of the village Pradhan ‘Chaudhri Saheb’, managed
to send him back to school thus ensuring that his own son as well as others are not denied
education in the village school because of their caste.

3. Summing Up

Joothan, a self conscious Dalit literary text, makes a powerful statement against
the oppressive caste system still prevalent in most parts of India. Valmiki`s use of
autobiography helps him to occupy a vantage subject position from which he
presents a Dalit’s lived experience. The ‘true to life’ format of the autobiography
helps him to lay bare the brutality inherent in the caste system, which
consequently becomes a powerful argument in favour of dismantling this
undesirable form of social organization. At the same time, Valmiki’s own
struggles and success, acts as motivation for others to struggle and achieve their
goals. Joothan symbolizes the struggle for dignity and human rights and
demonstrates that a revolutionary transformation of society is not just desirable
but possible as well.

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 3
DELIVERANCE
Prem Chand
-P.K. Satapathy
1. Introduction

This story, Deliverance (Sadgati in Hindi) deals with caste relationships within an
agrarian community. As mentioned in the notes at the end of the story, Sadgati roughly means
salvation in Death. In other words a worthy death. We see the working of caste laws in this
story which results in the death of Dukhi, the tanner. The preceding essay 'Caste Laws' by
Jyotirao Phule also dealt with caste laws. But you must have noticed that both the texts are very
different from each other. The obvious explanation is that while the first text is an essay,
Deliverance is a short story. The style and structure of the essay is different from that of a story.
'Caste Laws' by Phule analyses the emergence of the caste system from within a certain historical
context and lays bare the inhuman treatment suffered by the Sudra's under the system. On the
other hand Premchand's story "Deliverance" presents you the working of this system in the story
of Dukhi. While the essay is analytical, the story is literary and imaginary. Premchand presents
you with a piece of life, an experience, to convey the terrible sufferings of the lower castes under
the caste system. We shall discuss this issue a little later.

Premchand, as you know, wrote a very large number of stories and not all of them deal
with the caste system. But most of his stories have a rural setting. Premchand suffered great
hardship throughout his life. His own experiences in life certainly shaped him as a writer. He saw
the exploitation of the poor under the Zamindari system. He not only experienced poverty but
saw great poverty all around him. He experienced the corrosive effect of debt himself. All his
life he worked hard to pay off his debts. He saw the suffering of the people under British
Colonialism. Consequently his writing focused on zamindari, debt, poverty, colonialism and
communalism. Often critics moaned the fact that there is much misery and death in Premchand's
writing. However, it is not surprising that Premchand chose to write about death and misery. A
writer, as connected to the soil as Premchand, could not but write about these issues.
Premchand was very clear about the role of the writer in society. The purpose of
literature, for Premchand, was not just to delight, but more important to raise awareness about
the various social issues at hand and bring in change. Infact when he chaired the first convention
of the Indian Progressive Writers association in 1936, he pointed out that the use of the term
'Progressive' was unnecessary. He said that writers were progressive by nature otherwise they
wouldn't be writers in the first place. He went on to elaborate on the social role of the writer and
literature in his address. Literature must become the agent of social change. He followed in his
personal life and writings what he preached in public. He resigned from his post under the
United Province Government and played his part in the anti-colonial struggle. He was a writer
and not a politician. Hence he made his contribution through his writings. His first collection of
short stories "Soze-watan" was considered inflammatory and banned and all the copies were
confiscated and burned. He was a committed writer and his commitment shows in his writings
when he writes about not just colonialism but oppression and suffering in all its hues. 'Sadgati' is
one such story which captures the poignant death of Dukhi under an oppressive caste system.

2. Deliverance (Sadgati)

This story has four sections. We shall discuss each of these sections separately and at the
end sum up our discussion.

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2.(i) In the first section we are introduced to Dukhi and his wife Jhuriya. Both of them are
making preparations to welcome the Brahman. Dukhi is a tanner who in the traditional Hindu
social order are untouchables. Their job is to work with hides and remove dead animals. They
belong to the lowest strata of the society. Ironically he is named Dukhi(sorrowful) to ward off
evil. We see feverish activity in the Dukhi household . Dukhi is sweeping the floor clean and
his wife is plastering cow dung on the floor. Cow dung is believed to clean and purify.
Interestingly, the discussion between Dukhi and his wife is centered around making their
house fit for the visit of a holy man, the Brahman. We get a glimpse into the social norms
prevalent in the village. The caste hierarchies are such that no one would give them even a pot
of water if they asked for it. So instead of a cot they decide on making a mat of Mohwa leaves
for the Brahman to sit on when he visits. They must also offer the Brahman food as offering but
they cannot offer it in their own utensil because it is considered impure. So they decide to offer
food on a leaf once again. Jhuri is advised to buy the offering from the village merchant but not
to touch anything because the touch of the untouchable is impure. She is advised to take the help
of the gond girl who is a tribal girl. The tribes do not belong to the Hindu fold and consequently
escape the rigid caste laws. Dukhi makes a list of offering to be made which seems quite
impressive considering the status of Dukhi. Finally he leaves for the Pandit's house to invite him
with a big bundle of grass as a present.
This section not only introduces us to the main characters and the setting, it also in a very
subtle way lays bare the tension and hypocrisy present in a rigid, caste based society. While
Dukhi is considered an untouchable, whose touch pollutes whatever he touches, his offering and
gifts are accepted by the Brahman. Dukhi lives on the margins of this society. He has no rights
only obligations and duties. At the same time Dukhi seems to be a willing partner in the
perpetuation of this system. He seems willing because he is kept ignorant and he is made to
believe that indeed the Brahman is a holy man.
In the earlier essay, 'Caste Laws' Jyotirao Phule has pointed out the very same problem.
Brahmin's with their cunning not only cornered all the privileges but also made the other castes
believe that they were inferior to the Brahmans. The Brahman's were supposed to have come out
of the mouth of Lord Vishnu whereas the Sudra's came out of his feet. Hence the Sudra was
created to serve the Brahman. The Sudra was not allowed to study the scriptures hence he had to
believe what was told to him by the Brahman. The Brahmans, thus, through a combination of
myth making and denial of education, kept the Sudra oppressed. This situation prevails even in
the twentieth century India (Sadgati was written in 1931). But Premchand has allowed us a
glimpse of the holiness of the Brahman through the eyes of Dukhi. This Brahman seems to be
very religious. "You know what a stickler he is about religion and doing things according to the
rule". But he seems to have a terrible temper too. "He flies off the handle very fast". And when
he does get angry he spares no one including his wife and son. He beat up his son so badly that
it resulted in a broken hand for his son. Some holiness indeed.!

2(ii) The second section brings us to the house of Pandit Ghasiram. After a short account of
Pandit Ghasiram's devotion to God and rituals we witness the meeting between Pandit Ghasiram
and Dukhi. Pandit Ghasiram on his return from the temple finds Dukhi at his door. Dukhi
immediately prostrates himself on the ground. Dukhi on being asked states his purpose for the
visit. Dukhi wants the Pandit to visit his house and pick on an auspicious date for his daughter's
betrothal.
Pandit Ghasiram sensing an opportunity to get some work done for free immediately sets
him off on errands. He orders Dukhi to plaster the floor of his sitting room with cow dung, and

12
then split the wood and to take out the hay and put it in the barn. Dukhi, conditioned to obey
orders of the Brahmans, immediately sets out to work.
Unfortunately, Dukhi had nothing since morning and he was terribly hungry. The
Brahman was not offering him any food. He decides to smoke a pipe instead. But his own house
was a mile away. But Brahmans unlike the low castes and untouchables did not smoke tobacco.
Dukhi remembers the lone Gond who stayed in the village. He visits the Gond who offers him
both a pipe and the tobacco. But Dukhi needs to light his pipe. He returns to the Pandit’s house
and asks for a light. The Pandit asks his wife to give Dukhi a light. This upsets the Panditayan
and she reminds Pandit Ghasiram about the caste laws. The Pandit on the other hand reminds her
of the free labour that Dukhi is rendering and goads her to relent. Finally the Panditayan relents
and throws a piece of coal at Dukhi. Dukhi smokes his pipe and gets back to work. He works
hard at splitting the wood but lacks the experience to do it. The Panditayan feels a little pity for
Dukhi because in the act of throwing a piece of coal at Dukhi, she almost synged him. She
wonders if they could give Dukhi something to eat. After some deliberation they decide that
feeding Dukhi was not worth the effort. So Dukhi keeps working without a morsel in his
stomach.
This section focuses on the hardhearted nature of the Brahmin couple, the servile
mentality of Dukhi and the exploitative nature of caste system. The Brahmin’s holiness is almost
entirely constituted in the meaningless rituals that he follows religiously. Ironically the first part
of the ceremony of worship consists of preparing Bhang (an intoxicant) and the reward for the
rituals is a steady stream of clients at his doorstep everyday. The Brahman is in the business of
religion and it seems quite lucrative too. The Brahman's meaningless self-decoration and other
rituals have very little to do with God or people. But the Brahman sees it as an investment that
generates a fair amount of business.
Dukhi, on the other hand, hardly understands anything about these rituals. But his servile
mind perceives holiness in, what appears unremarkable to us, the Pandits glorious figure. Phule,
in the earlier essay, talked about mental slavery. We see that mental slavery acted out here
through the actions of Dukhi. His mental subjugation is complete, so much so that the sight of
the Pandit fills him with reverence. The sandalwood markings on the rotund figure of the Pandit
appears godly to Dukhi and he is more than willing to do the Pandit’s bidding.
What we see next is a fine example of the cunning, the greed and the hardhearted nature
of the Pandit and his wife. When Dukhi pleads with the Pandit to grace his house and pick an
auspicious date for his daughter's wedding, the Pandit immediately seizes the opportunity to
exploit Dukhi's labour. Not only does he exploit Dukhi's labour he even fails to relate to Dukhi
as a human being. Tired and hungry, Dukhi keeps working but the Pandit does not have the
decency to offer him any refreshment. More over his attitude towards Dukhi is inhuman. Dukhi
hears the conversation between the Pandit and his wife where the wife's chides the Pandit for
allowing a tanner inside the house. But instead of hurt or anger we see him in agreement with
the Panditayan's arguments. He has no respect for himself. He reasons that the Brahmans are
clean and holy and consequently all unclean and impure people including himself must worship
and respect the Brahmans. The extent of Dukhi's mental slavery becomes very clear in this
scene. Though abused and humiliated, he refuses to blame anyone except himself and accepts it
as his due.

2(iii) Dukhi sets about the job of splitting the wood after smoking the pipe. In the meanwhile
the Gond visits him and tells him of the futility of his efforts. The Gond is sympathetic to Dukhi
and enquires if Dukhi has had anything to eat. He also helps in chopping the wood for some time
before he gives up. He advises Dukhi to give up the work for which he is not being paid and
then he takes his leave. Dukhi, for a moment, considers quitting the work. But he is unable to
13
summon the courage to do it. He starts shifting the hay from the store to the fodder bin. Tired,
hungry and exhausted he falls asleep. In the meanwhile the Pandit after a nice nap comes out
and finds Dukhi asleep. Instead of being thankful for the service rendered by Dukhi, he starts
belittling him and his caste. He also threatens Dukhi with unpleasant consequences if the work is
not completed. Dukhi is shaken. After all if the Pandit refuses to pick an auspicious day then the
marriage would be a disaster. A mix of awe, respect and fear gets hold of Dukhi and he gets into
a state of delirium. He works the axe so hard that after sometime his tired and exhausted body
gives up. He is dead.
The death of Dukhi complicates the story a little. Dukhi dies in a Brahman village,save
the Gond. Removing the body of the tanner becomes a problem. The Gond's subversive activity
complicates the issue further. The Gond tells the tanners in their village that if they touched the
body of Dukhi they would get into trouble with the police. Consequently the tanners do not pick
up Dukhi's body. Moreover Dukhi wife, daughter and a dozen tanner women go to Pandit
Ghasiram’s home to mourn. The scene ends in a stalemate. This section, apart from reinforcing
the hard heartedness and cunning of the Pandit and the mental servility of Dukhi, introduces a
new theme. The possibility of upsetting the caste hierarchies is presented by the Gond. The
Gond is an outsider in the sense that he does not belong to the Hindu fold. Though he also lives
on the margins of this society he is not mentally enslaved as the tanner. He is able to see things
in their perspective and is able to see through the exploitation and meanness of the so called holy
Pandit. Chikhuri, contrasts the holy Pandit with the colonial administration and finds the latter
better. For, as he says, even if the government forced you to work they at least paid for your
labour.
The prodding's of Chikhuri forces Dukhi to contemplate quitting Pandit's work. The
Gond had made him aware that Pandit Ghasiram and the caste system was more exploitative than
the colonial administration. But Dukhi lacks the courage to rebel against it. Further, Pandit
Ghasiram's threat about not finding an auspicious date for the wedding of the daughter forces
Dukhi to abandon all thoughts of rebellion. On the other hand Dukhi's pitiable condition evokes
no pity in the Pandit’s heart. Dukhi, with 'stomach pasted to his backbone', kept axing the wood
which was as hard as steel.
Even Dukhi's death does not move the Brahman. It is only an irritant for him. The Gond
tries to fan a revolt by asking the tanners to refrain from touching the body. Dukhi's corpse lies
infront of Pandit Ghasiram's house in a state which is worse than a dead animal. The utter
insensitivity of the Brahmins is revealed when we see them more worried about the pollution
rather than trying to give the man a decent burial. This seems even more appalling when we
consider the fact that Dukhi died while serving Pandit Ghasiram. The attitude of the Brahman's
is made amply clear by the remark of one old woman who says "why don't you have this body
thrown away?" Throw away the body of Dukhi as one throws away the carcass of a dead animal.

2(iv) Dukhi's corpse lies in front of the Brahman's house as no one would touch it. The tanner
women keep up their weeping and lamentations late into the night. The corpse begins to stink.
But for Pandit Ghasiram and his wife this is only an irritant. After an uneasy night Pandit
Ghasiram decides to take matter into his own hands. He manages to get a noose tied around the
dead man's feet and drags the corpse to the fields outside the village. After he gets back he takes
a bath and performs the purification rites. The abandoned body of Dukhi in the fields becomes
food for the scavengers (jackals, kites, dogs and crows). The story ends with an extremely ironic
comment, 'This was the reward of a whole life of devotion, service and faith'.
There is poignancy to this short concluding section which makes us acutely aware of the
inhumanity of the caste system. Dukhi, literally, dies a dog's death. There is a jarring contrast
between the weeping and the insensitive, callous attitude of Pandit Ghasiram and his wife. It is
14
difficult to miss the profound irony of the ending. What Dukhi could not achieve in life he
manages to do that in his death. Pandit Ghasiram, who considers the touch of Dukhi polluting, is
forced to drag the dead body of Dukhi himself. This subversion was possible, of course, due to
the effort of Chikhuri, the Gond. But the price was a dog's death for Dukhi, left in the field to be
devoured by scavengers.

Summing Up

You must have noticed by now that though Jotirao Phule and Premchand are writing
about similar things (caste laws) they are very different from each other. While Jotirao's essay
analyses the caste flaws in terms of origins and practices, Premchand presents an experience
through imagination. While Jotirao's essay appeals to our reason, Premchand story tugs at our
emotions.
In Deliverance the narrative point of view is that of an observer, who also comments. We
also get an insight into the minds of the tanner, Pandit Ghasiram and Chikhuri the Gond.
Premchand thus, allows the reader access to look at the situation from the point of view of
various characters. Though the controlling voice is that of the narrator-observer, it helps the
reader to understand the actions of the various characters involved.
Premchand, in this story, provides a critique of the caste system. He does this by using
irony, satire and by setting up contrasting pictures through out the story. For instance Dukhi's
description of Pandit Ghasiram provides a jarring contrast to the description of Pandit Ghasiram
by the narrator. Thus we see him as a short, bold roly-poly fellow with a shining skull. Coupled
with the ridiculous rituals he observes so religiously, this description makes him look more like a
buffoon that a godly man. By juxtaposing Dukhi's account of Pandit Ghasiram with that of a
disinterested observer, Premchand keeps the reader from sharing Dukhi's point of view.
Premchand constantly uses authorial comments and objective description to influence the
readers mind. For instance, Premchand brings out the meanness of the Pandit couple by
describing the conversation between them about giving Dukhi a light and later some food. The
dialogues between the two reveal the meanness of their characters. When it is suggested that the
tanner be given some food the Pandit considers it 'entirely outside the behaviour expected of
him'. He goes on to say' You can never fill up these low-caste people with good bread'. The
Panditayan responds with, 'Let's forget the whole thing...I'm not going to kill myself cooking in
weather like this'. Thus ends the proposal for feeding a hungry man who has been working for
free at their house since morning.
Comments like 'why don't you have his body thrown away?' 'They are all polluted' alerts
the readers to the attitude of the Brahmins towards the lower castes. Premchand uses a very
subtle form of satire to expose the follies of the Brahmin. He does this by contrasting the simple
nature of Dukhi against the greed and cunning of the Pandit and his wife. Thus the Brahmins
treat the tanners as less than humans they have no qualms in accepting gifts and offering from
them. The Pandit and his wife are extremely rigid about caste laws but allow a tanner inside
their house to get their work done for free which otherwise would have cost them four annas.
Premchand, despite his sympathies for the poor and oppressed, was never considered
revolutionary enough for the Dalit cause. This assessment stems from the fact that though
Premchand presents the possibility of subverting the caste system he never moves beyond that
possibility. For instance the possibility of disturbing the caste system is prescribed in the story
but it remains only a possibility. The Gond and Dukhi share a sympathetic relationship.
Chikhuri being a tribal remains outside the influence of the Brahmins but nevertheless shares the
same marginal space with Dukhi. Both of them often end up being exploited by the higher
castes. But Chikhuri is bold and is willing to stand up against exploitation. Unlike Dukhi who is

15
enslaved in his mind and body, he does not consider the Brahman any higher than others. Thus
he is able to see the meanness in Pandit Ghasiram. He is the one who presents the possibility of
upsetting the hierarchy by a) inciting Dukhi to quit working for the Pandit free b) and then
prevents the tanners in helping Pandit Ghasiram out of his difficulties (of removing the corpse of
Dukhi). Chikhuri manages to upset the system for a while. In an extremely ironic reversal
Pandit Ghasiram is forced to dispose off the body of Dukhi, whom he would have never touched
in his life. And what comes as an even greater irony is the fact that Ghasiram disposes the
corpse of Dukhi in the fields to be eaten by scavengers, after Dukhi had served him with
devotion and faith. Instead of rewarding Dukhi for his services, Pandit Ghasiram has ensured that
Dukhi is vilified in death as he was in life. Pandit Ghasiram performs the necessary purification
rites and, perhaps resumes his normal life.

16
 4
KALLU
Ismat Chugtai
-P.K. Satapathy
Introduction
Ismat Chughtai remains one of the most important literary figures of modern India. She
was one of the first Muslim women to write novels and short stories. Tahira Naqvi, a Pakistani
critic, coniders Chughtai as one of the four pillars of modern Urdu short story, the other three are
S.H. Manto, Krishan Chander and Rajinder Singh Bedi. Apart from writing short stories and
novels she also wrote articles, essays, and even film scripts.

Ismat Chughtai was born into a middle class Muslim family in 1915. And unlike most of
the women, especially muslim women of her time, she had an education, worked at a job,
married according to her choice. In short, she led a very unconventional life. She was a rebel not
only in life but in death as well. She was, as per her expressed desires, cremated and not buried.
She had begun writing short stories when she was a student at Aligarh Muslim University. But
she was published only years later in 1939 and shot into prominence with the publication of
‘Lihaaf’ which dealt with the theme of women’s sexuality. By this time she was a prominent
member of the Progressive Writers Association. ‘Lihaaf’ created a storm not just in literary
circles but also in the public sphere as well. She was charged with obscenity and tried along
with another famous short story writer of the time, Sadat Hasan Manto. The trial lasted for four
years and both Chughtai and Manto were cleared of the charges of obscenity because the judges
could not find a single four letter word in their stories. Chughtai was mentored, earlier on, by
Rasheed Jahan who she had met at the Progressive Writers Association conference in 1936.
Rasheed Jahan, perhaps the first Muslim women writer, was one of the founding members of the
Progressive Writers Association. She was largely instrumental in shaping Chughtai’s early
literary career.

Chughtai, for most part of her working life, lived in Mumbai and worked as the Principal
of a girls college. She met her husband Shahid Latif at Aligarh and married him in 1942. Shahid
Latif was deeply associated with the Mumbai film industry and encouraged Chughtai to associate
herself with the film industry. Chughtai wrote a number of scripts for films and some of her
stories were also made into films. She herself wrote the script and acted in the film ‘Junoon’
(1978). Her story ‘Garam Hawa’ which was made into a film was a part of the new wave cinema
and won a lot of acclaim all over the world. But her relationship with the film world was tenuous
and full of complexities. She wrote many stories where she tried to expose the hypocrisy of the
film world but was not very successful at that. She was at her best when she wrote about
ordinary people and especially women. Consequently much of her writings deal with women’s
lives within middle class society and their concerns. Some critics do accuse Chughtai of being
unidimensional. But then that was what she was best at. She had a keen eye for detail, and had an
intuitive understanding of the concerns of women in the smaller town of Uttar Pradesh. Her
writing is marked by understanding and compassion for these women. She was awarded the
Padma Shri in 1975 for her contribution to Urdu literature and she died on 24th Oct 1991.

2. Kallu

Kallu is the story of a poor young boy who is sent by his mother to stay with a well-to-do
family in the hope that Kallu, with the help of this family, will be able to make something of
himself and improve his position in life. But, ironically, Kallu finds himself in very unfavorable

17
circumstances. He is made to work like a servant, exploited (he worked for only two rupees a
month), ill treated by this family,especially Mumani. Kallu bears all the indignity and hardship
with a smile. Kallu has no time to play. But Kallu takes a liking for Salima bi, the youngest
daughter of Mumani and the feeling seems to be mutual. One day Kallu while playing with
Salima bi, asks her, in all innocence, if she would marry him to which Salima bi innocently says
yes. Mumani, who is within hearing distance of the conversation goes into a rage and throws a
sandal at Kallu which finds Kallu’s nose and he starts bleeding. Kallu’s mother who was visiting
her son then, sees a bleeding kallu and creates a furore about it. Mumani throws both mother and
son out of the house immediately. Kallu, like all servants before him, is forgotten very soon.

But Kallu returns, years later, to the same town as a young and handsome Mr. Din, the
Deputy Collector. Once again the relationship between Kallu, now Kalim Saheb for the family,
and his earlier masters is renewed, but on altered terms. Ironically he is accepted back into the
family for precisely the same reasons for which he was thrown out in the first place – for
expressing his desire to marry Salima bi.

The Story illustrates the rigid class hierarchies that govern social intercourse in an Indian
society. The story also hints at the complex relationship between caste and class in our social
structures. Kallu, despite his lowly social position, is able to improve his position in society,
perhaps due to the fact that he is a ‘Qureshi’, a higher caste among muslims. When Mumani
learns of Kallu’s appointment as the Deputy Collector she reacts with incredulity. But she is
immediately reminded by the narrator’s mother “Amma” that after all Kallu was a ‘Qureshi’
which was a good caste. Though the Muslims do not have a caste system, the actual ground
reality was a little different. Omprakash Valmiki in his ‘Joothan’ points out that Taga’s, the
Muslim equivalent of the Tyagi’s did behave in certain ways like caste hindus.

The story, as you must have noticed, has two parts. The first part of the story details the
early life of Kallu in the narrator’s house. Kallu is kept busy the entire day running errands for
the household. The poor boy ends up doing the work of an adult. The irony of the situation is that
Kallu is sent by his mother to the family with the fond hope that Kallu will be able to improve
his position in life. But Kallu ends up as a servant of the household. Though Kallu is the errand
boy, he is treated differently by different members of the family. While ‘Amma’, the narrator’s
mother, treats Kallu with sympathy, mumani jan is harsh on Kallu and looks down upon him.
‘Amma’ seems to be indulgent towards Kallu. Once Kallu is asked in a lighter vein, who he was
going to marry. Kallu, in all innocence, expresses his desire to marry Salima bi, Mumani’s
daughter. Mumani’s response to kallu’s innocent answer reflects Mumani’s attitude. She not
only abuses Kallu but also boxes his ears as well. Mumani rejects the idea of Kallu getting
married to Salima Bi because of Kallu’s social status.

The Second part of the story presents an entirely different situation. In the course of life
the social status of Kallu as well as the narrator’s family has altered. Kallu, now, has achieved a
higher social status than the narrator’s family. He is the deputy Collector. On the other hand the
narrator’s family has witnessed a declining social and economic position. In this altered scenario
the family’s response to Kallu’s new social status is also fractured; while ‘Amma’ is happy with
Kallu’s rising fortune, Mumani jan is indignant. Mumani is unable to accept the new Kallu, who
has retained his love for Salima Bi. When ‘amma’ reminds Mumani Jan of the ill-treatment she
had meted out to Kallu, she is even more indignant. But this indignation is also mixed with guilt
and anxiety as well. But Mumani is unable to accept the altered situation because it entails an
admission of her guilt. However kallu makes it easy for Mumani jan by restoring the former

18
hierarchy. He pleads with Mumani Jan for Salima bi hand in marriage and addresses her as
Dulhan bi, the way he used to address her when he worked in their house. Once the former
hierarchy is restored at least in a symbolic way, Kallu is accepted by Mumani jan and she is
addressed as ‘Amma bi’ by Kallu. Thus, in a symbolic shift, Mumani jan is turned from the
master ‘Dulhan bi’ to mother (Amma bi).

19
 5
BOSOM FRIEND
Hira Bansode
-P.K. Satapathy
Introduction
Like all Dalit Literature Dalit poetry constitutes another dissenting collection of voices
that try to articulate the silent anguish, pain as well as anger of the Dalits. For them, like most
other Dalit writers and thinkers caste is much more real than class. Consequently their
articulation revolves around the experiences which spring from the humiliating caste equations
of the Hindu society. Dalit poetry has tried to rework a new aesthetic, different from the
mainstream literature, by exploring areas of experience neglected by the mainstream poetic
tradition. Dalit poetry marks itself by rejecting values of the mainstream poetic tradition like
propriety, balance, restraint and understatement. They often challenge even notions of
patriotism. The diction used is often deliberately subversive which challenges middle class
notion of linguistic decency.

On the other hand Dalit women poets have primarily focused on women experiences
within as well as without. Dalit women’s experience seems to be qualitatively different. As has
been often observed Dalit women are like drums, beaten on both the sides. Or one can say that
thus they are ‘twice Dalit’--- Dalits in the larger social scheme and Dalits within their own
community as well. Thus their poetry tends to be more introspective and less given into
sloganeering and abuse. It is more mature, sober and larger in its concerns. Much of Dalit
women’s poetry is conscious of form, less angry and complaining. There is even a time of
celebration of Dalit identity in their poetry.

Hira Bansode is one of the more celebrated and better known Dalit poets. She had
managed, with encouragement from her husband and her father- in- law, to acquire higher
education and even managed to secure a government job with the Indian Railways. Her poetry,
as you must have noticed in this poem, tends to be gentle and understated. Yet with a subtle
irony she is able to express the pain and anguish of the Dalit existence which is marked by
constant deprivation.

Bosom Friend
‘Bosom Friend’ forms a part of a collection of poems called Phiyad (1984). As the title
suggests this poem is about a very good friend, a woman friend, who accepts the poet’s
invitation for dinner and visits her for the first time. The first paragraph expresses the poet’s
surprise as well as her admiration and gratitude for this friend who seems to have broken through
the caste and traditional barriers to reach out to her untouchable friend. This friend, who
obviously is from a higher caste, surprises the poet because women, who are actually the worst
victims of oppressive traditions, are often the most orthodox defenders of the same traditions.
The poet is overwhelmed by this magnanimous gesture and the courage shown by her friend.
Her own small existence is marked by her pocket sized house. “but you came with a mind large
as the sky to my pocket size house.”

But the optimism, the expectations raised by this apparent magnanimity of the friend is
belied in the second paragraph. The poet is grateful that her friend has reached out to her,
bridging the chasm of social norms that has kept them apart till now. The emotional and
psychological divide, products of the caste and social divide, are bridged, at least for a moment,
between the two friends. The poet’s gratitude for this gesture from her friend is beautifully

20
captured in the image of Shabari, the tribal woman who, in her devotion to Lord Rama, tasted
each of the berries she offered him to ensure that they were indeed sweet. The poet’s love,
devotion and gratitude is, perhaps, naive like that of Shabari. But her expectations are shattered
the moment she offers food to her friend. The friend smirks at the way the food is arranged
and promptly reproaches the poet for her inability to serve food the way upper caste people do.

You still don’t know how to serve food

Truly, you folk will never improve

This heartless reproach reopens the chasm that was bridged for some time with the
friend’s visit. This us and them divide, it seems, has much deeper roots. Identities which are
built up on the notions of pure/impure need much more than a visit to be merged into one
human identity. The poet now turns inwards with this reproach. The poet’s out-stretched hands,
which had touched the sky of freedom, freedom from her caste bondage, find rejection. She
feels ashamed. A further reproach from the friend for not serving buttermilk makes her sad and
speechless. The sky, a symbol of hope and freedom, which was within reach a moment ago
recedes back. The hurt, almost a betrayal, stirs up memories of loss and deprivation.

I was sad, then dumb But the next moment I came back to life. A stone dropped in the water
stirs up things on the bottom.
The poet wakes up to the reality of her existence which she had forgotten for a moment
in a state of heightened expectation, triggered by the visit of this friend. Though she now leads
a middle class existence, her past is marked by deprivation and struggle.

Dear Friend-you ask about buttermilk what/how can I tell you ?.

An existence marked by much deprivation leaves its mark on the mind and shapes habits
of thought which are difficult to shake off. This is something that the friend cannot understand
because she is far removed from this experience due to her privileged position in society. There
is a slight reproach along with a sense of hurt in the poet’s tone in the third paragraph.

You know in my childhood we didn’t even have milk for tea much less yoghurt or
buttermilk.

The last few lines, in an ironic shift talk about habits of mind. But this line is about the
friend who, while pretending to treat the poet as an equal, still, treats her as an unequal. The
friend’s reproach that ‘Truly, you folk will never change’ turns back on her in an ironic reversal.
Though she had accepted the poet’s invitation and visited her house, in apparent disregard for
caste or tradition, she still carries the baggage of her tradition in her mind.
Dear Friend-you have not discarded your tradition
Its roots go deep in your mind

Though this friend has crossed the physical threshold of caste she still carries it in her
mind. She has recreated the emotional and psychological divide once again within the poet’s
house. The ‘you’ in her phrase ‘you folk will never improve’ once again imprisons the poet
within a predefined psycho-social space and simultaneously redefines her self in opposition to
the poet’s identity. She denies the poet’s essential humanity by formulating her in a fixed

21
communal identity. And all this because, ‘Today the arrangement of food on your plate was
not properly ordered’.

The poem ends with a couple of theoretical questions.

Are you going to tell me what
Mistakes I made ?
Are you going to tell me my
Mistakes ?

These question carry within them a reproach as well as a challenge. These questions
also put this visit in its real perspective. Friends visit each other to share, to be together in an
emotional and social bond and not to find faults. This friend makes the visit but retains her sense
of superiority. The attitude displayed by this friend in symptomatic of a larger problem that
simply cannot be resolved by empty gestures like this visit. The chasm of caste that divides
people, that sets people up in a hierarchy can only change when we change habits of thought.
This divide can only be bridged in a spirit of accommodation and understanding, by accepting
alternate realities and alternate identities.

22
 6
WHO WERE THE SHUDRAS?
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar
-P.K. Satapathy
1. Introduction
It is only appropriate that a section dealing with caste laws must have an essay by Dr. B.R.
Ambedkar. He is the intellectual and ideological fountain head from which the Dalit movement
in India draws its sustenance. You have already read an essay by Jotirao Phule. His essay, ‘Caste
Laws’ also dealt with a similar issue. Although Phule had pioneered the Dalit movement in
India, he was not a thinker and a scholar like B.R. Ambedkar. Jotirao Phule was a crusader and
you must have noticed it in the tone and tenor of his essay. B.R. Ambedkar was also inspired by
the work of Phule. And the admiration he had for Phule is amply evident in the dedication in the
book ‘Who were the Shudras’. He dedicates the book to Jotirao Phule, who was ‘The greatest
Shudra of Modern India, who made the lower classes of Hindus conscious of their slavery to the
higher classes and who preached the gospel that for India social democracy was more vital than
independence from foreign rule’. Its no wonder then that the slogan ‘Educate, Agitate, Organise’
became the catch phrase of Ambedkar’s fight for justice for the depressed classes in India.
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, unlike most of the Dalits, was fortunate to have an education. His father,
who was serving in the British Army was very keen to educate his son. After completing his
graduation in 1912, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar went to Columbia University with the help of a
scholarship from the Gaikwad of Baroda. While working towards his Ph.D. at Columbia
University, he was already thinking about the caste system in India and its disastrous
consequences for the Dalit. In 1916 he wrote an article “Caste in India: Their Mechanism,
Growth and Development” for an anthropology seminar. By this time he was convinced that the
caste system was an elaborate hoax perpetuated by the Brahmins to corner all the privileges for
themselves and to reduce the shudras to the status of slaves. He continued his further studies in
economics and law in England with a short break in between during the war years. When he
finally finished his studies and came back to India in 1923, he was one of the mostly highly
educated men of his times. He considered himself fully equipped, now to fight for the rights of
the Dalits.
After his return he immediately started working on his mission by establishing the Bahishkrut
Hitkari Sabha in 1924. Apart from providing legal help to the depressed classes, Dr. Ambedkar,
through this organization led a number of non-violent movements against inhumanity and the
caste system. His strategy was to awaken the masses and subvert the orthodox practices by
leading the untouchables into Hindu places of worship. Two of the more prominent examples
were entering the Kalaram Temple and securing the rights of the untouchables to use a common
water source, the Chowdar Tank, after a long and protracted legal battle. If you look closely, you
will notice that Dr. Ambedkar was following in Jotirao Phule’s footsteps in his fight against the
caste system. Later he went on to demand a separate electorate for the Dalits which brought him
into conflict with Mahatma Gandhi.
Dr. Ambedkar was convinced that the Dalits would never get justice under the existing social
system. Thus his primary concern during the later part of the freedom struggle was to secure as
much autonomy for the Dalits as possible. Thus it was imperative not just to educate them but
also to organise them politically so that they were able to get their due in an Independent India.
At the same time it was important to reform the society and get rid of the caste system by
creating public opinion national as well as international against the evils of this system. Thus Dr.
Ambedkar wrote a lot of articles and books about the caste system. By the time of the Second

23
Round Table Conference at London, where he had raised the demand for a separate electorate for
the Dalits, he had become very unpopular with the congress as well as the dominant Orthodox
Hindus. But Dr. Ambedkar’s conviction was hardly ever shaken by this rising unpopularity. In
fact his opposition to this evil system was so strong that in 1935 at Depressed Classes
Conference he declared that though he was born a hindu he did not intend to die one. Later on in
1956, he converted to Buddhism and 3,80,000 men converted along with him. Though he
ensured that untouchability was outlawed by the constitution of India, much of his dreams
remain to be realized even now. He passed away soon after his conversion to Buddhism in 1956.
But his writings and ideas remain central to and have inspired the Dalit movements in India.

2. Who were the Shudras?

This book was published in 1946. And this particular extract is taken from the preface to the
book. A preface as you know is written by the author where he explains what the book is all
about and also explains the reason why he wrote the book. The reason for writing this book,
according to Dr. Ambedkar, was to challenge the orthodox conception of the four castes and to
prove that prevailing condition and social status of the shudras was the result of a cunning
manipulation of the original Varna system by the Brahmins.

In the preface Dr. Ambedkar identifies five kinds of Hindus and their characteristics. They are:
a. The orthodox hindu who believes that there is nothing wrong with the hindu society, and
the caste system.
b. The Aryasamajists who believe in the primacy of the Vedas and the permanent and
eternal nature of the Vedas.
c. A class of hindus who agree that the caste system is wrong but see no reason to attack it.
They believe that since the law does not recognize the caste system, it is a dying, if not a
dead, system.
d. The political hindu who believes that swaraj is more important than social reform.
e. The rationalist hindu who considers social reform more important than swaraj.

This extract primarily deals with the antagonism shown by the orthodox hindus to his own ideas
and the likely response that the present book might elicit from this group of Hindus. In the first
paragraph Dr. Ambedkar spells out in very clear terms that the book is a challenge to orthodoxy
and that no amount of angry and violent reaction from the orthodox hindus can deter him from
attacking the orthodoxy and fabrication in the Sacred Books of the hindus. He expresses his
surprise over the fact that the orthodox hindu, who otherwise presents himself as meek and non-
violent can become extremely intolerant and violent when someone attacks his Sacred Books.
And what is even more surprising is the fact that the so-called highly educated hindu occupying
high positions, instead of displaying a free and open mind tend to join the orthodox Hindus. Dr.
Ambedkar, also makes it clear that he is determined to attack and expose the duplicity and
politics in these Sacred Books by producing evidence from these books. This attack, he clarifies,
is not inspired by any personal animosity but by common good. The guiding principle of his
work is the pursuit of historical truth and to highlight the fact that these Sacred Books were
responsible for the decline and fall of this great country. Thus in the first paragraph, in a very
concise manner, Dr. Ambedkar tells us what the book is all about and the motive behind writing
such a book. The tone is combative and the style is declamatory and rhetorical.
In the second paragraph Dr. Ambedkar talks about the rationalist hindu to whom he has
addressed his argument. He points out that it is undesirable to postpone seeking a solution to the
inherent problem of communalism that we find in the Hindu social organization. The Hindu

24
social organization, is an exclusivist form, which excludes the majority of the people from
privileges and dignity thereby making the system inherently unstable which, sooner or later, is
bound to break apart unless immediate measures are taken to correct these imbalances.
In the third and fourth paragraphs he provides justifications for attacking the Sacred Books of the
Hindus and for not displaying enough respect that the Sacred Books demand. He offers two
arguments in his defense.
a) Historical research has only one objective and that is the pursuit of truth. It does not make
any distinction between the sacred and profane. Historical research treats all literature as
belonging to the people and hence must be examined and tested by established rules of
evidence.
b) Respect for Sacred Books is a product of various social factors. Much of it has to do with
the belief structures of a society. Thus what is Sacred for one may not be so for another.
For instance it is natural for a Brahmin scholar to have an uncritical reverence for the
Sacred Hindu literature which was exclusively produced by the Brahmins to protect the
privileged and superior position enjoyed by the Brahmins. On the other hand it would be
unnatural for non-Brahmins to respect and uphold a body of literature which is
responsible for their social degradation. The fact that Dr. Ambedkar is not just a non-
Brahmin but an untouchable would then explain his lack of respect for these Sacred
Books.

In the next two paragraphs Dr. Ambedkar alerts the readers to the fact that an extreme
position on either side, the Brahmins and the non-Brahmins could be extremely harmful for
historical research. While the Brahmin scholar, over the ages, has strongly defended the
Sacred Books at the cost of truth, it is quite possible that a non-Brahmin scholar could go to
the other extreme and discredit the entire body of literature at the cost of truth. The Brahmin
is, of course, driven by self interest. Consequently the Brahmin scholar, in his desire to
maintain the status quo from which he derives his privilege and authority, has done very little
original work. On the other hand the non-Brahmin scholar, driven by the desire to free
himself from the clutches of this stifling system might be tempted to discard sincere and
impartial enquiry and try to examine history from the perspective of non-Brahmin politics.
Dr. Ambedkar goes on to reassure his readers that he has, in this book, kept away from
extreme positions and has focused on the issue at hand purely from a historical perspective.
He assures the readers that though he is associated with a non-Brahmin political movement,
he has not allowed himself to be swayed by his politics while writing this book.

The concluding paragraph, as is usual in a preface, explains some of the faults of this book,
one of which is long quotations from the sacred books, though in English translation. The
book, he says, is designed to serve the interests of the shudras who for historical and social
reasons are ignorant of the Sacred Books. The didactic purpose is made clear in the
concluding line. Dr. Ambedkar believes that the shudras by tolerating this inhuman system
and because of their ignorance, have been instrumental in sustaining the caste system. Hence
it is only the shudras who can overthrow this system. But before they can do that they need to
educate themselves about the truth of caste system.

25
 THEME: GENDER
-Dr. Anil Aneja

Introduction

Chapters 7-15 of the textbook prescribed in your course, namely, The Individual and
Society are clubbed under the heading Gender. The study materials on this section of the book
have been prepared with a view to help you better understand some of the key issues, which have
been focused upon in the prescribed pieces.

History is a witness to the fact that most societies and communities throughout the world
over a period of centuries have been patriarchal in nature and have tended to practice the
principle of male superiority. Such a practice has resulted in the constant and prolonged
suppression of nearly one-half of the world’s population, the women. Despite the technology age
of the 21st century in which we live, tendencies consciously or unconsciously aimed towards the
marginalization of women still prevail and find various manifestations. Further, it is important to
note that these tendencies are not just due to a physical difference between men and women.
Rather, these are the outcome of a more deep-seated psychological element of male superiority
as well as a result of the social and cultural upbringing.

You do not have to look too far to observe gender discrimination. Most of you may have
observed that in your particular family or community men get a preferential treatment over
women. Whether it is the birth, the education, the career or the marriage, society often practices
different standards for boys and girls. Many-a-time you may have even wanted to rebel against
such a discrimination, but your voice was not heard or given due importance just because you are
a woman.

The pieces prescribed in your course under the heading “Gender” are expressions of
protests on issues concerning discrimination against women, protests the voice of which is often
crushed in reality. While issues related to individual pieces are discussed in detail later in the
study material, we may at this point observe that studied together the nine pieces prescribed in
your course under the heading “Gender” present various forms of discrimination against women
in their multiple and complex dimensions. The selected pieces are written by Indian as well as
foreign writers, men as well as women. These cover many representative voices of protest
against gender discrimination asserting the feminist view point with which many writers and
thinkers of the twentieth century were preoccupied.

A dictionary of literary terms defines Feminist Criticism as” “a mode of critical discourse
that emphasizes culturally determined gender differences in the interpretation of literary works”.
The basic thrust of feminist criticism and gender issues related to it has been to “condemn male
attitudes towards women, charging that men have historically imposed their will on women in
order to convince them in their inherent inferiority.”

If “Shakespeare’s Sister” and “The Exercise Book” highlight the intellectual potentials
and creative aspirations of women by a male-dominated society, “The Girl” presents to us the
difficulties of a growing up girl who is being conditioned in the typical image of a woman by
her mother. It will be incorrect however to say that all the writings prescribed in your course are
about suppression only. In “The Breaking Out” we see that the girl is able to break the rod which
26
terrorized her, and the “Yellow Fish” in Ambai’s writing gets back her life by being thrown back
in the sea.

So, to conclude, we may say that feminism is not just about discrimination and
marjinalization of women, it also includes the challenging of such a suppression and possible
victory over it.

27
 7
THE EXERCISE BOOK
Ra b i nd ra na t h Ta g o re

—Dr. Anil Aneja

Introduction

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) hailed from a well-to-do and talented family in

Bengal. He was an outstanding poet, who won Nobel Prize for literature in 1913. Tagore is also
known for his short stories, plays and essays. He was trailblazer in the field of education, and
founded Shanti Niketan. During the nationalist movement and struggle for India’s independence,
Tagore emerged as a great thinker.

His visit to England at the age of 17 for a period of two years, gave him an exposure to
Western culture and life. He saw the wide gulf between the social conditions and gender
equations of the two countries. Some of his writings raise issues about the position of women in
Indian society, education of the girl-child, child-marriage and the plight of women in a male
dominated society.

Tagore’s short story, “The Exercise Book”, centers around the life of a girl-child in
Bengal, named Uma. Her joys and sorrows, and her innocent and justifiable aspirations (chiefly
her desire for reading and writing in an age which suppressed education of girls), her life as a
child-bride --- these form the crux of the story.

Textual Analysis

The very first sentence of this short story highlights the attitude of the family towards the
girl-child. Girls were not expected to be educated in Tagore’s times. Rather, they were
thoroughly discouraged to read and write. The story is narrated from the point of view of a little
girl called Uma and poignantly reveals her desire for education.

Little Uma was considered a troublesome person by her family when she started learning
how to write. She scribbled on every wall of the house with a piece of coal words from a Bengali
nursery rhyme. Finding a copy of the novel Haridas’s Secrets, she wrote a phrase “Black water,
red flower” on every page. She wrote on the pages of the family almanac, as well as in her
father’s account book.

Initially, she was not scolded or checked for writing here-and-there. But one day Uma
made the mistake of writing on her brother Gobindlal’s essays. Gobindlal used to frequently
write for newspapers. Though he did not appear to be capable of deep thought, nor did he use
much logic in his writing, nevertheless, using the power of rhetoric, he often wrote and
published.

Uma’s brother was beside himself with rage He beat her and then took away from her
writing tools. Deeply hurt and humiliated, Uma wept and rightly felt that the punishment she
received was much more than she deserved.

28
 After a period of time, Gobindlal returned her writing tools and also gifted her an
Exercise Book. From that day, this exercise book assumed great importance in Uma’s life. Many
of her individual thoughts, lines from poems and prose found a place in this exercise book.

Very soon however, such opportunities for reading, writing and quietly expressing herself
came to an abrupt end when Uma was married off at the tender age of nine to Pyarimohan, a
friend and literary associate of her brother. Child marriage was a prominent social evil of the
times. The parting advice that Uma received from her mother and brother was to refrain from
reading and writing. Such statements point to a clear gender bias in society at the turn of the
nineteenth century in India, when literacy in females was considered an offence. The child-
bride’s heart was full of fear and misgivings as she left her parent’s house. Her trusted servant
Jashi accompanied her to her in-laws house, and stayed there for a few days to settle Uma in a
new environment. The days Jashi returned to Uma’s parents’ house, Uma shut the door of her
room and poured out her heart in her previous exercise book: “Jashi has gone home, I want to go
back to mother too”. This little act reveals several facets of the girl-child’s plight --- shutting the
door shows how much a simple act of literacy was forbidden for girls, that is why she had to
write secretly. Also, her longing to go back to her parents as soon as her servant went back,
shows how little emotionally and psychologically prepared was this child for marriage. Through
such a presentation of a child-bride’s point of view, Tagore exposes the social evil of child-
marriage and holds it up for social scrutiny and reform.

Her heart-rending outpourings in the exercise-book, such as, “If Dada comes to take me
home just once, I will never spoil his writings again”, “Dada, I beg of you, take me home just
once, I’ll never make you angry again”, demonstrate the child’s deep longing for her parents as
well as for her parental home, and the curtailment of the child’s freedom and basic human rights.

Writing the exercise book became a source of creative self-expression for Uma. Being
literate was virtually a taboo for women in those days. One-day Uma’s three sisters-in-law
observed her through a crack in the door when she was writing. Reading and writing amongst
women was so frowned upon at the turn of the nineteenth century in India that the writer
ironically comments, “The goddess of learning Saraswati, had never made even so secret a visit
to the women’s quarters of their house.” Uma’s husband was duly informed about her
“misdeed”. Pyare Mohan, the typical male chauvinist, was very disturbed to know what had
happened. He believed in the viewpoint that education was solely the prerogative of the male
sex.

After the scolding and mockery she received from her husband, Uma did not write in her
exercise book for a long time. However, one autumn morning, when she heard a beggar woman
singing an “Agamani” song, the homesick little girl was so emotionally moved that she could not
restrain herself from writing. According to Hindu mythology, goddess Durga visits her parental
home once during autumn. A traditional Bengali song called “Agamani” is sung to welcome her.
Uma identified her longing to be with her mother with the goddess Uma’s (another name of
goddess Durga) reunion with her mother. Calling the singer to her room secretly, she wrote down
the words of the song in her exercise book. Her sisters-in-law again observed what she was doing
through the crack in the door and, despite Uma’s pleadings to the contrary, her husband was
informed about it. Pyare Mohan took a very serious view of what was regarded as a grave
offence by the community. He snatched the exercise book from her and humiliated the little girl
by mockingly reading aloud from it while his three sisters laughed.

29
 Subsequently, Uma did not receive her exercise book back. Pyare Mohan too had an
exercise book in which he wrote his lopsided views about life. But, says the writer regretfully:
“there was no benefactor of human kind to seize that book and destroy it.” In other words, the
gender bias against women in society gave men the prerogative to demand and snatch away a
woman’s writing (which was a mode of intelligent self-expression). But there was nobody to
snatch and destroy a man’s writings, which may be full of nonsense and prejudices.

Critical Moments

You have already read Virginia woolf’s essay “Shakespeare’s Sister”. Although written
in different cultural contexts, Woolf’s essay and Tagore’s short story The “Exercise Book”
voice similar concerns. Both authors --- one writing about sixteenth and seventeenth century
England, and the other writing about late nineteenth and early twentieth century Bengal, India---
raise similar issues. Both, in different ways demonstrate the hollowness of a male-dominated
society, where women’s education and women’s basic rights are ignored, their self expression
and identity suppressed.

Rabindranath Tagore strongly felt the need for social reforms, particularly in the areas of
education, gender equality and child marriage. The short story exposes inequality between men
and women in pre-independent India. Women were denied education and treated as being
intellectually inferior to men. They were expected to stay at home and have no say in the outside
world.

This short story explores the impact of a prejudiced patriarchal society on the life of a
sensitive and intelligent girl with a creative bent of mind. Narrated from the view point of the
girl-child Uma, who was pushed into child-marriage, denied education and self-expression, “The
Exercise Book” highlights the emotions, thoughts, feelings, hurts and pain of a child caught in
the shackles of social prejudices. The exercise book became a source of expression of the little
girl’s individual views and freedom of writing. As Tagore traces the longings, fears,
disappointments and anguish of a girl-child less than the age of ten, he eloquently portrays a
situation that he deplores, even though he has not personally suffered under it.

As against the imaginative talent of Uma, we see the mediocrity of men like Gobindlal
and Ppyaremohan. Uma, being a girl was suppressed, whereas her brother and husband, despite
their mediocrity found great opportunities to express themselves in writings that were published
and acclaimed by the reading public.

GLOSSARY

nuisance A person causing botheration, annoyance

or difficulty
obliterated to blot out or efface
almanac A calendar giving important dates and
information such as the phases of the moon
thrilling rhetoric exciting and persuasive language that is
empty or insincere
demolishing to pull down

30
misconception mistaken ideas
confiscated to take away or seize
assuage to make an unpleasant feeling less intense
declaim to speak or recite in a dramatic way
reprimands expressions of disapproval
Dada elder brother
Boudidi sister-in-law
ambit scope or extent of something
Agamani song traditional Bengali song to welcome
goddess Durga (also known as goddess
Uma)
Charupath, Bodhoday school primers in Bengali
anguish severe mental or physical pain or suffering
benefactor of human kind philanthropist, or a person who performs
good deeds for others

31
 8
GIRL
Jamaica Kincaid
—Dr. Anil Aneja

Introduction

Jamaica Kincaid, born in 1949, is a writer of West Indian origin. At the age of sixteen,
she left her native place, and later settled down in U.S.A. She became a writer of repute: apart
from writing for magazines, she has written novels, short stories and a book length essay.

The extract in your syllabus titled “Girl” is from her writing called at the bottom of the
River, which is often referred to as a series of “prose-poems”. “Girl” portrays a favourite theme
of the writer, that is, the difficulties of a growing girl, and a mother-daughter relationship. In this
piece of writing, a growing girl receives an endless series of directions from her mother. This
lengthy stream of instructions is punctuated by semi-colons and commas; there are no full stops.
The impact of this on the reader is one of being hit by a volley of precepts: how much more so, is
this impact on the daughter who receives the unsolicited advice.

Textual Analysis

A young growing girl is expected by her mother to become a perfect housewife and well-
mannered lady. The mother issues a heap of curt directions to the girl: the girl is expected to
wash white clothes on Monday; and wash coloured clothes on Tuesday; deep-fry pumpkin in
very hot sweet oil; to make sure that there is no gum on cotton while buying it; to soak salt fish
overnight before cooking it, to eat food in an elegant refined manner. The mother even rudely
tells the daughter to walk like a lady and not like the cheap or slovenly person she is bent on
becoming; she is not to sing “benna” in Sunday school. (Benna is a type of West Indian song
which often satirizes local events.) The girl is directed strictly not to speak to boys who loiter
near quaysides and steel.

The unending stream of “dos” and “don’ts” is interrupted only twice --- by words written
in italics. These italicized portions voices the feeble responses of protest of the girl to her mother.
In the first of these two responses, the girl says “but I don’t sing benna on Sunday at all and
never in Sunday school.” Normally, children upto the age of fifteen go to Sunday school; so from
this we can infer that the girl in this piece of writing is less than fifteen. Instead of receiving the
nurturing care and affection from her mother which a young girl needs, the girl receives only a
volley of advice, devoid of love. Her response to her mother’s accusing tone has no impact on
the mother, who continues to flood her with further domestic instructions. The writer seems to
suggest that in a patriarchal society, women were expected to be subdued by men, and perfect
homemakers with hardly any interaction with the outside world. Kincaid shows how the
psychological, emotional needs and rights of the girl-child and women were overlooked.

The mother goes on to give further household directions: such as “rules” regarding
stitching. Without a pause or break she sharply directs her daughter how to iron clothes, how to
grow plants such as Okra and dasheen (a tropical plant); how to clean and sweep how to smile at
people; how to set the table for various meals; how to make pudding. In none of the instructions
is the word “studies” mentioned. So we can figure out how low is education in the list of
priorities in the mother’s outlook, as well as in terms of social outlook.
32
 Three times in the narrative the mother warns the girl against looking like the slut she is
bent on becoming. The mother seems almost paranoid about the girl not growing up to become
decent and lady-like. The injunctions continue: how to make effective medicines--- medicines
for a cold, medicines to abort a child. Possibly the mother has become a little too cynical and
panicky because she herself has suffered in a male-dominated society. She passes on her
understanding of this to the girl --- including how to bully a man; how a man bullies a woman;
various ways of loving a man; if these ways don’t work, one should not feel bad about giving up
the relationship. She also gives unasked for advice about domestic economy, that is how to make
ends meet. Her last instruction in this piece of writing: “always squeeze bread to make sure it’s
fresh”, is interrupted by the girl’s protest: “but if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?” The
girl’s second protest (again written in italics) amidst this lengthy list of directions is rebuffed by
the mother who retorts, “after all, you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker
won’t let near the bread”. The mother’s pat reply reaffirms her anxieties about the girl not
turning up to her expectations.

Critical Comments

A growing girl needs love and care along with education and sound advice gently
imparted by her mother. But in the prose-poem “Girl”, the young daughter receives a torrent of
(often rudely spoken) instructions from her mother. The wide range of advice that the girl
receives centers around a number of issues, such as household chores, social etiquettes, style of
working and talking, worldly-wise or cynical attitude about how to deal with men. Nowhere in
this prose-poem is the issue of the girl’s identity or her studies taken up. The oppressive advice
of the mother curves the spontaneity of the girl. The endless stream of curt instructions shows the
lack of a close bonding between mother and daughter. The mother expects too much from the
girl. The girl is over-burdened by the mother’s expectations. It has been suggested by some that
the mother in the prose-poem could well be a step-mother. However, whatever be the case,
behind the mother’s/step-mother’s oppressive force of advice is the larger oppressive force of a
patriarchal society where the identity of the woman is totally negated. The mother herself has
been a victim of such a society and obsessed with training the girl to measure up to the
“requirements” of a male dominated ethos.

GLOSSARY

Fritters food coated in batter and deep-fried

benna A type of West Indian song, which often

satirizes local events
wharf-rat boys boys who live or hand around near
wharves, and steal from ships or
warehouses
okra A vegetable
dasheen A tropical plant
doukona A type of pudding
bully a person who intimidates or frightens
weaker people

33
 9

BREAKING OUT
Ma rg e Pi e rcy
—Dr. Anil Aneja

Introduction

Marge Piercy, a well-known novelist and poet, was born in U.S.A. in the year 1936.
During her childhood, her family went through very difficult times, due to Post-War Depression,
a long and severe slump in the nation’s economy. Marge Piercy, a person with intellectual
outlook, studied at the University of Michigan. She has been involved in various movements
such as civil rights, feminism and ante-Vietnam war. She emerged as a famous writer and has
published seventeen volumes of poetry, as well as an equal number of novels.
“Breaking Out”, which first appeared in 1984, raises the issue of human rights of the girl-
child. The protagonist reminiscences as the first person editor. The narrator is keenly aware of
the oppressive conditions under which girls and women lived. In her own way, she retaliates
against the oppressive forces.

Textual Analysis
Lines 1-7
The narrator recalls her first political act. She calls it “political” because it is her first act of
rebellion against the oppressive forces of which she is a victim, and her consciousness of her
rights to set herself free. The girl-child is a victim of physical abuse—she is often beaten badly
by her parents. The narrator views her parents as two open doors that always keep tabs over
movements. A machine known as “mangle” used for ironing damp clothes stood at the scene of
reminiscence. The narrator feels that an unnecessary amount of clothes were expected to be
ironed.
Lines 8-18
The narrator sees a parallel between her personal situation and external objects. An old-style
vacuum-cleaner with a clothe bag attached to it became dilated with air as dust was sucked into
it. This clothe bag is referred to as a “sausage bag” here. The narrator compares herself with the
sausage bag that deflated with a deep noisy sigh. The words “gusty sigh” and “deflated”
emphasize that the vacuum-cleaner was as fed up of household work as the narrator herself, who
swore never to dust or sweep. The first person narrator’s mother is over burdened with daily
chores. The narrator did not like to see her mother daily removing the industrial waste that form
deposits in her home from neighbouring factories. In school, the girl-child reads about Sisyphus,
a figure in Greek mythology whose punishment was to endlessly role up a large stone to the top
of a hill, only to see it roll down again. The narrator compares her mother’s situation with that of
Sisyphus, seeing a parallel between the two’s futile and endless labour. The girl’s mother was
daily down on her knees as the ash emitted by the factories formed daily deposits in her home.

34
Lines 19-28
There was a heavy wooden yardstick with which the narrator was beaten by her parents. She
compares the yardstick with the stork as this bird has a heavy long bill, and the stick was heavy
like the stork’s bill. As an instrument of unwarranted punishment it was naturally a nasty object.
It is possible that economic pressures prompted the parents to pour out their frustrations on the
girl-child in the form of corporal punishment. Whatever be the reason behind such a measure,
such beating amount to physical abuse and violation of the rights of the girl-child. By vividly
exposing the painful effect of physical abuse, the poet highlights the theme of violence against
the girl-child and the question of human rights. When she was severely beaten she roared in pain
like a “locomotive” or a noisy powered railway vehicle.

The narrator recalls that the beatings she received from her mother were more fierce than those
she received from her father. Her father wielded the stick for a longer period of time. In her
agony, the young girl would twist her head and inspect the marks in the mirror.

Lines 29-36:

The narrator used to examine the red and blue marks imprinted on her back by the beatings, and
think of becoming free when she grew up.

One day, at the age of eleven, she smashed the stick to pieces after a beating. She could hardly
believe that the instrument of her punishment was weaker than her. While the young girl
survived many beatings, the rod was broken.

Lines 37-42:
This act of smashing the rod into pieces was a significant and a symbolic one. Through this act
of defiance she stood up for her rights. By destroying the rod that was the instrument of her
oppression, she became mature; she was no longer a child. This was her first “political act”,
whereby she asserted her right as a human being.
The narrator ends by stating that her narration was not a story of lost innocence, but rather, of
power gained. By becoming aware of her rights as a human being, and more specifically as a
woman, she rejects the path followed by most downtrodden women, Unlike her mother, she
refused to be doomed to futile labour and bondage like Sisyphus. She was determined to break
things that limited her and oppressed her.
Critical Momenets
In the previous three writings on gender bias that you have read, that is “Shakespeare’s Sister”,
“The Exercise Book” and “Girl””,, the girls and women who suffered were passive victims of a
male-dominated society. By contrast, the protagonist in Marge Percy’s “Breaking Out”, is an
assertive person: she does not take the violence and negatives heaped upon her lying down. She
breaks out of the image of the meek, submissive woman who is a victim of injustice, and
assertively takes a stand.

35
By breaking the rod of punishment, and thereby defying the powers of her oppression, she took a
stand for her human rights. She became aware that “”there were things that I should learn to
break”. One can see that this protagonist will grow up to be a person who will come against
forces of injustice and violence and assert her rights as a woman of dignity.

GLOSSARY

Mangle Machine used for ironing damp

clothes
Deflated to let out air
gusty like a strong rush of wind
sludge dirty oil or industrial waste
Sisyphus a legendary Greek King. He was
doomed eternally to roll up a
boulder to the top of a hill from
where it always rolled down again

36
 10
MARRIAGES ARE MADE
Eunice De Souza

—Dr. Anil Aneja

Introduction

Born in 1940, Eunice De Souza was educated both in India and abroad and by the time
she retired from St.Zavier’s College, Mumbai, Eunice De Souza had firmly established her
identity as a teacher, thinker and writer.

One of the key issues that find a constant voice throughout her writings is the plight of the Indian
woman in various contexts. In the present poem prescribed for your course we see that the
protagonist Elena is to be married. The marriage however is not a happy occasion for her, but
rather, it is the time for her to be subjected to numerous humiliations to prove herself worthy of
being married. Interestingly, the protagonist of the poem Elena belongs to the Goan Catholic
society, the social background to which the writer Eunice De Souza herself belonged.

Textual Analysis

Lines 1-10

The occasion of the poem is the marriage of Elena, a cousin of the narrator of the poem.
The poem is narrated in an ironic tone, and in the passive voice indicating that the girl concerned
has no say in the matter. The “formalities” that have been completed are actually a series of
humiliating and embarrassing scrutiny: first her family history is examined to ensure that there is
no case of T.B. or madness in the family. Further, detailed enquiries are made to find out
whether her father is in a financially sound position or not. As it happens in Indian marriages, the
identity or the feelings of the girl who is to be married are not taken into account at all. Rather,
she is regarded as a commodity, or an object or a tame animal that needs to be clinically
examined. While her inner feelings are ignored, her physical aspects are focused upon
(presumably by the elderly relatives of the the prospective groom or the middlemen who are
trying to form an arranged matrimonial alliance). They suspiciously scrutinize her eyes to ensure
that they are perfectly normal and there is no squint in her eyes. Even her teeth are checked to
rule out the possibility of cavities. With heavy sarcasm the poet says that even the stools of the
prospective bride are examined to rule out the possibility of worms.

Lines 12-21

Those conducting the negotiations of this matrimonial alliance are forces which uphold
the principle of a male-dominated society. The groom is presumed to be good in all respects,
and, the poem seems to suggest, it is not necessary to conduct any kind of enquiry or
examination regarding him. This clear gender bias is typical of a patriarchal society, a society
where men hold most of the power.

In Lines 12-18, the girl’s physical appearance is taken into account. She is neither
considered to be suitably tall, nor shapely. However, her fair complexion makes up for her so-
called lesser attributes. Thus, Elena is chosen as an appropriate bride for Francisco Noronha
Prabhu, a “good” match from a Goan Catholic community. The expectations of “rightness” and
37
“justness” on the part of the groom’s family highlight the predominant attitude of male
superiority and gender injustice, whereby it is always the girl who has to live upto high
expectations, whereas none considers it necessary to think of equality between the genders and
dares to question the traits of the groom and his family.

Critical Comments

Marriages are made by social forces that deny the dignity and true worth of a woman. A
girl’s identity and worth does not lie in the external details of her outward physical attributes and
family history. Elena is yet another passive victim of a male-dominated society, whereby the
voice of the woman, who is about to form the closest human bond, is simply not heard.

GLOSSARY

solvent having more money than one owes

squint a permanent condition in which one eye
does not look in the same direction as the
other

38
 11
THE YELLOW FISH
Ambai
-Dr. Neeta Gupta

About the Author

Ambai or C.S.Lakshmi was born in a large middle-class Brahmin family in 1944. Her
parents hailed from Palghat, which was a constituent of the Madras Presidency but is now a
district in Kerala. It had a predominantly Brahmin population. The family had settled in
Coimbatore. Ambai was the third child of her parents, the eldest being a son while the second
was a daughter. When the third child too happened to be a daughter the family was visibly upset.
More so because it was an unplanned pregnancy and Ambai’s birth was an accident. In fact
Ambai recalls in an interview how for many days her father did not even cradle her in his arms
and always called her ‘blackie’ because of her dark complexion. ‘Blackie was however named
Lakshmi for two reasons, firstly because her maternal grandmother’s name was Lakshmi and
secondly because she was born on a Friday. Prejudice against the girl child in Indian society is a
well-known fact and Ambai was to some extent a victim of this prejudice being the second
daughter. Her first photograph was taken when she was four years old. Before that nobody ever
thought of taking a snapshot of hers.
Ambai was put in a Tamil medium school as against the English medium one to which
her elder siblings went. According to her own admission ‘In my family I am the only one to
write in Tamil. The others write even their personal letters in English.’ Despite these minor
irritants, Ambai’s childhood was a happy one and she remembers fondly the many enjoyable
vacations spent at her maternal grandmother’s house with innumerable cousins who became her
playmates. Ambai was greatly influenced by her grandmother who was a self-taught Tamil
scholar and who cultivated an interest in the young girl for Tamil literature. In addition to her
grandmother, Ambai’s own mother too was another constructive influence on her and who
became at many points in her life the pillar of support she needed to stand on her own two feet.
Ambai read avidly all the Tamil magazines and journals her mother subscribed to and
grew up on the conservative, tradition bound often-romantic writings that these magazines
encouraged and perpetuated. When Ambai first began writing at the age of sixteen, she wrote in
a style similar to the one she had soaked up from those magazines. As she comments on her early
writings she says: ‘Most of my initial stories had very rigid and orthodox views of sexuality,
femininity and life in general. The widows in my stories, after a speech full of symbolic
metaphors always refused to remarry and my heroines married idealists who were combinations
of Tagore, Ramakrishna and Vivekananda.’
Ambai had already published two novels before she turned twenty. At sixteen she had
won the first prize in a competition organized by the journal Kannan. Her entry Nandi Malai
Charalile (At Nandi Hills Falls), a novel, was published shortly after she won the competition.
This novel appeared under the name ‘Ambai’, the pseudonym that she had used for the first time
on this occasion and was to continue using it thereafter for all her creative writing. Her first short
story Gnanam (Knowledge) was published in the journal Ananda Vikatan. She published many
more stories in this magazine in the coming years. But her early writings were modeled on
traditional concepts of womanhood and chastity. Her world was still limited to her home and
there was a tacit rule limiting her interaction with the world outside. She therefore naively went
along believing in the prevalent concepts, which required women to be chaste, pure, submissive

39
and docile. To believe that a modern woman was one transgressing the bounds of morality was
merely an extension of these conventional concepts.
Ambai struggled to break free. A rebel at heart she knew that there was a different and
wider world beyond the confines of her walled existence. Thus her decision to move to Madras
came about. Subsequently she secured a UGC fellowship and took admission in JNU for her
Ph.D. and moved to Delhi in 1967.
Ambai’s literary career aptly reflects the various stages in her development both as a
writer and as a person. From her early idealistic writings like Andhi Malai she moved to writing
stories with new concerns but still wrote in the conventional style. Moving to Delhi, however,
was the bold step she took to venturing into women centered stories that questioned the
paradoxes of their suppressed existence. From writing in the conventional style she moved to
experiment with new forms, new themes and looked at old subjects from new angles. According
to her ‘Be it feminism, Marxism – whatever it be, it ought to contain its potency before it touches
you. Stories that have a lot of feminist ideas go unappreciated if they lack an engaging style.’
Herein lies the germ for Ambai’s desire to evolve new forms and a new language for expressing
her ideas in her writings.
The Yellow Fish: A Discussion
Introduction
Ambai’s short story ‘The Yellow Fish’ forms a component of the section on Gender in
your text book. This immediately alerts us to the fact that this particular story will surely
contribute to our understanding of gender and might deal with some aspect of a woman’s
experience. Ambai’s fiction is known for its emphasis on issues concerning women and in the
Tamil literary scene her voice is one to be reckoned with as far as feminist self-affirmation is
concerned.
Ambai known for her innovative narrative techniques experiments in the present story too
a quick reading leaves us with an impression of the story being a collage of images - almost
surrealistic images. The narrative content is not much and can be distinctly divided into three
sections.

❖ In the first section we are given a description of the fishing boats returning ashore.
A discarded fish’s struggle to survive reminds the narrator of a similar struggle she
witnessed some time back.
❖ We take a leap into the recent past and are transported to the next section of the
story where we get to know that a couple – Anu and Arun – have recently lost a new born
child whom they had called Jalaja. The child’s ashes have been immersed in the sea.
❖ In the third section the narrator Anu, understandably depressed, helps a discarded
yellow fish to survive and returns it to the sea. There is no obvious linkage between the
two events except for the fact that both form part of the experiences of the first person
narrator Anu.
A detailed and analytical look at the story reveals the thematic connections between the
two events and helps us understand that Ambai is here dealing with larger issues at a micro level.
Issues that are close to a woman’s heart because they form an integral part of her struggle to
survive in a hostile world.

40
 The story begins with a vivid description of a scene of the fishing boats returning to the
shore. It is high summer and the sand is hot. Images of the sea and water are predominant. There
is a juxtaposition of colours against the background of the ‘faded blue and ash-grey sea’. The
bright colours of the fisherwomen’s clothes stand vibrant against the white boat and the bodies
and hands of men darkened by the salt wind; the dry sand, the brown wood of the boats, the
white bellied fish. As Ambai writes it is “an extraordinary collage of colours, on the shores of the
wind-swept sea. A composition that imprints itself on the mind and memory.”
The Imagery
The sea and water are life-giving forces in this story. Even the livelihood of the fisher
folk depends on them. But suddenly our attention is drawn away from the din of the fisher-folk
and their boats. ‘A yellow fish is thrown away on the sand’. The line captures all our attention
because Ambai makes it stand by itself.
It is almost as though it is physically drawing our attention towards itself.
The Point of View
The first person narrator, enters the narrative as the ‘I’ of the narrative and fixes the
perspective and point of view of the story. We now know through whose eyes we are watching
the events. The narrator’s name however is not revealed yet. The detail of colour follows as the
narrator looks at and observes the details about the yellow fish. The fish is of the palest yellow
that comes before the withering and falling of leaves. A further detail is that it has black spots.
The narrator stoops to watch it and the fish begins to shudder and gasp for breath on the hot sand
and opening and closing its mouth its mouth opens and closes and it is this image that wrenches
another from the narrator’s memory when she remembers a similar gasping for breath – that of
Jalaja.
A Shift in Narrative
For a second time Ambai makes a sentence stand by itself. “Like Jalaja’s mouth” - stands
alone making us stop and think about the abrupt change from one sequence of events to another.
With the mention of Jalaja’s name we are taken into the next section of the narrative that tells us
about the ‘too hasty infant’ Jalaja who was probably born premature and had to be kept in the
incubator. Once more the narrative is in the form of images showing rather than telling what
happened. The first image is that of the narrator standing outside Jalaja’s room constantly
watching her struggle to survive. The next image is that of ashes being brought home in a small
urn and the narrator’s insistence that the mouth of the urn be opened and then the somber line
that the ashes were immersed in this very sea. In this section we also learn that the narrator’s
name is Anu and Arun is her husband. From the two images put before us we surmise that the
infant Jalaja was their daughter who had ultimately lost the struggle to survive. The small urn
contains Jalaja’s ashes which are immersed in the sea.
The image of the sea brings us back to the present moment and this time the narrator
observes the yellow fish struggling to survive. Anu the narrator calls over a fisherboy and asks
him to put the yellow fish back in the sea. With a snort of laughter the boy complies and holding
the fish by the tail runs towards the sea and puts it on the crest of an incoming wave. The fish
splutters and flounders for a few seconds and then with an arrogant leap it swims forward into
the blue grey-white sea.
The Theme
The two sections of the narrative – that of the yellow fish and the infant Jalaja apparently
unrelated are thematically linked with a deft use of images and metaphors. In both instances we
41
witness an astounding struggle to survive which becomes the theme of the story. The image of
the tiny mouth gasping to breathe forges a link between both the events. Jalaja loses the struggle
while the yellow fish survives with help from the narrator.
The yellow fish is discarded and thrown away as useless. The connection with Jalaja
implies that Jalaja too was probably unwanted. Was it because she was a girl child? Gender
issues emerge from the implied precept that girls are as unwanted as the yellow fish though both
may be beautiful.
Gender differences emerge from the difference in attitude of the narrator Anu and her
husband Arun who fails to understand why Anu wants the mouth of the urn to be opened. The
“loud racking sobs” hint at the intense grief till now buried in the narrator’s heart. We have seen
her helplessness earlier as she stands outside her child’s room and just watches her struggling to
survive. In trying to get Arun to open the urn’s mouth it is almost as though Anu is trying to help
her child to breathe now as she couldn’t earlier. The degree of insensitivity in the male outlook is
evident in Arun failing to understand why his wife wants the mouth of the urn to be opened. For
him it is “just ashes” whereas for Anu it is her daughter inside whom she wants to liberate.
All the pent up feelings of helplessness, grief and the fact that she could do nothing to
save her daughter resurface when the narrator watches the yellow fish thrashing about on the
sand, gasping to breath and leaping hopelessly towards the sea. Her decision to help the yellow
fish is prompted by Jalaja’s memory whose ashes lie in the very sea from where the yellow fish
had come and where it wanted to return. Anu was helpless in saving her infant daughter Jalaja,
but she could try and save the fish. She does this by enlisting the help of a fisher-boy.
Gender differences surface once again when the fisher boy snorts at the narrator’s request
for helping her take the gasping yellow fish to the sea. Insensitivity in the male outlook is
reinforced.
Anu manages to save the fish and return it to the sea. The arrogant leap of the fish once it
reaches the sea at the end of the story can be metaphorically interpreted and can have a variety of
meanings.
Firstly it could mean that there are endless possibilities if opportunities to thrive are
provided.
Secondly and more importantly it could point towards the overriding theme of self-
liberation in all of Ambai’s writings. It is almost as though Anu too has leapt towards freedom
along with the yellow fish. Anu’s freedom is a freedom from the bondage of ideologies, It is a
freedom from grief; a liberating move that takes her towards self realization. Ultimately this
emerges to be the theme of the story and links up the narrator’s life with the two instances
narrated by her.

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 12
THE HIGHWAY STRIPPER
A.K. Ramanujan

--Dr. Neeta Gupta

The Poet
A scholar, a poet, a critic, a folklorist, a linguist and a translator, A.K.Ramanujan was a
multi-faceted and multi-talented personality. He was born in Mysore on 16 March, 1929 and
studied literature at the University of Mysore and then migrated to the United States in the year
1959 to pursue a doctorate in folklore and linguistics from Indiana University. Later he began
teaching at the University of Chicago in 1963 and continued to do so for the next three decades
until his sudden and untimely death in 1993, at the peak of his career. His literary genius was
recognized and he was awarded the Padma Shri as early as 1976 and the McArthur fellowship in
1983. He was also elected Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1990.

A renowned poet in English, Kannada and Tamil, Ramanujan is also renowned for his
translations from Kannada and Tamil. Speaking of Siva and Hymns for the Drowning are two of
his brilliant translations. While Siva introduced the readers to the Virshaiva literature, Hymns
made it possible for readers to enjoy poems to Vishnu by the ninth century poet Nammavar.
Apart from two of the above mentioned widely read works, Ramanujan has numerous other
works to his credit. His literary, critical and theoretical contributions span across many
disciplines. Some of his major works include Folktales from India: A Selection of Oral tales
from Twenty Two languages (1991) and A Flowering Tree and other Tales from India (1997).
The Collected Essays published posthumously in the year 2000, amply demonstrates the amazing
genius of this man. ‘Is There an Indian Way of Thinking’ is one of his most widely read essays.
The Collected Poems were also published posthumously in 1995 and yet there was too much still
waiting to be published. Another anthology of his critical essays, poems and interviews was
brought out by his editors and was give a rather ‘unusual and enigmatic title’ ---The Uncollected
Poems and Prose: A.K.Ramanujan. In a way Ramanujan continued to publish even after his
death and it has been observed that he remains a ‘living voice’ in the world of literature
especially of Indian Poetry.

Having his roots in India and having lived half of his entire life in America, Ramanujan’s
poetry is replete with themes of ‘hybridity and trans-culturation.’ In fact, Bruce King calls him
along with two other poets, ‘Indo-Anglian harbingers of literary modernism.’ Published in 1986
in The Second Sight ‘The Highway Stripper’ is more quintessentially American in terms of its
imagery and its context but ends with a strong hint of the Indian concept of the Ardhnareeshwar
that translates into a desire for androgyny in this poem.

The Poem

Published in 1986 in Ramanujan’s collection of poems entitled The Second Sight, ‘The
Highway Stripper’ has been called a ‘quintessentially American’ poem in terms of its setting, its
context, its imagery and its content as well. There is nothing specifically Indian about it but
rather everything American right from the battered Mustang to the highway to Mexico, to the
kind of clothes that come flying out of the car right down to the football (not cricket) match on

43
the radio. What the poem initially focuses on however, is not something specifically American
but rather general. In one critic’s view the poem sums up more intensely than anything else, ‘the
intensity of the erotic viewer’s experience.’ The ending however, belies the expected climax to
the erotic buildup. It takes us from a mere erotic experience to a realization of a possibility that
exists within all of us as well as a possibility that one can strive for in the spiritual world. It hints
at a union of the male and female energies within a single human being but also indicates a
possibility of a union with the Supreme Being. We transcend the world of factual reality to move
into a world of possibilities and realizations and also of questions that arise out of those
possibilities.

Critical Analysis
The poem begins with the first person speaker recounting an experience he had while
travelling on a highway to Mexico. The entire poem is a narration of that event and is written in
stanzas of very short lines thus giving the poem an almost breathless quality, matching the speed
at which the speaker is travelling on that lonely highway.

Stanza 1
The speaker begins by telling us that once while travelling on a highway to Mexico he
happened to be driving behind a ‘battered once-blue Mustang’ which had a lot of dust on its rear
window. The name Mustang is almost synonymous with masculinity. As your textual notes tell
you, the Mustang was a sturdy car named after a small hardy wild horse of the North American
plains. This particular Mustang travelling in front of the speaker is obviously old and well used
since it has a ‘battered’ look. It is probably dented and looks beaten up and even its colour has
worn off for the speaker describes it as ‘once –blue.’

There is nothing unusual about the situation. In the United States a Mustang is a popular
car and someone could be travelling to Mexico just as the speaker is. As the two cars speed along
however, all of a sudden the speaker sees a woman’s hand come out of the side of the car in front
of him and begin throwing a number of items of women’s clothing one after another. Along with
the speaker we too are shocked and taken aback.

What is significant in these lines is the fact that the hand that has come out of the side of
the car is described as a woman’s hand but at the same time we are told that it has a wrist watch
on it. Normally one would expect a woman’s hand to have a bangle or a bracelet on it. The hand
wearing a wrist watch becomes significant only in retrospect when we reach the end of the poem.
For the moment we brush aside this question that has come up and move on to read what
happens next. The words ‘whirling’ and ‘hurtling’ aptly describe the speed at which the cars are
travelling.

Stanza 2-4

The next three stanzas provide the details about the clothing items that come hurtling out
of the car. A straw hat, a white shoe, a heavy pleated skirt and a fluttery slip (which is faded
pink), a leg- of- a -mutton blouse follow one after another. The speaker increases his speed to
minimize the distance between his car and the one in front. Then follows an ordinary, used and
off white bra which whirls off the window and gets stuck on the barbed wire around a farmer’s

44
field of yellow-green wheat-grass. The last item to come out of the window is a pair of bright red
panties that hit the speaker’s windshield and are gone, swept aside.

A few assumptions can be made based on the above description:

➢ It seems that there are at least two people travelling in the Mustang. One is obviously
driving the car at great speed while the other is busy taking off all clothes. The former
may be a man but the latter is certainly a woman for the speaker has seen only women’s
clothing come hurtling out of the Mustang.
➢ The items of clothing are western which is in keeping with the geographical context of
the poem.
➢ The speaker is obviously a very keen observer. Even in split seconds he is able to notice
that the faded slip has frayed lace edges; the bra is for smallish breasts and the red panties
are laced with white. He can even hear a few of these items swish!
➢ Noticing the kind of objects that emerge from the window of the Mustang one can safely
assume that whoever the woman in the car, she belongs to the middle or lower middle
class. One can take a further guess and assume that she is probably a hooker, out with a
client, who has asked her to strip on the highway. The title of the poem therefore makes
sense. In fact in the next stanza the speaker calls her as much for now he too is ‘excited
and curious, to see the stripper on the highway.’
The Possibilities
Having described the striptease without describing the stripper the speaker has managed
to grip the attention of the readers. It has even been observed that this particular poem ‘sums
up the intensity of the erotic viewer’s experience.’ It is not so much a description of the
stripper or the striptease. It is more a description of the experience of a man who while
driving on a highway happens to see items of women’s clothing being flung out of a moving
car traveling ahead of him.

Stanza 5 - 8
The poem even at this stage is more about the speaker than about the highway stripper.
Excited and desperate with curiosity he longs to see what is going on inside the car. His
imagination runs wild. He thinks that the stripper by now is probably naked with her lover or
more than one lover in the car. Just thinking about the possibilities of what might be
happening inside the moving Mustang arouse all erotic desires in the speaker and we as
readers stand along side him – all keyed up and curious as well.

Frustrated by the dusty rear window of the Mustang the speaker steps on the gas and
finally overtakes the car to take a peep inside. With this peep however, the mystery about the
highway stripper only deepens further.

The Anti-climax
The stanza describing what’s happening inside the moving Mustang comes as an anti-
climax to the whole erotic build-up. The speaker describes:

In that absolute
Second

45
 that glimpse and after
image in this hell
of voyeurs, I saw
only one at the wheel
a man
about forty,

a spectacled profile
looking only
at the road
beyond the nose
of his Mustang
with a football
radio - on.

There is no sign of a woman or any other occupant in the car -- just a lonely, fortyish
man, staring at the road ahead, listening to a football match on the radio.

Along with the speaker we too are confused! What could possibly have happened? Where
has the stripper vanished? What about the clothes that had been flung out of the same car only a
few moments back? Is the driver of the Mustang having some kind of an identity crisis? Is he a
case of the ‘third sex’ a trans-sexual? Is that the reason why he had dressed up as a woman? Has
he thrown away his women’s clothing because he is driving towards a city and would soon be
leaving the anonymity and the loneliness of the highway behind him? A number of such
questions come to our mind as we read. The ‘hand with a wrist watch on it’ now makes sense.
All along it has been the hand of a man and not of a woman. The speaker has to steady his pace
‘against the circling trees.’ He is almost reeling with shock at not finding what he had expected
to find. His repeated looks in the rear view mirror only confirm what he has already seen. There
is no stripper in the Mustang – only a middle-aged, lonely man. We are still trying to grapple
with this sudden shift in development when another one occurs in the next stanza giving an
entirely different perspective to the situation.

Stanza 9

Seeing only a man and no woman inside the Mustang the speaker questions:
had he stripped
not only hat
and blouse, shoes and panties
and bra
had he shed maybe
even the woman
he was wearing,

The items of clothing that have been flung out of the car have all been those of a woman.
Yet all along it has been a man who has been throwing those clothes from the car. The poet’s
question is whether in shedding the women’s clothing that man has even shed the ‘woman he
was wearing?’ Is there some kind of an identity crisis going on here? Has that man come to terms

46
with his own identity on that highway? It almost seems to be so. Having shed ‘the woman he was
wearing’ the man at the wheel of the Mustang seems to have overcome the struggle for identity
within his own personality. Yet the stanza ends only with a comma and the continuation of the
last line leads us into the concluding stanza which takes us much deeper into this ever going
struggle transporting us ultimately to a synthesis between not just masculine and feminine but
between being and nothingness, between created and creator, between the worshipper and the
worshipped.

The Issue of Gender and identity

The poet’s questioning in this stanza has immediately taken us to the issue of gender and
the question of identity related to it. If we talk of gender, we know by now that it is a social and
cultural construct. Physical anatomy is not the final determinant for making males and females
into masculine and feminine. In fact it is a well accepted truth that in every human being there is
a certain balance of the masculine and feminine energies.

In his poem Ramanujan provides yet another perspective on the issue of gender. Being an
avid reader as well as translator of the bhakti poetry he was all too familiar with the concept of
the ‘Ardhnareeshwar’ in the Indian bhakti tradition. This popular and well accepted concept
perceives God as half man and half woman – Shiva and Shakti – both together representing the
synthesis of the masculine and feminine energies in one body. Through his poem Ramanujan is
probably trying to say that we may be perceived as male or female but the other set of traits is
present deep within in each one of us. Those of us who are perceived as males would also have a
feminine side to our personality and those of us who are perceived as females would have a
masculine side to our personality. Of course the same may not be overtly visible.

Stanza 10
‘Or was it me,’ asks the poet, ‘moulting, shedding vestiges, old investments, rushing
forever towards a perfect coupling with naked nothing in a world without places?’

The perspective shifts dramatically. It is no longer the poet watching the driver of the
Mustang. It is the poet watching himself. It is a self projection. It is almost as though he has
stepped outside his own self and now stands looking at it, observing it, analyzing it from a
distance. The concluding stanza imparts an almost surreal quality to an otherwise very realistic
poem. It also takes us away from its ‘quintessentially American’ character into the realm of the
Bhakti tradition where we find an exploration of similar ideas with regard to the relationship
between the devotee and the devoted.

The Indian influence

The multi-faceted Ramanujan was an avid scholar of the Indian Bhakti tradition and had
translated many verses from the Virshaiva tradition. The same had appeared in his volume
entitled Speaking of Siva. He had studied and researched many Bhakti poets from the Tamil
literary scene. His views on this tradition shall help us understand the concluding stanza of our
poem ‘The Highway Stripper.’

In an interview to the magazine Manushi, Ramanujan freely expressed his views about
the bhakti movement. According to him in the Bhakti tradition ‘feelings are more important than
learning, status and privilege.’ To experience God one has to cast away all privileges. Being

47
male is one such privilege. In fact maleness is ‘an obstacle in spiritual experience, in attaining
true inwardness.’ Speaking further Ramanujan says:

Power entails the seeking of more power; power and privilege need defences. Men have
to overcome the temptation of this kind of seeking. They have to throw away their
defences.

In the context of the Bhakti tradition, a throwing away of clothes is a ‘throwing away of
concessions to social conventions, defences and investments. Nakedness signifies being open to
the experience of god.’ The poet wonders whether he is undergoing a similar movement towards
the ultimate union with god.

Power, privilege, pride, in fact maleness itself are all obstacles in the path of a true
spiritual experience. To attain oneness with god one has to overcome all these obstacles, throw
away all defences and privileges to be ready for a true inwardness, a true experience of god.

Speaking of male saints in the bhakti tradition, Ramanujan says:

One of the last things they overcome in these traditions is maleness itself. The male saints
wish to become women; they wish to drop their very maleness, their machismo. Saints
then become a kind of third gender. The lines between male and female are crossed and
re-crossed in their lives.

The desire for Androgyny that has surfaced in the poem can thus be contextualized in the
Bhakti tradition and understood as being a step towards a true experience of God which can
happen only in a world without boundaries. The poet mentions a ‘world without places’ where
such a union can occur. This signifies the fact that once you are ready for a oneness with god
physical ‘place’ becomes irrelevant. Once one is able to transcend all physical boundaries that
one has set for oneself the entire world becomes one, ‘a world without places.’ In the
metaphorical sense the highway thus assumes an added significance. It becomes a part of that
‘world without places.’

Conclusion
The concluding stanza transports us ultimately to a synthesis between not just masculine
and feminine but between being and nothingness, between created and the creator, between the
worshipper and the worshipped.
The speaker’s perceptions and preoccupations thus undergo a major change during the
course of the poem. From being an erotic viewer trying to describe a striptease and desperately
trying to get a glimpse of the stripper, the speaker finally becomes a seeker of true inwardness, of
an ultimate union with the Supreme Being. The ‘perfect coupling’ to which the speaker aspires
can therefore mean not only the ultimate synthesis of the masculine and feminine forces
symbolized in the Bhakti tradition in the image of the Ardhnareeshwar, but also the worshipper’s
final union with the worshipped – a true experience of God.

48
 13
BLACK OUT
Roger Mais
-Usha Anand
Caribbean Cause
The section on Race in your textbook begins with Blackout, a short story by Roger Mais
(1905-1955), a Caribbean brown writer. The introduction gives you a number of details about
his literary activities and his sympathy for the Black underprivileged who are the inspiration
behind his work.

However, a little information about the West Indies and the nation’s freedom struggle
would help us to understand the context of the story which is set in the period of World War II.

It’s nationalist movement began in 1938 with the Labour Rebellion and Mais became a
writer for the weekly newspaper Public Opinion which was associated with the People’s
Nationalist Movement in Jamaica. He wrote an anti-British column “Now We Know” and
suffered imprisonment on charges of sedition. It was in prison that his work of social protest was
conceived. He was one of the first Jamaican writers to examine the wretched living conditions
endured by the country’s poor.

He was born into a middle-class family and received a good education so his sensitivities
were reasonably developed. He supported the nationalist movement in the 1930s and 1940s and
travelled to Europe. Earlier too, there had been attempts to create a self-governing federal state
consisting of the ten British colonies of the West Indies. Under the assumption that each of these
islands was too small to become independent on its own, plans and campaigns for the creation of
a federation had emerged in the 1920s and were discussed with greater urgency after World War
II. After eleven years of extensive negotiations, the Federation finally came into being in 1958.
It consisted of the larger colonies of Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica, as well as several small
others. However, it was wrecked by the ambitions of the oppositional movements in Trinidad
and Tobago and Jamaica, which successfully sought to increase their own popularity through
appeals to patriotism. The two island states were released into independence in 1962 while the
other eight resumed closer ties with Britain as semi-colonial ‘associated states’. All of them
(except Antigua and Monstserrat) gained full independence by 1980.

This detailed account might help you to understand the setting of the story “Blackout”—
against the Second World War. Even in that setting, burning issues of race, gender and class
manifest themselves powerfully.

About the Short Story

Roger Mais's short story is a piece that requires utmost attention, a focusing of the mind
on each detail in order to realize the final fullness of effect. The title itself is loaded with
symbolism, “black” connoting different things to different –people the most obvious being the
black/white divide. For artistic effect, the story depends on concreteness, on sensual impressions
that deliver their meaning without waste. It is a lean narrative which does not tolerate any
digression holding the reader’s attention by its sinewy strength.

The action of this story is compressed within a short continuous time frame and space. It
is the twilight hour and the episode takes place at a bus-stop, a public place. Both the characters

49
are simply revealed, not developed. So they are, in the language of criticism, flat rather than
round characters. They do not grow in any significant mental or psychological or emotional
manner in the course of the narrative. The background and setting are implied; not all the details
are spelt out. Yet there is no confusion in the reader’s mind about the moments of tension in the
story the appearance of the black man from the other side of the street, his lighting a cigarette,
her throwing away her cigarette, and the man's refusal to go away. They all build up towards the
climactic exchange between the two. And this exchange is extremely powerful though
understated and low key. Mais's command over subtle dialogue is remarkable.

Point of View
Stories can be told from various points of view. There is an omniscient point of view, the
direct observer’s point of view, the first person narration (an insider’s point of view and
narration) or the third person intimate where one character, detaching himself from a group, tells
us about all the others. This story is told by a direct observer.

The Story
Your textbook informs you that the story is set on a West Indian island city during the
Second World War, and describes an encounter between a black West Indian man and an
American girl. It was the era of segregation with separate schools, buses, restaurants for blacks
and whites.

Right from the title onwards, the term “black” emphasizes the racist tension in a society
where colour prejudice is widespread. The street lights being off points to a relative lack of
safety but “the atmosphere of exclusive respectability” conveys that the girl is in a relatively safe
zone where suburban householders live. She is confident and feels that if there is trouble, “one
good scream” can bring a number of people to her rescue.

The first inkling of black-white tension is given when Mais states that the slinking black
shadow materializing out of the darkness did not initially disconcert her. When it grows into a
conventionally dressed black young man, she is “intrigued”. What further ruffles her smugness
is his asking for a match as he has observed her smoking. As she doesn't have a matchbox, she
lets him use her cigarette to light his. The racial divide seen in juxtaposition with her hesitating
offer to allow the use of a lighted cigarette (in use) to light the black man's stub, actually
generates a tension of its own. The vividness of this description is striking against the backdrop
of "partial blackout". There is also a contrast between the race, gender, class divide which
separates the two, and the relatively intimate gesture of allowing someone to light a cigarette
from that which one is using. The tension assumes a dimension of gender – man versus woman.
The black man’s steady gaze affects her momentarily. It breaks her resistance. She allows him to
light his half a cigarette from hers. Apart from this, the potential negative energy of a tiny spark
(of fire) keeps coming to mind in this delicate situation with dangerous possibilities.

It is then that an unthinking act on her part leads to a dramatic move in the story. Instead
of returning her cigarette to her lips, she casually throws it away and the black man sees this
happen. He looks at her “with cold speculation”. As it turns out he was interested in the
cigarette she had thrown away. But his gaze does unnerve her. So we can see the race and
gender issues at work. The American girl doesn’t like his insolence and he apologises for making
her waste a whole cigarette. Inspite of her cold and rather indifferent and unprovocative
behavior, the American girl still manages to evoke a confrontational response in the black young

50
man. They get into an unpleasant exchange and the language the man uses is one of understated
threat.

When the man says “This isn’t America” we need to know that the West Indies were a
British Colony. Politics enters the language of gender—“In this country there are only men and
women, you'll learn about it”. He seems to be talking about issues of equality as well as of
democracy which were a major concern among blacks in those times. (“Is he talking in the
universal context of mankind we ask ourselves”). This is the language of the mob although the
young man denies any indecent intentions. Meanwhile, the bus arrives and the American young
woman leaves.

The black young man, strong, aloof and proud to have shaken her supreme confidence,
picks up the discarded cigarette she had thrown away. The class divide has also manifested itself
in the swift, hungry movement of grabbing the leftover. The beauty of the story lies in the
intensity of interest that is sustained throughout this socially and politically relevant piece as it
touches livewire issues of race, gender and class.

51
 14
TELEPHONE CONVERSATION
Wole Soyinka
-Usha Anand
About the Poet
Soyinka was born in 1935 at Abeokuta near Ibadan in Western Nigeria into the family of
a teacher and a social worker. Both his parents were Christians but the generation before were
medicine men and people who believed in tribal mores, occult, magic rites etc. Soyinka thus felt
connected to primitive African culture and its rich and complex heritage. This identification is
reflected in his drama which in language, form and content is intertwined with the mores of
Yoruba Culture.

Soyinka also wrote poetry which was initially avantgardistically sophisticated. But with
involvement with the civil war in Nigeria and his imprisonment in the 1960s it took on a more
serious, even tragic character. He was the first black author to be awarded the Nobel prize for
Literature in 1986.

Introduction
Amongst his best-known poems, this is a poem about an African's search for an
apartment in colour conscious Britain. Having initially studied at Ibadan, Soyinka moved to the
University of Leeds where he later got a doctorate. He spent six years in England and was a
dramaturgist at the Royal Court Theatre in London. As such he was reasonably well versed with
its cultural life and this familiarity is evident in the poem. The speaker tells us about a telephone
conversation regarding a property that he intends to rent from a white landlady.

The Poem
Soyinka’s technique in Telephone Conversation is to allow the bantering surface tone to
lightly spread over the graver implications underneath.

Without a physical interface, through something as impersonal as the telephone, the

speaker is able to strip a faceless landlady of all hypocrisy inculcated by “good breeding”. At the
same time, his own feelings of shame, even humiliation are exposed although he covers them up
with his wit, his tremendous command over language and imagery and even manages to strike a
blow at the lady’s imagined sense of propriety by talking of his “raven black” bottom.

He begins in a seemingly objective, levelheaded way, judging the location and price of
the property. The advantage was that the landlady said she stayed off the premises. In other
words, she would not be there to interfere with or comment upon the author’s use of the
property. So the speaker being a self-respecting man, thought he would let her know he was
African. He knows he is living in a racially conscious society where colour prejudice is rampant.
As is mentioned earlier in the material black-white confrontation in the west has proved to be the
bitterest, most tortuous and most prolonged racial confrontation. And the most visible physical
marker of this difference is colour. And colour is what almost all black writing is about. The
speaker here is a victim because of his colour. Colour is the man, so to say for the white
landlady. His humiliation has its origin in his being a black (no matter light or dark). When he
says, “I hate a wasted journey”, he means that he doesn’t wish to wait till the last moment for her
to see that he is African and then find excuses for sending him away. His announcement is met
with silence, and silence, they say, can speak louder than words. That her genteel status had

52
caused her silence is powerfully conveyed by the speaker's observation that silence can be a
substitute for an unpleasant or unpremeditated response -“silenced transmission of pressurized
good breeding”. When she does speak, she wishes to know how dark he is or rather, how light
complexioned or how dark.

The idea of the colour of one’s skin being put into a slot A or B or whatever robs one of
the feeling of the richness of human personality. In these days of power dressing and make-up,
we are all aware of the variety of inputs that make one's skin colour and tone what it is. In fact,
it might be difficult to find two equally, identically, fair or dark persons. The effacement of
personality is emphasized further by the phrase, “hide and speak”, which is exactly what a
telephone user does. He or she is not visible to the listener. And in the case of a public telephone
booth, it is literally a cabin out of which one talks. The repeated use of “red” is significant. It
could refer to anger or embarrassment.

But don’t forget that the lady is upper class. After the initial silence, she speaks; her
query is clinical and insensitive. And the speaker’s response, describing his skin colour as West
Africa Sepia, silences her for the second time. This time he imagines that she is mentally
scanning the entire range of possible human complexions. Spectroscopic is derived from
spectrum meaning range. We know that even among fair people and among the blacks there are
varied shades of complexion. The lighter the complexion, the better a coloured person feels.
And when the white woman can’t seem to locate “West Africa Sepia” she has to ask.

Of course, the poet’s outburst is stunning and has a sardonic humour to it. Talking of his
face, his palms the soles of his feet, he goes on to say that his bottom is “raven black”. Of course
she slams the receiver. The poet can almost feel it about his ears and concludes with a
befittingly insulting “wouldn’t you rather/ See for yourself.”

Concluding Comment
The poem is a resounding satire on racial prejudice in so called civilized societies and
gives vent to black anger in such situations. This is apartheid in action and after reading this
poem, even you can gauge the degree of resentment it generates.

53
 15
HARLEM
Langston Hughes

- Usha anand
About the poet
Harlem is the title of Langston Hughes’s poem included in your text book. So let us first
take a look at both the place Harlem which is synonymous with Black culture and Langston
Hughes who is one of the earliest and most prominent Black poets in America.

Harlem is a residential area of New York City, USA, a political and cultural focus for
African Americans. The Centre for Research in Black Culture is located here, next to the
Countee Cullen Library, an historic meeting place for writers since the 1920’s.

The Harlem Renaissance was a period of creativity, particularly in literature, among

African-Americans in the 1920’s. Like all great writers and poets of the community, Langston
Hughes, 1902-1967, imbibed a sense of indelible racial pride, largely because of his upbringing
in his grandmother’s household with the tradition of oral storytelling. He went to grammar
school in Lincoln, Illinois, where he was designated class poet. He later said this was because of
his race as African Americans were stereotyped as having rhythm. After graduating high school
in 1920 he returned to his father hoping to convince him to pay for an education at Columbia
University. But his father refused to finance a writer’s education and for a year Langston studied
to be an engineer. He left us 1922 because of racial prejudice within the institution and his
interests revolved around the Harlem neighborhood and he continued writing poetry.

Hughes was often in conflict with the goals and aspirations of the Black middle class and
felt they were adopting and accommodating eurocentric values and culture for social equality.
He depicted the low life i.e. lives of blacks in the lower socio-economic strata. He wrote of the
superficial divisions and prejudices based on skin colour within the Black community. He wrote,
“My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely
that of all human kind”. He stressed the importance of a racial consciousness and cultural
nationalism absent of self-hate that united people of African descent across the globe.

He was drawn to communism and went to the Soviet Union in 1932. Hughes wanted to
record and interpret the lives of the common black folk, their thoughts and habits and dreams,
their struggle for political freedom and economic well being. In the 1940s he declared himself a
social poet as distinct from a primarily lyric poet, thus giving formal recognition to a bias his
earlier work hinted at.

Socio-Political Context: A major aim of his work, he said, (Phylan, 11 No. 4 Winter
1950) p.307 was to interpret and comment upon Negro life and its relation to the problems of
Democracy. Taking the American Dream as his cue, Hughes had developed his poetic metaphor
of the dream, a concept which was to become a strategic theme, a major artery running through
the body of his work.

The dream is transmitted along two channels: first as an assortment of romantic fantasies
and desires, including the desire for a life rich in love and adventure. Secondly, as the dream of
political freedom and economic well-being. The latter is an extension of the former, and it is this

54
latter that is the “dream deferred” of the black man and black race. To 'defer' is to postpone, to
put off for a future time. So, for the Blacks, it is a cruelly long wait for what they desire. The
theme of the “dream deferred” finds its fullest expression in his social poetry.

Duality: When you read “Harlem” a poem of just eleven lines, you can observe a certain
dual aspect in its imagery. To understand this, let us take note of a special feature of black
culture, its music which is often referred to as “the blues”. Hughes wrote poetry which he saw as
the literary equivalent of Blues music. Ralph Ellison stated that the blues “at once express both
the agony of life and the possibility of conquering it through sheer toughness of spirit”.

These two aspects of the Black experience are reflected in the images of rottenness and
disease being juxtaposed with those of sweetness.

Analysis of the Poem: The images in Harlem are sensory, domestic, earthy, like blues
images. The stress is on deterioration-drying, rotting, festering, souring on loss of essential
natural quality. The raisin has fallen from a fresh juicy grape to a dehydrated but still edible
raisin to a sun-baked and inedible dead bone of itself. The Afro-American is not unlike the
raisin, for he is in a sense a desiccated trunk of his original African self, used and abandoned in
the American wilderness with the stipulation that he rot and disappear. Like the raisin lying
neglected in the scorching sun, the Black man is treated like a thing of no consequence. But the
raisin refuses the fate assigned to it; it metamorphoses instead into a malignant living sore that
will not heal or disappear. The metaphor is rather long drawn out but is symptomatic of a
serious disorder. Its stink is like the stink of rotten meat sold to black folks in so many ghetto
groceries; meat no longer suitable for human use, deathly. And while a syrupy sweet is not
central to the diet, it is still a rounding off dessert. But that final pleasure turns out to be a pain.

The elements of the deferred dream are like the raisin, sore meat and candy, little things
of no great consequence in themselves. But their unrelieved accretion packs together
considerable pressure. Their combined weight is too much to carry. The longer it is carried, the
heavier it gets. And if it is dropped, it might explode from all its strange, tortured, compressed
energies.

In short, a dream deferred can be a terrifying thing. Its greatest threat is its
unpredictability.

Further Reading
Jennie, Onvickekwa, Langston Hughes: An Introduction to the Poetry; New York: Columbia
University Press, 1976.

55
 16
STILL I RISE
Maya Angelou
-Usha Anand
About the Poet
Maya Angelou born on April 4, 1928 is a famous black American woman poet. The
introduction in your textbook gives you a lot of information about her.

In her thirties, Maya became a distinguished social activist author. Also her commitment
to promote black civil rights strengthened. She began to examine the nature of racial oppression,
racial progress and racial integration.

For many readers, she personifies the Afro-American female writer with a wide range of
experiences and interests. On the one hand, she is heir to the slave narrative; on the other she is
sister to the women authors of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920’s.

In one of her autobiographical works ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sing’, published in
1969, she says.
“The fact that the adult American Negro female
emerges a formidable character is often met with
amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is
seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the
struggle won by survivors and deserves respect
if not enthusiastic acceptance”.

Again she says,

“The Black female is assaulted in her tender

years by all the common forces of nature at
the same time that she is caught in the tripartite
crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical
hate and Black lack of power”.

Maya Angelou’s poetry seems to be conjured out of her by the soul of her people, in
particular, women; her journey towards selfhood is a metaphor of their lives. Her primary
concern is the human capacity for survival, redemption and transcendence. She maintains a
confident and positive attitude about the possibilities of life not by denying pain and sorrow in
her life but rather by focussing on the sense of humanity and self worth that have helped her
transcend these experiences.

In a newspaper interview with David Frost, published in The New Sun Newspaper, she
said, “growing up is very painful, almost impossible; growing up is admitting there are demons
you cannot overcome----. The greatest of all virtues is COURAGE”.
Surviving inspite of these demons is what Still I Rise is about.
The Poem
The poem has a raw energy and is addressed to a hostile world.

56
 The first stanza draws attention to the fact that accounts of the lives of an exploited,
suppressed, enslaved, racial group or community are invariably biased by colour prejudice, such
a strong cultural factor in western society. The phrase, “bitter twisted lies”, actually expresses
the bitterness of the poet herself. And her indomitable spirit refuses to be trod on, crushed. Like
dust, it still rises.

As the poem progresses, she uses new images to assert her spirit of survival; sassiness is
rudeness, a lack of respect. If a black woman's sassiness upsets people, so be it. If it makes
them gloomy, that is a victory for an oppressed group – black women. When she talks of oil
wells, she is referring to access to wealth.

Her amazing self-confidence is reiterated in her psychological security reaffirmed by

images of the certainty of the moon and the sun and the tides caused by the moon. The rising tide
is hope springing high.

She does not lose sight of the fact that people would not like to see her so confident.
'Broken with bowed head, and lowered eyes' is not how people will get to see her. Nor will they
see her with drooping shoulders, defeated and demoralized. She is bold, even arrogant, and can
laugh as if she has goldmines in her backyard. And the wealth represented by oil wells and gold
mines is not just material; it is an emotional and psychological resource, the source of strength.

All the hostility described in Stanza VI cannot upset the speaker.

That there is an undeniable physical dimension to sexuality is emphasized in Stanza VII.
To “dance like I've got diamonds/ At the meeting of my thighs” is to revel in one's sexuality
rather than deny it.

From line 20 onwards the mood of the poem becomes philosophical. The brazenness is
left behind. It is almost a recollection of the racial past of a whole community. The “hunts of
history's shame” refers to the horrible past of victims of the slave era – the torture, humiliation
and suffering described in all slave narratives of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

She talks of the pain her ancestors endured. Her own life is rooted in pain but she
transcends all to stay afloat to survive; “black” in line 33 is meaningfully used. So is the image
of the ocean. Significantly, the individual speaker here is herself the ocean which contains/bears
the welling and swelling of the tide, rather than being lost in the ocean. Other poets often see the
ocean as one of the inconquerable forces of nature. Here, the poet herself is the ocean unlimited
power personified.

Another natural image which follows is that of daybreak. The night of fear and terror
ends to give way to a beautiful clear day. And the poet faces this beautiful new day with 'gifts
that my ancestor's gave'. This phrase refers to the intense racial pride in African culture and
ancestry which all blacks see as a source of strength in their struggle for survival against heavy
adds.

When the slaves, powerless and crushed, dreamt of a future, surely they must have
dreamt and hoped for future generations free of bondage, happy and assertive. She in an
ascendant mood is the fulfillment and embodiment of that imagined dream of several past
generations of her ancestors.

57
 You observe that from line 29 onwards, as the poet shifts mentally to her racial past, the
rhythm of the lines becomes different. The long-drawn out suffering represented by long lines
culminates in the powerful brief assertiveness expressed in the repeated use of I rise, I rise, I rise
(7 times). This is reinforcement and reassertion of a triumphant self – the black poet.

58
 THEME: VIOLENCE AND WAR

Introduction

Human history is replete with wars. Wars were/are waged primarily for conquest of land and subjugation
of the conquered peoples. The heroes and warriors of various wars since the ancient times, have been the
stuff of legends, folktales and ballads. They occupy a dominant place in the psyche of the people of
various cultures. Literature which is a cultural product has not been indifferent to this eulogizing aspect
of war. The earliest of literature has had for its subject-war. The Indian epics Ramayana and
Mahabharata, Greek epics the Illiad and the Odyssey and the Roman Aeneid, all have for their subject
war, and ponder upon the question of honour and disgrace, love and hatred. An ancient Chinese Sun Tzu
authored the first book on military tactics and strategy The Art of War which adorns the shelves of many
modern military officers.

Martyrdom- the honour of dying for one's motherland has been thought of as the most honorable
death an individual can ever aspire for. War rhetoric no matter which side one is on, is full of
glorification of its purpose. The two world wars in the twentieth century, partially altered this perspective.
Due to rapid technological advancement which resulted in a vast scale of destruction, questions began to
be raised about the folly of war. "We must remember not only that the battle casualties of W.W. I were
many times greater than those of W.W.II, wiping out virtually a whole generation of young men and
shattering so many illusions and ideals; but also that people were wholly unprepared for the horrors of
modern trench warfare. W.W.I broke out on a largely innocent world, a world that still associated warfare
with glorious cavalry charges and the noble pursuit of heroic ideals". Norton Anthology of English
Literature (1891). Protests of various kinds against war tried to expose the emptiness and jingoism of
war rhetoric. However, the sad truth remains that almost every part of the world today is embroiled in
some form of violence or the other. Our own nation is beset with various kinds of warfare and violence.
Communal violence, ethnic violence, caste violence, terrorist violence is a reality we all are coping to live
with. Things have come to such a pass that it is now deemed necessary to wage war to combat violence.

The selection of poems, essays, short stories given for your study draw attention to the horrifying
aspects of war and violence. The subjects of these pieces are not Generals and warriors but the common
man or the common solider who suffers the consequences of the war the most. The focus of this course
as also this particular section is not the writers. This course has been prepared with a view to encourage
students to form "insights" into the various themes that emerge from the text(s). The focus therefore is on
developing skills of textual analysis, paying attention to the literary techniques and devices at work in the
text.
The section Violence and War raises some very pertinent questions about the nature of war and
violence. In a world ravaged by various kinds of violence, this section is not only very topical but also
very necessary.

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 17
DULCE ET DECORUM EST
Wilfred Owen
-Nalini Prabhakar
The Poet
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) was a British Soldier during W.W.I. He fought in France
from January 1917 as a second Lieutenant in the Manchester Regiment. He spent several days in
a bomb crater with the mangled remains of a fellow soldier, because of which he suffered 'shell-
shock'. He was sent to a war hospital in Edinburgh to recuperate. It is here that he met Siegfried
Sassoon and Robert Graves who encouraged his poetry. Owen returned to the front in 1918 and
was killed in combat on 4th November 1918.
Owen is perhaps the finest of the war poets. Most of his poems were published
posthumously. Owen's poetry shows an eyewitness account of the brutality of war, to a world
that still believed in "heroic wars". In the preface to a proposed volume of poems he wrote, "My
subject is war, and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity".

Summary
Originally the poem "Dulce et Decorum Est" was written as a personal letter to Jessie
Pope. Owen later decided to address his poem to the wider audience of all supporters of the war.
This is a powerful anti-war poem which emphasises the brutality of war, thereby undermining
the conventional notions of honour and glory associated with wars. The poem describes a soldier
dying from poison gas. After combat at the Front, the narrator and his troop of exhausted soldiers
are making their way back to the base, when a Gas shell is fired at them. A soldier is fatally
gassed and he is dying slowly, eaten away from inside, drowning in his own blood. The
horrifying image of the dying soldier permeates the narrator's dreams making him live the
nightmare over and over again.

In this poem a line from an ode by the Roman poet Horace "Dulce et Decorum Est Pro
Patria Mori" (It is sweet and proper to die for one's country) is being challenged by Owen. Owen
does not use the entire line in the title. He stops at "Its sweet and proper to die". He then
proceeds to paint a picture of death--brutal death. The manner of death described seems to
suggest that there is nothing that can justify this manner of death. After all there is nothing sweet
and proper about a man drowning in his own blood--"guttering, choking drowning "white eyes
writhing" "blood...gargling from froth corrupted lungs". The meaning of the poem is firmly
established at the end when the narrator says, "My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
/ To children ardent for some desperate glory / The old lie" Dulce et Decorum Est Pro patria
mori". The title then is extremely ironical and the irony is sustained through the entire poem.

Critical Analysis
Poetry is poetry because of the presence of certain elements such as metaphor, simile,
personification, alliteration and imagery. A poem usually has more than one image, but all the
images should cohere and work together.

The opening words of the poem "bent double" immediately catch our attention. The two
similes in the first two lines of the poems heighten the sense of drama. In the first, the soldiers
are like "beggars" and in the second the soldiers are like "hags"--sexless, old, associated with
witchcraft and death. By lines 5 & 6, the soldiers move from the state of "being like" beggars,
hags, to "being" blind, drunk and deaf. The narrator uses "cursed through sludge" to suggest the
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movement of the marchers, and this figuratively also suggests the state of mind of the marchers.
The initial lines with alliterating sounds create a claustrophobic march of exhausted soldiers.
Note the use of alliterating sounds "t"/"o"/"m"/"l" in the following lines.

Till on the haunting f lares we

t u r n e d o u r b a c k s,
And towards our distant rest
we began to trudge
M e n m a r c h e d a s l e e p. M a n y h a d
lost their boots
B u t l i m p e d o n, b l o o d - s h o d . A l l w e n t
lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even
to the hoots
Of gas shells dropping softly behind.

In the above quoted lines you will also note the accumulation of specific details. The phrases
used beginning from "Men marched" are also short and sharply declining as in "Men marched
asleep. All went lame, all blind". The first three phrases "Men marched...blood shod" describe
the physical appearance of the soldiers. The next three "All went lame...behind" describe the
total destruction of physical movement and physical senses---"lame", "blind", "drunk" and
"deaf".

Owen breaks up the iambic rhythm of the lines with the use of punctuations; commas in
the middle of lines, dashes, hyphens, exclamations. He deliberately attempts to break the
rhythm, to emphasize that war is not a rhythmic dance. This is further accentuated by the images
of stumbling, fumbling, staggering dying man. The pretty language of the poetry of his day is
substituted with brutal images of the reality of war. By these images Owen illustrates the poem's
ultimate irony which lies in its title "Dulce et Decorum Est". There are four clusters of images in
this poem:

1. Sleep or dream images--"haunting", "rest", "men marched asleep", "tired", in all my

dreams", "smothering".
2. Drowning images--these are found mostly in the 2nd and 3rd stanza. "Floundering",
thick green light", "under a green sea, I saw him drowning", "guttering choking,
drowning", "gargling".
3. Images of physical breakdown--"Bent double", "knock kneed", "lame", "limp", "drunk",
"fumbling", "clumsy", "stumbling", "writhing".
4. Images of breakdown of senses--"blind", "deaf", "helpless sight".

The men who enlist are innocent children who wish for desperate glory but the experience of
war will make them learn the truth, the truth inherent in "white eyes writhing", "face like a
devil's sick of sin "(although the soldier unlike the devil has not sinned) and "blood gargling
from the froth-corrupted lungs, Bitter as the cud of vile incurable sores on innocent tongues".
The truth that all war is brutal, ugly and inhuman.

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 18
CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR
Edna St. Vincent Milloy
-Nalini Prabhakar
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) :
Millay was born in Rockland, Maine. Her early life involved movement from town to town
with her two sisters, relying on the kindness of friends and relatives. Though poor, her mother
Cora, traveled with books and read them to her children. The family finally settled in Camden in
a small house on the property of Cora’s well to do aunt. It was here that Millay wrote the first
of her poems which brought her recognition and fame on the strength of her poem, “Renascence”
(1912). She was awarded a Scholarship to Vassar College. After her graduation. she moved to
Greenwich Village in New York. Millay was known as much for her poetry as for her
unconventional, bohemian lifestyle and her many love affairs with men and women. The poem
“Conscientious Objector” was written in 1917 during W.W.I. and was published in the
collection “Wine from These Grapes”.

Analysis:
The title of the poem gives us a clear indication of the theme. The Conscientious
Objector is a person who refuses to be a part of the armed forces for moral and ethical reasons.
Thus, by inference war itself is being considered as immoral. War is immoral because it
militates against life and facilitates death. This poem Conscientious Objector then, is a statement
against the immorality of war as well as death which follows in its wake.

The poem begins with the recognition that death is inevitable, life and death being the
two sides of the same coin. The affirmative tone of “I shall die” is followed by an equally
vehement denial “But that is all I shall do for Death”. Though she knows Death is inevitable,
she refuses to aid Death in its designs. The personification of Death in the opening line serves to
heighten the sense of struggle. The resistance offered here is not against death as part of the
cosmic design, but Death as a consequence of man’s mindless actions in mindless wars.

The poet offers a passive non-cooperation as a method of resisting this pointless death.

The following lines (lines 2-5) capture the urgency in the situation beautifully. Death
like a hunter is preparing to set about his business in places like Cuba and the Soviet Balkans,
which are in the grip of civil war and strife certain of finding many victims. Death is leading his
horse out of the barn in a hurry – “I hear the clatter on the barn-floor. He is in haste.”
However, the business in Cuba or the Balkans is not the handiwork of Death. The civil war and
strife is engineered by man and Death is reaping the benefits of man’s folly. The resultant
suffering and death, the poet seems to suggest is avoidable only if man refuses to invite death
and chooses life instead. The poet on her part shows the way by refusing to assist Death-- “But I
will not hold the bridle while he cinches the girth. And he may mount by himself; I will not
give him a leg up.”

In the next line “Though he flick my shoulders with his whip, I will not tell him
which way the fox ran”, Death is presented as a hunter who is killing not for prey but for sport.
The fox obviously stands for the people who are the innocent victims of war. The image of the
hunt, once again reinforces the idea of war as a meaningless cruel game of Death. A subtle irony
in these lines alerts us to the fact that war is a sport for people, who see death only as a

62
spectacle. Yet, at the same time, the hunt would not be possible without the active participation
of the hounds, or in other words the foot soldiers. Hence the foot soldiers are in a significant
way responsible for this game of Death.

This theme of Death hunt is carried forward in lines 12-13, as well, but this is another
kind of hunt. The poet points out the essential inhumanity of the hunt by referring to the sordid-
history of slavery in America. In this Death hunt, black men, women and children were
brutally hunted down by the white masters. The brutality is captured in the poignant image of
the terrified black boy hiding in the swamps to save his life. The first part of the poem ends
once again with the resolve that, although death is inevitable, the poet will not do anything to aid
Death. The poet’s passive resistance in the face of imminent physical pain and torture, (flick
my shoulders with his whip”, “hoof on my breast”) is a measure of the poet’s pacifist
beliefs.

The second part of the poem, from lines 16-24, continues the theme of resistance but
this time in the face of inducements. The poet promises to protect not just her friends but her
enemies as well against Death – “I will not tell him the whereabouts of my friends nor of my
enemies either.” In this part, she presents a world view which is not only pacifist but inclusive
as well. She refuses to be “a spy in the land of the living” She refuses to “deliver men to
death” The poet in a very quiet way, through consistent denials asserts life. This quiet
determination born out of the poet’s pacifist world-view, is her response to the militarist
environment of the first World War. The concluding lines of the poem marks a movement
outward. While re-affirming her resolve to resist death, she tries to reach out to others and
instill the same resolve in them. These lines take us back in time and remind us of all the
betrayals which aided Death in its designs. This reminder is also a warning not to fall into
Death’s trap. There is also, in these lines a passionate appeal to all those men who have become
the agents of Death to affirm life. The poet assures the people that she would resist Death at all
costs. Through her own example, she is perhaps urging the people to become “Conscientious
Objectors”.

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 19

GENERAL, YOUR TANK IS A POWERFUL VEICHLE

Bertolt Brecht
-Nalini Prabhakar

Brecht was born in Augsburg, Bavaria and was raised in a comfortable middle class home. He
was forced to flee Germany in 1933 because of his leftist beliefs and his opposition to the Nazi
regime of Hitler. He spent 14 years in exile in Scandinavia and United States. He returned to
Europe in 1947. Two years later he moved to East Berlin and remained there until his death in
1956.

As a creator Brecht is many sided; poet, dramatist, theoretician, director critic. As a

dramatist, Brecht has been highly influential in the 20th century. As a poet his contribution
comprises of more than 1500 poems collected in several volumes. His poetry is a faithful
chronicle of his times, and has for its subject the common man-the worker, the peasant, the
soldier in the trenches.

Introduction

“General, your tank is a powerful vehicle” is from Brecht’s “A German War Primer”.
This is a simple poem and the meaning that it conveys is simple yet profound, and it does this
with a directness which is both touching and thought provoking. In “Hymn to Communism”
Brecht writes “It is the simple which is so difficult”. This in a nutshell is Brecht’s principle on
Art, and the simplicity is both of expression as well as thought. To get a feel of this poem let
us look at some other parts from “A German Primer” which express a similar anti-war
sentiment as the “General…”

1. Those at the top say This way to Glory. Those down below say This way to Grave.

The War which is coming

Is not the first one. There were
Other wars before it
When the last one came to an end
There were conquerors and conquered.
Among the conquered the common people
Starved. Among the conquerors
The common people starved too.

When it comes to marching many do not know

That their enemy is marching at their head
The voice which gives them their orders
Is their enemy’s voice and
The man who speaks of the enemy
Is the enemy himself.

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Analysis
The poem is addressed to the Generals of war and each stanza begins with General. This
is interesting because the Generals hardly ever lead at the front. They are perhaps those that least
risk their lives. They plan attack strategies but are distanced from the sordid business of fighting
in the war. It is only right that this poem should be addressed to them as it makes a powerful
statement against war.

Let us first sum up the poem. The first stanza deals with the powerful tank which
‘Smashes down forests and crushes hundred men”. Although it can do this, it is nonetheless
powerless, because it cannot propel itself. It needs a driver.

The second stanza deals with the powerful bomber that “flies faster than a storm and
carries more than an elephant”. The bomber too, like the tank suffers from the same defect. It
needs a mechanic to fly. Note the ironic use of the word “powerful”, in both these stanzas. The
last stanza states that man is useful for he is the one who converts the otherwise powerless tanks
and bomber into powerful instruments of destruction. But then even man suffers from one defect.
This defect is his ability to think. The use of “defect” in this stanza is highly ironical for this
defect is not really a defect but the crowning feature of human beings.

Brecht’s concern whether in his plays or his poems has been to encourage the
audience/reader to think. He once said “Nothing is more important than learning to think crudely.
Crude thinking is the thinking of great men”. Brecht in this poem is suggesting that if only man
begins to think, he can render all machines/weapons of destruction powerless, and put on end to
wars by refusing to co-operate with war-mongers.

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 20
THE DOG OF TETWAL
Manto
-Dr. Neeta Gupta

About the Author

In the world of Urdu Short Stories, one name that stands towering above all others is that
of Saadat Hasan Manto. The sheer intensity of his stories, particularly those on the Partition of
India, leaves one almost gasping for breath as it were. Manto lived through the experiences of the
Partition and like many other writers who belonged to that period of time, re-lived the horror and
the incomprehensible violence and brutality of that year through his writings on the theme. What
was different about Manto’s stories was that he wrote dispassionately and objectively, taking no
sides and pronouncing no judgements. He was deeply wounded by the sudden savagery leashed
upon man by man, upon brother by brother, on neighbour by neighbour, upon one community by
the other.

Manto belonged to a middle-class Kashmiri family of Amritsar. He was born in Sambrala

(which is some miles from Amritsar) on the eleventh of May 1912. His short life span saw him
migrate to Pakistan after the partition, where he died in Lahore in 1955 at the age of forty three.

Manto’s father, Maulvi Ghulam Hasan, was a well educated man and worked as a
government official in Sambrala. Soon after Manto’s birth he shifted to Amritsar and set up
residence in Kucha Vakilan. He retired as Additional Sessions Judge. As far as formal education
is concerned, Manto failed to make his mark. He could clear his school leaving examination only
in the third attempt and it is highly ironical that one of the subjects which he was unable to pass
was Urdu. He entered The Hindu Sabha College in Amritsar in 1931 but failed in the first year
itself and so dropped out. A few years later, in l934, following the advice of a school friend in
Amritsar, he took admission in the famous Aligarh Muslim University. But the story got repeated
all over again and Manto did not do well.

It was around this time that he met Bari Alig, the man who put him on the path of
becoming a writer. Bari was himself a writer and journalist and immediately sensed Manto’s
bent of mind, his talent and his fascination with the idea of bringing about a revolution. He
introduced Manto to Russian and French literature and set for him the task of translating Victor
Hugo’s play The Last Days of a Condemned Man into Urdu. Manto finished it in an incredibly
short time of two weeks! This translation was published and was followed by a translation of
Oscar Wilde’s Vera. Having successfully completed these tasks Manto was easily persuaded to
tiy his hand at creative writing, writing original stories in Urdu. Here too Manto proved to be a
man truly gifted with the power of creative expression. He could write out his stories in an
incredibly short span of time and rarely needed to revise his drafts. How much the massacre at
Jalianwallah Bagh had impressed upon the mind of the seven year old Manto is evident from the
fact that one of his first short stories to be published in a magazine was about the tragic incident
and he returned to the bloody memories in a later story written almost in the last years of his life
when he wrote ‘It Happened in 1919’.

Around 1935 Manto spent about three months at a hill station in Batauàt to recover from
tuberculosis. When it was found that he was suffering from no such ailment, he returned to
Amritsar and then moved to Lahore where he took up his first regular job with a magazine called

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Paras. Disillusionment soon followed and he gave up the job and moved to Bombay in 1935
itself, this time to work as editor for a flim magazine Mussawar, at forty rupees per month.
Manto stayed in Bombay from 1935 to 1947, only to leave it for one and a half year in between
when he went to Delhi to work with All India Radio.

All along Manto continued writing stories, plays and essays. The first collection of his
stories appeared in 1940 and was followed by a volume of essays in 1942. In his one and a half
year stint with All-India Radio, he wrote more than a hundred plays. Not being very happy in
Delhi, Manto moved back to Bombay to take up his old job at Mussawar. He soon branched off
into free lancing for various film companies as their screenplay writer. He worked for Saroj,
Movietone, Hindustan Cinetone and Imperial Film Company. In 1943 he joined Filmistan for
which he wrote a number of films most notable among which was Eight Days where Manto
himself played a small part. He even wrote the story of the famous film Mirza Ghalib but
unfortunately this film was made after Manto had left for Pakistan. The screenplay for the film
was written by Rajinder Singh Bedi and it was directed by Sohrab Modi. From Filmistan Manto
moved to join Bombay Talkies.

Manto met his future wife Safia Begum in Bombay. It was an arranged match and he was
taken aback when he was accepted by Safia’s family despite his irregular income, ad-hoc nature
of job and his habit of drinking. But Manto’s life with Safia was a happy one and together they
tried to combat their difficult financial circumstances. The couple had four childrena son Arif
(who passed away tragically at the tender age of one and a half years) and three daughters
Nikhat, Nuzhat and Nusrat.

Manto’s family was on the other side of the border the day India was partitioned. He was
literally torn between the two countries, unable to decide whether to stay or go. All around him
was chaos and anarchy unleashed on the world with a sudden ferocity and with so much of
barbarity that it was impossible to make any sense of it. Manto was tormented by innumerable
questions when he saw the merciless killings and unprecedented violence all around him. Both
India and Pakistan were free but, as he observes, ‘man was a slave in both countries, of
prejudices, of religious fanaticism of bestiality of cruelty’. He was unable to decide which of the
two countries he would now call his homeland. His family was in Pakistan and he was in the
land where his roots were. Should he cross over the line or not was the question that constantly
plagued his mind. Finally he decided to go to Lahore.

Manto lived for seven years in Pakistan in Lahore and died from depression and his drink
induced liver ailment on l8 January 1955. These seven years were strife-torn years for a sensitive
writer who was uprooted from the land he loved and that he carried with him in his mind till his
last breath. He faced extreme poverty and deprivation as he had no steady source of income. In
his last days he was reduced to a state of virtual penury and had to take refuge at his in-law’s
place. But these seven years were very profitable from the point of view of Manto the writer as
he wrote one hundred and twenty seven short stories during this time apart from various essays,
sketches and memoirs. The nightmarish reality of the horrific division of the subcontinent was
transformed into great literature as Manto wrote one story after another on the theme. Siyah
Hashiye, a collection of short sketches on the Partition, is notable for its grim humour and utterly
detached tone that becomes a powerful tool for recreating the horror without any sentimentality
or perverse, obsessive indulgence in violence.

67
The Partition
Partition of the subcontinent into two separate geographical entities was that calamitous
event in its history that changed not only its physical boundaries forever but also altered the lives
of its people in an irrevocable manner. The horror, the madness, the bestiality, the violence,
arson, looting and rape that followed in the wake of the political decision was unprecedented.
Suddenly, overnight, all those secure walls of a shared tradition, shared culture, shared history
came crumbling down. People of different communities, who till then had led a harmonious and
peaceful co-existence, now turned into enemies. Reason was the first casualty and fear and then
rage were its first outcome. Neighbours who till yesterday would have died for each other now
thirsted for one another’s blood simply because they belonged to different communities. Scenes
of senseless carnage were witnessed everywhere. A communal frenzy, a hypnotic obsession with
violence overtook the people on both sides of the dividing line. It was ironical that the people of
the same country, who had set an example of winning a struggle in a non-violent manner,
following the ideals of Gandhi and had thrown off the yoke of British subjugation, would now
turn against each other. Certainly these were demented times when people had no consideration
for either young or old, child or woman and all suffered a horrifying fate. If any managed to
escape physical violence or torture, the memory of what they witnessed scarred their minds
forever and none emerged unscathed from the holocaust.

For writers who wrote around that time it became almost an inward compulsion to write
about the Partition of the country. For most of them the memory of what they had suffered or
witnessed was too recent to allow for objectivity in their writings about it. There was an
obsessive preoccupation with violence as they had been sufferers, eye-witnesses and tragic
participants in the horrendous events. The horrors suffered and witnessed had become a part of
their experiential world. They were too near and too much involved in the holocaust. The stories
that were written immediately after the Partition therefore, tend to recreate the horror in all its
details without many attempts at objectivity or an imaginative rendering of the events being
described. These stories could not even offer any historical explanation nor see any political
necessity for the suffering. They are marked by a sense of rage and helplessness and also a sense
of incomprehensibility of it all due to its utter meaninglessness. Writers like Rajinder Singh
Bedi, Krishan Chander, Bhishm Sahni, Ibne lnsha, Kamleshwar, Umm-e-Ummara, Kulwant
Singh Virk, Sant Singh Sikhon, Khushwant Singh, Ibrahim Jalees, S.K. Vatsayan and many
more; all gave expression to their tormented souls through the medium of fiction. History thus
entered the realm of Fiction but a rendering of the same event brought into focus the human face
of the tragedy. What were merely some figures and statistics in the historical chronicles of the
time now assumed human identities through the works of these creative writers. Instead of just
numbers so many dead, so many wounded, so many raped, so many homeless-these fictional
historical narratives tried to show the actual suffering that lay behind each face, each number.
For a historian the holocaust of 1947 can perhaps be covered in two volumes of objective
recording. For the fiction writer, however, the sad event threw up unlimited possibilities of
delineation and treatment as there were innumerable faces of grief and an equally limitless
number of questions that erupted from the sudden barbarism and bestiality of man to man. The
writers tried to grapple with their fractured psyches with the basic question ‘why’? Why did the
shared social, cultural, traditional and historical fabric collapse? Why did we turn killers and
violators? Why did we forget the past? Why did we give in to rage rather than reason the
questions are endless. The fictional writings took up these questions in one story after another, in
one novel after another, looking for answers but failing to find any.

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Fictional historical narratives about the Partition developed basically on two lines. There were
those who re-evoked the senseless carnage, the horrifying brutalities and the numbing
meaningless violence that the different communities perpetrated on each other. Then there were
those narratives that focused on the fear, the agony, and the insanity which resulted from the
sudden dislocation of people, uprooting them cruelly from places which had been home to them
for generations, only to be thrown into a strange alien land and told that henceforth this was their
home. The suffering and anguish that resulted from being wrenched away from familiar
surroundings forever, is sensitively delivered in these stories.

In 1948, India and Pakistan went to war over territorial boundaries, principally which
nation would govern Kashmir. The war, however, spread all along the frontier. This tragedy was
the impetus for “The Dog of Tetwal”, which gives a microcosmic view of the hateful struggle.
The unfortunate division between the people of the two countries is a legacy of the Partition.
Although nature continues in harmony in the story's mountain setting, the Pakistani and Indian
soldiers who face each other there cannot be at peace. The friendly dog who is unable to
comprehend the changed circumstances becomes a helpless and innocent victim of the tension
between the two. The manner in which it is first befriended and then killed by the soldiers
effectively brings out the irrational hatred that had led to unprecedented violence during the
partition and that continues to mark the relationship between the two communities.

The Dog of Tetwal: A Discussion

‘The Dog of Tetwal’ is a story that is set in a time immediately after the partition of
India. The hateful struggle about which country would govern Kashmir had led to a war that had
spread all along the frontier. This ongoing war forms the background to the story and the very
first words of the story tell us that there are ‘two sides.’ In a purely matter of fact way we are told
that one can hear ‘occasional bursts of firing’ but ‘never the sound of human shrieks.’ These two
sides are of course those of Hindustan and Pakistan and in the immediate context we have two
mountain peaks being defended by both respectively.

The Natural Scene

As against the man-made calamity Manto gives us an idyllic description of the natural
world which goes about its business ‘oblivious to the battle.’ The tranquility of the mountains
pervades in spite of the tension. Manto gives us an almost poetic description of the peace and
harmony in nature. In the world of Nature, peace is palpable. Flowers continue to bloom, bees go
about their business of sipping nectar, birds are singing, and fluffy white clouds sail lazily in the
skies. The occasional shot strikes a discordant note in the peaceful scene.

What do you think is Manto’s purpose in giving us this idyllic description?

Is it not ironic that even the serenity of the physical world is unable to bring peace into the world
of humans? By pitting the battle against this idyllic natural scene Manto further heightens the
fact that man and his struggle for power disrupt the natural order of things.

The Question of Identity

Men have created insurmountable barriers between themselves; barriers that are based on
the differences of culture, community, religion and more recently nation. The sense of difference
percolates through the use of words like ‘the two sides’, ‘Hindustan’ and ‘Pakistan’, ‘Sikh’ and
‘Musalman’, ‘this side ’, ‘that side’ and so on. Identity in Manto’s story is now being determined
and defined by one’s belonging to a particular nation. Geographical boundaries which determine
a nation’s identity now by extension determine the identity of those who live within those

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demarcated lines. One should not forget the fact that for India as well as for Pakistan the concept
of a separate state was a new and recent phenomenon. The sense of a shared culture however,
comes as a reminder in the song being sung by a Hindustani soldier. The tales of Heer Ranjha
were equally beloved of Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims. Thus when Banta Singh begins singing a
‘Heer’ in a melancholy voice, he is committing no treason or crime since he is drawing on a deep
repository of a shared culture between the two countries that goes back hundreds of years. Manto
places other similar indications within the story – the smoke from fires on both sides rises and
mingles in the air; Subedar Himmat Khan can read as well as write Gurmukhi - all pointing to
the fact that till very recently the warring sides had belonged to one and the same country. A
geographical division however seems to have divided the hearts of the people as well. In ‘The
Dog of Tetwal’ Manto explores the concept of a nation as understood, defined and enforced by
the state machinery and exposes the rigidity and senselessness behind it through his poignant
description of a dog’s fate at the hands of those who protect the physical boundaries that define
the nation.

Boundaries extend to the Animal Kingdom

In Manto’s story the national boundaries seem to extend to the animal kingdom as well.
The dog that strays into the Hindustani camp is given a Hindustani name and the point is
reinforced by the label the soldiers put around its neck pointing to the fact that it is a Hindustani
dog. The dog however is merely a dog, an animal and has no understanding of such divisions
between humans. It wags its tail for both. But the way it meets its end exposes the animosity that
lurks beneath the surface lives of the people on the two sides and also the senselessness of the
violence that such animosity generates. The dog exemplifies the fate of all innocent victims of
such violence.

On the dog’s first appearance in the Hindustani camp it is affectionately named ‘Chappad
Jhunjhun’ by Banta Singh. Harnam Singh expresses his anxiety that that the dog could be a
Pakistani. A soldier who is not named, but whose anger is evident in the way he digs up the
ground with the heel of his boot, gives expression to the senselessness of the political decision
that had thrust this division on a people who had till very recently had lived shared lives within a
shared culture. “Now even dogs will have to be either Hindustani or Pakistani,” he says.

The dog being christened ‘Chapad Jhunjhun’ and being given a Hindustani identity
brings an element of cheer in that camp. ‘From time to time, each one would affectionately
address it as Chapad jhunjhun and cuddle it,’ writes Manto.

When the same dog appears at the Pakistani camp in search for food, completely
oblivious of the fact that there is a cruel division between the two sets of humans even though
outwardly they appear to be the same, it is greeted with familiarity. Obviously the dog had been
to the Pakistani camp earlier too. On this visit however it carries a label around its neck which
gives rise to some anxiety in the Pakistani camp. Subedar Himmat Khan is prompted to report
the matter to his platoon Commander and we learn that the dog had previously stayed at the
camp for several days. This time however, its name on the tag and the line declaring ‘This is a
Hindustani dog’ causes a flutter and some consternation in the Pakistani camp. Manto is almost
amused at Himmat Khan’s anxiety but effectively brings out the paranoia concerning the
question of one’s identity in the changed times and also the absurd limits to which the same was
being taken by both sides.

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 To counter the Hindustani move the Pakistanis tie another name tag around the dog’s
neck, this one declaring him to be ‘Sappar Sun Sun’ and a Pakistani dog at that. The dog is of
course ignorant of what’s going on. All it wants is food and probably shelter. When it is
redirected towards the Hindustani camp it goes without a second thought.

The Story as an Allegory

By now we realize that Manto’s story is gradually shaping up as an allegory. An
Allegory in its simplest form means a piece of writing where characters are not individuals but
personified abstractions and the happenings are purely symbolic. ‘An Allegory is a form of
extended metaphor, in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative, are equated with the
meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. The underlying meaning has moral, social,
religious, or political significance, and characters are often personifications of abstract ideas as
charity, greed, or envy. Thus an allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a
symbolic meaning.’ Additionally allegories are designed to teach something – an idea, a moral
lesson and in an allegory character and event mean more than themselves. In Manto’s story the
dog becomes symbolic of all those innumerable refugees for whom the question of their identity
had become confused overnight and who had been shunted from one side to the other not being
able to find a place they could call their own. Additionally it also becomes symbolic of all
innocent victims of violence who pay the price for the cruel acts of others.

In the narrative the dog is shunted from one camp of soldiers to the other where the two
camps belong to the two warring sides. The ‘two sides’ are of course the state machinery of the
two newly defined nations and whose arbitrariness, irrationality, but at the same time ruthless
power is exemplified in the soldiers of both sides.

It is ironic that the dog is fired at merely because it is approaching the Hindustani camp
from the opposite side. Jamadar Harnam Singh expresses his concern: “He’s coming our way . . .
The rope is tied around its neck . . . but he’s coming from there . . . the enemy camp.” This is
enough to infuriate Harnam Singh and he fires at the dog. It is pathetic the way the poor innocent
dog runs to save its life at first towards one camp and then towards the other. The senselessness
behind the violence is severe and unmistakable. The dog that had been christened by the
Hindustanis as well as by the Pakistanis is killed because its identity is put under a scanner. It
had been safe when no such classifications had been thrust on its head.

What do you think is Manto trying to explore and question in this whole story?
Is he implying that man made divisions merely cause strife and turmoil and ultimately
lead to destruction?

Is he making a comparison between the dog’s fate and the fate of thousands of refugees
who had been rendered homeless suddenly and many of whom lost their lives merely because an
identity hitherto unknown to them had suddenly been thrust on their heads?

A dog’s death?
The dog of Tetwal dies on no man’s land and it is ironic that it is killed by those that had
made a show of making it belong to their side. The suspicion, the hatred, the fear finds an outlet
in a senseless killing of an innocent dog. By calling it ‘The Dog of Tetwal’ Manto has raised an
additional and basic question of the identity of such people whose national boundaries were not
yet determined. We need to recall the immediate context of the story at this point. The war is
now about Kashmir and at the moment it belongs to neither side. How will the status of such

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people be defined, Manto is asking a very valid question here to which there are no easy
answers. The dog also becomes symbolic of all such refugees whose fates hung in a similar
limbo.

It is ironic that the dog is killed by those who had supposedly given it an identity. The
fate of innocent victims of violence is symbolized in the senseless killing of the dog of Tetwal.
Violence has many faces but it always has one beginning. It begins with a failure of reason; it is
lodged in senselessness, it is perpetrated by irrationality and it is always mindless. Manto’s
poignant story about the dog successfully illustrates the irrationality behind acts of violence. The
soldiers who had affectionately cuddled the dog finally kill it in a senseless rage. The worst part
is that they take pleasure in inflicting pain. Manto is clearly pointing a finger at the
dehumanizing effects of violence and its dangerous outcome.

Ultimately the dog of Tetwal lies dead on no man’s land. For one warring side it had died
a ‘martyr’s death’ while for the other it has met a ‘dog’s death’. Whichever way you look at it,
the dog remains an innocent victim of the senseless brutality that hides beneath the surface lives
of the two communities. Additionally, by making a dog the protagonist of his story Manto is able
to universalize the idea of innocent victims. The image of the friendly dog who had wanted
nothing but food and shelter and who had wagged its tail alike for the two sets of soldiers
ultimately being shot to death is a profoundly moving indictment of all forms of violence. It does
not understand, cannot retaliate, it cannot even save itself. It is merely a mute victim of the
brutality of those whom he had trusted. It therefore becomes symbolic of all such victims of
violence who are abused and assaulted for no fault of theirs.

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 LIVING IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD

- Dr. Seema Suri

Objectives

This section includes a brief introduction to globalization, a phenomenon that has been at the
centre of scholarly debate and discussion for many decades. I have also summarized different
perspectives on globalization, that aim to enrich your understanding and provide a context for the
critical essays, poems, and short story in this section.

Introduction: What is globalization?

How does one define a term that is so complex, with many layers and dimensions to it? Broadly
speaking, globalization refers to significant worldwide changes that have been taking place since
the latter half of the twentieth-century, leading to increased global interconnectivity and
integration in the economic, social, technological, and political spheres; fostering a sense of
belonging to a global community that transcends family, society, and nation. Globalization is a
catch-all term, encompassing a range of phenomena. Some of the important ones are
summarized.

Economic globalization: It is primarily characterized by the emergence of a global market, based

on the principles of free trade. This was sought to be accomplished through the formation of the
World Trade Organization in 1995, the most significant development in terms of economic
globalization. Other characteristics of globalization are,

- Growth in international trade; with a rise in the number of multinational, and bilateral trade
agreements;

- expansion of the services sector. The meaning of the word trade expanded to include not only
goods and production but services;

- increase in cross border investment in markets, FDI flows, and outsourcing of production
processes;

- growth of corporate giants through mergers and acquisitions. For instance, the gross annual
revenue of Wal-Mart, the largest US retail chain, was US $ 485,000 million in 2017, more
than that of many developing countries and small nation states; and

- privatization: all over the world governments sold off state-owned corporations which had
become unprofitable.

As Saul (2005) has summarized:

Since 1950 world trade has multiplied – between twelve and twenty-two-fold.
Worldwide foreign direct investment has grown fifteen-fold since 1970. For
foreign direct investment to developing countries, the multiple is twenty. The

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 daily turnover in foreign exchange markets was $15 billion in 1973. Now it is
over $1.5 trillion. Technology production has multiplied six times, the
international trade in technology, nine times. In 1956, it was possible to have
eighty-nine simultaneous transatlantic telephone conversations by cable. Today,
by satellite and fibre optics, there are one million, plus faxes and e-mails.

Informational: Developments in information and communication technologies in the early

nineties have revolutionized the way information is stored, processed, and transmitted. The
internet, satellites, submarine fibre optic cables, and wireless communications have impacted
almost every sphere of human activity; from education to genetics. Personal communications,
trans border data flow, governance and banking have become more efficient. Think of the ease
with which you can communicate via electronic mail, apply online for a course or shop for a pet;
the list is endless. Information technology has been an important driver of globalization and
changed the way people live their lives.

Social: Due to improved infrastructure, travel has become faster and cheaper. As a result, the
volume of travel and tourism has increased sharply. In addition to that is the growing body of
transnational white and blue-collar workers. Europe, for instance, is home to millions of migrants
from the Mediterranean region. However, migration to a foreign land is not always voluntary;
people leave their countries to escape hostile living conditions, war, religious or political
persecution, and natural calamities. Sometimes, in their desperation they enter other countries
through illegal means. Many are victims of human trafficking; forced to work for low wages.
Migration, both legal and illegal, has grown to the extent that, in 2015, according to UN data, 3.3
per cent of the world’s total population comprised people who live in a country other than the
one they were born in.

There has been a shift in occupations as well, with the number of people in the services
sector increasing and those in the agricultural and industrial sectors decreasing. Movement of
people to urban centres is another worldwide trend. Indicators for social globalization include (a)
growth in cross-border personal contacts; tourist flows, resident foreign population, telephone
traffic, (b) access to cross-border information flow through the internet, TV, foreign press
products, and (c) proximity to international outlets and bookstores, volume of export/ import.
Ranked on the basis of these criteria; the Netherlands, Belgium, and Singapore are some of the
most globalized countries.

Cultural: Cross-cultural exchange has been facilitated through the mass media, easy access to
consumer products and lifestyle goods produced by multinationals, increased interaction between
people, travel, and migration. Evidence of international influences is mostly to be found in
popular culture where there is a desire to consume not just foreign goods but culture as well.
Some obvious examples are:

- cinema: you must have read about Hollywood films being released simultaneously in major
metropolises of the world, sometimes in regional language versions, as happened with the
immensely popular Spiderman-3 movie, dubbed and released in Bhojpuri. Similarly,
Bollywood cinema is also very popular in China as well as Dubai. Dangal earned more in
China than it did in India and the popular movie Three Idiots did exceptionally well in South
Korea.

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- food: it is not uncommon or surprising to find an Indian restaurant in a remote town of New
Zealand or an Israeli one in the hill-towns of Himachal Pradesh. But American food chains,
like McDonald’s and Starbucks have the most visible presence in all cities of the world.

- fashion: again, it is western apparel that has begun to replace traditional attire. Jeans for
casual wear and suits for formal occasions are the most popular.

These are just a few random examples of cultural assimilation. Consuming foreign culture when
in your own country is generally a happy experience. Eating the occasional burger with your
friends at a McDonald’s outlet, buying a pair of branded jeans, or watching your favourite
superhero movie is fun but to live in a foreign country and adapt to new social norms is more
complicated. You will read more about this in a later section.

Globalization: an evaluation

The most dominant of perspectives on globalization has always been the economic one.
Politicians, technocrats, and economists believed that global markets, freed from narrow national
interests and restrictive regulations would eventually lead to economic growth which would
benefit both developed and developing countries. The resulting prosperity would empower the
underprivileged and citizens of dictatorships to establish new democracies. These ideals of
market- oriented policies, democratic politics, and individual rights promised to promote the
well-being of billions across the world:

Globalization is helping to give birth to an economy that is closer to the classic

theoretical model of capitalism, under which rational individuals pursue their
interests in the light of perfect information, relatively free from government and
geographical obstacles. It is also helping to create a society that is closer to the
model that liberal political theorists once imagined, in which the power lies
increasingly in the hands of individuals rather than governments, and in which people
are free, within reasonable bounds, to pursue the good life wherever they find it.

(Micklethwait & Wooldridge, 2000, p. 340)

Political events like the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989, the end of the Cold War, Margaret
Thatcher’s drive to privatize state-owned organizations, and President Mikhail Gorbachev’s
subsequent embracing of classic capitalism further strengthened the ideology of the free market
and established the supremacy of the United States in the global economic and political system.
There was confidence that countries would cooperate peacefully as players in one worldwide
market, pursuing their interests while sharing basic human values. International organizations
like the WTO and IMF would be the vehicles through which these values would be pursued.
These ideals were based on assumptions that the American free market was the template on
which the economy of each country would be restructured.

Critics of globalization point out that though trade negotiations opened up the markets of
poor countries to goods produced in industrialized countries, they did not open up the markets of
the United States and other superpowers to agricultural goods, in which developing countries had
a comparable advantage. Nor did the trade agreements eliminate the subsidies to agriculture
provided in developed countries, that made it so hard for third world countries to compete.
Interests of the poorer nations, the working class and the natural environment have not been

75
protected. Though there are binding agreements in trade there are none for labour rights,
immigration laws or health

The functioning of the WTO and the IMF has also been attacked. Meant to safeguard the
interests of member nations in an impartial way, these organizations are blatantly
unrepresentative and there is no transparency in their working. For instance, the WTO doesn’t
work by voting. It uses a consensus arrangement, which in reality is managed by four
superpowers: Japan, the US, the European Union, and Canada.

Free trade has only benefited the multinationals; they produce their goods in free-trade
zones where labour laws are not strictly enforced and labour is dirt cheap. Niké, the biggest
sports equipment manufacturer, paid sports star Michael Jordan US $ 60 million in 2016, to
endorse their products, more than it paid its entire, 30,000 strong Indonesian work-force.

Proponents of globalization insist that whereas there was no universal suffrage in any
country in 1900, by 2000 nearly 63 per cent of all nations had universal suffrage. Global literacy
has increased to 81 per cent. The World Bank reports point out how the number of people living
on less than US $ 1.90 per day has halved, especially in economies where free-trade policies
were implemented. They claim that there is substantial evidence to prove that there is a direct
correlation between standards of living and the degree of globalization.

There is no doubt that globalization has not benefitted large sections of the human race.
For instance, the touted benefits of the ICT revolution have not reached those who need them the
most. While millions of people use social apps like WhatsApp or Instagram for trivial pursuits
like posting holiday pictures or self-glorifying selfies; in rural areas internet access is not
available. Around 11 per cent of the world’s population still lives on less than $1.90 a day. India,
for instance, has the largest number of the world’s poor, around 30 per cent.
(www.worldbank.org.2013) The debate still continues.

To conclude this section, read this extract from an article by Amartya Sen, which is an
excellent, well-balanced summary of the different viewpoints:

Globalization is often seen as global Westernization. On this point, there is

substantial agreement among many proponents and opponents. Those who take an
upbeat view of globalization see it as a marvelous contribution of Western
civilization to the world. There is a nicely stylized history in which the great
developments happened in Europe: first came the Renaissance, then the
Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, and these led to a massive increase
in living standards in the West. And now the great achievements of the West are
spreading to the world. In this view, globalization is not only good, it is also a gift
from the West to the world. The champions of this reading of history tend to feel
upset not just because this great benefaction is seen as a curse but also because it
is undervalued and castigated by an ungrateful world.

From the opposite perspective, Western dominance – sometimes seen as a

continuation of Western imperialism – is the devil of the piece. In this view,
contemporary capitalism, driven and led by greedy and grabby Western countries
in Europe and North America, has established rules of trade and business relations
that do not serve the interests of the poorer people in the world. The celebration of

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 various non-Western identities – defined by religion (as in Islamic
fundamentalism), region (as in the championing of Asian values), or culture (as in
the glorification of Confucian ethics) – can add fuel to the fire of confrontation
with the West.

Is globalization really a new Western curse? It is, in fact, neither new nor
necessarily Western; and it is not a curse. Over thousands of years, globalization
has contributed to the progress of the world through travel, trade, migration,
spread of cultural influences, and dissemination of knowledge and understanding
(including that of science and technology). These global interrelations have often
been very productive in the advancement of different countries. They have not
necessarily taken the form of increased Western influence. Indeed, the active
agents of globalization have often been located far from the West.

To illustrate, consider the world at the beginning of the last millennium

rather than at its end. Around 1000 A.D. the global reach of science, technology,
and mathematics was changing the nature of the old world, but the dissemination
then was, to a great extent, in the opposite direction of what we see today. The
high technology in the world of 1000 A.D. included paper, the printing press, the
crossbow, gun-powder, the iron-chain suspension bridge, the kite, the magnetic
compass, the wheel-barrow, and the rotary fan. A millennium ago, these items
were used extensively in China – and were practically unknown elsewhere.
Globalization spread them across the world, including Europe.

A similar movement occurred in the Eastern influence on Western

mathematics. The decimal system emerged and became well developed in India
between the second and sixth centuries; it was used by Arab mathematicians soon
thereafter. These mathematical innovations reached Europe mainly in the last
quarter of the tenth century and began having an impact in the early years of the
last millennium, playing an important part in the scientific revolution that helped
to transform Europe. The agents of globalization are neither European nor
exclusively Western, nor are they necessarily linked to Western dominance.
Indeed, Europe would have been a lot poorer – economically, culturally, and
scientifically – had it resisted the globalization of mathematics, science and
technology at that time. And today, the same principle applies, though in the
reverse direction (from West to East). To reject the globalization of science and
technology because it represents Western influence and imperialism would not
only amount to overlooking global contributions – drawn from many different
parts of the world – that lie solidly behind so-called Western science and
technology.
(Sen, 2002, p.1)

Globalization: the future

Over the years, there have been many indications that globalization was not welcomed by all. In
fact, there was active resistance to Western domination in some countries. North Korea,
Afghanistan, and Cuba have held out against globalization. Instead of greater understanding and
cooperation amongst nations, there is growing resentment with the effects of globalization, even
within the developed world.

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 Many political analysts believe that the year 2016 saw the rejection of the idea of
globalization. Donald Trump’s election as President of America was a significant event for world
politics. Trump won his election by promising to give Americans their jobs back, tighten
immigration rules, deport illegal immigrants, and build a “big beautiful wall” between America
and Mexico. He tapped into the working-class anger against outsourcing of jobs.

It was this same dissatisfaction with globalization that influenced Brexit; Britain’s exit from
the European Union. In June 2016, in a nationwide referendum, Britain voted to extract itself
from the single market of the European Union, as well as its institutions, laws, and regulations.
Europe is faced with a refugee crisis due to the huge influx of refugees from war-torn Syria and
Iraq, amidst hardening attitudes towards them.

At the World Economic Forum held in January, 2017 at Davos, Klaus Schwab, Founder and
Executive Chairman, WEF, observed that “Globalization has lifted over a billion people out of
poverty. But in its present form it is no longer fit for purpose.” There was intense debate in
Davos, about the future of globalization and the merits of a system under fire from populists. I
would like to quote Ray Dalio, founder of investment company Bridgewater Associates;

We may be at a point where globalization is ending and provincialism and

nationalism are taking hold. You will see more protectionism, perhaps the
reversal of the trend found in the 90s, of trade agreements and negotiations.

( www.weforum.org/agenda/2017)

Economic pundits predict that China, which is now the world’s second largest economy and
contributed 39 per cent to world growth in 2016, is set to become the new economic world
power. It is no coincidence that, in 2017, President Xi Jinping was the first Chinese head of state
to attend the WEF. He formally opened the proceedings with an appeal to world leaders to
continue on the path of globalization.

Summing Up

Now that you have read the introduction you must have formed a fairly good idea of what the
title ‘Living in a Globalized World’ means. Each chapter in this section of your textbook deals
with an important aspect of globalization. ‘Toys’ by Roland Barthes is a superb intellectual
analysis of the products of industrialization. The poems ‘Indian Movie, New Jersey’ and ‘At the
Lahore Karhai’ deal with the Indian immigrant experience in America and the United Kingdom
respectively; Naomi Klein’s ‘The Brand Expands’ is a critique of the marketing strategies
employed by corporate giants; ‘Colombe’ offers us an alternate insight into colonial expansion,
and ‘Zero-Sum Game’ is a satire on international trade agreements and the politicians who are
indifferent to the implications for people in developing counties.

References

Micklethwait, J. & Wooldridge, A. (2000). A future perfect: The essentials of globalization.

United Kingdom: Wylie Agency Inc.

Sen, A. (2002). ‘How to judge globalism’, The American Prophet, 13(1), January 1-14, p.100.

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 21
TOYS
Roland Barthes

- Dr. Seema Suri

Objectives

This section of the study material will guide you through a close reading of the essay ‘Toys’ by
Roland Barthes. The study-guide will

- discuss the significance of his ideas as a social theorist,

- draw your attention to Barthes’s literary style, and
- explain his strategy as a social critic.

Introduction

Mythologies is a collection of essays which were originally written for the newspapers. Barthes
wrote on objects and trends which we generally consider unimportant and accept uncritically:
toys, jeans, advertisements and detergent powder. Barthses felt that simple, innocent looking
everyday objects also mean something that is beyond their functional value and related to the
dominant ideologies in society. His method of inquiry is simple; to uncover the subsidiary
meanings (connotations), beyond the literal and agreed upon meanings (denotations).

You might wonder how a critical essay on toys, published in France in 1957, is related to
the topic of globalization. Firstly, globalization is not only about the economic, political, and
cultural integration of societies. As you read in the introduction to this section, trans border
dissemination of knowledge and ideas is an important driver of globalization. Not only are
people consuming products manufactured by countries from all over the world but they are
taking an interest in other religions, traditions, literature, art, and cinema. Though it was
published in 1957, Barthes’s Mythologies is an enduring book and is essential reading for anyone
interested in cultural studies as he was one of the earliest commentators on modern mass culture.

Barthes was disturbed by the rising affluence of the middle-class and the emergence of a
mass culture that was influenced by industrialization and technology. He felt that tasteless
bourgeois culture was killing an authentic and genuine popular culture, sustained by the
working-classes. Some of the objects that he selects for scrutiny in his collection of essays,
Mythologies, such as cars and detergents, are products of industrialization. In Toys, Barthes
selects the most commonplace of objects and explains the serious implications of the toys
children play with. His analytical skill is one of the best illustrations of social criticism.

Study-Guide
paragraph 1
microcosm : something small and self-contained that represents all the qualities and activities
of something large; a little universe or world.
homounculus : a tiny man, capable of being produced artificially.

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Barthes immediately, in the opening sentence, announces his disapproval of French toys. He
complains that the French people assume that the child is another ‘self’ who has to be provided
with miniature versions of everyday objects.

Using a cluster of related metaphors, Barthes conveys his dislike of modern toys. He
thinks that contemporary French toys are ‘a microcosm of the adult world’ and ‘reduced copies’
of human objects.

paragraph 2

dynamic forms : active, energetic.

socialized : the process by which infants and young children become aware of society
and their relationship with others.
myth : (a) a traditional narrative usually involving supernatural or imaginary persons
and embodying popular ideas on natural or social phenomena.
(b) a widely held but false belief. It is in this second sense that Barthes uses
the word in this essay.
Citroen : model of a car.
Vedette : large car manufactured by Ford France from 1956-1961.
Martian : alien from the planet Mars.

Barthes states his preference for toys that do not deprive the child of the opportunity to be
creative. He thinks that even a simple set of blocks will encourage the child to create new shapes
and structures. According to Barthes the problem is that,

French toys always mean something, and this something is always entirely
socialized, constructed by the myths or techniques of modern adult life.

This sentence summarizes Barthes’s intellectual position. What he means is that toys are not as
innocent as we might think they are; they are the products of the dominant belief systems in
society. Toys have meanings and an investigation into their meaning will reveal how society and
adults are providing children with objects that turn them into unquestioning and uncritical adults.
Children are naturally creative and free of prejudices but modern French toys provide the child
with readymade images of the world.

For instance, as Barthes points out, toy cars and petrol stations make the child believe
that it is normal and natural to own cars; thus, blinding the child to the massive amounts of fuel
consumption which individual ownership of cars entail, and fail to encourage the child to explore
other, alternative modes of transport. Toy Martians reduce the mystery and complexity of
science to unsubstantiated fears of aliens. Children who play with toy post-offices will not
appreciate that the modern day postal system has come into existence after centuries of evolution
and take for granted the existence of such institutions in their lives. A child who is provided with
soldiers or tanks to play with cannot realize that war is destructive and unnatural. French toys
encourage the child to accept without any curiosity or pleasure the world she/ he is growing up
in, accepting its faulty beliefs without question.

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paragraph 3

prefigure : imagine something beforehand, according to a type.

alibi : an excuse, pretext, or justification of any kind.

abdication : to formally give up a responsibility or duty.

causality : the relation of cause and effect.

demiurge : the maker of the world.

Barthes develops his argument further in this paragraph. He says that a child, who plays with toy
soldiers or Vespa scooters, will gradually start believing that these objects have always existed,
created by nature. Socially constructed meanings and institutions are passed off as natural. A toy
soldier is going to send a subtle message to the child: that there is nothing wrong in countries
going to war and people killing each other. The destructive and inhuman aspects of war are
glossed over.

It is not so much the imitation of real-life objects that Barthes objects to but the absurd
limits to which toy manufacturers go to, to imitate real life; sometimes even incorporating
biological functions in the toys. He illustrates with the example of baby dolls which have an
esophagus and urinate. Barthes point out that these dolls train the little girl to become an efficient
mother. Little girls are provided with pre-determined roles to follow in life.

What other kinds of toys are girls expected to play with?

Have you ever thought of gifting a baby doll to a little boy or a football to a girl? Why?

Most probably, girls will get kitchen sets, make-up kits or dolls as gifts. Not only do such toys
lack in imagination, they are meant to condition children into viewing women in stereotyped
roles. Barthes’s perspective here is feminist; he is critical of the role played by toys in moulding
the gender attitudes of children.

Barthes’s approach as a social critic is fresh. The main point that he makes in this
paragraph is that French toys do not nurture the creative spirit of children. From an early age,
they become passive users. Notice how Barthes uses a series of oppositional words in the second
half of this paragraph. They help to reinforce his argument that French toys are “based on
imitation” and highlight the contrast between what French toys actually are and what they should
ideally do:

owner : creator
user : demiurge
ready-made : invent, discover
property : life
inert : move by themselves

It is necessary to pay attention to the language as it is instrumental in helping the author build up
his argument. For instance, Barthes uses a frightening simile to compare French toys with the

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real world. They are ‘like a Jivaro head’; a dead, shrunken human head. The Jivaro tribes of
South America would preserve their enemies’ heads till they were reduced to the size of a
baseball.

paragraph 4

bourgeois : a member of the middle class; conservative, conventional, unimaginative,

materialistic.

graceless : without charm.

hernia : a medical condition in which an organ pushes through its covering wall.

Vosges : mountain region in the South of France, famous for its craftspeople.

fretwork : ornamental work, consisting of perforated interlaced woodwork.

posthumous : after death.

In this paragraph Barthes shifts his focus from the form of the toys to the materials used to make
them. Barthes expresses his dissatisfaction with plastic and metal as raw materials to
manufacture toys. He again employs the strategy of placing oppositional pairs of words to
emphasize the differences between these materials. Mechanical, mass-produced toys are
compared to those handcrafted by artisans. He recalls wooden farmhouses that were made by
craftspeople of the Vosges region.

Wood Plastic/Metal

‘product of nature’ ‘product of chemistry’

‘natural warmth’ in its touch ‘chemical coldness’ of its touch
firm and soft sharp angles
muffled and sharp sound vibrates, grates
created by craftspeople mechanical, mass-produced
lasts longer, wears out dies quickly, shatters

Plastic or metal are not appealing materials. They produce irritating sounds and do not establish a
long-lasting relationship with the child. Wood is a material that is warm, soft, humane, and
pleasing. The overriding tone of this section of the essay is sensuous; Barthes dwells on the
sensations produced when one touches wood: ‘natural warmth’, ‘firmness’, and ‘softness’, and
‘the pleasure, the sweetness, the humanity of touch.’ Wood keeps the child in close contact with
the tree and nature. To express his disgust with mechanical toys, Barthes uses a rather
unflattering image. When they break they ‘disappear behind the hernia of broken spring’. He
uses a number of adjectives that we do not normally associate with inanimate objects; plastic is
‘graceless’ and wood is a ‘familiar and poetic’ substance. Can you make a list of other such
words used in the essay?

In the end Barthes gets nostalgic about wooden toys made by craftspeople, before mass-
produced, factory made toys made of plastic or metal took over. He describes the farmhouses,
with intricate woodwork, handcrafted by the artisans of the Vosges region of France. Such toys

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are a pleasure to play with, unlike mechanical toys which the child can use but not feel any joy in
their touch or even in their possession, as they break easily.

Conclusion

In his essay ‘Toys’, Barthes has criticized modern French toys for many reasons. The most
important point that he makes is that these toys are copies of objects in the adult world. They do
not encourage the child to be creative but mould him into a passive, unquestioning user. In the
last paragraph Barthes dwells on the superiority of wood as a material to make toys, rather than
plastic or metal. He also expresses his disapproval of mechanical, mass-produced toys.

Remember that more than the critique of French toys that is the subject of this essay; it is
Barthes’s method of inquiry into his subject matter that is important. For Barthes, toys are social
signs, full of meanings that are not obvious and as a social critic he scrutinizes them closely to
decipher their role in perpetuating dominant ideologies. He gives an excellent example of dolls
that perform biological functions. They condition the little girl to become a mother, instead of
encouraging her to explore a career.

Modern toys do not allow children to be creative and condition them to grow up into
unquestioning adults who accept social institutions, relationships, and their own position in it
without thinking of the implications. The observations that Barthes makes about French toys are
very much true of most toys even today.

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 22
INDIAN MOVIE, NEW JERSEY
C. B. Divakaruni

-Dr. Seema Suri

Objectives

The following introduction gives a historical context to the poem. Reading a poem requires a
strategy very different from that needed for a short story or an essay. The study-guide will help
you with a close reading of ‘Indian Movie, New Jersey’ (1990) and provide an extensive
analysis. In addition to appreciating the emotional core of the poem you must learn to appreciate
the special techniques used by the poet.

Introduction

The migration of people across countries is not a recent phenomenon as people have been
moving across countries and continents for centuries. Economic globalization and dramatic
improvements in the infrastructure for transport and communications have resulted in a sharp
rise in this trend since the latter half of the twentieth-cury.

People leave their countries for many reasons but at the top of the list are economic ones.
In addition, there is forced migration as people do not always leave their homeland voluntarily.
During the colonial expansion of the European powers in the 15th century, there was large scale,
forced migration of people, especially from Africa, to work on the plantations of the settlers in
the West Indies. People also migrate due to internal conflicts; to escape oppression or
persecution on the basis of race, religion or political beliefs. Natural or environmental disasters
such as floods or famines are another cause, as are development projects such as dams or the
construction of special-economic zones that displace entire populations. Then there is illegal
migration which includes smuggled people and human trafficking.

Uprooted from the familial, social, cultural, and political environment which supports
their identity and provides them with a sense of security, the migrants are forced to revise their
sense of identity based on these paradigms. The migrant is uprooted and feels alienated within
the new and unfamiliar climate, lifestyle, social norms, and public institutions. Many adjustments
need to be made and there are problems integrating with the host country; racist and xenophobic
treatment, difficulty accessing public resources or obtaining citizenship, and understanding the
cultural norms. Ignorance of language is a major obstacle. Sometimes those working in
unregulated environments do not even get basic wages.

Dislocation causes a lot of stress and anxiety. The immigrant experience, whether it is
that of the Arab in France, an Indian in America or a Chinese in Australia, is the subject of a vast
body of modern literature and cinema as well. Anurag Mathur’s novel ‘The Inscrutable
Americans’ and Jhumpa Lahiri’s collection of short stories ‘The Interpreter of Maladies’ are
some of the popular books on the subject of Indian immigrants in America.

Indians have been migrating to America since the 1790s. In 1900 there were only 2,050
Indians in America. The first wave of immigrants were from an agricultural background in
Punjab. From the 1960s onwards, right down to the 1980s, they were most visible as owners of
convenience stores and motels, and cab drivers. After that there has been a change in profile and
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they now belong to a variety of skilled professional backgrounds: academics, software engineers,
management consultants, and media professionals. Indians, in 2017, constituted 19 per cent of
the total immigrant population in America and are the fastest growing, most educated, and
affluent of all ethnic groups.

Indian immigrants in America are known as Asian or South Asian Americans, along with
immigrants from other countries in South Asia. This is to distinguish them from the American
Indians who are the local, indigenous people of the country. New Jersey has a large Indian
population; and the setting for the poem, as the title implies, is in a movie-hall in New Jersey,
where a group of Indians are watching a movie.

Study-guide

stanza 1

The speaker in the poem is not individualized; we don’t know his/her gender or social status
though we can guess that the speaker is a middle-aged, first generation immigrant because there
is a mention of grown up, rebellious children in the second paragraph. It is the collective identity
of the Indian immigrant community that is the focus of this poem and the speaker is both a
participant and observer in this exploration.

The genre of film is used to sketch the differences in the American and Indian ideals of
feminine beauty, as embodied by the film star on screen. The Indian ‘sex-goddess’, as
Divakaruni calls her, has more fleshy limbs than the white film star who is ‘all rib/ and gaunt
cheekbone’. Her thighs are ‘satisfying-solid, redeeming’, suggesting stability and reliability. The
men gazing on her respond with appreciative whistles to her sexually suggestive movements.
Don’t miss the association with fertility and fecundity in the image of the sex-goddess ‘smiling
plumply/ from behind a flowery branch.’ The abundant flesh on her body is comforting and
familiar. The speaker’s preference for the stereotypical Indian representation of womanhood,
over the starved looking white film star is an indication of resistance to acculturation or the
process of assimilating features of another culture through continuous contact. The immigrant
clings to his/her notions of beauty. The coinage ‘sex-goddess’ is interesting: it combines
sexuality with spirituality and captures the influence of cinema on the Indian psyche.

It is clear that the movie is a typical Indian masala film; it follows a formula and has a
predictable storyline. The viewers seem to be familiar with the songs; apparently, they have seen
the movie before or heard the songs. The whole experience of watching a movie is like a ritual
for them, an assertion of their distinct identity. Notice how, throughout the poem, the speaker
uses the collective pronoun ‘we’ no less than ten times, ‘our’ is used thrice and ‘us’ twice. The
movie-hall in New Jersey becomes the site for collective participation, where the Indian
community can re-create, for a brief period, the home that they have left behind. The hostility
and alienation felt outside can be discarded: ‘It is safe here.’ The word ‘here’ highlights the
movie-hall as a sanctuary. Nostalgia for their homeland makes them forget the negative aspects.
As the speaker says,

….the day
golden and cool so no one sweats,
roses on every bush, and the Dal Lake
clean again.

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Distance makes them idealize their homeland, believing that the Dal Lake, a favourite tourist
spot is not dirty or polluted.

stanza 2

On screen, the ‘sex-goddess’ speaks in English, with a heavy accent. Think, for a moment, about
the incongruity of the scene. An Indian movie is being screened for an Indian audience in New
Jersey, who have gone there with the ostensible purpose of reasserting their cultural identity and
the heroine, who is supposed to be a representation of ideal Indian womanhood, speaks in
English and wears ‘a brief red skirt’; certainly not traditional attire. The sex-goddess is obviously
a member of the English speaking, educated, upper-class; pseudo-modern and adopting the
outward manifestations of a western lifestyle. But the audience does not notice the contradictions
between the implications of what is on the screen and their nostalgia.

The audience laughs and claps when the actress speaks in English. They identify with her
inarticulate and unclear accent and feel relieved to be away from the embarrassment of
mispronounced words in their own lives. The poet uses a simile to reinforce the failure to
communicate effectively with Americans:

Here
We need not be embarrassed by words
dropping like lead pellets into foreign ears.

Language is an important tool for assimilation with the culture of the host country but the
immigrants find it difficult to adapt their pronunciation of English to American norms.

The light from the screen is soothing as it ‘wipes from our faces years of America’: living
in a foreign land is tiring. The tensions of a new life in an alien country are temporarily forgotten
in the movie hall. The speaker talks of generational conflicts as well; sons and daughters who
want to break the shackles of their parents’ traditions and culture. For most second-generation
Indians in American, India is no more than a holiday destination which they have visited,
perhaps, a few times. Note how the plural ‘sons’ and ‘daughters’ forges their collective identity
as an immigrant community with common problems. The younger generation has no direct
experience of or understanding of Indian society and values: unquestioning obedience of elders
in the family, conservative norms for women, and a general allegiance to family over self.

The American culture that the second-generation Indian immigrants have been born and
brought up in nurtures and celebrates individualism, and the pursuit of personal gratification,
which they find more attractive. The boys do not want to follow their fathers and run the family
store. From the 1960s to the 1980s, Indian immigrants were most visible as the owners of
convenience stores, motels or as cab-drivers. The girls assert their right to sexual liberty in a
secretive manner and meet their boyfriends without informing their parents. Independence is
asserted in different ways; sometimes by sporting hairstyles that are associated with punk sub-
culture.

It is not as if conflicts between parents and children are peculiar to immigrant groups;
they occur everywhere, all the time. For the immigrant in an alien land, the family is her/his only
emotional support and if there are tensions within the family it leads to further psychological
stress.

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stanza 3

The film has a familiar plot, repeated innumerable times in Indian movies, and ends predictably.
Yet, the audience is moved to tears by the hero’s sacrifice; he gives up his life so that his friend
can marry the sex-goddess. The tale of friendship and sacrifice touches them in many ways; it is
a reminder of certain values associated with Indian culture and at the same time they realize that
their lives are so far removed from their homes; both geographically and culturally.

In India, movies are synonymous with popular culture. Television and radio programmes
rely heavily on movies for their content; and style and fashion are dictated by film stars. Though
Indian cinema is frequently criticized for its lack of original stories or convincing
characterization, the Indian immigrants see no shortcomings. For them watching a movie is an
opportunity to rejuvenate their connections with their culture.

After the movie is over, the Indians hang around the foyer, discussing their latest
acquisitions. A trip to India is a perennial, favourite topic. The reference to the ‘good news: a
new gold chain’ is a gentle reminder that Indians have not been able to give up their
preoccupation with gold ornaments. The speaker observes how they consciously remain silent
about the painful reality of their lives outside, where they are targets of racial hatred and
discrimination.

You would be interested to know that around 60 per cent of the hotels and motels in
America are owned and run by immigrants of Indian origin, and 30 per cent of them are owned
by the Patel community from Gujarat. In the eighties, there were nationwide investigations into a
network of hotels and motels used to harbour illegal immigrants and facilitate human smuggling.
It is apparent that there is resentment amongst members of the host community and prejudice
against the whole immigrant community after such incidents, forming obstacles on the path to
social inclusion.

stanza 4

The immigrants linger on in the secure environment of the movie-hall, where the familiar smell
of Indian snacks is comforting. They stand and talk with their compatriots, arranging the
marriages of their children with ‘hometown boys and girls’; who, they believe, will be traditional
and untouched by American culture. In the second stanza, there is a reference to daughters who
date secretly. It is obvious that the Indians do not approve of the dating culture and prefer to
arrange an Indian match from back home. Their resistance to American culture is strong.

The confused attitude of the immigrant towards her/his host country can be felt in this
stanza. Though the Indians are reluctant to change their cultural norms and practices, they are not
averse to realizing their material aspirations here:

open a franchise, win a million

in the mail.

They dream of starting a profitable business or winning huge sums in the e-mail lottery. Their
aspirations are cast in material terms; the typical middle-class dream of a house, whether in India

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or the suburbs of America, where the neighbors will talk to them. There is a sad undercurrent
noticeable here; the immigrant feels alienated by a lack of communication.

Here while the film-songs still echo

in the corridors and restrooms, we can trust
in movie- truths: sacrifice, success, love and luck,
the America that was supposed to be.

The poem ends with the immigrant’s observation that in the movie-hall they can believe in
‘movie-truths: sacrifice, success, love and luck’; knowing well that these values are rarely found
in real life. The fiction of the movie is like the idea of America that pulled them here; the
promise of prosperity and social prestige which remains unfulfilled. Perhaps the speaker repents
leaving her/ his roots behind and coming in search of an ‘America that was supposed to be.’,
which turns out to be a myth. The immigrant’s sense of loss and disappointment is hinted at.

A note on the language

It is not enough to respond emotionally to a poem. An appreciation of the poet’s technique

enhances our pleasure in reading the poem. Remember that poems are not always within the
form of rhyming stanzas, with fixed line lengths and rhyming end-words as in this example,

The sun descending in the west,

The evening star does shine;
The birds are silent in their nest
And I must seek for mine.

(William Blake; Night)

Most modern poetry is in the form of free verse where there is no fixed pattern of stanzas or
syllables. In ‘Indian Movie, New Jersey’ the poet uses run-on lines, or enjambment, where the
sense of one line is carried over to the next.

Divakaruni depends on the repetition of ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ as an organizing principle.
These collective pronouns, used a total of 15 times, resonate throughout the poem She uses
figurative language sparingly, as in the simile of the Indian film star’s thighs that are ‘satisfying-
solid/ redeeming as tree trunks’, or the metaphor of the ‘years of America’ on the faces of the
immigrants.

The language is simple, with the inclusion of some Urdu and Hindi words: ‘dosti’,
‘quarbani’ and ‘pakoras’, to give the language an ethnic flavour. Another interesting feature is
her use of typical Indianisms in the coinage of words like ‘men-viewers’, ‘sex-goddess’, and
‘lover-hero’.

The extended, implicit metaphor of movies

The word metaphor comes from the Greek word ‘metaphorein’, that means to transport
something from one place to another. A metaphor is a comparison between two dissimilar
objects, as in ‘fishing for information’, where the characteristics of one domain are carried over

88
to another. Sometimes the metaphor is not restricted to a word and can carry over the whole
poem: it is then called an extended metaphor.

If the comparison is not directly stated and implied it is an implicit metaphor. In this
poem, there is an unstated comparison between movies and the immigrant community’s culture.
Indian movies are a composite representation of their ideals, values, and the home they have left
behind. The metaphor of Indian movies permeates the whole poem; it is a very successful use of
the technique of an extended, implicit metaphor.

Summing Up

In this poem, you have read about the Indian immigrant’s experience in New Jersey. Within the
space of a few lines, Divakaruni has managed to convey some of the problems faced by the
Indian community in America; the sense of alienation and uprootedness, racial discrimination,
xenophobic behaviour. The Indian migrants find it difficult to adjust in America because of
different cultural norms. Their accent makes it difficult for them to be understood. At the same
time, they nurture dreams of owning a house in the suburbs or starting a business there.

The movie-hall is presented as the space where the Indian community asserts its ethnic
identity and the movie becomes an extended metaphor for their idea of India. Their response to
the movie tells us so much about the culture they have left behind; their ideals of beauty,
friendship, and family. The speaker is not unaware that what is shown on the screen is a ‘movie
truth’, as unreal as the idea of America that pulled them here. The next poem in your text book,
‘At the Lahore Karhai’ has a similar theme and explores nostalgia for home through the
metaphor of food.

Notes

gaunt : thin, without flesh, bony.

Dal Lake : famous lake in Srinagar, in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. A popular
tourist spot, it is plagued by an alarming rise in the levels of pollution
and falling water levels.
thickened English : inarticulate, heavy accent while speaking the language.
Mohawks : a type of hairstyle where the sides of the head are shaved and a long,
narrow strip of hair left. This style was sported by the warriors of the
Mohawk tribes, indigenous people of North America and later became
associated with punk sub-culture in the U.S.
quarbani : Urdu for sacrifice.
dosti : Hindi for friendship.
motel : a hotel with accommodation and service facilities for cars.
pakoras : fried Indian snack.

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 23
AT THE LAHORE KARHAI
Imtiaz Dharker

- Dr. Seema Suri

Objectives

As the poem ‘At the Lahore Karhai’(2001) is similar in subject matter to C.B. Divakaruni’s
‘Indian Movie, New Jersey’, I have not provided a detailed introduction as it would be repetitive.
Read the introduction to the previous chapter before proceeding with the study-guide. Each poet
brings a different perspective and technique to the immigrant situation. I have attempted to
explain Dharker’s vision of the migrant experience and discussed her poetic technique.

Introduction

People of Asian origin have been living in Britain since the early 18th century. Indian domestic
workers, sepoys, cricketers, and sailors recruited by the British Navy were common sights. It was
the 1950s and 1960s that saw the largest wave of migration. The Second World War had ended
and the Indian subcontinent had just gone through a painful partition. Many people were
displaced whereas Britain needed cheap labour to rebuild its ravaged economy. The poem must
be read in the backdrop of 200 years of colonial rule in the Indian subcontinent.

In 2017, roughly two per cent of the population of the United Kingdom was of Indian
origin, including people from pre-partition India and Indians with British passports from Uganda,
Kenya, and Nigeria. In London there are many boroughs, like Wembley, Southall, and
Hounslow; populated mostly by Indians. Wembley has many restaurants with names similar to
‘Lahore Karhai.’

The poem, like ‘Indian Movie, New Jersey’ is a representation of the immigrant’s
nostalgia for home, explored through the metaphor of food. Like most immigrant literature, it is
autobiographical in nature. Whereas the overriding tone of ‘Indian Movie, New Jersey’ is sad,
this poem has a more cheerful mood. The speaker’s isolation, loneliness, and deep
disappointment with America are forgotten for a while in the movie hall, surrounded by other
Indians. ‘Lahore Karhai’ does not have any underlying anxieties. The group in the poem has a
mixed composition, comprising people of different nationalities; Indian, Pakistani, and British.
The speaker’s nostalgia for home-cooked food is expressed in gentle terms, without any sense of
alienation from her surroundings.

stanza 1

The poem begins on a happy note: ‘It’s a great day, Sunday’. The group of six friends get into a
car and set off for lunch at the ‘Lahore Karhai’, a restaurant in Wembley, London. The poet
immediately underscores the sanctity of the visit: it is a ‘pilgrimage’ and the association is with a
journey undertaken to connect with a higher being or their inner selves. It is a way of staying in
touch with their roots, their ethnic identity.

They reach the restaurant just as lunch has begun to be served. Note the line: ‘No beer,
we’re Muslim.’ Their request for beer is turned down by the staff but they are happy with the
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morning sun and the old classic film-song playing in the background. The song ‘Yaad na jaaye’,
is from a popular Hindi film, sung by Mohammad Rafi in 1963. The words, roughly translated,
mean ‘memories refuse to leave.’ The significance cannot be missed. It is the memory of their
homeland, the longing for Indian/ Pakistani food and music that brings the group to this
restaurant. The music echoes their sentiments.

stanzas 2, 3

The ambience of the restaurant reminds the speaker of the dhabas that dot the Grand Trunk Road
and are popular with truck drivers and travelers. The reference to the Grand Trunk Road is
significant as this ancient trade route connects the Indian subcontinent; it starts from Bangladesh,
runs through east and west India, and from Wagah goes on to Lahore and Rawalpindi in
Pakistan. The poet dwells on the common historical inheritance of these countries in the Asian
subcontinent.

The dhabas are the lifeline of truckers travelling on this road. Away from home, they are
hungry and tired, seeking the taste of home-cooked food. Observe how the poet uses a word
implying strong physical desire to describe their hunger: ‘full of lust for real food/ just like
home.’ The comparison is carried over into the next paragraph; if the restaurant has morphed into
a dhaba then this group of friends are like the truckers: miles away from home, rootless and
restless, separated by both distance and time:

looking hopefully (years away

from Sialkot and Chandigarh)
for the taste of our mother’s
hand in the cooking.

The poet says that their lives are ‘overloaded’. What do you think this means? Do you agree that
there is a hint of fatigue and tiredness? Why is the immigrant tired? Perhaps tired of having to
bear the double burden of making adjustments in a foreign land, and maintaining their cultural
entity without support mechanisms.

stanza 4, 5

The poet identifies her friends by nationality. The ‘Lahore runaway’ is a reference to herself.
Imtiaz Dharker was born in Lahore but spent most of her life in Britain and India. Then there is
the Sindhi refugee and his wife, and two young girls from Bombay, India. The group has a
cosmopolitan composition and also includes a young Englishman. It is not a homogenous group
like that of the Indian audience in ‘Indian Movie, New Jersey.’ The boundaries between nations
become blurred, and it seems the poet is conscious of the South Asian, regional identity of this
group. Don’t miss the mention of the Sindhi lady who prays to Lord Krishna. The group
comprises both Hindus and Muslims; as well as a British national; truly indicative of a unified
global culture.

It is indicative of a certain degree of cultural assimilation with the host country that there
is an Englishman in the midst of the other immigrants. He is ‘too young to be flavoured by the
Raj’, suggests that he in untouched by any form of racial prejudice. He does not relate to his
friends as a colonizer as he was born after the end of British rule in 1947.

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 There is nostalgia for home but without any of the anxiety-filled, herding together of the
group in ‘Indian Movie, New Jersey’. These people seem to have come to terms with life in a
foreign land, making the transition from the past to the present and revisiting the past without
discomfort, as expressed in the following simile:

This winter, we have learnt

to wear our past
like summer clothes.

Though dislocated from their homeland, the immigrants are on their way to becoming truly
global citizens; embracing new cultures while retaining an ethnic identity. The summer clothes
are a metaphor for the home and culture they have left behind.

stanza 6-9

The poet shifts her attention to the food on the table. Observe the innovative use of food as a
metaphor for familial ties. As I explained earlier, the poet uses food as an implicit extended
metaphor for her ethnic roots. In the following lines, she uses specific Indian / Pakistani dishes to
affectionately remember her relatives:

A feast! We swoop
on a whole family of dishes.
The tarka daal is Auntie Hameeda
the Karhai ghosht is Khala Ameena
the gajjar halwa is Appa Rasheeda.

The warm naan is you.

Within this stanza, Imtiaz Dharker has used no less than five metaphors. The dishes are perhaps
those which their aunts cooked for them, back home in Pakistan; food that was an expression of
love, reinforcing interpersonal relations. Families in the Indian subcontinent maintain ties with
almost every member of their extended family; cousins, uncles and aunts. This distinct cultural
practice is evoked in the fond remembrance of relatives back home. As the poet say:

bound together by the bread we break

sharing out our continent.

These
are ways of remembering.

Food is not only a way to stay connected to home; it also forges relationships in the present.
When the light falls on the people in the restaurant it makes the poet realize that they are ‘bound
together’ by the food they eat, sharing a common culinary legacy. The sense of connectedness is
presented through the metaphor of food.

stanza 10

The last paragraph comes as something of a surprise because till this point the overriding mood
of the poem is nostalgic, to the point of sentimentality, about the taste of home-cooked food. The

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immigrants’ visit transports them to a past where food cooked by a loving mother or aunt
nourished them. How then does the preference for Chinese food fit into the theme of the poem?

Other days we may prefer

Chinese.

The point I wish to make is that there is no sense of conflict with the host society and these Asian
immigrants have learnt to enjoy other, foreign cultures existing in Britian; one of the most multi-
cultural societies in the world. They seem to have learnt to effortlessly make the transition from
one cultural ethos to another. Nostalgia co-exists with assimilation. Unlike the Indian community
in ‘Indian Movie, New Jersey’, who share a deep anxiety and a sense of failure to integrate with
the host society; the immigrants in ‘At the Lahore Karhai’ have come to terms with life in a
foreign land and embraced multiculturalism. They can enjoy a beer with their curry and naan.

At the same time, there is perhaps a subtle suggestion that for the immigrant, her/his
culture has been reduced to the same status as other exotic cuisines, such as Chinese, which they
consume as a break from their everyday monotony. The lived culture they left behind is now
experienced on an occasional weekend outing. The taste of food, lovingly cooked by mothers/
aunts each day is now sought in restaurants. But not always; sometimes they eat food from other
countries as well.

A note on the language

The poem uses free verse, which does not depend on a system of end-rhymes. Imtiaz Dharker’s
language is colloquial, with a liberal use of Hindi and Urdu words which give it a distinct ethnic
flavor; kadhai, naan, kebabs, and khala are some of them.

Although there are no end-rhymes, Dharker uses internal rhymes liberally. When the
accented last syllable of two words in one line of a poem rhyme, it is called half-rhyme, as in:

It is a great day, Sunday,

and in the first paragraph there is another example:

begun / sun / two-in-one,

or
hair / air.

In other places Dharker uses vowel rhymes, where the vowel rhymes but the consonants don’t
matter, as in:
Hauling our overloaded lives
the extra mile
we’re truckers of another kind.

and in para 6 there is the Hameeda / Ameena / Rasheeda which creates a rhythm. This technique
is known as assonance.

Try to locate other pairs of words in the poem that have rhyming vowels or consonants.

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In addition to the implicit extended metaphor of food that permeates the whole poem, the poet
uses food as a metaphor to evoke the memory of loved ones back home. In stanza 6, Dharker
uses no less than five metaphors to describe her family.

Another literary device is that of metonymy – which means using one word to stand for
another, usually larger, more general thing, as when you say ‘fond of the bottle’ it means’ fond
of drink’. Note the poet’s use of metonymy:

looking hopefully....
for the taste of our mother’s
hand in the cooking.

and

bound together by the bread we break

sharing out our continent.

What do the ‘mother’s hand’ and ‘continent’ signify in these lines?

Conclusion

The poem, ‘At the Lahore Karhai’ is an expression of the immigrant’s nostalgia for home. The
speaker is both participant and observer, enjoying lunch at a restaurant with her friends in
Wembley, London. She is an immigrant of Pakistani origin, now settled in London. In the poem,
many elements of the culture of the Indian sub-continent are reinforced, especially the sense of
community, both the old familial one that has been left behind and the present one that comprises
people with a common regional inheritance.

The poem represents the different elements of the poet’s regional culture through the
metaphor of food. References to old Hindi film songs, the dhabas on the Grand Trunk Road, the
Sindhi lady who prays to Lord Krishna every day, and the memories of loving aunts and a
mother who cooked special dishes for them: all these create an image of a culture that is
distinctly Asian.

At the same time, the poem is devoid of any discomfort about the immigrant’s place in a
new culture and the poet is comfortable with her situation. There are no disturbing background
whispers of xenophobic behaviour or racial discrimination, as one read in ‘Indian Movie, New,
Jersey’. It is significant indicator of assimilation that one person in the group is of British origin
and very comfortable with them. The speaker in this poem misses her home but she has
embraced her life in London. She celebrates the multiculturalism of the city.

Notes

Karhai : a deep bottomed dish used to cook and fry.

Grand Trunk Road : Asia’s oldest and longest highway that runs through 2,500 km of the
Indian sub-continent, from Sonargaon in Bangladesh, through Kolkota,
Delhi and Wagah, on the border, to Lahore and Rawalpindi in
Pakistan.

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Raj : period of British rule over India, from 1858 to 1947.

tarka daal : lentils with a sprinkling of oil.

Karhai ghosht : mutton cooked in a Karhai.

gajjar halva : a sweet-dish made of carrots and milk.

naan : a sort of Indian bread made from fermented flour

khala : Urdu word for aunt (mother’s sister).

appa : Urdu word for elder sister.

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 24
THE BRAND EXPANDS
Naomi Klein

Dr. Seema Suri

Objectives

This section includes a brief introduction to the anti-corporate movement which will place the
extract from Naomi Klein’s book ‘No Logo’ (2001), in its proper context. The chapter contains
many popular American brand names, which I have explained in the detailed notes. The
commentary on the essay will help you grasp the core issues raised by the writer.

Introduction: Anti-corporate movement /Anti-globalization/ Alter-globalization

Like globalization, anti-globalization is also an umbrella term that encompasses many social
movements opposed to the growing power of global financial institutions, transnationals, and
free trade agreements. They feel that cultural domination is posing a threat to local, indigenous
cultures. Their targets are global financial institutions like the WTO and the IMF; and trade
treaties like GATS and TRIPS. These various movements aim to preserve democratic principles,
human rights, cultural diversity, and the environment. Critics of globalization point to the fact
that a phenomenal increase in international trade has not resulted in any of the promised benefits
to Third World countries.

Proponents of anti-globalization are not against globalization. On the contrary, they feel
that the unhindered flow of people, knowledge, and resources can benefit humanity so the name
by which they prefer to call themselves is alter-globalization or the world justice movement.
Theirs is a world-view that seeks to make the world a truly democratic and just place. The World
Social Forum, the Global Convention on Biodiversity, Greenpeace, and the Anti-corporate
movement are some of the social and environmental movements that have emerged to raise
awareness about the harmful effect of globalization.

The anti-corporate movement, as the name implies, targets the growing corporate power,
not globalization. The key manifesto of the movement is the exposure of the production practices
of the large multinationals; it is based on a form of politics that revolves around the exposure of
reality rather than any radical ideology. They believe in activism and consider the Internet their
tool, as it helps raise awareness about the harm being done by giant transnationals.

Its main characteristic is the attack on US economic domination, as most of the world’s
biggest multinationals are American. They focus on the impact of aggressive corporate
sponsorship and retailing on public space and cultural life, both locally and globally. Anti-
sweatshop protests outside Nike Towns in New York or ad busters defacing bill boards are some
of the methods used by members of this movement.

Many documentary films have been made to expose the inhuman trade practices of the
American corporate giants. You could view some of these on YouTube. I would suggest that you
begin with Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story (2009).

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No Space/ No Choice/ No Job/ No Logo

Mentioned above is the complete title of Naomi Klein’s book, ‘No Logo’, published in 2001.
Naomi Klein comments that it is not just another book on corporate rule, the de facto global
government:

…the book is an attempt to analyze and document the forces opposing corporate
rule and to lay out the particular set of cultural and economic conditions that made
the emergence of the opposition possible.
(Klein, p. xxi)

Klein’s book explores the surrender of culture and education to marketing, the boiling down of
culture to corporate choices, and labour market trends such as outsourcing to third-world
countries. She also chronicles anti-corporate activism as an alternative to corporate rule.

The essay, ‘The Brand Expands’ is from the first section of her book, in which she traces
the evolution of the brand; from an inconspicuous label on the inside of apparel to becoming
inextricably woven with popular culture, to the extent that the two become indistinguishable.

What is a brand?

From the outset, I’d like to mention that branding is not synonymous with advertising: the two
are very different. Advertising is just one vehicle to convey the brand’s meaning to the world and
forms the interface between the product and the consumer.

The word brand has negative connotations; it derives from the practice of permanently
marking or stamping property, usually with a hot iron. Cattle or sheep are marked in this way.
Branding is principally the process of attaching a name and a reputation to something or
someone. Below are some definitions of the term, as outlined by advertising professionals. Some
focus on the trademark, as this one:

The most recognizable feature of a brand is a name, a logo, a symbol or trademark

that denotes a product’s origin. A person, corporation or institution will own the
rights to the brand name and employ it as a means of distinguishing their product
or services from others.
- David Aaker

Advertising is one of the mechanisms that help brands to succeed in establishing the association
of physical and social ideas with particular brands:

A brand is not a product. It is the product’s essence, its meaning and its direction
and it defines its identity in time and space.
- Jean-Noel Kapferer

A product is something made in a factory; a brand is something bought by a

customer. A product can be copied by a competitor, a brand is unique. A product
can be quickly outdated; a brand is timeless.
- Stephen King

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 (Source: Jane Pavitt, Brands.new. London: V&A Pub., 2000)

These varying perspectives will help you understand the meaning of the term. Brands are bearers
of meaning that exceeds the material attributes of the product. Brands are a combination of the
name, logo, packaging, design, as well as consumers’ expectations and perceptions about the
product or services branded with the trademark. The relationship between brands and consumer
behaviour has been the focus of recent research in the diverse disciplines of sociology,
anthropology, business marketing, psychology, and design.

Commentary

paragraphs 1,2

Naomi Klein recounts her pre-teen years in school and the obsession with designer labels on
clothes. Like other girls in her class, she was convinced that designer labels are essentials of
fashion. She and her friends would try to pull on skin-tight jeans, imitating the style of the model
in the advertisement for Calvin Klein jeans. Awareness of the value of brands began early. As
she observes, ‘the reign of logo terror had begun.’

Klein’s style of writing is simple; mixing personal anecdotes with hard-hitting statistics
and contemporary pop culture. It is a combination of investigative journalism and social theory;
and the language is rich in metaphor, succeeding in presenting a damaging critique of corporate
power over young, impressionable minds.

Naomi recalls how, when she was working as a sales assistant in a leading apparel retail
store she observed children, sometimes as young as six years old, insist on buying clothes that
had a visible brand name. With a perceptible tinge of irony, Klein remarks that even infant
clothes are branded, turning them into ‘mini-billboards’. The extent to which children get
influenced by logos of well-known brands is illustrated in the case of the little boy who checks
his homework with little red Nike swooshes, one of the most recognizable brands in the world.

The power of the logo, especially over young, innocent minds is a sad comment on the
corporate presence in our lives. Visit any shopping mall, one of the many that have mushroomed
all over the major metropolises and even small towns in India, and you cannot miss the yellow
arch of McDonald’s, the Nike´ swoosh, the Starbucks Coffee counter or KFC restaurants. What
Klein observes of her city Montreal, Canada is becoming true of shopping centres all over the
world.

paragraphs 3,4

Naomi traces the growth of the logo. She informs us how brand labels, till the 1970s, were
stitched on the inside of the shirt. The only apparel on which the logo was visible was the kind
people wore when they went to their clubs to play golf or tennis. Sometime during the late 70s,
people, tired of the current trend towards flamboyance in fashion, switched to a more sporty,
casual, and comfortable look. Suddenly, everyone was seen wearing these branded T-shirts,
especially the ones made by Lacosté. Notice the amusing metaphor:

Ralph Lauren’s Polo horseman and Izod Lacosté’s alligator escaped from the golf
course and scurried into the streets.

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The reference is to the logos of these famous brands; Ralph Lauren’s horseman and Lacoste’s
alligator. The logo on the shirts served an important ‘social function’, becoming a sign of wealth
and status. Soon, other major brands copied this trend and the logo became a fashion accessory,
investing the wearer with a value that transcended the shirt. Not only did the logo change its
position on the shirt but it grew in size as well. Tommy Hilfiger, for instance, printed the name
of their brand in bold, capital, six-inch high letters across the front of the T-shirt. It transformed
the wearer and dehumanized him into a ‘walking, talking, life-sized Tommy doll’. Don’t miss
the sarcasm in the language. The author’s passionate commitment to the anti-corporate
movement can be felt in the description of corporate giants who transform children and adults
into ‘mini- billboards’, ‘dolls’ and ‘empty carriers’.

Picking up the metaphor of the alligator, Klein extends it to draw attention to the dangers
inherent in branding, with utter disregard for personal space: ‘the metaphorical alligator; in other
words, has risen up and swallowed the literal shirt.’

Make a list of metaphors used by the author to express her disapproval of the trend of making
the logo of the brand visible on apparel?

paragraphs 5, 6

Following the growth of the brand, Naomi points out how it evolved into the next ‘level’. From
serving a social function, it graduated to branding the outside world. Klein identifies Marlboro
Friday, 2 April, 1993, the day the cigarette brand cut its prices, as a significant turning point in
the history of advertising. From a company that spent 70 per cent of its budget on advertising and
20 per cent on promotions, it turned around to spend 70 per cent on promotions and 20 per cent
on advertising.

After Marlboro Friday, a new consensus emerged amongst corporate giants; that products of
the future will be presented, not as commodities but as concepts, the brand as experience, as life
style. The reasoning was that if a prestigious brand like Marlboro; which had, since 1954, the
longest running ad-campaign in history, and spent more than a billion dollars on advertising, was
desperate enough to cut cigarette prices then the whole concept of branding the products had
failed.

By the mid-nineties, companies like Nike, Polo and Tommy Hilfiger were
ready to take branding to the next level: no longer branding their own
products, but branding the outside world as well- by sponsoring cultural
events they could go out into the world and claim bits of it as brand name
outposts.

Klein borrows from the vocabulary of history to characterize the expansionist strategies of the
multinationals. Like colonial powers, they transform culture into outposts of their empire, and
this is achieved through sponsoring cultural events. They are like parasites, ‘thirstily soaking up
the iconography and ideas’ of culture. She illustrates with the example of an exhibition of
photographs of nudes being sponsored by a major brewery. The association is based on an
unconvincing connection between art and beer.

Sponsorship is no longer a simple arrangement that is beneficial to both the artist and the
sponsor. Klein calls it ‘traditional corporate sponsorship.’ It has morphed into what she terms the

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Tommy Hilfiger type of ‘full-frontal branding’, applied not only to art and music but the
cityscape as well; that is the buildings, sidewalks, and public spaces. Klein is referring to the
practice of treating buildings as billboards. The logo has grown to the extent that it supersedes
the event to become ‘the main attraction.’

paragraph 7, 8

In this paragraph, the author discusses what is now known as experiential branding/advertising.
In another section of her book, Klein calls it ‘the highest feat of branding when companies
provide their consumers with opportunities not merely to shop but fully experience the meaning
of the brand’. During the nineties, manufacturers attempted to move beyond the conventional
goals of advertising; which were to infuse their products with desirable qualities, and create a
three-dimensional reality; artificial and unreal. Several instances of how corporates provide a
manufactured, unreal external world are frightening; ESPN bars, Swatch time, and Roots country
lodges. They have started taking over public spaces, such as bars or school camps, and attempt to
re-construct spaces reserved for social interaction.

The brand has gradually become the culture. Klein uses a mock argument to show up the
absurdity in the justification that if advertising is about ideas and attitudes then it can very well
be the culture. Don’t miss the ironic undertone in this argument;

The effect, if not always the original intent, of advanced branding is ….to
make the brand the star. It is not to sponsor culture but to be the culture.
And why shouldn’t it be. If brands are not products but ideas, attitudes,
values and experiences, why can’t they be culture too?

The phenomenon of celebrities endorsing products is critiqued in this paragraph. The co-optation
of celebrities is not only the product of the manufacturer’s desire to increase revenues. Klein
points out how celebrities eagerly enter into co-branding strategies as it is a lucrative proposition
for them. All the celebrities mentioned are owners of their personal corporations and are willing
participants in this process.

paragraph 9

Klein believes that the growth of corporate interference was a direct result of the policies of
economic liberalization pursued by the prime ministers of Canada, America, and Britain.
Privatization and lowering of taxes for the private sector were some of the main changes that
took place between 1970 and 1990, leading to a reduction in government funds. Public
institutions were considered over-staffed, mismanaged enterprises and government funding was
reduced. Educational institutes were forced to turn to the rich multinationals for financial
assistance to organize cultural events.

Naomi Klein has a historical perspective and her analysis moves beyond straightforward
criticism of multinationals. She identifies the political decisions that fed the growth of the
multinationals; privatization, deregulation, and lowering of corporate taxes across most
countries, leading to a scarcity of funds for public institutions and events. The absence of any
public debate on the need to preserve public spaces further fuelled the growth of corporate
sponsorship, which grew from a rare occurrence in the seventies to a massive industry in the
eighties, culminating in the type of advertising witnessed at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984.

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 Like Marlboro Friday, the Los Angeles Olympics held in 1984 marked a significant
moment in the history of advertising, when corporate giants were the visible sponsors of an
international sporting event. When the Olympics Committee needed funds, 29 companies paid at
least US $ 4 million each to use the Olympics theme in their advertising. Officially, this event
was a breakthrough in the private sponsorship of sport. It marked the assertion of America’s
corporate power.

paragraphs 10,11

Changing the course of her argument, Klein cautions against a dismissal of the kind of
sponsorship where there is a ‘delicate balance’ between the cultural event, the institution’s
independence, and the sponsor’s interests. She points out that, in times of scarce public funding,
corporate sponsorship has helped revive many art forms.

She feels that all sponsored events should not be viewed through the prism of
commercialization and to illustrate, she quotes at length from advertising critic Mathew
McAllister’s book, ‘The Commercialization of American Culture’, who firmly believes that art,
once it is sponsored, becomes ‘Art for Ad’s Sake’. McAllister’s thesis is based on idealistic
notions that art can remain unaffected by economic imperatives. Klein thinks that this type of
outlook ignores the existence of royal patronage of the arts since thousands of years. She gives
examples from as far back as 33 BCE, and the Renaissance. As she concludes, ‘cultural products
are the all-time favourite playthings of the powerful.’ Klein’s perspective is realistic as she
admits that the domain of art has never been free from interference and there has always been
some degree of ‘meddling’.

Sometimes, sponsorship can have harmful effects as when tobacco companies sponsor
events popular with youngsters; as they are indirectly promoting cigarette smoking. But to view
all sponsorship as purely commercial ventures can blind us to the changes taking place in the
corporate sector. Klein provides statistical figures to illustrate the dramatic rise in the, amounts
spent by manufacturers on sponsorships.

paragraphs 12-14

Corporate sponsorship grew and transcended the delicate balance between public good and
corporate interests, to being viewed as a ’marketing tool’ in the eighties. As the culture industry
needed financial support, manufacturers became more controlling. Dissatisfied with the
arrangements, more and more companies were taking over total control by buying events
outright. The result was that the boundaries between the sponsor and the culture became blurred.
The aim of sponsors is to become the culture. Naomi gives the example of Molson and Miller
beer concerts, where the brand overshadows the stars. Sponsors are now aiming for ‘seamless
integration’. The big corporate houses have now become the owners of cultural events, buying
them outright.

The essay ends with a warning about the dangers inherent in corporate sponsorship –
people will be conditioned to believe that no activity, personal or communal, is possible without
a sponsor. From being sponsors of cultural events, multinationals have made inroads into private
events, like weddings, as well. Quoting from Leslie Savan’ book, ‘The Sponsored Life’, Klein
says that we will all end up with a ‘sponsored mindset.’ Her prognosis for the future is
disturbing.

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Conclusion

As the title indicates, Naomi Klein’s essay maps the growth of the logo, from being an
inconspicuous label inside the shirt to a powerful marketing tool which, through the medium of
sponsorship, has taken over the function of culture. In language that is informal and has a
conversational tone, Klein combines personal anecdote with solid statistics to present a
damaging picture of corporate sponsorship. She quotes from many experts in the advertising
industry to support her argument.

The essay succeeds in presenting us with the underside of economic globalization. It is

not difficult to understand why her book ‘No Logo’ is considered the seminal text of the anti-
corporate movement. The liberalization policies pursued by governments all over the world have
resulted in the growing power of multinationals that, through the medium of branding and
sponsorship, are colonizing our minds and the public spaces reserved for art events and social
interaction. Klein’s purpose in this essay is to draw attention to the way transnationals attempt to
expand their business and don’t stop at intruding into personal spaces as well.

Notes

Calvins : jeans made by well-known American fashion designer Calvin

Klein. In the mid-70s, he created a designer jeans craze by
putting his name on the back pocket. His advertisements
usually featured adolescents and had sexual overtones.
Actress Brooke Shields featured in one of them.

Jordache : considered the originator of the designer denim phenomenon

in the late 70s in New York. They had a horse-head for a
logo.

alligator : logo of Lacosté, a French apparel company selling clothes,

footwear and perfumes. The founder René Lacosté was
nicknamed alligator and always wore a small green alligator
on the pocket of his tennis shirt. The alligator is considered
the first example of a brand name appearing on the outside of
an article of clothing.

leaping horseman : the figure of the classic polo-player on left breast of shirts
manufactured by Ralph Lauren.

Espirit : famous American clothing brand.

Gap : world’s largest apparels and accessories retailer. In 1982 they

started manufacturing under their own label.

Nike´ : the name for the Greek goddess of victory. The company by
this name is the largest sportswear manufacturer in the world.
Famous sports stars like Michael Jordan, Maria Sharapova
and Ronaldinho have modeled for them. Nike´ has been

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 accused of running sweatshops in China, Vietnam and
Indonesia.

swoosh : the logo of Nike´, resembling a tick-mark and so called

because of the resemblance to wings and the sound made
when a high jump is made.

Auqarian flamboyance : the astrological Age of Aquarius, it is believed, began in

1962, and is characterized by offbeat styles and the growth of
spiritualism. Also known as the New Age.

preppy : neat, fashionable.

Ralph Lauren : famous American fashion designer, owner of the label ‘Polo’.
A vast majority of its apparel is manufactured in China.

Izod Lacosté : In the 1980s René Lacosté, owner of Lacosté, teamed up with
David Crystal, owner of the label Izod to produce Izod
Lacosté clothing, popular with teenagers.

Roots : Canada’s leading athletic life style brand apparel and leather
goods manufacturer. Its logo is a beaver.

marquee’ : a tent used for social functions.

Tommy Hilfiger : world famous fashion designer, owner of Tommy Hilfiger

brand. The company has been criticized for manufacturing
clothes in sweatshops in the Northern Mariana Islands where
labour laws don’t apply.

Farah Fawcett : American actress and noted pop culture figure in the 70s and
80s.

Marlboro Friday : Friday, 2 April 1993 when Philip Morris announced a 20 per
cent cut in Marlboro cigarette prices to fight back against
bargain brands. As a result, stocks of competitors, as well as
other brands like Heinz and Coca-Cola also fell.

out-post : the furthest territory of an empire.

iconography : the study of symbols and their meaning.

Tequila Sauza : a popular alcoholic drink made in Sauza town in Mexico.

risque’ : audacious.

George Holz : photographer, well known for his nudes.

synergy : combined effect, that exceeds the sum of individual effects.

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cityscapes : a view or picture of a city.

Disney : world’s largest media and entertainment corporation. Disney

has been lobbying for harsher implementation of Intellectual
Property laws, while itself being accused of violating labour
rights. They got ‘The Sweatshop Retailer of the Year’ award
in 2001.

ESPN : acronym for Entertainment and Sports Programming

Network, a 24-hour American cable television network.

Swatch : world’s largest watch company. Swatch is a condensation of

the phrase ‘second watch’. Bold designing and style
characterized a new generation of watches that were casual,
fun and disposable. These Swiss watches were very popular
in the US in the mid-80s.

conflation : fusion, combination.

Michael Jordan : retired American professional basketball player, regarded as

one of the world’s greatest basketball players and one of the
most effectively marketed stars of his generation.

Puff Daddy : nickname for Sean John Combs; American media mogul,
record producer, rapper, owner of a clothing line and richest
hip-hop entertainer.

Austin Powers : fictional movie character, played by Mike Myers, starring in

films that are a spoof on James Bond films.

Brandy : Brandy Rayoma Norwood; American actress and songwriter,

singer. Considered the bestselling female artist in the music
industry.

Brian Mulroney : Prime Minister of Canada from 1984-1993 signed many free
trade treaties.

Ronald Reagan : President of the US, from 1981-1989. Introduced significant

tax-cuts.

Margaret Thatcher : British Prime Minister from 1979-1990. Her tenure was
characterized by curtailing, large-scale dismantling and
privatization of state-owned enterprises.

Martha Stewart : a suburban caterer in the 1970s, by the 1990s Martha Stewart
had evolved into a brand entity and her business Martha
Stewart Living Multimedia was a hybridized marketing and
media venture that managed her syndicated newspaper
columns, the publication of her monthly magazine ‘Martha

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 Stewart Living’, production of her T.V. programmes and
merchandising her lifestyle goods.

bogeyman : a person, real or imaginary, causing fear or difficulty.

Molson and Miller beer : beer made in North America’s oldest brewery. They also own
50 per cent of Universal Concerts, Canada’s only concert
promoter.

bluechip stars : a term applied to anything of high-value.

Altoid mints : British company, manufacturing mints since the turn of the
century.

Medici family : aristocratic family of Florence, cultural centre of Europe in

the 12th century.

Renaissance : the period that marked the revival of classical models of art
and learning that took place in Europe, from the Middle Ages
to the 15th century.

coralling : to put or keep something, as animals, in an enclosure.

Master Card : membership organization including 25,000 financial

institutions which issue its brand of credit cards.

Dannon : company manufacturing fresh dairy products.

Phoenix Home Life : American insurance company.

LaSalle Bank : subsidiary of Netherlands based ABN-AMRO Bank.

gig : a light two-wheeled carriage.

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