Hello and welcome to this course on postcolonial
literature.
Conventionally the study of English Literature
in Indian universities and colleges has meant
primarily a study of British literature.
Or at most we include the study of American
literature.
In this new category, postcolonial literature,
we encounter a fascinatingly wide array of
literary texts that come from parts of the
world as varied as India, West Indies, Africa,
Canada, Australia, South America.
And therefore, I think that, though this course
is primarily aimed at graduate students of
English literature, anyone who is interested
in literature in general should benefit from
this course.
And since this particular course is going
to read the wide variety of literary texts
that I just mentioned against the backdrop
of colonialism and resistance to colonialism,
it should also appeal to students who are
interested to know more about the cultural
legacies of colonialism as well as those who
want to actively engage with the process of
decolonisation or think through the process
of decolonisation.
Postcolonial literature, as some of us will
know, is a fast expanding field of literary
studies and just the numbers of academic journals,
of books, of monograph series, of conference
proceedings that are regularly brought out
with the word postcolonial or postcolonialism
in their title, that very number is now mind-boggling.
This course will try to map some of the exciting
possibilities as well as challenges that this
new area of literary studies has thrown up
and it will do so by discussing literary texts
as well as critical texts which have come
to form the canons of postcolonial literature.
But even before we try and do that, we try
and discover the kind of literature that this
category contains, we should try and understand
in depth the meaning of the word postcolonial
or postcolonialism because at the end of the
day this is the term which holds the literary
category together and gives meaning to it.
But an attempt to understand the meaning of
the term or to answer the question what is
postcolonialism is fraught with difficulties.
It is in fact a challenge.
And I refer to it as a challenge primarily
because for the past four decades now, this
term postcolonialism has been used to mean
various different things.
In fact there is also no general consensus
as to how the term postcolonial or postcolonialism
should be written.
Should it be written with a hyphen separating
post and colonialism or should it be written
as a single word?
So our first task therefore would be to know
how to navigate through this rather confusing
warren of meanings as well as spellings of
this term postcolonialism.
Now if you look at the word “postcolonialism”
carefully, you will notice that it is composed
of two different elements.
The major element or the major component is
of course the word “colonialism” but there
is also a very important prefix that is attached
to the word which is “post”.
And that prefix adds an important dimension
to our understanding of the term.
Now if we go to the dictionary and look up
the prefix “post”, we will see that generally
it means “after” or “behind”.
So if we attach the prefix “post” before
a noun which denotes a particular event, then
“post” indicates something that happens
or comes after the event, that is indicated
by the noun.
So for instance, if we are looking at the
word post-graduation, for instance, which
also uses the same prefix “post”, then
we will see that by adding the prefix post,
the word post-graduation signifies something
which comes after or happens after the graduation.
So if we are talking about post-graduation
degree, for instance, if I am doing a post-graduation
degree in English, that will mean that I have
already completed my graduation and I am now
studying for a degree which can be obtained
only after graduation.
If we try to decode the term postcolonialism
using this same logic, then the term should
mean the period that comes “after” colonialism.
If you try and understand this particular
meaning from within the Indian context, then
we are almost inevitably directed towards
a certain date and that date is of course
15th August 1947.
As we all know, India till 1947 was a British
colony and on 15th August 1947 we ceased to
be a colony and we became a sovereign nation-state.
Now this should mean therefore that the period
in the history of India that comes after the
date of our political independence is the
history of postcolonial India.
Now there are certain problems if you understand
the term postcolonialism in this sense and
I am going to come to these problems soon
enough.
But let me state here that this is not an
altogether wrong understanding of the term
postcolonialism.
Indeed, the word postcolonial, used with a
hyphen separating “post” and “colonial”,
has often been used to refer to the post-independence
history of states which were once politically
part of large European empires.
Which means that this equation, postcolonial
means post-independence, is not an altogether
wrong equation.
But nevertheless this is not the mainstream
understanding of the term postcolonialism
within the field of postcolonial studies,
and to mark this difference, the word “postcolonialism”
is used without the hyphen by most scholars
of postcolonial studies.
But what is the problem if you use postcolonialism
to mean post-independence?
Well even without a very well-rounded definition
of colonialism at our hand, we are going to
discuss that later, but right now even without
a definition of colonialism, I think we all
agree that colonialism has a number of different
facets, different aspects.
And the political aspect, though an important
one, is not the only aspect of colonialism.
To try and understand this further let us
look at the date 15th August 1947 more closely.
What exactly happened on that date?
Well on that date we ceased to be politically
governed by the British parliament or British
monarch.
They ceased having any direct political control
over our affairs.
But this political power which Britain exercised
over India till 14th august 1947, till the
date before independence, was only part of
what we understand as British colonialism.
Indeed, apart from the political domain, British
colonialism also exerted a large amount of
influence on the social, cultural, and economic
spheres of India and those influences did
not come to an abrupt stop when we achieved
our independence on 15th August 1947.
So even today, if we look around, we find
ourselves surrounded by legacies of British
colonialism which range from the miles and
miles of railway tracks that criss-cross this
country to the English language in which I
am now communicating with you.
Perhaps the most profound impact of British
colonialism in India was economic.
Because it was with the advent of colonialism
that India became thoroughly integrated within
a global network of capitalism and even seven
decades after gaining political independence
we are still very much integrated within that
global network of capitalism.
So clearly not everything that constituted
British colonialism in India has come to an
end.
Therefore, as far as understanding postcolonialism
within the Indian context is concerned, a
date like 15th August 1947 does not prove
to be very useful.
Is there then any other way of understanding
the term postcolonialism?
Well there is.
And if you think about the discussion that
we have had so far you will realise that we
have been trying to understand postcolonialism
as signifying things which come after the
end of colonialism.
And that end is apparently signified by the
date 15th August 1947 as far as India is concerned.
But as we have seen, many aspects which constituted
the process of colonialism, at least in the
context of British Raj in India, has survived
well beyond our date of political independence.
And therefore it is not practicable to talk
about the end of colonialism.
But we get a new insight into things if we
think of postcolonialism as a word that signifies
not something that comes after the end of
colonialism but as signifying things that
come after the beginning of colonialism.
Now I can understand that this sounds slightly
confusing.
But to help us understand this better, and
this is crucial, let us again use the familiar
context of Indian history.
Now if rather than the end of British colonialism
in India, we have to look for its beginning,
then we will see that we are pushed as far
back as the 18th century when the Mughal emperor
Farrukhshiyar issued a firman allowing the
East India Company, the British East India
company, there were in fact, a number of East
India companies, the British East India company
duty free trading rights in Bengal.
And since the first quarter of the 18th century
when the firman came into effect, the British
colonial power started expanding their economic
and political influence in India which was
soon coupled by a strong socio-cultural influence
as well.
Now the impact of this colonial influence
was such that the India that emerged after
the first impact of colonialism was felt,
was markedly different from the India that
was there before the impact of colonialism.
Postcolonialism in this Indian context would
therefore mean the sum total of all the various
social, political, economic and cultural changes
that started being perceived after the first
impact of colonialism was felt.
And if you notice here in the slide, I have
spelt postcolonialism without the hyphen.
So chronologically, postcolonial India is
not the India after 1947 as far as the field
of Postcolonial studies is concerned, rather
it is the India which started emerging from
the 18th century onwards as the colonial power,
British colonial power, started spreading
its influence across the land.
Now at this point, let us stop for a while
and think about this new definition of postcolonialism
that we have arrived at.
If postcolonialism is the sum total of the
social, economic, political, cultural changes
that are brought about because of colonialism
then are these changes relevant only for the
colonised society and not for the colonising
society?
In other words, when we are talking about
the British colonialism in India, can we only
talk about the emergence of a postcolonial
India and not about postcolonial Britain?
Well that is a wrong assumption.
Why?
Because even a cursory acquaintance with the
British history of 18th-century and 19th-century
and even 20th-century would tell us that the
British society was as deeply impacted, as
deeply influenced by the process of colonialism
as the Indian society.
And in fact this is not very difficult to
comprehend if we keep in mind that colonialism
is ultimately a two-way traffic, a two-way
traffic of ideas, goods and people between
the colonised and the colonising country.
Therefore, it is implausible to think that
colonialism only affects the colonised people
and not the colonisers.
Thus, if we can talk about a postcolonial
India, we can also with equal justice talk
about the emergence of a postcolonial Britain.
Now so far, we have been talking about colonialism
without really trying to explore its definition,
its meanings but now let us look at it more
closely.
And if we want to understand what is colonialism,
then the historical origin of the word provides
us with a very interesting clue.
The word colonialism has at its root the word
colony which in turn is derived from the Latin
word “colōnia”.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines “colōnia”
as “farms” or “landed estates” which
were located in newly conquered territories
of the Roman empire, and were originally given
as gifts to Roman citizens who are mostly
veteran soldiers.
And establishing such Roman colonies in an
otherwise hostile territory ensured that the
occupied land remained under control and among
the various colonies that Roman had, London
was a very prominent one.
Now this understanding of colony and colonialism,
via the root word “colōnia”, throws up
a number of interesting points.
The first point is that colonialism or the
process of establishing colonies is essentially
a violent process because it involves forcibly
occupying the land and using the territorial
resources that originally belonged to someone
else.
Colonies are therefore sites of hostility
and violence.
As we will see in this course, the colonial
violence that I just mentioned makes itself
felt at several different levels - social,
economic, cultural.
But these more abstract kinds of violence
are almost always coupled with the brutalities
of physical violence.
And we see this for instance in Peru, via
during the early decades of the 16th century,
Spanish conquistadors reduced the native population
from about half a crore, to around three lakhs.
We again see this more recently in the 1893
war against the Matabele kingdom, which is
in present day Zimbabwe, where the British
forces almost mowed down their African opponents
like grass using the newly invented Maxim
gun, which is a special kind of a machine
gun.
So, though in this course we will talk a lot
about the cultural violence perpetrated by
colonialism as well as resistance to this
cultural violence, we should not become blind
to the physical violence, to the gruesome
physical violence which almost always underlines
the process of colonialism.
The second point to note in the dictionary
definition of the Latin word “colōnia”,
which informs the present day use of the word
colonialism, is that though Roman colonia
where settlements away from the heart of Italy
which was the centre of the Roman empire,
they were nevertheless inhabited by people
who still retained their rights as Roman citizens
and who represented the political and economic
interests of their mother country in the distant
territory of the colonies.
Therefore, when we are talking about colonialism
which derives from this Roman model, we are
always talking about this relationship between
a mother country, which is otherwise called
metropolis and from where the colonising people
come, and the conquered country which is transformed
into a colony so that its resources can be
siphoned off.
If we look at this world map of 1921, here
the shaded areas represent the British colonial
empire.
And here you can see that the comparatively
small island of Britain is acting as the colonial
mother country or metropolis over a huge territory
that includes South Asia, which of course
contains present day Pakistan, India, Bangladesh,
Sri Lanka.
There is also Burma.
It contains vast stretches of Africa, it contains
Canada, it contains Australia, it contains
New Zealand.
Now it can be argued that such territorial
conquests and expansion, as this map shows,
was always a part of human history.
As we have seen, even the British capital
of London, which acted as a centre of the
metropolis of this entire huge colonial empire,
was itself once a colony of the Roman empire.
So doesn’t this make the history of colonialism
really the entire history of humanity?
Well it may be so but as far as postcolonial
studies is concerned, the focus is on the
kinds of colonialism that emerged since the
sixteenth century and that were driven primarily
by the profit making motives of capitalism.
We will be discussing this relationship between
colonialism and capitalism later on, but before
that we will have to try and understand postcolonialism
and its relation to literature.
This will be our topic for the next lecture.
Thank you.
