The many-faceted aspects of post-colonial literature
Carl Muller
LITERATURE: The Postcolonial has been a time of testing the waters.
Writers have made their mark by manipulating words to suit or criticize
the many controversial and political subjects that have simmered around
them. They have done so by connecting themselves with langauge; and in
this way, language became their tool. After all, no person has become a
worse writer by writing.
I have found in most postcolonial literature an unconscious cry for
stability. The colonial period had inflicted on us a quite dampening
effect. We had come to accept the experiences of life while things just
seemed to happen around us.
There was little dignity of ancestry or hope for posterity. The
colonials gave us their vision and we danced to the tunes they played.
Yet, as we see, the colonial era did not leave us barren of interest and
devoid of purpose. This age of Postcolonial Literature has become, in
many ways, an era of Postcolonial Literary Revolution.
Everything that has been written has been, in a sense, bonded with
personal experience - but this is usually defined as an attempt to set
down one's conclusions about a part of human living which no one except
the writer could possible master: that part which is wholly comprised
observations, experiences, emotions and thoughts of the writer himself.
Yet, in much of the writing that has emerged, we see how, unlike the
sociologists who may understand the workings of people in the mass, the
writer is, shall I say cuter?
He can tell of how forces enwrap or buffet his characters, and yet
limits himself to a chosen few.
True models
I recall how Bertrand Russel once said that, as a young man, he was
unhappy because he thought too much about himself and conceived of the
universe as being centred about his own interests. This could be applied
for much of postcolonial literature too.
It has its bark and its bite and the true models of such literature
become valid when the writer appreciates his own relative unimportance
and recognizes the much greater importance of the world around him and
knows when he or she should bark and when to bite.
A new Sri Lankan writer from Victoria, Canada, Shane Joseph, has
given us his first novel, "Redemption in Paradise." The novel is rich
and set in a landscape that is fluid and where time itself is
inconsequential. We are assured of many barks and bites. In the novel,
Sarah Neal, an Australian, arrives in Sri Lanka. Let me quote:
Commercial interests
"A man passing by on the sidewalk turned and caught her eye... She
could see the interest in his eyes. She had seen this many times over in
her travels around Asia. Men desired Western women in these parts of the
world, mostly as sexual objects.
"Maybe there was a thirst for conquest over past colonial masters and
attaining it via a European-looking woman was one way of gratification."
We also have the author's comments on Colombo - so very true - deftly
sandwiched into the thoughts of another visitor to the island, an
expatriate, Lionel Kodituwakku:
"Colombo was oblivious to the troubles in the country: a crowded city
where commercial interests switched allegiances with changing trends. He
remembered when the socialist government of the Bandaranaike era had
throttled free market forces in the early Seventies. The city was filled
up with bureaucrats mainly from the Eastern bloc.
When the rival UNP government finally reinstated a freemarket system
seven years later, trading companies flourished as the companies strove
to catch up with the rest of the world. Imported cars, motorcycles and
electronics flooded in. Television was introduced into the country for
the first time. Merchants became all-powerful once again.
Inflation raged in the 20 to 50 p.c. range and the middle classes
began to disappear. One either had a business and was rich or was a
salaried worker and lived poor... When the Middle East expatriate worker
exodus reached its zenith in the early Eighties, Colombo changed
complexion again and was littered with recruitment and travel agencies.
Now, with the ethnic war in full swing up north, and the socialists
back in power in a more capitalistic mode, all sorts of new businesses
were in evidence: arms imports, security systems, casinos, immigrant
consultants, internet-based businesses.
This city always made good on the ups and downs of the rest of the
country; and villagers still streamed into this big city that promised
one a chance to get rich or get chewed up in the attempt."
Tourist group
The novel comes to a tourist group at the Dalada Maligawa. There is
tour guide Asoka, there is Lionel, Jefferson from New York, Robert,
Sarah, John and Margaret. Robert comments: "I can't believe the
security. This is more like a military establishment."
Sarah: "They obviously have a lot of national treasure here to
protect."
Robert: "I wonder whether the Buddha's message of being above earthly
things has gotten a bit lost here."
Sarah: "The monks here look very hierarchical - as if they are
entitled to respect from the lay folk."
Lionel: "The monks here are on top of the food chain."
Robert: "Buddhism in this country has penetrated the political
spectrum. I guess you sense some of the political power here. Soldiers
and politicised monks - an interesting combination."
What do we have? Evidently we have the author's own thoughts, his
denunciations, his own views uttered by his characters.
But isn't there something else? Is he not trying to also tell us that
he will bark as long as he pleases and also show us that this country
and its people fared better in colonial times? This is something about
postcolonial writing that needs to be addressed.
How much looking back carries such a message? The writings of Anita
Desai, Arundathi Roy, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Shiva and V. S. Naipaul,
David Davidar and so many others are strong-voiced postcolonial works,
but we have to own that the writer's own view of many things could be
coloured by preconceptions and prejudices.
What do we then have? Thinking writing or rationalised writing? Is
postcolonial literature caught up in a process of finding arguments for
going on believing as the writer already does?
What follows then is that Postcolonial Literature blossomed because
of this thing called literary ability. This is the hallmark of the
really professional writer who is able to handle hopes and fears of his
or her own experiences and weave them into a story that can be properly
handled and understood.
What we now have, with our feet planted on this postcolonial road, is
a rapid succession of literary forms that always stimulate interest.
There are so may expressed or implied standards, and, above all, they
coalesce with the writer's relations to a fast-changing world.
Wealth of words
The biggest explosion has been langauge; and, as Cratylus said,
"Language is divinely ordained." But I will go a step farther and add
that even if langauge can help us to suggest our conception of the
meaning of things, it can only approximate exactitude.
I have yet to come upon a language that can fully or accurately
express the finest shades of meaning. So we are now grown accustomed to
the Jamaican way, the Indian way, the Sri Lankan way, the English way.
In his book "What a World", A. P. Herbert gave us an essay on "Jungle
English" which was most amusing. It has taken us some effort to break
out of the hard-set mould of colonial schooling and values; but we have
pulled ourselves out of that rut and I can now say that the Empire is
also barking back in its many tongues!
George Orwell, you will remember, saw it coming when he wrote
"Politics and the English Language." He said: "Most people who bother
with the matter at all, would admit that the English langauge is in a
bad way."
Orwell did not live to see how well the postcolonial writers redeemed
it! It began to absorb and accept the great wealth of words that moved
in battalions across the West.
These became telling literary works, carrying an Indian-ness, a Sri
Lankan-ness, sopping the sorry air with phrases and new approaches from
Bangladesh to Berlin, Kandy to Kent, Pakistan to Pennsylvania, Africa to
Auckland. Just consider what happened. Did we give a hoot? There were no
dead or dying metaphors, no verbal wooden legs, no pretentious diction,
no meaningless words.
India was speaking out in a strong Indian voice. The old English
concreteness was shattered. Suddenly there was a new refreshment and, if
I may say so, a refreshing vulgarity as well that certainly rocked the
staid British cradle. |