Imaginery Homeland by Rushdie

Imaginery Homeland is a collection of essay published in 1981-91  by Diasporic writer Salman Rushdie. This book contains essays like "Attenborough's Gandhi", "Commonwealth literature does not exist", "Hobson Jobson", New Empire within Britain", "Imaginery Homeland" etc.

Imaginery Homeland

The title is very suggestive and appropriate. He was born in India. But due to partition, their family has to move to Pakistan. But even there they are tagged as Kafir. He has written book "Satanic verses", and due to this there was Fatwa against him

 so he has to live in secrecy for many years. Now he is living in U.K. But there he is Immigrants. An Asian or outsider.

so the question comes that where to belong? THE ANGST OF BELONGING IS VERY MUCH VISIBLE in this essay.

Attenborough's Gandhi :-

It is a critical essay in which he makes critical remarks on the movie "Gandhi". He begins the essay by saying that " Deification is an Indian disease". But what happen to Western people that they have given 8 Oscars. He says it is neither Biography nor history but it is HAGIOGRAPHY.

He also questions the absence of figures like Bose, Tagore. Nehru was also shown as his follower where as he was equal to Gandhi. Jinnah is presented as counter Dracula.

He also makes critical observation on the scene of Jalianwala bagh. That after this massacre Dyre was rewarded in England rather than punished.

Why they are interested in deifying Gandhi? the answer is that it satisfies West's longing for spirituality. Gandhi is  also Christ like figure for them , who sacrificed themselves for the betterment of mankind. and to promote the idea of non violence . But he says that Gandhi was a shrewd, crafty Gujarati lawyer.

Though he praises that Ben Kinsley deserves the award for the role of Gandhi

He agrees that in art one has to be selective. one cant include everything in single film. But then even he says that what Attenborough did is problematic.

Black Skin White Masks

"Black skin white Masks" is a Ph.d. thesis of  studying the Psychology of black people and racism.

Black Skin, White Masks ( Peau noire, masquesblancs , 1952) by Frantz Fanon , is a sociological study of the psychology of the racism and dehumanization inherent in situations of colonial domination. He applied psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theory to explain the feelings of dependency and inadequacy that Black people experience in a White world. That the divided self-perception of the Black Subject who has lost his native cultural origin, and embraced the culture of the Mother Country, produces an inferiority complex in the mind of the Black Subject, who then will try to appropriate and imitate the culture of the colonizer . Such behavior is more readily evident in upwardly mobile and educated black people who can afford to acquire status symbols within the world of the colonial ecumene , such as an education abroad and mastery of the language of the colonizer, the white masks. (Wikipedia)

The book is divided in 8 chapters. In these eight chapters, Fanon talks about psychology of white colonizers and black people’s desire to be like white men. He talks about issue of language, marriage between white and black and psychology behind it, white mind set of ruling, black’s inequality and struggle for human existence.

1.The Black  Man and the language

In this chapter the author discusses that if a black person does not learn the white man’s language perfectly, he is unintelligent yes if he does learn it perfectly, he has washed his brain in the world of racial ideology.

According to Fanon

“The Negro enslaved by his inferiority, the white man enslaved by his

superiority alike behaves in accordance with a neurotic orientation.”

Essentially the Negro is born into a hopeless situation. In this context, the black man will never be normal, but always an inborn no, a preborn human of abnormality. "Let me add only that in the psychological sphere the abnormal man is he who demands, who appeals, who begs." Fanon invokes Freud; however the Oedipus complex is a luxury for the white man.

2. The woman of colour and the white Man

The colonized women look down on their own. Race and deep down won’t to be white. In “The Bluest eye” of “Tony Morrison” we find a black desire of white woman.

There are two such women: the Negros and the mulatto. The first has only one possibility and one concern: to turn white. The second wants not only to turn white but also to avoid slipping back. What indeed could be more illogical then a mulatto woman’s acceptance of a Negro husbands? For the understood once and for all that it is a question of saving the race.

Further fanon talks about three women, Mayotte, Nini and Dedee. Those entire woman are part white. A Blackman proposed Nini. Police was called because he is black and she is half white he has offended her “white girl’s” honours. Dedee was proposed by a man with a good government job. She was eager to enter the white world where Mayotte, the third woman had an affair with a married white man. She goes to white side of town with him where the white woman made her feel unworthy of him.

The woman colour wants to marry with white people because she believes that

 ‘Look a Negro!’ ‘Dirty nigger!’

3.The man of colour and white woman.

“The man of color and the white woman” reveals a boy, team venues that grow up in France and desired white woman. As a civil servant, he just is a bad as the whites.’ 

I want to be recognized not

As Black but as a white (Franon)

 

 In this chapter Fanon talks about the condition of man as a Black. He says that these men wants to become white, they are also equal to whites. Gwendolyn Brook’s poem “We real cool’’ deals with the same theme.

4.The so called dependency complex of the colonized people.

In this chapter Fanon argues that a people of colour may have deep desire for white rule. Those who opposite to it they don’t have secure sense of self that they have very chip sense on their shoulder.

If the black is not a man, then what is the biological, psychological and cultural identity of the black? If the black is not a man, what and who is black? Fanon’s answer to this is equally enigmatic: ‘The black is a black man.’ Moreover, his answer to what a black man wants is more enigmatic: ‘The black man want to be white’. In this book he said that...

“Toward a new humanism…Understanding among men...Our colored brothers...Mankind I believe in you...Race prejudice...To understand and to love...From all sides dozens and hundreds of pages assail me and try to impose their will on me.

But a single line would be enough. Supply a single answer and the colour problem would be stripped of its importance’ .A single answer was and is indeed not enough to deal with Dubois’ old problem of colour line.”

5.The Lived experience of Black Man

This chapter deals with them pathetic situation of black people. Here it is shown that being always black as if they are never fully human being. No matter however education or intelligence you have or no matter how well you perform in to the society. Even we have to mention here the black historical movement to support this argument. 

After that Fanon categorises this chapter …

§  He is seen not as Dr Fanon ,But as a Black Man who is a Doctor.

§  Being Seen as a Negro , never a man .

§  White people do not see him , they see his body .

§   

6. The Black Man and Psychopathology.

“Black man and psychopathology” is related with some wrong beliefs that white had for natives”

Why should people fear of being as a black? Here the white man repressed the Homosexuality and their strange hang ups about black man’s penises more generally, black man are viewed as a bodies which makes them seems like mindless, violence, sexual, animal beings. All the bad meaning that the word “Black” had even before Europeans set foot in black Africa.

Here he writes that

7. The Black Man and Recognition.

“The black man and Recognition” draws our attention as the author writers “ I am narcissus, and I want to see reflected in the eyes of the other an image of myself that satisfied me.”

Even we can also prove the post colonialism through these points

·        The idea of Blackness

·        The idea of identity

·        Notion of desire

·        The idea of Negritude

·       Other

·        

            8. “By way of conclusion

“By way of conclusion” is the final chapter, Frantz fanon does not want to be a black man, and he wants to be amen plain and simple. Black and white could not live in present as they can’t separate themselves from their past, says fanon.

 He writes……

“I will not make myself the man of any past. I do not want to sing the past to the detriment of my present and future.

§  Let the dead bury the dead:

§  I am my own foundation.”

Fanon says he has only one rights and one duty.

1) The rights to demand human behaviour from the other.

2) The duty to never let his decisions renounces his freedom.

A Tempest by Aime Cesaire

A Tempest

Its a play by Aime Cesaire. it is remarkable in the field of Post Colonialism.

☆What is Post Colonialism? 

Post Colonialism is an approach, a lens to see, understand and subvert notion of Western superiority.

~ It is an approach, in which colony writes back.

~We have to relook, rethink, revisit whatever written or spoken by the white people.

~Europeans have developed pre conceived notion about the East.

~Doubt whatever comes from West, every step taken by them is under doubt& question.

★Decentering the center :-

In Ramayan, Ram is at the center. But if we change the center and bring Sita into the center then it is problematic.

In "Hamlet" by Shakespeare, Hamlet is at the center. But if we change the center and bring Rosencrantz and Guildenstern into center or if we bring women characters like Ophelia or Gertrude at the center & read from their point of view then it is problematic.

What Tom Stoppard did by play "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead", the similar kind of thing is done by Aime Cesaire in A Tempest. Marginalised character of that book comes here into centre.Voiceless is given voice here.

Césaire  uses  all of  the  characters  from  Shakespeare's  version,  but  he  specifies  that  Prospero  is  a  white  master,  while Ariel  is  a  mulatto  and  Caliban  is  a  black  slave.  These  characters  are  the  focus  of  the  play  as  Césaire foregrounds  issues  of  race,  power,  and  decolonization.

The  action  in  the  play  closely  follows  that  of  Shakespeare's  play,  though  Césaire  emphasizes  the importance  of  the  people  who  inhabited  the  island  before  the  arrival  of  Prospero  and  his  daughter Miranda:  Caliban  and  Ariel.  Both  have  been  enslaved  by  Prospero,  though  Caliban  was  the  ruler  of  the island  before  Prospero's  arrival.  Caliban  and  Ariel  react  differently  to  their  situation.  Caliban  favors revolution  over  Ariel's  non-violence,  and  rejects  his  name  as  the  imposition  of  Prospero's  colonizing language,  desiring  to  be  called  X. He  complains  stridently  about  his  enslavement  and  regrets  not being  powerful  enough  to  challenge  the  reign  of  Prospero.  Ariel,  meanwhile,  contents  himself  with asking  Prospero  to  consider  giving  him  independence.  At  the  end  of  the  play,  Prospero  grants  Ariel  his freedom,  but  retains  control  of  the  island  and  of  Caliban.  This  is  a  notable  departure  from  Shakespeare's version,  in  which  Prospero  leaves  the  island  with  his  daughter  and  the  men  who  were  shipwrecked  there at  the  beginning  of  the  play.

A  Tempest  is  a  postcolonial  revision  of  William  Shakespeare’s  The  Tempest and  draws heavily  on  the  original  play—the  cast  of  characters  is,  for  the  most  part,  the  same,  and  the  foundation  of the  plot  follows  the  same  basic  premise.  Prospero  has  been  exiled  and  lives  on  a  secluded  island,  and  he drums  up  a  violent  storm  to  drive  his  daughter’s  ship  ashore.  The  island,  however,  is  somewhere  in  the Caribbean,  Ariel  is  a  mulatto  slave  rather  than  a  sprite,  and  Caliban  is  a  black  slave.  A  Tempest  focuses on  the  plight  of  Ariel  and  Caliban—the  never-ending  quest  to  gain  freedom  from  Prospero  and  his  rule over  the  island.  Ariel,  dutiful  to  Prospero,  follows  all  orders  given  to  him  and  sincerely  believes  that Prospero  will  honor  his  promise  of  emancipation.  Caliban,  on  the  other  hand,  slights  Prospero  at  every opportunity:  upon  entering  the  first  act,  Caliban  greets  Prospero  by  saying  “Uhuru!”,  the  Swahili  word for  “freedom.”  Prospero  complains  that  Caliban  often  speaks  in  his  native  language  which  Prospero  has forbidden.  This  prompts  Caliban  to  attempt  to  claim  birthrights  to  the  island,  angering  Prospero  who threatens  to  whip  Caliban.  During  their  argument,  Caliban  tells  Prospero  that  he  no  longer  wants  to  be called  Caliban,  “Call  me  X.  That  would  be  best.  Like  a  man  without  a  name.  Or,  to  be  more  precise,  a man  whose  name  has  been  stolen.”  The  allusion  to  Malcolm  X  cements  the  aura  of  cultural  reclamation that  serves  as  the  foundational  element  of  A  Tempest.  Cesaire  has  also  included  the  character  Eshu  who in  the  play  is  cast  as  a  black  devil-god.  Calling  on  the  Yoruba  mythological  traditions  of  West  Africa, Eshu  assumes  the  archetypal  role  of  the  trickster  and  thwarts  Prospero’s  power  and  authority  during assemblies.  Near  the  end  of  the  play,  Prospero  sends  all  the  lieutenants  off  the  island  to  procure  a  place in  Naples  for  his  daughter  Miranda  and  her  husband  Ferdinand.  When  the  fleet  begs  him  to  leave, Prospero  refuses  and  claims  that  the  island  cannot  stand  without  him;  in  the  end,  only  he  and  Caliban remain.  As  Prospero  continues  to  assert  his  hold  on  the  island,  Caliban’s  freedom  song  can  be  heard  in the  background.  Thus,  Cesaire  leaves  his  audience  to  consider  the  lasting  effects  of  colonialism. (Wikipedia)

Abhigyan shakuntalam

Abhigyan Shakuntalam

छिन्नबन्धे मत्स्ये पलायिते निर्विण्णो।

धीवरो भणति धर्मो मे भवति ॥

Chchhinnabandhe matsye palaayite nirvinno

Dheevaro bhanati dharmo me bhavati

When the fishing net was torn and fish leaped into the water the fisherman becomes dejected and consoles himself saying that he will get merit (punya) (for allowing the fish to escape).

Abhigyanshakuntalam

is regarded asone of the best play in Sanskrit literature by Mahakavi Kalidasa. 'Dushyant' and 'Shakuntala' are the Hero and heroine of the play. it is at large extent a love story with interesting turns and twists.

 it is the play which German poet Goethe had put on his head and danced.

the play is divided into seven acts. in the beginning Dushyant goes into forest and saw beautiful Shakuntala pouring water to the trees. she was a daughter of Rishi Kanva. in absence of Rishi Kanva both does Gandharva vivah.

Later on it happens that due to a curse of Rishi Durvasa, Dushyant forgets that he got married to Shakuntala in forest, he denies to accept her as his wife.

Later on with the help of the ring, king remembers everything. once when King was returning from the heaven by helping lord Indra, he lends in a Aashram for a while. there he saw very exceptional child, who was counting teeth of a Lion. then it is revealed that 'Bharat" (child) is the son of Dushyant and Shakuntala. she was living there after rejected by king. both gets united there, and it ends happily.