POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES

Short Notes:-

1.Other

In phenomenology, the terms the Other and the Constitutive Other identify the other
human being, in his and her differences from the Self, as being a cumulative,
constituting factor in the self-image of a person; as acknowledgement of being real;
hence, the Other is dissimilar to and the opposite of the Self, of Us, and of the Same.
The Constitutive Other is the relation between the personality (essential nature) and the
person (body) of a human being; the relation of essential and superficial characteristics
of personal identity that corresponds to the relationship between opposite, but
correlative, characteristics of the Self, because the difference is inner-difference, within
the Self.

The condition and quality of Otherness (the characteristics of the Other) is the state of
being different from and alien to the social identity of a person and to the identity of the
Self.[5] In the discourse of philosophy, the term Otherness identifies and refers to the
characteristics of Who? and What? of the Other, which are distinct and separate from
the Symbolic order of things; from the Real (the authentic and unchangeable); from the
æsthetic (art, beauty, taste); from political philosophy; from social norms and social
identity; and from the Self. Therefore, the condition of Otherness is a person's non-
conformity to and with the social norms of society; and Otherness is the condition of
disenfranchisement (political exclusion), effected either by the State or by the social
institutions (e.g., the professions) invested with the corresponding socio-political power.
Therefore, the imposition of Otherness alienates the person labelled as "the Other" from
the centre of society, and places him or her at the margins of society, for being the
Other.

The term Othering describes the reductive action of labelling and defining a person as a
subaltern native, as someone who belongs to the socially subordinate category of the
Other. The practice of Othering excludes persons who do not fit the norm of the social
group, which is a version of the Self;[7] likewise, in human geography, the practice of
othering persons means to exclude and displace them from the social group to the
margins of society, where mainstream social norms do not apply to them, for being the
Other.

2.Imperialism

Imperialism is a policy or ideology of extending the rule over peoples and other
countries, for extending political and economic access, power and control, through
employing hard power especially military force, but also soft power. While related to the
concepts of colonialism and empire, imperialism is a distinct concept that can apply to
other forms of expansion and many forms of government.

Expansionism and centralisation have been pursued throughout recorded history by

states, with the earliest examples dating back to the mid-third millennium BC. However,
the concept of imperialism arose in the modern age, associated chiefly with the
European colonial powers of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries and New Imperialism.
Following the decolonization of European holdings, the concept has further evolved and
has been broadly used to identify as well as criticise a range of policies and a number of
states, including even supposedly anti-imperialist states.

In postcolonial theory Imperialism always refers to the ideology that promotes a

worldview in which one group of people or a nation assumes that it is inherently superior
to other peoples or nations and hence has the right, or obligation, to bring their
civilization message to the so-called “inferior’ or “primitive” cultures. While the term
Imperium comes from the Roman system of imperial government, in most postcolonial
studies only the 19th and 20th century imperialism is studied, as it coincides with the
rise of mercantile and later industrial capitalism.
In so many ways it is this imperial mind-set and ideology that underwrites the Western
colonial project in the 19th and 20th century. While some actually believed in this way of
thinking the non-West, for most nations and its leaders the “civilizing mission” worked as
a legitimizing strategy to justify the occupation of non-Western lands for extracting raw
materials. One could say, a la Edward said, that imperialism provided the ideological
scaffolding, and still does, for the physical occupation of non-western lands.

3.Colonialism
Colonialism is the policy of a country seeking to extend or retain its authority over other
people or territories, generally with the aim of economic dominance.In the process of
colonisation, colonisers may impose their religion, language, economics, and other
cultural practices on indigenous peoples. The foreign administrators rule the territory in
pursuit of their interests, seeking to benefit from the colonised region's people and
resources.

Colonialism is strongly associated with the European colonial period starting with the
15th century when some European states established colonising empires. At first,
European colonising countries followed policies of mercantilism, aiming to strengthen
the home-country economy, so agreements usually restricted the colonies to trading
only with the metropole (mother country). By the mid-19th century, however, the British
Empire gave up mercantilism and trade restrictions and adopted the principle of free
trade, with few restrictions or tariffs. Christian missionaries were active in practically all
of the European-controlled colonies because the metropoles were Christian. Historian
Philip Hoffman calculated that by 1800, before the Industrial Revolution, Europeans
already controlled at least 35% of the globe, and by 1914, they had gained control of
84% of the globe.

In the aftermath of World War II colonial powers were forced to retreat between 1945–
1975, when nearly all colonies gained independence, entering into changed colonial,
so-called postcolonial and neocolonialist relations. Postcolonialism and neocolonialism
has continued or shifted relations and ideologies of colonialism, justifying its
continuation with concepts such as development and new frontiers, as in exploring outer
space for colonization.

Collins English Dictionary defines colonialism as "the policy and practice of a power in
extending control over weaker peoples or areas".Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary
defines colonialism as "the system or policy of a nation seeking to extend or retain its
authority over other people or territories". The Merriam-Webster Dictionary offers four
definitions, including "something characteristic of a colony" and "control by one power
over a dependent area or people". Etymologically, the word "colony" comes from the
Latin colōnia—"a place for agriculture".

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy uses the term "to describe the process of
European settlement and political control over the rest of the world, including the
Americas, Australia, and parts of Africa and Asia". It discusses the distinction between
colonialism, imperialism and conquest and states that "[t]he difficulty of defining
colonialism stems from the fact that the term is often used as a synonym for
imperialism. Both colonialism and imperialism were forms of conquest that were
expected to benefit Europe economically and strategically," and continues "given the
difficulty of consistently distinguishing between the two terms, this entry will use
colonialism broadly to refer to the project of European political domination from the
sixteenth to the twentieth centuries that ended with the national liberation movements of
the 1960s".

In his preface to Jürgen Osterhammel's Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview, Roger

Tignor says "For Osterhammel, the essence of colonialism is the existence of colonies,
which are by definition governed differently from other territories such as protectorates
or informal spheres of influence. In the book, Osterhammel asks, "How can 'colonialism'
be defined independently from 'colony?'" He settles on a three-sentence definition:

Colonialism is a relationship between an indigenous (or forcibly imported) majority and a

minority of foreign invaders. The fundamental decisions affecting the lives of the
colonised people are made and implemented by the colonial rulers in pursuit of interests
that are often defined in a distant metropolis. Rejecting cultural compromises with the
colonised population, the colonisers are convinced of their own superiority and their
ordained mandate to rule.
4."Third World"

The term "Third World" arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained
non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Japan,
South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the First World,
while the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and their allies represented the Second World.
This terminology provided a way of broadly categorizing the nations of the Earth into
three groups based on political and economic divisions. Since the fall of the Soviet
Union and the end of the Cold War, the term Third World has decreased in use. It is
being replaced with terms such as developing countries, least developed countries or
the Global South. The concept itself has become outdated as it no longer represents the
current political or economic state of the world.

The Third World was normally seen to include many countries with colonial pasts in
Africa, Latin America, Oceania and Asia. It was also sometimes taken as synonymous
with countries in the Non-Aligned Movement. In the dependency theory of thinkers like
Raúl Prebisch, Walter Rodney, Theotonio dos Santos, and Andre Gunder Frank, the
Third World has also been connected to the world-systemic economic division as
"periphery" countries dominated by the countries comprising the economic "core".

Due to the complex history of evolving meanings and contexts, there is no clear or
agreed-upon definition of the Third World.[1] Some countries in the Communist Bloc,
such as Cuba, were often regarded as "Third World". Because many Third World
countries were economically poor, and non-industrialized, it became a stereotype to
refer to poor countries as "third world countries", yet the "Third World" term is also often
taken to include newly industrialized countries like Brazil and China now more
commonly referred to as part of BRIC. Historically, some European countries were non-
aligned and a few of these were and are very prosperous, including Austria, Ireland,
Sweden, Finland and Switzerland.

Most Third World countries are former colonies. Having gained independence, many of
these countries, especially smaller ones, were faced with the challenges of nation- and
institution-building on their own for the first time. Due to this common background, many
of these nations were "developing" in economic terms for most of the 20th century, and
many still are. This term, used today, generally denotes countries that have not
developed to the same levels as OECD countries, and are thus in the process of
developing.

In the 1980s, economist Peter Bauer offered a competing definition for the term "Third
World". He claimed that the attachment of Third World status to a particular country was
not based on any stable economic or political criteria, and was a mostly arbitrary
process. The large diversity of countries considered part of the Third World — from
Indonesia to Afghanistan — ranged widely from economically primitive to economically
advanced and from politically non-aligned to Soviet- or Western-leaning. An argument
could also be made for how parts of the U.S. are more like the Third World.

The only characteristic that Bauer found common in all Third World countries was that
their governments "demand and receive Western aid," the giving of which he strongly
opposed. Thus, the aggregate term "Third World" was challenged as misleading even
during the Cold War period, because it had no consistent or collective identity among
the countries it supposedly encompassed.

5.Hybridity

Hybridity, in its most basic sense, refers to mixture. The term originates from biology
and was subsequently employed in linguistics and in racial theory in the nineteenth
century. Its contemporary uses are scattered across numerous academic disciplines
and is salient in popular culture. Hybridity is used in discourses about race,
postcolonialism, identity, anti-racism and multiculturalism, and globalization, developed
from its roots as a biological term.

Hybridity is a cross between two separate races, plants or cultures. A hybrid is

something that is mixed, and hybridity is simply mixture. Hybridity is not a new cultural
or historical phenomenon. It has been a feature of all civilizations since time
immemorial, from the Sumerians through the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans to the
present. Both ancient and modern civilizations have, through trade and conquests,
borrowed foreign ideas, philosophies, and sciences, thus producing hybrid cultures and
societies. The term hybridity itself is not a modern coinage. It was common among the
Greeks and Romans. In Latin hybrida or ibrida refers to "the offspring of a tame sow and
a wild boar," and by extension to the progeny of a Roman man and a non-Roman
woman. The word hybridity was in use in English since the early 17th century and
gained popular currency in the 19th century. Charles Darwin used this term in 1837 in
reference to his experiments in cross-fertilization in plants. The concept of hybridity was
fraught with negative connotations from its incipience. The Greeks and Romans
borrowed extensively from other civilizations, the Egyptians and Persians in particular,
and creating ipso facto hybridized cultures, but regarded unfavourably biological
hybridity. Aristotle, Plato and Pericles were all opposed to racial mixing between Greeks
and "barbarians" and viewed biological hybridity as a source of racial degeneration and
social disorder. Similarly, within the Roman Empire, which is considered as one of the
most multi-ethnic empires, cultural difference was usually integrated into the
predominant culture, whereas biological hybridity was condemned.[8] The Romans’
attitudes to racial mixing hardened from the 4th century AD when Rome embraced the
Christian faith. This is manifest in the Codex Theodosianus (AD365) which prohibited
marriages between Christians and non-Christians, the Jews in particular, and inflicted
death penalty on those who did not obey this law.[9] Contempt for biological hybridity
did not end with the fall of the Roman Empire, but continued throughout the Middle
Ages and well into modern times, reaching a peak in the nineteenth century with the rise
of Europe into an unrivalled imperial power. Hybridity and fear of racial degeneration
caused by the mixing of Europeans and non-Europeans were major concerns in 19th
century colonialist discourse prompted by racist pseudo-scientific discourses found in
such works as Joseph Arthur de Gobineau's Essai sur l’inégalité des races and Joseph-
Ernest Renan's L’Education culturelle et morale.

As an explicative term, hybridity became a useful tool in forming a fearful discourse of

racial mixing that arose toward the end of the 18th century. Pseudo-scientific models of
anatomy and craniometry were used to argue that Africans, Asians, Native Americans,
and Pacific Islanders were racially inferior to Europeans. The fear of miscegenation that
followed responds to the concern that the offspring of racial interbreeding would result in
the dilution of the European race. Hybrids were seen as an aberration, worse than the
inferior races, a weak and diseased mutation. Hybridity as a concern for racial purity
responds clearly to the zeitgeist of colonialism where, despite the backdrop of the
humanitarian age of enlightenment, social hierarchy was beyond contention as was the
position of Europeans at its summit. The social transformations that followed the ending
of colonial mandates, rising immigration, and economic liberalization profoundly altered
the use and understanding of the term hybridity.

6.mimicry

In evolutionary biology, mimicry is an evolved resemblance between an organism and

another object, often an organism of another species. Mimicry may evolve between
different species, or between individuals of the same species. Often, mimicry functions
to protect a species from predators, making it an antipredator adaptation. Mimicry
evolves if a receiver (such as a predator) perceives the similarity between a mimic (the
organism that has a resemblance) and a model (the organism it resembles) and as a
result changes its behaviour in a way that provides a selective advantage to the mimic.
The resemblances that evolve in mimicry can be visual, acoustic, chemical, tactile, or
electric, or combinations of these sensory modalities.Mimicry may be to the advantage
of both organisms that share a resemblance, in which case it is a form of mutualism; or
mimicry can be to the detriment of one, making it parasitic or competitive. The
evolutionary convergence between groups is driven by the selective action of a signal-
receiver or dupe. Birds, for example, use sight to identify palatable insects, whilst
avoiding the noxious ones. Over time, palatable insects may evolve to resemble
noxious ones, making them mimics and the noxious ones models. In the case of
mutualism, sometimes both groups are referred to as "co-mimics". It is often thought
that models must be more abundant than mimics, but this is not so.Mimicry may involve
numerous species; many harmless species such as hoverflies are Batesian mimics of
strongly defended species such as wasps, while many such well-defended species form
Mullerian mimicry rings, all resembling each other. Mimicry between prey species and
their predators often involves three or more species.

In its broadest definition, mimicry can include non-living models. The specific terms
masquerade and mimesis are sometimes used when the models are inanimate. For
example, animals such as flower mantises, planthoppers, comma and geometer moth
caterpillars resemble twigs, bark, leaves, bird droppings or flowers.Many animals bear
eyespots, which are hypothesized to resemble the eyes of larger animals. They may not
resemble any specific organism's eyes, and whether or not animals respond to them as
eyes is also unclear. Nonetheless, eyespots are the subject of a rich contemporary
literature. The model is usually another species, except in automimicry, where members
of the species mimic other members, or other parts of their own bodies, and in inter-
sexual mimicry, where members of one sex mimic members of the other.

Mimesis in Ctenomorphodes chronus, camouflaged as a eucalyptus twig

Mimicry can result in an evolutionary arms race if mimicry negatively affects the model,
and the model can evolve a different appearance from the mimic.Mimicry should not be
confused with other forms of convergent evolution that occurs when species come to
resemble each other by adapting to similar lifestyles that have nothing to do with a
common signal receiver. Mimics may have different models for different life cycle
stages, or they may be polymorphic, with different individuals imitating different models,
such as in Heliconius butterflies. Models themselves may have more than one mimic,
though frequency dependent selection favours mimicry where models outnumber
mimics. Models tend to be relatively closely related organisms,but mimicry of vastly
different species is also known. Most known mimics are insects, though many other
examples including vertebrates are also known. Plants and fungi may also be mimics,
though less research has been carried out in this area.

7.Colonialist discourse

In La Réforme intellectuelle et morale (1871), the Orientalist Joseph-Ernest Renan,

advocated imperial stewardship for civilizing the non–Western peoples of the world.

Colonialism was presented as "the extension of civilization," which ideologically justified

the self-ascribed racial and cultural superiority of the Western world over the non-
Western world. This concept was espoused by Joseph-Ernest Renan in La Réforme
intellectuelle et morale (1871), whereby imperial stewardship was thought to affect the
intellectual and moral reformation of the coloured peoples of the lesser cultures of the
world. That such a divinely established, natural harmony among the human races of the
world would be possible, because everyone has an assigned cultural identity, a social
place, and an economic role within an imperial colony. Thus:

The regeneration of the inferior or degenerate races, by the superior races is part of the
providential order of things for humanity.... Regere imperio populos is our vocation. Pour
forth this all-consuming activity onto countries, which, like China, are crying aloud for
foreign conquest. Turn the adventurers who disturb European society into a ver sacrum,
a horde like those of the Franks, the Lombards, or the Normans, and every man will be
in his right role. Nature has made a race of workers, the Chinese race, who have
wonderful manual dexterity, and almost no sense of honour; govern them with justice,
levying from them, in return for the blessing of such a government, an ample allowance
for the conquering race, and they will be satisfied; a race of tillers of the soil, the Negro;
treat him with kindness and humanity, and all will be as it should; a race of masters and
soldiers, the European race.... Let each do what he is made for, and all will be well.

— La Réforme intellectuelle et morale (1871), by Joseph-Ernest Renan

From the mid- to the late-nineteenth century, such racialist group-identity language was
the cultural common-currency justifying geopolitical competition amongst the European
and American empires and meant to protect their over-extended economies. Especially
in the colonization of the Far East and in the late-nineteenth century Scramble for
Africa, the representation of a homogeneous European identity justified colonization.
Hence, Belgium and Britain, and France and Germany proffered theories of national
superiority that justified colonialism as delivering the light of civilization to unenlightened
peoples. Notably, la mission civilisatrice, the self-ascribed 'civilizing mission' of the
French Empire, proposed that some races and cultures have a higher purpose in life,
whereby the more powerful, more developed, and more civilized races have the right to
colonize other peoples, in service to the noble idea of "civilization" and its economic
benefits.

8.Gender binary

(also known as gender binarism, binarism, or genderism)is the classification of gender

into two distinct, opposite forms of masculine and feminine, whether by social system or
cultural belief.

In this binary model, sex, gender, and sexuality may be assumed by default to align,
with aspects of one's gender inherently linked to one's genetic or gamete-based sex, or
with one's sex assigned at birth. For example, when a male is born, gender binarism
may assume the male will be masculine in appearance, character traits, and behavior,
including having a heterosexual attraction to females. These aspects may include
expectations of dressing, behavior, sexual orientation, names or pronouns, preferred
restroom, or other qualities. These expectations may reinforce negative attitudes, bias,
and discrimination towards people who display expressions of gender variance or
nonconformity or whose gender identity is incongruent with their birth sex.

Gender binarism may create institutionalized structures of power, and individuals who
identify outside traditional gender binaries may experience discrimination and
harassment within the LGBT community. Most of this discrimination stems from societal
expectations of gender that are expressed in the LGBT community. But many LGBT
people and many youth activist groups advocate against gender binarism within the
LGBT community. Many individuals within the LGBT+ community report an internal
hierarchy of power status. Some who do not identify within a binary system experience
being at the bottom of the hierarchy. The multitude of different variables such as race,
ethnicity, age, gender, and more can lower or raise one's perceived power.

Worldwide, there are many individuals and several subcultures that can be considered
exceptions to the gender binary or specific transgender identities. In addition to
individuals whose bodies are naturally intersex, there are also specific social roles that
involve aspects of both or neither of the binary genders. These include Two-Spirit
Native Americans and hijra of India. Feminist philosopher María Lugones argues that
Western colonizers imposed their dualistic ideas of gender on indigenous peoples,
replacing pre-existing indigenous concepts.[20] In the contemporary West, non-binary
or genderqueer people do not adhere to the gender binary by refusing terms like "male"
and "female" as they do not identify as either. Transgender people have a unique place
in relation to the gender binary. In some cases, attempting to conform to societal
expectations for their gender, transsexual individuals may opt for surgery, hormones, or
both.

9.Hegemony

Hegemony (UK: /hɪˈɡɛməni, hɪˈdʒɛməni/, US: /hɪˈdʒɛməni/ (About this

soundpronunciation (help·info)) or /ˈhɛdʒəˌmoʊni/) is the political, economic, or military
predominance or control of one state over others. In ancient Greece (8th century BC –
6th century AD), hegemony denoted the politico-military dominance of a city-state over
other city-states. The dominant state is known as the hegemon. In the 19th century,
hegemony came to denote the "Social or cultural predominance or ascendancy;
predominance by one group within a society or milieu". Later, it could be used to mean
"a group or regime which exerts undue influence within a society". Also, it could be used
for the geopolitical and the cultural predominance of one country over others, from
which was derived hegemonism, as in the idea that the Great Powers meant to
establish European hegemony over Africa, Asia and Latin America.
In cultural imperialism, the leader state dictates the internal politics and the societal
character of the subordinate states that constitute the hegemonic sphere of influence,
either by an internal, sponsored government or by an external, installed government.

In international relations theory, hegemony denotes a situation of

(i) great material asymmetry in favour of one state, that has

(ii) enough military power to systematically defeat any potential contester in the system,

(iii) controls the access to raw materials, natural resources, capital and markets,

(iv) has competitive advantages in the production of value added goods

(v) generates an accepted ideology reflecting this status quo; and

(vi) is functionally differentiated from other states in the system, being expected to
provide certain public goods such as security, or commercial and financial stability.

The Marxist theory of cultural hegemony, associated particularly with Antonio Gramsci,
is the idea that the ruling class can manipulate the value system and mores of a society,
so that their view becomes the world view (Weltanschauung): in Terry Eagleton's words,
"Gramsci normally uses the word hegemony to mean the ways in which a governing
power wins consent to its rule from those it subjugates". In contrast to authoritarian rule,
cultural hegemony "is hegemonic only if those affected by it also consent to and
struggle over its common sense".

10.Eurocentrism

Eurocentrism (also Eurocentricity or Western-centrism) is a worldview that is centered

on Western civilization or a biased view that favors it over non-western civilizations. The
exact scope of centrism varies from the entire Western world to just the continent of
Europe or even more narrowly, to Western Europe (especially during the Cold War).
When the term is applied to history, it may be used in reference to an apologetic stance
towards European colonialism and other forms of imperialism.

The term Eurocentrism dates back to the late 1970s but it did not become prevalent
until the 1990s, when it was frequently applied in the context of decolonization and
development and humanitarian aid that industrialised countries offered to developing
countries.

The adjective Eurocentric, or Europe-centric, has been in use in various contexts since
at least the 1920s.The term was popularised (in French as européocentrique) in the
context of decolonization and internationalism in the mid-20th century. English usage of
Eurocentric as an ideological term in identity politics was current by the mid-1980s.
The abstract noun Eurocentrism (French eurocentrisme, earlier europocentrisme) as the
term for an ideology was coined in the 1970s by the Egyptian Marxian economist Samir
Amin, then director of the African Institute for Economic Development and Planning of
the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.Amin used the term in the context
of a global, core-periphery or dependency model of capitalist development. English
usage of Eurocentrism is recorded by 1979.

The coinage of Western-centrism is younger, attested in the late 1990s, and specific to
English.

11.Nationalism

Nationalism is an idea and movement that promotes the interests of a particular nation
(as in a group of people), especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining the nation's
sovereignty (self-governance) over its homeland. Nationalism holds that each nation
should govern itself, free from outside interference (self-determination), that a nation is
a natural and ideal basis for a polity and that the nation is the only rightful source of
political power (popular sovereignty). It further aims to build and maintain a single
national identity, based on shared social characteristics of culture, ethnicity, geographic
location, language, politics (or the government), religion, traditions and belief in a
shared singular history,and to promote national unity or solidarity. Nationalism seeks to
preserve and foster a nation's traditional cultures and cultural revivals have been
associated with nationalist movements. It also encourages pride in national
achievements and is closely linked to patriotism.[page needed] Nationalism is often
combined with other ideologies such as conservatism (national conservatism) or
socialism (left-wing nationalism).

Throughout history, people have had an attachment to their kin group and traditions,
territorial authorities and their homeland, but nationalism did not become a widely
recognized concept until the end of the 18th century.[9] There are three paradigms for
understanding the origins and basis of nationalism. Primordialism (perennialism)
proposes that there have always been nations and that nationalism is a natural
phenomenon. Ethnosymbolism explains nationalism as a dynamic, evolutionary
phenomenon and stresses the importance of symbols, myths and traditions in the
development of nations and nationalism. Modernization theory proposes that
nationalism is a recent social phenomenon that needs the socio-economic structures of
modern society to exist.

There are various definitions of a "nation" which leads to different types of nationalism.
Ethnic nationalism defines the nation in terms of shared ethnicity, heritage and culture
while civic nationalism defines the nation in terms of shared citizenship, values and
institutions, and is linked to constitutional patriotism. The adoption of national identity in
terms of historical development has often been a response by influential groups
unsatisfied with traditional identities due to mismatch between their defined social order
and the experience of that social order by its members, resulting in an anomie that
nationalists seek to resolve. This anomie results in a society reinterpreting identity,
retaining elements deemed acceptable and removing elements deemed unacceptable,
to create a unified community. This development may be the result of internal structural
issues or the result of resentment by an existing group or groups towards other
communities, especially foreign powers that are (or are deemed to be) controlling them.
National symbols and flags, national anthems, national languages, national myths and
other symbols of national identity are highly important in nationalism.

In practice, nationalism can be seen as positive or negative depending on context and

individual outlook. Nationalism has been an important driver in independence
movements such as the Greek Revolution, the Irish Revolution, the Zionist movement
that created modern Israel and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Conversely, radical
nationalism combined with racial hatred was also a key factor in the Holocaust
perpetrated by Nazi Germany.[18] More recently, nationalism was an important driver of
the controversial annexation of Crimea by Russia.

12.Universalism

Universalism is the philosophical and theological concept that some ideas have
universal application or applicability.

A belief in one fundamental truth is another important tenet in Universalism. The living
truth is seen as more far-reaching than the national, cultural, or religious boundaries or
interpretations of that one truth. As the Rig Veda states, "Truth is one; sages call it by
various names." A community that calls itself universalist may emphasize the universal
principles of most religions, and accept others in an inclusive manner.

Universalism has had an influence on modern day Hinduism, in turn influencing western
modern spirituality.

Unitarian Universalism emphasizes that religion is a universal human quality, and also
focuses on the universal principles of most religions. It accepts all religions in an
inclusive manner, this approach to religion being called religious pluralism.

Christian universalism refers to the idea that every human will be saved in a religious or
spiritual sense. This specific idea being called universal reconciliation.

Universality

In philosophy, universality is the notion that universal facts can be discovered and is
therefore understood as being in opposition to relativism.
In certain religions, universalism is the quality ascribed to an entity whose existence is
consistent throughout the universe.

Moral universalism

Moral universalism (also called moral objectivism or universal morality) is the meta-
ethical position that some system of ethics applies universally. That system is inclusive
of all individuals, regardless of culture, race, sex, religion, nationality, sexual orientation,
or any other distinguishing feature.[6] Moral universalism is opposed to moral nihilism
and moral relativism. However, not all forms of moral universalism are absolutist, nor do
they necessarily value monism. Many forms of universalism, such as utilitarianism, are
non-absolutist. Other forms such as those theorized by Isaiah Berlin, may value pluralist
ideals.

13.Margins

Margins are an important method of organizing the written word, and have a long
history. In ancient Egypt, writing was recorded on papyrus scrolls. Egyptian papyrus
scrolls could reach up to 30 metres in length, and contained text organized in columns
laid out from left to right along the scroll.[5] Columns were referred to as pagina (or
pages) and were separated by margins, so that scrolls could be unrolled horizontally,
uncovering individual sections one by one.[6] Thus, in papyrus scrolls margins
performed the function of visually signaling to readers when to stop reading and move
down to the next line of text.

14.Postcolonialism

Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural legacy of colonialism and
imperialism, focusing on the human consequences of the control and exploitation of
colonized people and their lands. More specifically, it is a critical-theory analysis of the
history, culture, literature, and discourse of (usually European) imperial power.

Postcolonialism encompasses a wide variety of approaches, and theoreticians may not

always agree on a common set of definitions. On a simple level, through anthropological
study, it may seek to build a better understanding of colonial life—based on the
assumption that the colonial rulers are unreliable narrators—from the point of view of
the colonized people. On a deeper level, postcolonialism examines the social and
political power relationships that sustain colonialism and neocolonialism, including the
social, political and cultural narratives surrounding the colonizer and the colonized. This
approach may overlap with studies of contemporary history, and may also draw
examples from anthropology, historiography, political science, philosophy, sociology,
and human geography. Sub-disciplines of postcolonial studies examine the effects of
colonial rule on the practice of feminism, anarchism, literature, and Christian thought.
At times, the term postcolonial studies may be preferred to postcolonialism, as the
ambiguous term colonialism could refer either to a system of government, or to an
ideology or world view underlying that system. However, postcolonialism (i.e.,
postcolonial studies) generally represents an ideological response to colonialist thought,
rather than simply describing a system that comes after colonialism, as the prefix post-
may suggest. As such, postcolonialism may be thought of as a reaction to or departure
from colonialism in the same way postmodernism is a reaction to modernism; the term
postcolonialism itself is modeled on postmodernism, with which it shares certain
concepts and methods.

LONG ANSWERS:-

1.Homi Bhabha's essay "cultural diversity and cultural differences"

Homi K. Bhabha (/ˈbɑːbɑː/; born 1 November 1949) is an Indian English scholar and
critical theorist. He is the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities at Harvard
University. He is one of the most important figures in contemporary post-colonial
studies, and has developed a number of the field's neologisms and key concepts, such
as hybridity, mimicry, difference, and ambivalence. Such terms describe ways in which
colonised people have resisted the power of the coloniser, according to Bhabha's
theory. In 2012, he received the Padma Bhushan award in the field of literature and
education from the Indian government.He is married to attorney and Harvard lecturer
Jacqueline Bhabha, and they have three children.

Bhabha presents cultural difference as an alternative to cultural diversity. In cultural

diversity, a culture is an "object of empirical knowledge" and pre-exists the knower while
cultural difference sees culture as the point at which two or more cultures meet and it is
also where most problems occur, discursively constructed rather than pre-given, a
"process of enunciation of culture as 'knowledgeable.'" Enunciation is the act of
utterance or expression of a culture that takes place in the Third Space. Since culture is
never pre-given, it must be uttered. It is through enunciation that cultural difference is
discovered and recognized. The enunciative process introduces a divide between the
traditions of a stable system of reference and the negation of the certitude of culture in
the articulation of new cultural, meanings, strategies, in the political present, as a
practice of domination, or resistance.Therefore, cultural difference is a process of
identification, while cultural diversity is comparative and categorized. Moreover, it is that
possibility of difference and articulation that could free the signifier of skin/culture from
the fixations of racial typology, however, the stereotype impedes the circulation and
articulation of the signifier of "race" as anything other than that. An important aspect of
colonial and post-colonial discourse is their dependence on the concept of "fixity" in the
construction of otherness. Fixity implies repetition, rigidity and an unchanging order as
well as disorder. The stereotype depends on this notion of fixity. The stereotype creates
an "identity" that stems as much from mastery and pleasure as it does from anxiety and
defense of the dominant, "for it is a form of multiple and contradictory beliefs in its
recognition of difference and disavowal of it."

Cultural Diversity and Cultural Differences

Homi K. Bhabha

The revision of the history of critical theory rests … on the notion of cultural difference,
not cultural diversity. Cultural diversity is an epistemological object—culture as an object
of empirical knowledge—whereas cultural difference is the process of the enunciation of
culture as “knowledgeable,” authoritative, adequate to the construction of systems of
cultural identification. If cultural diversity is a category of comparative ethics, aesthetics,
or ethnology, cultural difference is a process of signification through which statements of
culture or on culture differentiate, discriminate, and authorize the production of fields of
force, reference, applicability, and capacity. Cultural diversity is the recognition of
pregiven cultural “contents” and customs, held in a time frame of relativism; it gives rise
to anodyne liberal notions of multiculturalism, cultural exchange, or the culture of
humanity. Cultural diversity is also the representation of a radical rhetoric of the
separation of totalized cultures that live unsullied by the intertextuality of their historical
locations, safe in the utopianism of a mythic memory of a unique collective identity.
Cultural diversity may even emerge as a system of the articulation and exchange of
cultural signs in certain … imperialist accounts of anthropology.

Through the concept of cultural difference I want to draw attention to the common
ground and lost territory of contemporary critical debates. For they all recognize that the
problem of the cultural emerges only at the significatory boundaries of cultures, where
meanings and values are (mis)read or signs are misappropriated …

The time of liberation is, as Fanon powerfully evokes, a time of cultural uncertainty, and,
most crucially, of significatory or representational undecidability:

“But [native intellectuals] forget that the forms of thought and what [they] feed … on,
together with modern techniques of information, language, and dress have dialectically
reorganized the people’s intelligences and the constant principles (of national art) which
acted as safeguards during the colonial period are now undergoing extremely radical
changes … [We] must join the people in that fluctuating movement which they are just
giving a shape to … which will be the signal for everything to be called into question …
it is to the zone of occult instability where the people dwell that we must come” (my
emphasis).

The enunciation of cultural difference problematizes the division of past and present,
tradition and modernity, at the level of cultural representation and its authoritative
address. It is the problem of how, in signifying the present, something comes to be
repeated, relocated, and translated in the name of tradition, in the guise of a pastness
that is not necessarily a faithful sign of historical memory but a strategy of representing
authority in terms of the artifice of the archaic. That iteration negates our sense of the
origins of the struggle. It undermines our sense of the homogenizing effects of cultural
symbols and icons, by questioning our sense of the authority of cultural synthesis in
general.

This demands that we rethink our perspective on the identity of culture. Here Fanon’s
passage—somewhat reinterpreted—may be helpful. What is implied by his juxtaposition
of the constant national principles with his view of culture-as-political-struggle, which he
so enigmatically and beautifully describes as “the zone of occult instability where the
people dwell”? These ideas not only help to explain the nature of colonial struggle. They
also suggest a possible critique of the positive aesthetic and political values we ascribe
to the unity or totality of cultures, especially those that have known long and tyrannical
histories of domination and misrecognition. Cultures are never unitary in themselves,
nor simply dualistic in relation of Self to Other. This is not because of some humanistic
nostrum that beyond individual cultures we all belong to the human culture of mankind;
nor is it because of an ethical relativism that suggests that in our cultural capacity to
speak of and judge Others we necessarily “place ourselves in their position,” in a kind of
relativism of distance of which Bernard Williams has written at length.

The reason a cultural text or system of meaning cannot be sufficient unto itself is that
the act of cultural enunciation—the place of utterance—is crossed by the difference of
writing or écriture. This has less to do with what anthropologists might describe as
varying attitudes to symbolic systems within different cultures than with the structure of
symbolic representation—not the content of the symbol or its “social function,” but the
structure of symbolization. It is this “difference” in language that is crucial to the
production of meaning and ensures, at the same time, that meaning is never simply
mimetic and transparent.

The linguistic difference that informs any cultural performance is dramatized in the
common semiotic account of the disjuncture between the subject of a proposition
(énoncé) and the subject of enunciation, which is not represented in the statement but
which is the acknowledgment of its discursive embeddedness and address, its cultural
positionality, its reference to a present time and a specific space. The pact of
interpretation is never simply an act of communication between the I and the You
designated in the statement. The production of meaning requires that these two places
be mobilized in the passage through a Third Space, which represents both the general
conditions of language and the specific implication of the utterance in a performative
and institutional strategy of which it cannot “in itself” be conscious. What this
unconscious relation introduces is an ambivalence in the act of interpretation …

The intervention of the Third Space, which makes the structure of meaning and
reference an ambivalent process, destroys this mirror of representation in which cultural
knowledge is continuously revealed as an integrated, open, expanding code. Such an
intervention quite properly challenges our sense of the historical identity of culture as a
homogenizing, unifying force, authenticated by the originary Past, kept alive in the
national tradition of the People. In other words, the disruptive temporality of enunciation
displaces the narrative of the Western nation which Benedict Anderson so perceptively
describes as being written in homogeneous, serial time.

It is only when we understand that all cultural statements and systems are constructed
in this contradictory and ambivalent space of enunciation, that we begin to understand
why hierarchical claims to the inherent originality or “purity” of cultures are untenable,
even before we resort to empirical historical instances that demonstrate their hybridity.
Fanon’s vision of revolutionary cultural and political change as a “fluctuating movement”
of occult instability could not be articulated as cultural practice without an
acknowledgment of this indeterminate space of the subject(s) of enunciation. It is that
Third Space, though unrepresentable in itself, which constitutes the discursive
conditions of enunciation that ensure that the meaning and symbols of culture have no
primordial unity or fixity; that even the same signs can be appropriated, translated,
rehistoricized, and read anew.

Fanon’s moving metaphor—when reinterpreted for a theory of cultural signification—

enables us to see not only the necessity of theory, but also the restrictive notions of
cultural identity with which we burden our visions of political change. For Fanon, the
liberatory “people” who initiate the productive instability of revolutionary cultural change
are themselves the bearers of a hybrid identity. They are caught in the discontinuous
time of translation and negotiation, in the sense in which I have been attempting to
recast these works. In the moment of liberatory struggle, the Algerian people destroy
the continuities and constancies of the “nationalist” tradition which provided a safeguard
against colonial cultural imposition. They are now free to negotiate and translate their
cultural identities in a discontinuous intertextual temporality of cultural difference. The
native intellectual who identifies the people with the “true national culture” will be
disappointed. The people are now the very principle of “dialectical reorganization” and
they construct their culture from the national text translated into modern Western forms
of information technology, language, and dress. The changed political and historical site
of enunciation transforms the meanings of the colonial inheritance into the liberatory
signs of a free people of the future.

“I have been stressing a certain void or misgiving attending every assimilation of

contraries—I have been stressing this in order to expose what seems to me a fantastic
mythological congruence of elements. [ … ] And if indeed therefore any real sense is to
be made of material change it can only occur with an acceptance of a concurrent void
and with a willingness to descend into that void wherein, as it were, one may begin to
come into confrontation with a specter of invocation whose freedom to participate in an
alien territory and wilderness has become a necessity for one’s reason or salvation.”

This meditation by the great Guyanese writer Wilson Harris on the void of misgiving in
the textuality of colonial history reveals the cultural and historical dimension of that Third
Space of enunciation which I have made the precondition for the articulation of cultural
difference. He sees it as accompanying the “assimilation of contraries” and creating that
occult instability which presages powerful cultural changes. It is significant that the
productive capacities of this Third Space have a colonial or postcolonial provenance.
For a willingness to descend into that alien territory—where I have led you—may reveal
that the theoretical recognition of the split-space of enunciation may open the way to
conceptualizing an international culture, based not on the exoticism or multiculturalism
of the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of culture’s hybridity.
To that end we should remember that it is the “inter”—the cutting edge of translation
and negotiation, the in-between, the space of the entre that Derrida has opened up in
writing itself—that carries the burden of the meaning of culture. It makes it possible to
begin envisaging national, antinationalist, histories of the “people.” It is in this space that
we will find those words with which we can speak of Ourselves and Others. And by
exploring this hybridity, this “Third Space,” we may elude the politics of polarity and
emerge as the others of our selves.

2.Partha Chatterjee concept of Nationalism in the essay "Nation and its

Fragments"

Partha Chatterjee (Bengali: born 5 November 1947) is an Indian political scientist and
anthropologist.[2] He was the director of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences,
Calcutta from 1997 to 2007 and continues as an honorary professor of political science.
[3] He is also a professor of anthropology and South Asian studies at Columbia
University and a member of the Subaltern Studies Collective. (pdf)

3.Edward Wadie Said

Edward Wadie Said (/sɑːˈiːd/; Arabic: ‫[ إدوارد وديع سعيد‬wædiːʕ sæʕiːd], Idwārd Wadīʿ Saʿīd;
1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a professor of literature at Columbia
University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial
studies. A Palestinian American born in Mandatory Palestine, he was a citizen of the
United States by way of his father, a U.S. Army veteran.

Educated in the Western canon at British and American schools, Said applied his
education and bi-cultural perspective to illuminating the gaps of cultural and political
understanding between the Western world and the Eastern world, especially about the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict in the Middle East; his principal influences were Antonio
Gramsci, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Michel Foucault, and Theodor Adorno.

As a cultural critic, Said is known for the book Orientalism (1978), a critique of the
cultural representations that are the bases of Orientalism—how the Western world
perceives the Orient. Said's model of textual analysis transformed the academic
discourse of researchers in literary theory, literary criticism, and Middle-Eastern studies
—how academics examine, describe, and define the cultures being studied. As a
foundational text, Orientalism was controversial among scholars of Oriental Studies,
philosophy, and literature.

Orientalism

Main article: Orientalism (book)

Said became an established cultural critic with the book Orientalism (1978) a critique
(description and analyses) of Orientalism as the source of the false cultural
representations with which the Western world perceives the Middle East—the narratives
of how The West sees The East. The thesis of Orientalism proposes the existence of a
"subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo–Islamic peoples and their
culture", which originates from Western culture's long tradition of false, romanticized
images of Asia, in general, and the Middle East, in particular. That such cultural
representations have served, and continue to serve, as implicit justifications for the
colonial and imperial ambitions of the European powers and of the U.S. Likewise, Said
denounced the political and the cultural malpractices of the régimes of the ruling Arab
élites who have internalized the false and romanticized representations of Arabic culture
that were created by Anglo–American Orientalists.

This painting shows the back side of a naked man standing with a snake wrapped
around his waist and shoulders. The man is lifting up the head of the snake with his left
hand. Another man to his right is sitting on the ground playing a pipe. A group of 10 men
are sitting on the floor facing the snake handler with their backs against an ornate blue
mosaic wall decorated with Arabic calligraphy.

The cover of the book Orientalism (1978) is a detail from the 19th-century Orientalist
painting The Snake Charmer, by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904).
So far as the United States seems to be concerned, it is only a slight overstatement to
say that Moslems and Arabs are essentially seen as either oil suppliers or potential
terrorists. Very little of the detail, the human density, the passion of Arab–Moslem life
has entered the awareness of even those people whose profession it is to report the
Arab world. What we have, instead, is a series of crude, essentialized caricatures of the
Islamic world, presented in such a way as to make that world vulnerable to military
aggression.

— "Islam through Western Eyes" (1980) The Nation.

Orientalism proposed that much Western study of Islamic civilization was political
intellectualism, meant for the self-affirmation of European identity, rather than objective
academic study; thus, the academic field of Oriental studies functioned as a practical
method of cultural discrimination and imperialist domination—that is to say, the Western
Orientalist knows more about the Orient than do the Orientals.

That the cultural representations of the Eastern world that Orientalism purveys are
intellectually suspect, and cannot be accepted as faithful, true, and accurate
representations of the peoples and things of the Orient; that the history of European
colonial rule and political domination of Asian civilizations, distorts the writing of even
the most knowledgeable, well-meaning, and culturally sympathetic Orientalist.

I doubt if it is controversial, for example, to say that an Englishman in India, or Egypt, in

the later nineteenth century, took an interest in those countries, which was never far
from their status, in his mind, as British colonies. To say this may seem quite different
from saying that all academic knowledge about India and Egypt is somehow tinged and
impressed with, violated by, the gross political fact—and yet that is what I am saying in
this study of Orientalism.

— Introduction, Orientalism,

Bustling city scene of men dressed in turbans outside the walls of an Oriental city. An
official appears to be holding court at the gate, reclining on a red sofa with two
individuals facing him (perhaps parties to a dispute). Others observe the proceedings—
many men on foot, two men on camel-back, and one on horse-back. A monkey, a male
deer and a female deer are also present in the crowd.

The idealized Oriental world of The Reception of the Ambassadors in Damascus (1511)

That since Antiquity, Western Art has misrepresented the Orient with stereotypes; in the
tragedy The Persians (472 BCE), by Aeschylus, the Greek protagonist falls, because he
misperceived the true nature of The Orient.[46] That the European political domination
of Asia has biased even the most outwardly objective Western texts about The Orient,
to a degree unrecognized by the Western scholars who appropriated for themselves the
production of cultural knowledge—the academic work of studying, exploring, and
interpreting the languages, histories, and peoples of Asia; therefore, Orientalist
scholarship implies that the colonial subaltern (the colonised people) were incapable of
thinking, acting, or speaking for themselves, thus are incapable of writing their own
national histories. In such imperial circumstances, the Orientalist scholars of the West
wrote the history of the Orient—and so constructed the modern, cultural identities of
Asia—from the perspective that the West is the cultural standard to emulate, the norm
from which the "exotic and inscrutable" Orientals deviate.

The thesis of Orientalism concluded that the West's knowledge of the Orient depicts the
cultures of the Eastern world as an irrational, weak, and feminized non–European
Other, which is the opposite of the West's representations of Western cultures as a
rational, strong, and masculine polity. That such an artificial binary-relation originates
from the European psychological need to create a "difference" of inequality, between
the West and the East, which inequality originates from the immutable cultural essences
innate to the peoples of the Oriental world.

Criticism of Orientalism

Main article: Orientalism (book)

Orientalism provoked much professional and personal criticism for Said among
academics.Traditional Orientalists, such as Albert Hourani, Robert Graham Irwin, Nikki
Keddie, Bernard Lewis, and Kanan Makiya, suffered negative consequences, because
Orientalism affected public perception of their intellectual integrity and the quality of their
Orientalist scholarship. The historian Keddie said that Said's critical work about the field
of Orientalism had caused, in their academic disciplines:

Some unfortunate consequences ... I think that there has been a tendency in the Middle
East [studies] field to adopt the word Orientalism as a generalized swear-word,
essentially referring to people who take the "wrong" position on the Arab–Israeli dispute,
or to people who are judged "too conservative." It has nothing to do with whether they
are good or not good in their disciplines. So, Orientalism, for many people, is a word
that substitutes for thought, and enables people to dismiss certain scholars and their
works. I think that is too bad. It may not have been what Edward Saïd meant, at all, but
the term has become a kind of slogan.

— Approaches to the History of the Middle East (1994),

In Orientalism, Said described Bernard Lewis, the Anglo–American Orientalist, as "a

perfect exemplification [of an] Establishment Orientalist [whose work] purports to be
objective, liberal scholarship, but is, in reality, very close to being propaganda against
his subject material."

Lewis responded with a harsh critique of Orientalism accusing Said of politicizing the
scientific study of the Middle East (and Arabic studies in particular); neglecting to
critique the scholarly findings of the Orientalists; and giving "free rein" to his biases.

Said retorted that in The Muslim Discovery of Europe (1982), Lewis responded to his
thesis with the claim that the Western quest for knowledge about other societies was
unique in its display of disinterested curiosity, which Muslims did not reciprocate
towards Europe. Lewis was saying that "knowledge about Europe [was] the only
acceptable criterion for true knowledge." The appearance of academic impartiality was
part of Lewis's role as an academic authority for zealous "anti–Islamic, anti–Arab,
Zionist, and Cold War crusades."Moreover, in the Afterword to the 1995 edition of the
book, Said replied to Lewis's criticisms of the first edition of Orientalism (1978).

Influence of Orientalism

A seated woman surrounded by 9 children who seem dependent upon her.

The Motherland and her dependent colonies are the subjects of Post-colonial studies.
(William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1883)

In the academy, Orientalism became a foundational text of the field of Post-colonial

studies, for what the British intellectual Terry Eagleton said is the book's "central truth ...
that demeaning images of the East, and imperialist incursions into its terrain, have
historically gone hand in hand."

Said's friends and foes acknowledged the transformative influence of Orientalism upon
scholarship in the humanities; critics said that the thesis is an intellectually limiting
influence upon scholars, whilst supporters said that the thesis is intellectually liberating.
[61][62] The fields of post-colonial and cultural studies attempt to explain the "post-
colonial world, its peoples, and their discontents",[3][63] for which the techniques of
investigation and efficacy in Orientalism, proved especially applicable in Middle Eastern
studies.

As such, the investigation and analysis Said applied in Orientalism proved especially
practical in literary criticism and cultural studies, such as the post-colonial histories of
India by Gyan Prakash, Nicholas Dirks and Ronald Inden, modern Cambodia by Simon
Springer,[67] and the literary theories of Homi K. Bhabha, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
and Hamid Dabashi (Iran: A People Interrupted, 2007).

In Eastern Europe, Milica Bakić–Hayden developed the concept of Nesting Orientalisms

(1992), derived from the ideas of the historian Larry Wolff (Inventing Eastern Europe:
The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment, 1994) and Said's ideas in
Orientalism (1978). The Bulgarian historian Maria Todorova (Imagining the Balkans,
1997) presented the ethnologic concept of Nesting Balkanisms (Ethnologia Balkanica,
1997), which is derived from Milica Bakić–Hayden's concept of Nesting Orientalisms.

In The Impact of "Biblical Orientalism" in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century

Palestine (2014), the historian Lorenzo Kamel, presented the concept of "Biblical
Orientalism" with an historical analysis of the simplifications of the complex, local
Palestinian reality, which occurred from the 1830s until the early 20th century.Kamel
said that the selective usage and simplification of religion, in approaching the place
known as "The Holy Land", created a view that, as a place, the Holy Land has no
human history other than as the place where Bible stories occurred, rather than as
Palestine, a country inhabited by many peoples.

The post-colonial discourse presented in Orientalism, also influenced post-colonial

theology and post-colonial biblical criticism, by which method the analytical reader
approaches a scripture from the perspective of a colonial reader. See: The Bible and
Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-colonialism in Palestine–Israel
(2007). Another book in this area is Postcolonial Theory (1998), by Leela Gandhi,
explains Post-colonialism to how it can be applied to the wider philosophical and
intellectual context of history.

Overview: The Problem of Representation and Resistance in Post-Colonial

Literature

Many problems surround the terms post-colonial and post-colonial literature. In its most
literal definition, post-colonial literature is simply a classification: a body of work or
works produced by a previously colonized nation. If one accepts post-colonial literature
only at its simplest definition, he leaves the term too broad and without coherency. One
defines a literary movement not only by the era and location in which the movement
occurred but also by the style of the writing and its political and social impact on society.
For example, Romantic literature in Great Britain was produced from the mid to late
eighteenth century to the early nineteenth, and some of the themes that emerged from
British Romanticism were the glorification of nature and the omnipresence of love
through class boundaries. Similarly, Victorian literature of the nineteenth century
possessed qualities of the Age of Enlightenment, a movement that ran parallel to Queen
Victoria's reign.

Therefore, to accept post-colonial literature only by its temporal and political designation
does not give justice to the artist whose intentions may subsequently be ignored. If a
reader credits or disparages a work strictly for its literary value, that is a choice that he
makes. However, if the same reader states that this method is the only means by which
one should value literature, he ignores the possible intentions of the author. Indeed a
novel defined as post-colonial intends to have a greater impact than simply its plot.
What are the implications of political independence from a so-called "empire?" What
does it mean to write either as a voice, a representative, or a citizen of the post-colonial
country? What are the political, social, and economic implications of the literature he
produces?

If a post-colonial work manages to escape the valueless fate of many novels of the late
20th century, it is then subjected to more problems within the theoretical genre of post-
colonial studies. The issues I will discuss are such: how a post-colonial novel acts as a
representative of its respective nation and how it serves as a symbol of resistance
against its colonizer. Within these categories, authors depict the life of a newly
independent nation, speak out against the oppression of its colonizers, express a desire
for an ideal "pre-colonial" society, or extol the beneficial consequences of empire. How
can such widely varying ideas singularly define post-colonial literature?

It is important to note the differences among Romantic, Victorian, and post-colonial

literature. First, the political and social implications differ greatly among them. In
addition, Romantic and Victorian literature were labeled as such in hindsight, while post-
colonial authors and scholars are self-aware of the existing style and movement that is
labeled post-colonial. Post-colonial literature and post-colonial studies have the ability
then to control self-consciously the direction and definition of its label. In other words,
"post-colonialism" is a definition in progress. This definition in progress further
problematizes post-colonial literature because without a solid source, scholars can
debate forever what constitutes a post-colonial work and if that work gives justice to
post-colonial literature as a whole.

Representation and Resistance: An Examination

Two ideas that surface repeatedly in post-colonial literature and theory are
representation and resistance. Inevitably, scholars will judge a novel or poem by how
adequately it represents an indigenous people or by how it reacts to the oppressing
colonizers. Does Philip Jeyaretnam's Abraham's Promise serve as a statement against
the remnants of a colonized Singapore or does it perpetuate the colonizing institutions
of modern Singapore? This is one of the numerous questions scholars may ask when
applying a theoretical study of post-colonial literature. Edward Said uses the term
"Orientalism" in one aspect of post-colonial theory. He states that the idea of post-
colonialism needs the dynamic between itself and its colonizers in order to define its
existence:

The Orient is an integral part of European material civilization and culture. Orientalism
expresses and represents that part culturally and even ideologically as a mode of
discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even
colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles.

The dynamic between the colonizer and the colonized may impose an intellectual rather
than a political domination over the post-colonial nation. While political freedom may
exist, the intellectual independence is far from reality. Said goes on to state "it
[Orientalism] is, rather than expresses, a certain will or intention to understand, in some
cases to control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is a manifestly different (or
alternative and novel) world." Thus, choosing to represent an indigenous culture with
the language of the empire serves as another form of colonization.

Resistance theory in post-colonial literature refutes the very notion that idea of
representation also connotes further subjugation. Resistance literature uses the
language of empire to rebut its dominant ideologies. In other words, the colonized
nation is "writing back," speaking either of the oppression and racism of the colonizers
or the inherent cultural "better-ness" of the indigenous people. Helen Tiffin expresses
this point best in her essay "Post-colonial Literatures and Counter-discourse": "Post-
colonial literatures/cultures are thus constituted in counter-discursive rather than
homologous practices, and they offer Ôfields' or counter-discursive strategies to the
dominant discourse." Thus the counter-discursive nature constitutes post-colonial
literatures rather than a unifying style or theme.

Counter-discourse fails to recognize that by existing simply to react against or to resist

dominant ideology, it is marginalized into an idea that cannot stand on its own. As Tiffin
states, counter-discourse exists only "in its determining relations with its material
situation." The concept of "other" cannot exist without its relationship to its reference
point. Could this then be the fate of post-colonial literature? Is post-colonial literature
only a subset, corollary, or a reaction to the already existing dominant discourse of
English Literature?

The paradox of marginalization and empowerment seem to coexist in the ideas of

representation and resistance. How does one then resolve this paradox? Tiffin offers
another idea in the study and assessment of post-colonial literature. This idea involves
a compromise between complete separation from the empire and the complete
dependence upon the empire for its existence. She states "[p]ost-colonial cultures are
inevitably hybridised, involving a dialectical relationship between European ontology
and epistemology and the impulse to create or recreate independent local identity."
Using Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea and J.M. Coetzee's Foe as examples, she
states that "neither writer is simply Ôwriting back' to an English canonical text, but to the
whole of the discursive field within which such a text operated and continues to operate
in post-colonial worlds." It seems as though colonial institutions in literature such as
language and narrative style are necessary for a body of work to reach an academic
audience. However, by potentially being able to reach a larger audience, an author
enables himself to voice the emotions, frustrations, and the triumphs of his people to a
group of scholars or students not yet exposed to his nation or race.

In the following essays, I will examine how four novels exemplify different aspects of
representation and resistance theory. Philip Jeyaretnam's Abraham's Promise depicts
the lack of social and political direction of a post-colonial world. Gopal Baratham's A
Candle or the Sun explores the reactionary nature of local government immediately
after its political independence. Yvonne Vera's Nehanda portrays the heroic tale of a
young woman chosen to resist her colonial oppressors. Finally, Uncle Babamukuru in
Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions explores Jenny Sharpe's notion of the mimic
man in her essay "Figures of Colonial Resistance." All the novels serve to represent the
indigenous lifestyle, resist colonial acts of authority and oppression through their textual
transmission, or they accomplish both.

4.Postcolonial studies can be viewed as a critical discourse on literature that is

eurocentric

Modernity has long been a dominant paradigm in producing knowledge and in

determining theoreticalframework of the disciplines although it is in connivance with a
Eurocentric ideology and conflict of paradoxes in itself. The other participant of the
crime, committed with Eurocentric ideology, is sociology as anobservation method of
modernity’s self and developed with it. They also display a tautological view witheach
other. Compatibility of paradoxes in modernity makes the othering notions of rejection,
negation etc.

inevitable. Otherization in sociological literature has been a reference point in

historiography that is developed with the claim that historical process experienced
throughout Europe is the only straight and universal one with an essentialist
perspective, in the Orientalist discourse that is established in parallelism withcolonial
activities and generating ideal tips. This article aims to criticize the framework and the
narrative in modernity and sociology as they contain Eurocentric discourse according to
post-colonial theory. While chasing a non-othering paradigm inquiring troubles and
dilemmas that post-colonial theory faced will also be the other aim of this study. This
paper aims to be authentic by determining the problems of post-colonial theory that
criticizes the dominant paradigm through orientalist discourse yet falls into clutches of
selforientalism.

INTRODUCTION

This study revolves around the assumption that the (classical) sociological tradition,
which has a tautological character, remains incapable of elucidating, conceptually and
theoretically, postmodern and postcolonial societal alterations such as modern-day
post-industrial society, consummative, risk or information society by its depiction of
modern society and its modernization theory, and is rather problematic.

Developments experienced in social sciences, particularly within post-structural and

postmodern frame,have been more favored by postcolonial non-Western societies. It is
essential to notice that the allocation of sociology as a discipline only to the West so that
it could examine its own society has played a significant part in this appropriation. As a
matter of fact, according to this narrative of classical period, the West, in its own
opinion, has already left the civilization period behind and by accomplishing its
evolutionary process,has claimed its place in history. Thanks to sociology, the West has
also announced them to the world by legislating historical process of civilization by
means of determining them in a self-directed manner and recording them through
sociology. However, the field which non-Western societies have been deemed worthy is
anthropology, known otherwise as the science of primitive societies and understood to
have been invented in order to colonize mentioned societies.

The relationship between sociological and anthropological societies has been somehow
characterized as master-slave relation. Such exploitative hierarchical relationship even
largely coheres with segregationist nature of modern paradigm, which shatters the truth
and which has been made into a rule with science. Thus, I will be offering in this article
to unriddle the exploitative structure of European sociology based on the argument that
although colonialism has been determinative in the West’s enrichment, colonial
confrontations and exploitative activities are not mentioned in the tradition of sociology.
In fact, modernity has shaped in flesh and bones and strengthened thanks to these
colonial confrontations. From the perspective of postcolonial theory, sociology is
coordinated with imperialistic culture and even contributes to it. Thus postcolonial theory
is in fact a criticism to sociology. It helps to reveal, above all, sociology’s elements such
as orientalism, Eurocentric universality, imperial repression and illuminative scientism.
Then the breakage of organic bond between modern empires and sociology may bring
the mind the annihilation of sociology as it is.

I will be developing my analyses in this article through the basic postulate suggesting
Western thought makes the notion of otherization derived from its nature, which tears
down the reality, unavoidable by means of producing dichotomies. Partial reality
conception containing divisions between which a hierarchical order is established such
as subject-object, mind-body, West-East, center-sphere or fact-value pertains to
modern Western thinking initiated by Descartes. The relationship modernity established
with nature, human, history and society was established to dominate.

As method, this study has adopted discourse analysis. As a matter of fact, analysis of
orientalism set forth by Edward Said, who was inspired by Foucault, is discourse
analysis functioning with philosophical tradition in social sciences. Anti-positivist
discourse analysis, which positions itself against explicative and descriptive content
analysis and which articulates itself to natural sciences and pretending to universality,
generalizability and objectivity, reveals how discourse is shaped by power and ideology,
and how influential it is in the formation of social identity, social relations and
knowledge-belief systems. Content analysis, however, claims the feature of objectivity.
Accordingly, information earns the feature of being scientific when it is objective.
Scientific reality is only possible when it is given in an unbiased manner. What
examines, explains, interprets is the subject itself and it speaks in certain historical and
sociocultural context. There is no such thing as absolute reality; the reality is comprised
of subjective and unique interpretations.

To this end, in the article, Oriental discourse relating specifically to Islam and generally
to perception of East will be analyzed through two concepts that lay the ground for this
discourse: Euro-centrism and Otherization. In fact, Euro-centrism is a broader concept
that also includes orientalism. It spawned Otherization in itself. The West first defined
itself over the East and then identified the East over itself. Therefore, we picked a
reading form evolving from general sociology into sociology of religion.

5.Chandra Mohanty(pdf)

6.Intellectual history of post colonial theory

Postcolonialism, the historical period or state of affairs representing the aftermath of

Western colonialism; the term can also be used to describe the concurrent project to
reclaim and rethink the history and agency of people subordinated under various forms
of imperialism. Postcolonialism signals a possible future of overcoming colonialism, yet
new forms of domination or subordination can come in the wake of such changes,
including new forms of global empire. Postcolonialism should not be confused with the
claim that the world we live in now is actually devoid of colonialism.

Postcolonial theorists and historians have been concerned with investigating the various
trajectories of modernity as understood and experienced from a range of philosophical,
cultural, and historical perspectives. They have been particularly concerned with
engaging with the ambiguous legacy of the Enlightenment—as expressed in social,
political, economic, scientific, legal, and cultural thought—beyond Europe itself. The
legacy is ambiguous, according to postcolonial theorists, because the age of
Enlightenment was also an age of empire, and the connection between those two
historical epochs is more than incidental.

From Decolonization To Postcolonialism

Although there were (and are) many different kinds of imperialism and thus of
decolonization, two of the most-important periods for those who study postcolonialism
include the British disengagement from its second empire (of the 19th and 20th
centuries) and the decolonization movements of the 1960s and ’70s in Africa and
elsewhere. It was during the latter era in particular that many of the international
principles and instruments of decolonization were formally declared (although the
history of their emergence and formation goes back much farther) and that the language
of national self-determination was applied to liberationist movements within former
colonial territories. The processes triggered by those struggles were not only political
and economic but also cultural. Previously subjugated individuals sought to assert
control over not only territorial boundaries—albeit ones carved out by the imperial
powers—but also their language and history.

The term postcolonialism is also sometimes used to refer to the struggles of indigenous
peoples in many parts of the world in the early 21st century. However, given the
interpretation of the principles of self-determination and self-government within the
international system, along with the minority status and vulnerability of those peoples
even within decolonized states, the term is perhaps less apt. At that time indigenous
peoples were denied even the modest gains extended by the United Nations and the
international system of states to the various decolonized territories in the 1970s.
Moreover, the history of imperialism is complex. European imperialism between the
16th and 18th centuries in the Americas, the West Indies, Australasia, and Southeast
Asia was substantially different from that of the 19th and 20th centuries. Still, one of the
central themes of postcolonial scholarship is the persistence of empire—and resistance
to it—in human history.

Thus, on the one hand, the legacy of the Enlightenment forms an indispensable and
unavoidable feature of the present, whether European or otherwise. The universal
categories and concepts at the heart of much Enlightenment thought have been put to
work by both European and non-European intellectuals and activists to criticize the
injustices of their societies as well as imperialism itself. There is a tradition of anti-
imperialist criticism that extends as far back as the 16th century, and yet some of the
very same criticism not only was compatible with but was often used to justify imperial
domination. The theoretical tools provided by the Enlightenment, combined with an
often unrelenting cultural Eurocentrism, informed the political and economic practices of
imperialism throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Still, many of the most-powerful
local and indigenous critics of empire in the 20th century were themselves deeply
influenced by European social and political theory as much as they were deeply critical
of it. The seminal work of C.L.R. James, Aimé Césaire, Albert Memmi, Frantz Fanon,
and Edward Said, as well as by the group of historians associated with the editorial
collective of Subaltern Studies, all exemplify that complex inheritance. It derives in part
from the fact that there is no such thing as “the” Enlightenment but rather multiple
Enlightenments shaped by different historical and political contexts; so too, the bundle
of concepts and ideals to which “the” Enlightenment refers are plural and capable of a
wide range of elaboration.

What Is The Subject Of Postcolonialism?

As a general domain of intellectual inquiry, postcolonialism addresses those questions

that emerge in relation to the aftermath of imperialism. One of the most-important
features of the history of imperialism has been the emergence of states—either from the
consolidation of territories and polities or from the dissolution of empires (or some
combination thereof)—and, along with that, new conceptions of international order. In
that sense, to be concerned with postcolonialism is to be concerned with a set of
questions at the heart of modern political thought.

However, postcolonialism is also closely associated with a more-specific set of

questions, and, although it should not be reduced to these questions, they have proved
to be enormously influential. One of the most prominent has been the relation between
imperialism and identity. Fanon, a psychoanalyst and philosopher born in Martinique,
presented one of the most searing and provocative analyses of the relation between
colonized and colonizer in The Wretched of the Earth (1961) as well as in his Black
Skin, White Masks (1952). Fanon remains perhaps best known for his explosive
justification of violence in The Wretched of the Earth (highlighted in Jean-Paul Sartre’s
preface to that work), where it is cast as the appropriate response to the violence
perpetrated by colonialism and as the mediation through which the colonized can begin
to reclaim their self-conscious agency. His is a deeply unsettling argument, shaped
undoubtedly by the brutal period of French colonial rule in Algeria and the war for
independence (1954–62) there, which Fanon experienced firsthand. Violence was
inevitable and necessary, Fanon seemed to be arguing in The Wretched of the Earth,
but it also has to be overcome. One has to move from reaction to the construction of
something new, which for Fanon included overcoming the binary oppositions imposed
on the colonized by the geopolitical structures of the Cold War. It is there that the
foreshadowing of some important themes that became central to postcolonialism is
found. For example, Fanon combined a material and psychological analysis of the
consequences of colonialism, which looked to both the micro- and macroeffects and
experience of colonial government. Among those consequences and their effects, as
identified and investigated by Fanon and other theorists, are: both the colonized and the
colonizer are implicated in the horrors of imperialism, and both will have to be
decolonized; the colonized have to find a way of overcoming the imposition of alien rule
not only over their territory but also over their minds and bodies; seeking recognition
from an oppressor in terms that the oppressor has set hardly provides a genuine
liberation from the grip of colonialism (an effect that anticipates an important debate in
contemporary political theory over the “politics of recognition”); the colonizers have to
make sense of how the brutality of colonialism relates to their own apparent humanism.
Fanon’s work emphasized the complex relation between imperialism and nationalism
that remained a critical focus of much postcolonial writing. The aspiration for self-
determination at the heart of anticolonial struggles proved difficult to institutionalize
democratically in existing postcolonial states (about which Fanon was remarkably
prescient). Most postcolonial theorists—whether writing about Africa, South Asia, or
elsewhere—have been critical of nationalism but also equally critical of the “nativism”
and romantic communitarianism often supposed to be alternatives to it. They have
sought to investigate the ways in which European conceptions of politics, as well as
assumptions about secularism and historical time more generally, have been used to
describe and locate non-European peoples’ forms of collective action and modes of
self-understanding along a continuum that terminates with the ideas and institutions of
modern Europe. Postcolonial theorists have also been critical of the assumption, often
made by liberals, that what is needed is simply the extension of existing liberal
universals, this time in good faith, to those to whom they were previously denied (or
never seriously intended). For some theorists, the problem is not simply one of a lack of
consistency on the part of liberalism; it instead lies more deeply within the structure of
the universal principles themselves. The conditions attached for the ascription of rights,
for example, or the distribution of liberties were often grounded in narratives of social or
cultural development that justified denying rights and freedoms to those deemed too
backward or uncivilized to exercise them properly. John Stuart Mill’s justification of the
denial of Indian self-government is a classic instance of that kind of assumption,
however much he thought it was best for the well-being of Indians themselves.

7.POLITICAL COMMUNITY DURING POST COLONIAL

In this article, I introduce geographic and spatial approaches as a way to gain insight on
social and political dimensions of Indian archaeology. I demonstrate that political crisis
and national interests influenced understandings of Sanghol in post-colonial Indian
archaeology, reflecting an interweaving of space and power. This does not mean that
Sanghol was significant only regionally and lacked national importance. Rather,
Sanghol’s very recent status amongst the ‘most important sites’ in Indian archaeology
may be seen as a reflection of the impact of social and political factors on the
interpretation of archaeology and of the changing interests of Indian archaeologists.
Discontinuities in research at Sanghol show that it was not archaeologically important
within the established historical framework in which innovations developed elsewhere
were brought into India by Aryans. The Survey’s collaborative investigations in Sanghol
signal the changing relationship between the local community and the national
government during a period of intense social and political instability. This situation has
implications for our understanding of national archaeology.

Following Indian independence in 1947, some Indian archaeologists influenced by

Hindu nationalism increasingly questioned the Aryan invasion and the foreign origins of
caste. This view renewed scholarly interest in the relationship between the Rg Veda and
later Sanskrit texts, the Puranas4. Because many scholars believed in the Vedic origins
of Indian civilization, and because they thought that Aryans had introduced caste, up
until the early 1990s, relations between Aryans and non-Aryans were of great interest to
scholars and policy makers (Jha 1991). These views often overshadowed concerns of
India’s ethnic and linguistic minorities, as I have discussed in detail elsewhere (Gupta, N
2013a). It was precisely amid political uncertainties in the wake of intense competition
for an autonomous state of Khalistan for Punjabi-speakers, and Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi’s assassination in 1984 that Sanghol gained its place in Indian archaeology.

It was in this context that Indian archaeologists reinterpreted Sanghol in terms of social
stratification, where Harappans (and their descendants), a dynamic and creative social
group, brought social order and technologies to local, non- or pre-Harappan
communities. These methods served the social and political aims of the national
government at a time when it faced growing social unrest and severe internal political
instability that threatened Indian unity. Through an analysis of popular and scholarly
publications as well as archival records, I show how after independence from the British
Crown in 1947, the practice of Indian archaeology was influenced by both an ideology of
‘fundamental unity’ throughout India and by Hindu nationalism. Increasingly difficult
relations between a pro-Hindi-speaking national government and India’s ethnic and
linguistic minorities such as Punjabi-speakers marked growing disagreement over
archaeological interpretation and the preservation of cultural heritage. For scholars and
policy makers, concerns over Indian unity and security were heightened by sensitive
geopolitical relations with India’s immediate neighbours. These tensions impacted the
collection and interpretation of archaeological data.

Specifically, as a result of armed conflict and intensifying hostilities between the newly
created Dominions of Pakistan and of India in 1947, Indian archaeologists could no
longer reach or study many archaeological sites and collections. Sites such as
Mohenjodaro and Harappa, the Indus Valley sites excavated in the 1920s, and Taxila,
an archaeological site relevant to understanding ancient India came under Pakistan’s
jurisdiction. At the same time, Indian archaeologists lost access to collections stored at
local museums in East and West Pakistan5 and subsequent opportunities to study
archaeological material (Lahiri 2012). Challenging foreign relations between India and
Pakistan have impacted the practice of post-colonial archaeology in this geopolitically
strategic region (Lawler 2008), yet we have only a limited understanding of the influence
of these tensions on the interpretation of archaeology.

In this post-colonial context, some Indian archaeologists promoted internal development

as a factor of societal change, challenging conventional views of the Indian past in
which creative and dynamic groups brought innovations into India. Yet whereas these
perspectives offered ammunition against colonial interpretations of the Indian past, an
internal view of cultural development reinforced Vedic origins of Indian civilization, thus
maintaining a caste-based prehistory, which presumed cultural continuity between
contemporary people and prehistoric groups. At Sanghol, Indian archaeologists
influenced by Hindu nationalism sought to recover ‘indigenous’ practices and ‘Vedic
roots’. This view of prehistory excludes all non-Hindus from Indian society and social
dynamics, which, in turn, is a source of tension for India’s ethnic and linguistic minorities
(Gupta, N 2013a; 2013b).

The data for this study come from archaeological publications in scholarly and popular
journals, as well as archival documents housed at the National Archives of India
(henceforth NAI) in New Delhi and at the Directorate of Cultural Affairs, Archaeology
and Museums, Punjab in Chandigarh. The choice of depositories is significant. Since
archives are themselves a product of the society in which they were created, they are
influenced by their social, political, cultural and historical circumstances (Cox and
Wallace 2002). Collections in depositories differ in content matter, as well as in
historical coverage.

Specifically, the historical coverage at NAI encompasses colonial and post-1947

documents, and the latter collections represent a distinctly national perspective on
archaeology and heritage management in India. Previous work in the history of Indian
archaeology has emphasized a colonizer-colonized dynamic in which Indian views are
juxtaposed to European ones (Singh 2004; Ray 2008), underestimating the influence of
‘princely’ or Native States, territories that were differentiated from Crown-administered
ones (Sengupta and Gangopadhyaya 2009). Yet while these approaches are fruitful for
colonial settings, they fall short in the post-colonial context (Gullapalli 2008), where
relations between the national government and state governments take centre-stage
(Guha, R 2007). To better understand perspectives of post-colonial archaeologists in
Punjab and the influence of local and national dynamics on the interpretation of
archaeology, this study examined annual field reports and popular publications
produced by the staff in the Punjab department during the Sanghol excavations from
1985 to 1990, alongside documents available in national archives.

Broadly conceptualized, the archaeological community in post-colonial India consists of

three knowledge producers, namely, the national department (Survey), universities and
research institutions, and state departments. Archaeologists employed at the Survey
and at state departments of archaeology are considered civil servants and all state
departments have full-time staff. In state departments, archaeologists are often
recruited locally and from within the state in which they are resident. These constraints
are likely eased at the Survey, which employs archaeologists for its offices in New
Delhi, and ‘regional offices’ across India6.
Along with archival collections, newspapers such as The Tribune, an English-language
daily published in Chandigarh, and The Times of India, an English-language daily
distributed throughout India, offer insight on public reception of the latest archaeological
recoveries. Survey archaeologists and those in state departments alike make use of this
medium to disseminate the interpretation of archaeology. To that end, the present study
examines newspaper articles relevant to archaeology in Punjab. A brief overview of
archaeology in Independent India is followed by a discussion of national archaeology
and political crisis in the Indian Republic, and the changing fortunes of Sanghol in Indian
archaeology.

Characterizing Archaeology in Independent India

Most scholars agree that the first two decades following Indian independence from the
British Crown in 1947 are characterized by rapid economic development, which saw
large-scale government-sponsored projects, such as mining, construction of large
dams, power plants, roads, and airports. Many of these activities resulted in the
destruction of cultural heritage and in the displacement of people.

The 1950s ushered a new era in the practice of Indian archaeology. The ‘national
narrative’ had a north-India-centric, caste-based view of prehistory that justified
economic, social, cultural and political marginalization of aboriginal peoples as it is
reflected in works such as Bendapudi Subbarao (1958), discussed in a later section.
New universities and organizations opened and old ones, such as the Archaeological
Survey, were reoriented. These developments coincided with rapid economic change.
Cultural protection laws created before the independence were expanded with The
Antiquities Export Control Act in 1947, which in turn was repealed and revised by The
Antiquities and Art Treasures Act in 1972. Interestingly, protection for movable material
culture remained separate from that for monuments and archaeological sites, as
expressed in The Ancient and Historical Monuments and Archaeological Sites and
Remains (Declaration of National Importance) Act in 1951, which was amended in
1956, 1958 and 2010. Amid rapid social, economic and political change, these
protective measures encouraged the accumulation of archaeological material and the
preservation of cultural heritage.

Leading Indian archaeologists such as Hansmukh D. Sankalia thought of Indian history

and prehistory in an historical continuum (Sankalia, Subbarao and Deo 1953: 345), and
conceptualized the aims of archaeology in terms of the Puranas and Vedas (Sankalia,
Subbarao and Deo 1953: 343). For Sankalia (1969: 29), the aims of Indian archaeology
were to: “reveal the country’s long prehistoric past”, be a “handmaid of, and corrective
to, a past with a long tradition of unwritten literature”, and to “show how far the pre- and
protohistoric cultures can be related to the preliterates who continue to survive in many
parts of India”. This view maintained pre-1947 interests in the identity of Aryans.
Pressing geopolitical concerns influenced the study of ancient India. Following in the
wake of Independence, Indian archaeologists were cut off from monuments and
archaeological sites which they had excavated along (and west of) the Indus River (Fig.
1). N. P. Chakravarti who had taken over from Mortimer Wheeler7 as Director General
of the Archaeological Survey remarked that the Native States “had no separate
historical or cultural traditions” (Chakravarti 1949a: 1). Rather, he argued that
archaeological material recovered there was “an integral part of the larger ancient
culture of India” (ibid.). This meant that the Republic’s newly acquired territories,
including those in Punjab, were part of the ancient Hindu civilization. These views are
best understood within the context of escalating social and political tensions with West
Pakistan.

This article examined the influence of political crisis on the practice of Indian
archaeology in post-colonial India. Approaches to the history and practice of
archaeology in India have tended to focus on a colonizer-colonized dynamic in which
the relationship between Europeans and Indians is of central interest. While fruitful,
these approaches are unsatisfactory for an understanding of Indian archaeology in the
post-colonial context, where relations between the national government and state
governments take centre-stage. To better understand perspectives of post-colonial
archaeologists in Punjab and the influence of local and national dynamics on the
interpretation of archaeology, this study examined the case of Sanghol in the aftermath
of the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Sanghol’s unique place in Indian
archaeology draws from its proximity to a tenuous international border with Pakistan,
and from its reinterpretation during a time of severe political crisis and social unrest in
the Indian Republic.

From this perspective view, we gain a nuanced understanding of a subtle but significant
re-orientation in Indian archaeology that challenged conventional views of the Indian
past. Indian archaeologists often explained change as a result of external events in
which creative and dynamic groups brought innovations into India. Influenced by
growing social awareness, some Indian archaeologists increasingly attributed change to
local development and social factors. This does not mean that Indian archaeologists
rejected migration as a factor in change or discarded culture-historical approaches.

Following independence in 1947, the national government invested in land redistribution

for mining and the construction of large dams, irrigation canals and power plants. Amid
these rapid economic and social changes, the government undertook measures to
protect cultural heritage, encouraging the accumulation of archaeological material.
Some Indian archaeologists assumed cultural continuity between contemporary and
prehistoric groups when it came to the interpretation of archaeological data. They
thought in terms of recovering cultural achievements of their ancestors. Moreover,
scholars thought of aboriginal peoples as static and unchanging, and synonymous with
prehistoric cultures that had gone extinct. Some scholars believed that more advanced
peoples had pushed aside aboriginal and less developed peoples. These ethnocentric
views highlighted the progress of Hindus, and denigrated aboriginal people as simple.
Thus, by assuming a simplistic past, some Indian scholars encouraged migration as an
explanation for change. These approaches were accepted because they naturalized
social inequality and justified rapid development in territories occupied by ethnic and
linguistic minorities. These methods were similar to those employed by British scholars
to justify colonialism and gave observers the impression that Indian archaeology had
continued without significant modification until the 1990s.

Yet through the 1960s, India’s middle class grew increasingly anxious in the face of
growing social unrest and political uncertainty. Some scholars increasingly challenged
traditional views of the Indian past and questioned the foreign origins of innovations.
Some Indian archaeologists examined the influence of social and political factors in the
development of complex societies, challenging traditional understandings of the
archaeological record. These archaeologists emphasized local development and social
class as factors in Indian archaeology. These views reflect significant theoretical
developments in Indian archaeology prior to the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992.
It is clear that with the growing social awareness of the Indian middle class, the practice
of archaeology in India, far from being static and unchanging, has undergone significant
re-orientation in recent decades. Yet because some Indian archaeologists believed in
the cultural and biological superiority of ancient Hindus, and because they thought of
themselves as descendants of these early farmers, they sometimes neglected
examination of internal dynamics as explanations for change. Their commitment to
Vedic origins also meant that archaeologists interpreted the archaeological record in
terms of an archive of Hindu cultural achievements. India’s ethnic and linguistic
minorities increasingly challenge these views of the Indian past. These developments,
in turn, influence the interpretation of archaeological data and the preservation of
cultural heritage in the Indian Republic.

8.European culture,produces the orient on the other,drawing from the

discussions on orientation

A few introductory remarks about Edward W. Said might benecessary before

approaching his representative work Orienta/ism. Edward Said was born in 1935 in
Palestine with Arabic heritage. He received almost all his higher education in the United
States. He got his BA from Princeton in 1957 and subsequent MAin 1960 and Ph. D. in
1964 from Harvard, both in English. He has lectured at Harvard, Johns Hopkins and
Yale. From 1989 to 1992 he held the Old Dominton Foundation Professorship in the
Humanities at Columbia University where he now chairs the doctorial program in
Comparative Literature. He is also editor of Arab Studies Quarterly. Said is most widely
known for his tireless representations on behalf of the cause of the Palestinian people.
His writings span the areas of literary criticism, politics and music. Because of his Arabic
family background, a childhood spent in Palestine and Egypt and his subsequent
emigration to the USA he generally restricts his focus to an examination of American,
English and French imperialism and literary and cultural affairs of the Near East and
Palestine. Among numerous works written by Said, Orientalism ts undoubtlessly the
best known. It is considered as one of the key texts in cultural and literary studies. Since
its publication in 1978, the influence of the book has been enormous and marked a
turning point.
Evidently, Orientalism is not about oriental cultures in its usual sense, but about the
Western representation of cultures in the "Near East", which is particularly associated
with a scholarly discipline entitled Orientalism. Supported by abundant references and
illustrations, Said shows how this discipline was created alongside the European
penetration into the "Near East" and how it was nurtured and " proved " by various other
disciplines such as history, anthropology, philosophy, literature, etc.
According to Said, "Orientalism" can be interpreted in a number of ways. An orientalist
can be anyone who makes systematic study of or teaches the Orient; Orientalism may
be an ideology based on ontological and epistemological distinction made between the
East and the West. Many literary figures, philosophers, cultural theorists have accepted
this classification as the benchmark for their literary creations and social and political
descriptions; Orientalism can be discussed and analysed as an instrumental system for
treating the Orient in various ways, namely, "making statements about it, authorising
views of it, describing it, teaching it and above all, ruling over it".
Orientalism sets out to treat the reconstruction of European and Euro-American
discourse about civilisation, cultures and peoples in some eastern countries, by
redefining such "Oriental"studies against the background of Western imperialism.
Therefore, Western studies of the East can only begin to be understood when examined
as a discourse of power, the theory advanced by Michel Foucault. The European and
Anglo-American discourse of Orientalism, Said maintains, enables "the enormous
systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manage-and even
produce-the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and
imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment period". The primary argument remains
was focused on the power relationships of such discourses relative to essentially
political agenda. No Western discourse, whether literary or political about a nation,
culture and people can be on the passive end within the context of imperialism and
colonisation because all participants maintain a cultural sovereignty.
As remarked by Mao Zedong, wherever there is oppression there is resistance. For
Said, "the history of Orientalism has both an internal consistency and a highly
articulated set of relationships to the dominant culture surrounding it". Literary and
historical texts are constructed within these political contexts, creating a discourse about
the East as the cultural "other". Being a Palestinian of Western educational and
professional background, Said uses the discourse analysis to deal with colonialism- an
experimental approach. It examines how the formal study of the "Orient", in combination
with key literary and cultural texts, firmly formulated certain viewpoints and "ideologies
which in turn contributed to the exercises of colonial power, i.e. the Western style for
dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the'Orient'".
Surveying Orientalism, the major argument m the book is that the discourse of
Orientalism can create not only knowledge but also the very reality which they appear to
describe-political and cultural power of the discourse. On the one hand, Said suggests
that Orientalism consists of a representation, a European representation of the Orient
that is far from being accurate or objective about the Orient, while on the other hand he
argues that the knowledge of "Orient " could be put in the service of colonial conquest,
of occupation and administration. According to Said, "Orientalism, therefore, is not airy
European fantasy about the Orient, but a created body of theory and practice in which,
for many generations, there has been a considerable material investment. Continued
investment made Orientalism as a system of knowledge about the Orient, an accepted
grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness, just as that same
investment multiplied-indeed, made truly productive-the statements proliferating out
from Orientalism into the general culture".
It is proper to say that Orienta/ism initiates a new kind of study of colonialism and
postcolonialism. Said maintains that representations of the " Orient " in European
literary texts, travelogues and other writings contributed to the creation of a dichotomy
between Europe and its "other", a dichotomy that was central to the creation of Euro-
centralism as well as to the maintenance and extension of European hegemony over
other lands. Said presents that this dichotomy or opposition is crucial to the
selfestablishment of Europe: if colonised people are irrational, Europeans are rational; if
the former are barbaric, sensual, and lazy,Europe is civilised, with its sexual appetites
under control and its dominant ethic that of hard work; if the Orient is static, Europe can
be seen as developing and marching ahead; the Orient has to be feminine so that
Europe can be masculine. This dialectic between self and other, derived in part from
deconstruction, has been greatly influential in subsequent studies of colonial discourse
in other places.
Some critics have traced it as informing colonial attitudes towards Africans, Native
Americans, and other non-European peoples. Further, this dichotomy can lead to
cultural bias in that in stead of "seeking truth from fact" (Deng Xiaoping ) and "harmony
allowing diversity""qiu tong cun yi" (Confucian legacy), the attitudes towards the Orient
were a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the
familiar (Europe, the West , "us") and then strange ( the Orient, the East, "them") ... The
result is usually to polarize the distinction-the Oriental becomes more Oriental, the
Westerner more Western-and thus to limit the human contact and cross-cultural
communication between different cultures, traditions, and societies.
It would serve the reader well to not only keep the great positive influence of
Orienta/ism in mind but to take notice of disputes as well as criticism on the book from
numerous commentators the world over. Some criticise Orienta/ism for adapting a view
of colonial power as all pervasive, for he claims to have based much of his work in
Orientalism on the theoretical framework by Foucault and has "found it useful here to
employ his notion of a discourse, as described by him in The Archaeology of Knowledge
and in Discipline and Punish, to identify Orientalism." Foucanlt suggests in his works
that power manifests itself not in a downward flow from the top of the social hierarchy to
those below but extends itself in spreads. He also discusses how dominant structures
legitimise themselves by allowing a controlled space for dissidence-resistance, in this
view, is produced and then inoculated against by those in power. Following Foucault,
Said tries to connect individual authors to structures of thought and to the workings of
power. He further connects specific discourses and their distributions to the agents and
institutions of colonialism themselves. Consequently, he brings together a large number
of representative writers, statesmen, political thinkers, philologists and philosophers
who contributed to the Orientalism as an institution which then provided the scale by
which the "Orient" would be considered and weighted; but equally these consideration
and measurement in turn governed these ways of knowing, studying, believing and
writing the "Orient". Therefore, knowledge about and power over colonised lands are
related together. Several other recurring critiques focus on his "binary opposition
model", "exclusive concentration on canonical Western literary texts", "neglect of the
self-representation of the colonised", "static model of colonial relations " and so forth.
Despite all these sharp criticism, some scholars nevertheless acknowledged that Said's
project inspired and coincided with widespread attempts to write "histories from below"
or "recover" the experiences of those who have been somehow "hidden from history".
Chinese critics (Beili and Liu Juan: 1995) attach much emphasis on Orientalism and
regard it as a pioneer work with a universal appeal. They feel that some non-white and
the "Third World" scholars in residence of the West (Said himself included) have voiced
strongly and criticised Western cultural hegemony, thus making a unique contribution to
literary studies and cultural criticism. (Wang Xiaolu, Chen Yaohong, 1996). As a
pathbreaking work in the analysis of colonial discourse and cultural studies at large.
Edward Said's Orientalism is capable of challenging fundamentally peoples' habitual
ways of viewing the world. Therefore, the significance of the work is great and far-
reaching (Lu ]iande, 1999).
Technically, the book falls into two halves: the first part concerned with the scope of the
thought and action covered by the word Orientalism through European concrete
experiences of and with Near Orient, Islam, and Arabs. The invention of the Orient by
Europe, and its construction as a representation are foregrounded; the second is about
the time when this representation and academic knowledge that was manipulated
around it, became an instrument in the service of colonial power. Throughout the book,
Said makes a series of judgements, according to which each writer is identified in the
process of intellectual hierarchy with the West above the East . Said's style of writing is
elaborated. The book comes off as meticulously researched book that makes a fruitful,
thoughtprovoking reading experience. For those involving themselves cultural studies
and comparative literature, Orientalism is a must.
9.Leela Gandhi’s Postcolonial Theory
The first edition of Leela Gandhi’s Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction, published
in 1998, was an indispensable guide to a field that, while relatively recently coalescing
into a definable approach and discipline, was also engaged in self-reflexive critiques.
Now released in a second edition, Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction (2019)
includes a short new preface and an epilogue titled “If This Were a Manifesto for
Postcolonial Thinking.” The latter is a substantial meditation on developments in the
field that asks “what is enduring in postcolonial thinking” capturing not only a backward
look on postcolonial thinking’s new interlocutors since the first edition, but also a forward
look to what might persist. Given that twenty years has elapsed between the first and
second editions, we might turn Gandhi’s question back on her introduction to
postcolonial theory itself: what endures, and what persists? If the updates to the text
consist of a second preface and a new epilogue that bookend the text, to what extent do
the original chapters still capture the landscape of the field?

If the goal of the first edition was “‘name’ postcolonialism,” describing its emergence in
the academy and “major preoccupations” (p. xiii), the need to name and to situate the
field is one that endures—especially for the students and scholars who come to field
now, and who might not have the historical consciousness of the culture wars and
debates that animated critical theory in the 1990s. Chapter 1, “After Colonialism,”
usefully traces the interventions of postcolonial theory to understanding the aftermath of
colonialism, and to refusing “the mystifying amnesia of the colonial aftermath”. Gandhi
reminds us of the psychological and historical dimensions of the aftermath of European
colonization, detailing the contributions of Gayatri Spivak, Albert Memmi, Edward Said,
Ashis Nandy, Michel Foucault, Frantz Fanon, and Homi Bhabha among others.

If this terrain is well trod in other accounts of postcolonialism, Gandhi’s second chapter,
“Thinking Otherwise: A Brief Intellectual History,” contextualizes postcolonial theory’s
emergence as both an extension of and departure from Marxism, poststructuralism, and
Enlightenment philosophies. The chapter begins with the tensions between
poststructuralism and postmodernism and Marxism. Gandhi situates this divide in a
larger intellectual history, moving us further backward in time: from Jacques Derrida and
Michel Foucault to Immanuel Kant to René Descartes, concluding with the immense
influence of Friedrich Nietzsche in decrying the limits of Western humanism. The
importance of sketching the emergence of postcolonial theory from this larger
philosophical tradition—and specifically the critique of the Cartesian theory of
epistemological subjectivity—is succinctly summarized by Gandhi: these critiques “hold
out the possibility of theorizing a non-coercive relationship or dialogue with the excluded
‘Other’ of Western humanism”.

The third chapter, “Postcolonialism and the New Humanities,” traces postcolonialism’s
contemporary “oppositional stance against the traditional humanities,” locating its
opposition in two related projects: “to foreground the exclusions and elisions which
confirm the privileges and authority of canonical knowledge systems” and “to recover
those marginalized knowledges which have been occluded and silenced by the
entrenched humanist curriculum”. Readers interested in the gap between postcolonial
theorizing and social realities will find the second half of the chapter particularly useful
its critique of the postcolonial academic, who embodies “the incommensurability
between the oppositional stance of postcolonial intellectuals and their co-option within
the very institutions they allegedly critique”.

Given Edward Said’s towering role in the development of postcolonial studies, it is not
surprising that an entire chapter is devoted to “Edward Said and His Critics.” In chapter
4, Gandhi is less interested in explicating the nuances of his argument than in analyzing
Orientalism’s canonization, impact, influence, and limitations. Throughout this chapter,
Gandhi offers elegant glosses of Said’s work—including and beyond Orientalism—and
suggests that the limitations of Orientalism inhere in its inability “to accommodate the
possibility of difference within Oriental discourse”. Specifically, Said’s analysis overlooks
the way that “Orientalist discourse was strategically available not only to empire but also
to its antagonists” and mobilized by writers and others to “critique … the
aggressivecapitalism and territorialism of the modern West” .

Chapter 5 discusses the relationship between postcolonialism and feminism, noting the
“collision and collusion” of the two around “the contentious figure of the ‘third-world
woman’”. From Sara Suleri to Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Gandhi’s account in this
chapter adequately captures the important critiques of postcolonial feminism in the
1990s; it is in this chapter that the refusal to update the chapters for the second edition
is most evident. We learn about Jenny Sharpe’s “recent” book Allegories of Empire
(1993) and the arguments of “recent critics and historians” like Rosemary Marangoly
George (also 1993) (p. 91). Perhaps the War on Terror rehearses rather than
complicates many of the insights Gandhi reviews, but an updated version of this chapter
might consider the enduring appeal of Spivak’s provocative assessment, quoted also by
Gandhi, that “‘White men are saving brown women from brown men’” . Finally, the
chapter ends with a reference to Mohandas Gandhi’s “radical self-fashioning” that
“complicates the authoritative signature of colonial masculinity”. Though occupying a
small portion of this chapter, the book largely takes an uncomplicated view of Gandhi’s
legacy; an updated chapter would profit from the inclusion of the robust debates on
Gandhi’s gender and racial politics that have gained traction since the first edition.

On the other hand, in a time of ethno-nationalist resurgence, chapter 6, “Imagining

Community: The Question of Nationalism,” remains exceedingly relevant for theorizing
both postcolonalism’s account of cultural nationalism and our contemporary moment.
From Fanon’s prescient anticipation of the pitfalls of national consciousness to Benedict
Anderson’s well-known account of imagined communities, the chapter also historicizes
Western antagonism to Third World nationalisms. Chapter 7, “One World: The Vision of
Postnationalism,” expands the concerns of the previous chapter to consider “the
postcolonial desire for extra- or post-national solidarities”. The appeal of
postnationalism, Gandhi offers, might reside in oppositional fatigue, or “the pervasive
postcolonial exhaustion with the mantric iteration of the embattled past”. It is in this
postnationalist setting that the terms “hybridity” and “diaspora” become popular in
postcolonial theory, and Gandhi describes the terms’ appeal and limitations alike. The
chapter ends on a cautionary note: while a “postnational/postcolonial ethics of hybridity”
might offer “a non-violent reading of the colonial past through an emphasis on the
mutual transformation of colonizer and colonized,” we ought not to let “the euphoric
utopianism of this discourse … degenerate into a premature political amnesia” .

Chapter 8, “Postcolonial Literatures,” describes the centrality of textuality and textual

analysis to postcolonial theory, beginning with the important role of literature in the
consolidation and expression of colonial power. This chapter addresses several issues
that postcolonial studies still grapples with: the language of postcolonial literature, the
privileging of the migrant novel, the expectation that postcolonial literatures are
necessarily subversive, and the reification of the metropolitan center as the “privileged
addressee … of the romantic postcolonial text”. Here again, an update that takes stock
of the contemporary conversation in postcolonial theory would be useful. Gandhi
concludes the chapter with the assessment that “what postcolonial literature needs is a
properly romantic modality; a willingness to critique, ameliorate and build upon the
compositions of the colonial aftermath” in order to “envision a transformed and improved
future for the postcolonial nation” . How would Gandhi, in 2019, respond to David
Scott’s more recent account of the utility of tragedy and the temporality of postcolonial
aftermath?

Chapter 9, “The Limits of Postcolonial Theory,” is a short chapter that describes

postcolonial theory’s tendency to straddle “the politics of structure and totality on the
one hand, and the politics of the fragment on the other”. Gandhi offers that, in the end,
postcolonial theory’s enduring contributions to a more just world include “hold[ing] out
the possibility of thinking our way through, and therefore, out of the historical
imbalances and cultural inequalities produced by the colonial encounter”.

The new epilogue is a departure in form from the rest of the book. Here, in what Gandhi
describes as a “Manifesto for Postcolonial Thinking,” she describes postcolonial theory’s
critical perspective, which lends itself to “a contemporary philosophy of renunciation,
with a unique proposal for uninjured life and noninjurious community” . Each subsection
ends with a provocative proposal for what postcolonial thinking can offer, ranging from
“Postcolonial thinking can present as an ethics of departure” to “Postcolonial thinking is
best as an imperfect outlook that remains indefinite, unfinished, and peripatetic”. For
readers looking for a concise and specific account of the developments in postcolonial
theory since 1998, the epilogue demurs to deliver. Instead, Gandhi focuses her account
on seven themes that characterize postcolonial thinking: assemblage, injury, exit,
ontology, renunciation, ethics, and advice to kings. In the end, each proposal reads
intriguingly like a Nietzschean aphorism. If taken in that spirit, the epilogue offers much
to debate and to decipher in contemporary arguments about the utility of postcolonial
thinking.
To a large extent, Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction endures as an important
book for contextualizing and historicizing postcolonial theory. Early chapters are
especially suitable for the undergraduate classroom for their clear summaries of
complex postcolonial concepts, and for the long view of Western philosophy and
humanism out of and against which postcolonial theory emerges. Later chapters on
postnationalism and postcolonial literatures should appeal to readers with an already
firm grasp of postcolonial theory’s history, and the bibliography is indispensable as a
compendium of important theorists not only from the first edition’s 1998 moment, but
updated to include those writing in the second edition’s 2019 present.

10. Things Fall Apart (pdf)

11.Homi Bhabha’s Concept of Hybridity

One of the most widely employed and most disputed terms in postcolonial theory,
hybridity commonly refers to the creation of new transcultural forms within the contact
zone produced by colonization. As used in horticulture, the term refers to the cross-
breeding of two species by grafting or cross-pollination to form a third, ‘hybrid’ species.
Hybridization takes many forms:linguistic, cultural,political, racial, etc. Linguistic
examples include pidgin and creole languages, and these echo the foundational use of
the term by the linguist and cultural theorist Mikhail Bakhtin,who used it to suggest the
disruptive and transfiguring power of multivocal language situations and, by extension,
of multivocal narratives. The idea of a polyphony of voices in society is implied also in
Bakhtin’s idea of the carnivalesque, which emerged in the Middle Ages when ‘a
boundless world of humorous forms and manifestations opposed the official and serious
tone of medieval ecclesiastical and feudal culture’.

The term ‘hybridity’ has been most recently associated with the work of Homi K.
Bhabha, whose analysis of colonizer/colonized relations stresses their interdependence
and the mutual construction of their subjectivities (see mimicry and ambivalence).
Bhabha contends that all cultural statements and systems are constructed in a space
that he calls the ‘Third Space of enunciation’ . Cultural identity always emerges in this
contradictory and ambivalent space,which for Bhabha makes the claim to a hierarchical
‘purity’of cultures untenable. For him, the recognition of this ambivalent space of cultural
identity may help us to overcome the exoticism of cultural diversity in favour of the
recognition of an empowering hybridity within which cultural difference may operate.

It is significant that the productive capacities of this Third Space have a colonial or
postcolonial provenance. For a willingness to descend into that alien territory . . . may
open the way to conceptualizing an international culture, based not on the exoticism of
multiculturalism or the diversity of cultures,but on the inscription and articulation of
culture’s hybridity.
It is the ‘in-between’ space that carries the burden and meaning of culture, and this is
what makes the notion of hybridity so important. Hybridity has frequently been used in
post-colonial discourse to mean simply cross-cultural ‘exchange’. This use of the term
has been widely criticized, since it usually implies negating and neglecting the
imbalance and inequality of the power relations it references. By stressing the
transformative cultural, linguistic and political impacts on both the colonized and the
colonizer, it has been regarded as replicating assimilationist policies by masking or
‘whitewashing’ cultural differences.

The idea of hybridity also underlies other attempts to stress the mutuality of cultures in
the colonial and post-colonial process in expressions of syncreticity, cultural synergy
and transculturation. The criticism of the term referred to above stems from the
perception that theories that stress mutuality necessarily downplay oppositionality, and
increase continuing post-colonial dependence.There is,however,nothing in the idea of
hybridity as such that suggests that mutuality negates the hierarchical nature of the
imperial process or that it involves the idea of an equal exchange. This is,however,the
way in which some proponents of decolonization and anti-colonialism have interpreted
its current usage in colonial discourse theory. It has also been subject to critique as part
of a general dissatisfaction with colonial discourse theory on the part of critics such as
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Benita Parry and Aijaz Ahmad. These critiques stress the
textualist and idealist basis of such analysis and point to the fact that they neglect
specific local differences.

The assertion of a shared post-colonial condition such as hybridity has been seen as
part of the tendency of discourse analysis to de-historicize and de-locate cultures from
their temporal, spatial, geographical and linguistic contexts, and to lead to an abstract,
globalized concept of the textual that obscures the specificities of particular cultural
situations. Pointing out that the investigation of the discursive construction of
colonialism does not seek to replace or exclude other forms such as historical,
geographical, economic, military or political, Robert Young suggests that the
contribution of colonial discourse analysis, in which concepts such as hybridity are
couched,

provides a significant framework for that other work by emphasising that all perspectives
on colonialism share and have to deal with a common discursive medium which was
also that of colonialism itself: . . . Colonial discourse analysis can therefore look at the
wide variety of texts of colonialism as something more than mere documentation or
‘evidence’.

However, Young himself offers a number of objections to the indiscriminate use of the
term.He notes how influential the term ‘hybridity’ was in imperial and colonial discourse
in negative accounts of the union of disparate races – accounts that implied that unless
actively and persistently cultivated, such hybrids would inevitably revert to their
‘primitive’ stock. Hybridity thus became, particularly at the turn of the century, part of a
colonialist discourse of racism. Young draws our attention to the dangers of employing a
term so rooted in a previous set of racist assumptions, but he also notes that there is a
difference between unconscious processes of hybrid mixture, or creolization, and a
conscious and politically motivated concern with the deliberate disruption of
homogeneity. He notes that for Bakhtin, for example, hybridity is politicized, made
contestatory, so that it embraces the subversion and challenge of division and
separation. Bakhtin’s hybridity ‘sets different points of view against each other in a
conflictual structure, which retains “a certain elemental, organic energy and
openendedness”’ . It is this potential of hybridity to reverse ‘the structures of domination
in the colonial situation’ , which Young recognizes, that Bhabha also articulates.
‘Bakhtin’s intentional hybrid has been transformed by Bhabha into an active moment of
challenge and resistance against a dominant colonial power . . . depriving the imposed
imperialist culture,not only of the authority that it has for so long imposed politically,
often through violence, but even of its own claims to authenticity’ .

Young does, however,warn of the unconscious process of repetition involved in the

contemporary use of the term. According to him, when talking about hybridity,
contemporary cultural discourse cannot escape the connection with the racial
categories of the past in which hybridity had such a clear racial meaning. Therefore
‘deconstructing such essentialist notions of race today we may rather be repeating the
[fixation on race in the] past than distancing ourselves from it, or providing a critique of it
. This is a subtle and persuasive objection to the concept. However, more positively,
Young also notes that the term indicates a broader insistence in many twentieth-century
disciplines, fromphysics to genetics,upon ‘a double logic,which goes against the
convention of rational either/or choices, but which is repeated in science in the split
between the incompatible coexisting logics of classical and quantum physics’ . In this
sense, as in much else in the structuralist and poststructuralist legacy, the concept of
hybridity emphasizes a typically twentieth-century concern with relations within a field
rather than with an analysis of discrete objects, seeing meaning as the produce of such
relations rather than as intrinsic to specific events or objects.

Whilst assertions of national culture and of pre-colonial traditions have played an

important role in creating anti-colonial discourse and in arguing for an active
decolonizing project, theories of the hybrid nature of post-colonial culture assert a
different model for resistance, locating this in the subversive counter-discursive
practices implicit in the colonial ambivalence itself and so undermining the very basis on
which imperialist and colonialist discourse raises its claims of superiority.

12.Diop and waqlcott bring out the geo-politics of Africa in their poems
As a consequence of colonialism, Anglophone writers of African descent living in Africa,
the Caribbean, and Canada can be said to have a Janus-like access to both Western
and African literary traditions. In this situation of double vision, writers have had to
choose their mode of literary expression, and in many cases the choice has been a
mixing of discourses, specifically a transcribing of peculiar African oral features into the
European-derived written form. By oral features, I mean what has been appropriated
into the literary tradition from the oral traditions derived from the indigenous African
languages, that is the Creole, Pidgin, and Nation languages of the three regions being
studied here; from oral traditions of any genre that were composed, performed, and, at
least initially, transmitted orally; from the contexts of performance; and from oral
traditions already translated or transcribed into English. Such features include
ceremonial chants, proverbs, riddles, songs, folktales, the antiphonal call-and-response
styles, and the rhythmic, repetitive, digressive, and formulaic modes of language use.
These constitute some of the aspects of African oral discourse to which post-colonial
Black writers, or in certain cases protagonists, return, in order to reclaim and rewrite
these features as important components of their linguistic consciousness.

Frangoise Lionnet has called the writing of these consciously hybridized texts
metissage, a term which means mixed (metis) culture and an interweaving (tissage) of
various ethnic, geographic, personal, and linguistic registers. Carolyn Cooper also has
coined the term "oraliterary" to describe the blend. Her reason for using this term is that
most practitioners of orality in writing are "both literate and orate" , and their works
exhibit what Walter Ong calls the "literate orality" of the secondary oral culture . Ong
distinguishes the primary oral culture, in which orality is not a choice, from the literate
culture that aspires to create secondary -- in other words literate -- orality. Margery

Fee, interpreting literature in English by Aboriginal writers, has used the term "writing
orality" to describe how orality in Aboriginal literature is composed through writing but
meant to be read and/or performed within an oral context. Fee's term, like the others,
could be applied to much of the literary praxis with which I am concerned here, and
since all these terms allude to an utterance or text within which two or more different
linguistic consciousnesses co-exist, I shall use them interchangeably. Though studies
such as Eileen Julien's African Novels, Isidore Okpewho's African Oral Literature, and
Marlies Glaser and Marion Pausch's Caribbean Writers show that most post-colonial
texts are characterized by metissage critical evaluation of these hybridized texts has
been dominated by Western critical approaches that are often flawed by a colonizing
refusal to recognize and value the positive cultural and literary value of the traditional
African oral features. By the term colonizing refusal, I suggest that Western criticism of
texts by contemporary Black authors bears alarming resemblances to colonization,
which is founded on the systematic devaluation of the colonized cultures and a refusal
of their aesthetics.
 Associated with this refusal is the Western critical notion of "art for art's sake,"
exemplified by the practice of New Criticism, which seeks to free literature of historical
and societal connections, and does not, therefore, allow for a reading that locates the
texts of Black writers in their historical and social contexts. Consequently, as Edward
Kamau Brathwaite observes, much of what we have come to accept as literary criticism
of works by writers of African descent is "work which ignores, or is ignorant of, African
connection and aesthetic" . likewise, Christopher Miller comments that when reading
criticism of "African [and Diasporic] literatures written in [English] and other European
languages, one is struck by both the insistence [on] and the inadequacy of Western
interpretive models" , which often result in gross distortions or misreadings.

This inadequacy partly explains Bill Ashcroft's submission that the idea of "postcolonial
literary theory emerges from the inability of European theory to deal adequately with the
complexities and varied cultural provenance of postcolonial writing". Kwame Anthony
Appiah makes a similar point in his "Strictures on Structures," and asks critics first to
"locate" texts by post-colonial Black authors, to situate or embed them within their own
literary, social, cultural, historical, and political realities . Thus, until we redefine the term
literature (as applied to the works of postconial writers of African descent) to include not
simply its Europeanness but also its nonscribal material of traditional African

oral poetry, we will fail to properly value a significant corpus of the literature.This need
to locate the text has caused a shift of critical enterprise from a Eurocentric basis to a
more inclusive approach that considers the importance of an African perspective in any
examination of works by writers of African descent. Interest in this present trend has led
to a foregrounding of aspects of African culture in many works, and has resulted in
several insightful studies. Joseph Holloway, in Africanisms in American Culture, has
identified African sources for various elements of American culture, and many theorists
of African culture agree that a valid and distinctive African cultural continuity exists in
the Caribbean and other Black diasporic societies. Such a culture, according to Kojo
Vieta, refers to cultures evolved by African peoples in their attempt to fashion a culture
that gives order, meaning, and pleasure to social, political, aesthetic, and religious
norms. These cultures, Vieta argues, are appreciably different from aspects of the
Eurocentric cultures introduced through colonialism. Ardent proponents of this model,
such as Joseph Holloway and Amuzie Chimezie, categorically refute the ideas of Robert
Blauner's"Black Culture," Diane Ravitch's American Reader, and Abraham
SchleSinger's Disuniting, which deny the existence of a distinct Black culture in the
diaspora.

Chimezie, disputing arguments that African culture cannot exist because African
peoples encompass many ethnic groups, points out that the African heritage is very
much alive in the sense of the commonalties of African traditions held by continental
Blacks and those in the diaspora Beyond what may seem to be the fragmentation of
culture along ethnic, religious, ideological, class, and gender lines lie some common
ideas, behavior, philosophy, and themes that run through the cultures of Africa. Whether
lbo, Asante, Maasai, Mandingo, Gikuyu, Zulu, African Caribbean, or African American,
Blacks have more in common with each other than they have, for example, with
Europeans or Japanese. As Kwame Gyegye's Essay, Molefi Asante and Kariamu
Asante's African Culture, V. Y. Mudimbe's Invention, and Isidore Okpewho's African
Oral Literature point out, despite ethnic pluralism and cultural diversity among African
peoples, the unities of experience, struggle against colonialism, and origin give peoples
of African descent an internal unity.

Holloway also stresses that some of the early studies by anthropologists like Melville
Herkovits identified a continuity of African traditions in the areas of social structure,
music, burial customs, and folk beliefs. Likewise, Roger Abrahams and John Szwed's
After Africa, Asante and Asante's African Culture, Joe Trotter's Great Migration, and
William Bascom's African Folktales point to varying degrees of Africanisms that can be
found in Black folklore, music, communal networks, religion, language, and hospitality.
Bayo Oyebade's "African Studies," building upon many of these ideas, argues that "any
perceived discontinuity in [Black] history at any given time is a myth. To be valid, the
study of [Black] experience must be rooted in African culture" (236). Further, Ruth
Finnegan (Oral Poetry), Eileen Julien (African Novels), Harold Scheub ("Review"), and
Marlies Glaser and Marion Pausch (Caribbean Writers) have used the relationship of
orality to writing in racialized people's cultures,albeit with varying degrees of emphasis,
to reject and resituate the concept of the "Great-Divide" in literacy studies. Instead of an
evolutionary theory of the x before y progression from oral to written literature, these
theorists argue for an alternative model of integration, which emphasizes that orality and
literacy are not ''two separate and opposed models, but part of one dynamic in which
both written and oral forms interact" (Finnegan, "Oral Literature" 35). These are all
commendable efforts, and deserve to be allowed to go as far as they can lead us.

But there is an equal or greater need to explore certain lines of thought that his present
Africanist trend inevitably encourages, especially if we consider the fact that linguistic
choice reflects various communicative and discursive impulses, motives, and interests.
Language, after all, is not simply a bag of utterances, but, as the psychologist Rom
Harre observes, ''the person that we are depends on the language which we speak" . In
other words, "Language in an important sense, speaks us," as Catherine Belsey points
out . Harre's and Belsey's statements become culturally significant when considered
together with the Post-Saussurean idea that culture is analogous in many respects to
language, that it is language/culture that makes possible the constructing of a world for
individuals, and of differentiating between them. This cultural significance of language
leads inevitably to the hypothesis that a commitment to blending oral and written
discourses on the part of many writers of African descent is a way of articulating a
distinct identity which derives in part from selective appropriation, incorporation, and
articulation of European and African discourses. According to the culturalfunctional
analysis of Michael Thompson, Richard Ellis, and Aaron Wildavsky. which asserts that
groups are continually changing, the artist, in an important sense, becomes a new kind
of cultural worker associated with a new cultural politics to challenge the monolithic and
hegemonic in the name of diversity, multiplicity, and heterogeneity.

To study African, African-Caribbean, and African-Canadian literature is to go through a

process that considers the spoken word or "Nommo," as Janheinz Jahn first called it ,
as the source of parole. This is to say that the poetry is not fully realized unless and until
it is energized by the power of African oral discourse, such as the vitality of drum
language, tonal language, ideophonic units, and song. Though each of the writers
discussed herein wrote as an individual artist, commenting on life from both the
individual and socio-political point of view, they all turned to traditional African literature
for inspiration.

To emphasize the Afrocentric perspective, they spoke with a consciousness of their

African heritage and the need for a validation of that consciousness within postcolonial
criticism. Their works therefore demonstrate unity in diversity, a unity emphasized by
the pervasive presence of the peculiar discursive characteristics of African-derived oral
textual features. This practice can be extended to African-American literature as well.
Scores of discussions by Henry Louis Gates and Houston Baker, for instance, use
"blues criticism" in analyzing African American literature, and Toni Morrison's novel,
Jazz, explicitly embodies this impulse. If in this dissertation I have emphasized this unity
in diversity, it is not because these works are homogeneous, but because they show
certain commonalities.

Wale Soyinka's Ogun Abibiman, for instance, provides a sOcio-political vision of the
Pan African liberation struggle built on precolonial African oral discourse. Traditional
African warrior traditions and culture inspire the poem. Brathwaithe's and Bennett's
poetry is essentially a survey of New World cultural and socia-political history,
thematizing the socio-political condition of peoples of African descent who have been
uprooted from their old country as a consequence of slavery and colonization. Both
writers' use of Creole, to stress their African descent and to rebel against the colonizer's
impositions, can be described as an unbreakable link with the resistance of the Maroons
and the internationalized reggae sounds of defiance. The same socia-political emphasis
is evident in the works of diasporic Black-Canadian writers, but in Canada where the
socio-political agenda is assimilation of the few by the many writers use a stronger
political idiom to expose the injustices in the system.

Poetry becomes an instrument of public protest, a theme forcefully conveyed in the

works of Philip, Allen, and Joseph. Though all the poets affirm their common African
heritage, poems by the female poets are marked by clear feminist elements. In Canada
especially, a characteristic of the poetry is the dominance of female poets and a
thematizing of women's issues that create a rich amalgam of feminist, African-
Caribbean, and traditional African oral discourses.

The mixing of discourses and cultures by these writers is particularly interesting in terms
of its revolutionary potential. Conceiving of the written text as comprising oral textual
features such as dialect, song, rhythm, audience participation, storytelling, and audio-
visual material destabilizes the fixity of both published material and formalist genre
typologies. Texts go beyond the individualistic fixed expression to the mutual interaction
between artist, written text, oral text, and audience, a merger Brathwaite calls "total
expression" because it "makes demands not only on the poet but also on the audience
to complete the. This holistic context of expression, according to Brathwaite, is the
"continuum where ... meaning truly resides". Though reception theory has demonstrated
amply in the past twenty years the variety and subtlety of these interactions between
author, text, and audience, this continuum furthers our understanding of the pact or the
interactive agency between audience and the text, and suggests that the printed word
may not necessarily be the definitive act of publication.

If, as Jacques Derrida observes, genres and discourses are not to be mixed since they
imply the question of law, (which is often figured as "an instance of the interdictory limit,
of the binding obligation, ... the negativity of a boundary not to be crossed", then one
can argue that transcribing orality into writing, and concomitantly writing into orality, has
far-reaching consequences. By mixing genres that exceed the boundaries of fixed
systems of categorization, writers of African descent are redefining traditional notions of
orality and writing. In so doing, they are dismantling traditional genre designations,
because by working with two traditions, something of both the oral and written
discourses is significantly altered and reconfigured with/in each other's discursive
contexts. Just as the generic designations of such oral components as songs,
performance, and storytelling techniques are altered, so too are the written forms that
the oral "partakes" in.

By combining oral and scribal modes, something of each discourse is embedded into
the other to create a new literary medium, and the reader/critic who seeks to understand
this new form should, as a pre-requisite to interpreting it, first seek an understanding of
the larger discursive context of each discourse. According to Alison Donnell and Sarah
Lawson Welsh, understanding oral discourse, especially in performance poetry, "can be
problematic for readers and critics more accustomed to written literature, in that it
encompasses much greater textual variation" . Consequently, they advocate" a wider
reading and teaching of dub [oral] poetry, even if only in textual form, for, ... this is a
poetry which restores the need for immediate audience", and demands a more inclusive
critical approach that considers both oraliterary and socio-political dimensions.
 Another important observation has been made by Atsu Dekutsey: "[orality] will
undoubtedly affect the very writing of poetry; the poet, during those silent moments as
he [or she] creates . . . will have his [or her] audience very much in mind; the poetic
voice will tend to be more social rather than private". This, in turn, will make the poetry
more public, as was the case in traditional African poetry. This socio-political dimension
makes the artist a private individual concerned not only with his/her own private world,
but with public life also, intellectually, culturally, and politically.

In this regard, my intent has been not only to position the writings of Anglophone
African, African-Caribbean, and the African-Canadian poets within traditional African
socio-political and cultural framework, but perhaps more importantly, to show that the
concern of these literatures with traditional African oral discourse has been
advantageous to the aesthetic end of particular works. Indeed, the use of oral textual
features as deliberate techniques in literary production has been extremely beneficial in
reconciling an old world reality (precolonial African discourse) to a new reality: the
reality of print culture. These inherently hybrid texts transform the duality brought about
by the collision of two cultures into an artistic and cultural asset. Such artistry may be
considered the beginning of a cultural and aesthetic renaissance: the point in time when
a real start was made to forge out of the traditional African and the alien European
traditions something new, having elements of both, but nevertheless unique in itself.

13.Gandhi's "Hind Swaraj" is a polemic on the west

Abstract

After attempting a summary of the book the paper argues that the evaluation of the
ideas of Hind Swaraj depends obviously on how one looks at it. One of the ways to look
at it is to take it as a blue-print, something like a project report, for a new social order.
Looked at from that perspective, we do not find many takers for the major ideas of Hind
Swaraj. But looking at it from another angle, particularly in the context of the failure of
most of the dominant ideologies of the twentieth century, including Marxism and
liberalism in its variant forms, there is a strong tendency among the sensitive minds
from all over the world to look at Gandhian ideas as providing a new paradigm for an
alternative civilisational framework. And Hind Swaraj being the source-book of
Gandhian ideas has necessarily become the centre of the new intellectual quest.

Hind Swaraj: A Summary

Hind Swaraj or Indian Home-Rule comprises of 20 short chapters. It is written in a

dialogic form between the Reader and the Editor of a journal/newspaper. The
advantage of the dialogic form is that it provides the Editor (here Gandhi) with an
opportunity to discuss the entire gamut of issues with all their implications and
intricacies.

Primarily Hind Swaraj deals with two issues:

(a) a critique of modern civilization,

(b) the nature and structure of Indian Swaraj and the means and methods to achieve it.

Malaise of Modern Civilization

Gandhi's Hind Swaraj is primarily known for its trenchant critique of modern civilization.

In Hind Swaraj he also dwells on the condition of India as it has developed under the
British rule and tutelage. He makes a basic formulation that under the impact of the
British rule India is turning into an 'irreligious' country. He hastens to add that he is not
thinking of any particular religion, but rather of that Religion which underlies all religions.
We are turning away from God, he adds. He likens modem civilization to a 'mouse'
'gnawing' our people while apparently soothing them. Then he turns his moral gaze to
some of major developments like railways and the emergence of new elite like lawyers
and doctors. All these developments, he asserts, have only led to the impoverishment of
the India. According to him railways have helped the British to tighten their grip over
India. Besides, they have been also responsible for 'famines', epidemics and other
problems for the country. He counters the argument that railways have contributed to
the growth of Indian nationalism by saying that India had been a nation much before the
British arrived. In chapter XI of Hind Swaraj he argues that lawyers have contributed
more to the degradation of India. Besides, they have accentuated the Hindu-Muslim
dissensions, helped the British to consolidate their position and have sucked the blood
of the poor of India. In the next chapter he describes how doctors have failed the Indian
society. In his opinion, doctors have been primarily responsible for making the people
'self-indulgent' and taking less care of their bodies. He concludes his critique of modern
civilization by comparing it to an Upas tree, a poisonous plant which destroys all life
around it.

In another chapter of the Hind Swaraj he examines the English educational system
introduced in India and describes it as 'false education'. For him the basic aim of
education should be to bring our senses under our control and to help imbibe ethical
behaviour in our life. He attacks the newly emerged elite, a by-product of the Macaulay
system of education, as they have enslaved India.

Swaraj of the Hind Swaraj

Swaraj and the method to attain it was the main concern of the Hind Swaraj. In chapter
IV of Hind Swaraj he puts forward a basic formulation that mere transfer of power from
British hands to Indian hands would not lead to true swaraj. He adds that would be
nothing more than having 'English rule without Englishmen'. In that case, he argues,
India may be called 'Hindustan' but actually it would remain 'Englistan'. Hence it would
not be swaraj of his conception. And in chapter XIV (How Can India Become Free?) he
tries to define true swaraj by saying that if we (individuals) became free, India would be
free. It is in the same vain that he opines that 'it is swaraj when we learn to rule
ourselves! Such a swaraj, he further adds, would have to be experienced by each one
of us. Gandhi also uses the term swaraj for home-rule or self-government for the Indian
people. But he makes it clear that there is a symbiotic relationship between swaraj as
'self- rule' of individual Indians and swaraj as the home-rule or self- government for the
Indian people.

In other words, home-rule that Indian people would achieve would be true only to the
extent they are successful in being 'self ruling' individuals. In the chapter XV. Gandhi
puts forward the thesis that the real challenge is to free millions of our people and not
simply to change the government. How could it be achieved? Not by the use of arms
and violence. This is for two reasons, he adds. One, any resort to violent rebellion would
require thousands of Indians being armed which in itself is too much of a tall order. Two,
more importantly, if India resorts to arms, the 'holy land' of India would became 'unholy'.
In the process, India would become a land worse than Europe. He vehemently rejects
the use of brute force for attaining swaraj for India. He introduces new arguments for
such rejection. One, there is a close relationship between the means and the end. Thus
he rejects the basic formulations of Indian revolutionaries that India could be freed only
by violent means both on moral and ethical grounds. Besides, he also rejects the
Moderates' view that Indians could be freed by mere supplication and petitioning.
Unless backed by effective sanctions that would be an exercise in futility.

Hence India would require passive resistance, based on 'love-force' or 'soul-force' to

move forward on the road to Swaraj. In chapter XVII he elaborately dwells on the
concept of passive resistance, albeit Satyagraha. He explains the concept of passive
resistance as a method of securing rights by going through 'personal sufferings'. Here
by implications he justifies the use of soul force on the basis of the concept of 'relative
truth'. He further argues that passive resistance is not a 'weapon of the weak'. Rather it
is a weapon of the strong. He concludes the entire discussion by saying that real home
rule is possible only through passive resistance. But he also hastens to add that a true
passive resistor will have to observe 'perfect chastity' adopt 'voluntary poverty' 'follow
truth' and 'cultivate fearlessness'.

Indian Nationhood

Another major concept which he introduces in Hind Swaraj is that of the composite
nature of Indian nationalism. ln Hind Swaraj he puts forward the argument that Indian
people constituted a nation much before the British came. The coming of the
Mohammedans earlier had hardly made any difference to the fact of India being a
nation. In the process, he argues that India could not cease to be a nation simply
because people belonging to different religions reside here. People with different
religious backgrounds would continue to constitute one nation so long as they maintain
the principle of non-interference in one another's religion. In the process, he makes a
very profound statement:

'If the Hindus believe that India should be peopled only by Hindus, they are living in
dreamland. Hindus, Mohammedans, Parsees and Christians who have made India their
country are fellow countrymen and they will have to live in unity if only for their own
interests. In no part of the world are one nationality and one religion synonymous terms
nor has it ever been in India'.

Elsewhere in Hind Swaraj he rejects the British thesis that India was never a nation.
Rather it has always been a conglomerate of different creeds and communities. He
asserts that our seers and sages laid the foundation of our national unity and Indian
nationhood by establishing centres of pilgrimage on the four corners of India. In the
process, they fired the imagination of our people with the idea of nationhood. Thus in
Hind Swaraj Gandhi lays a real foundation of secular nationalism for which he lived and
died for.

Vision of an Alternative Society

Hind Swaraj presents the broad contours of an alternative society - a new civilizational
framework in a rudimentary form. In the chapter dealing with 'true civilization' he defines
it as that 'mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty'. He further adds
that moral behaviour is nothing but to attain 'mastery over one's mind'.

In the same chapter he avers that the ancient Indian civilization fits the bill for being the
true civilization. To that end, he identifies its core values such as limits to self-
indulgence in terms of luxuries and pleasures, emphasis on ancestral profession, rural
life, and moral control of sages over the kings, its curb on unnecessary competitiveness
and its preference for small scale technologies and decentralized polity. He admits that
at present modern India is moving away from these old values. But he pins his hope in
the bulk of the people of India residing in hinterland who continue to persist in its hoary
tradition. As to who would perform all these onerous tasks, he reposes his faith in the
new band of satyagrahis who should play the of role of exemplars rather than that of
vanguards.

There are other concepts in Hind Swaraj scattered all over the book viz. swadeshi,
brahamcharya, nature cure, a new educational and legal system, relationship between
the means and the end and duties and rights which he elaborated in his later writings.
At the end of the book he makes a solemn declaration that the rest of his life would be
dedicated to the attainment of the kind of Swaraj he had explained and has actually
experienced in his own inner being.

Critical Evaluation of Hind Swaraj: A Centennial View

Initially, Hind Swaraj did not attract much attention either at the hands of scholars or
even political leaders of India.

There are innumerable commentaries and 'write-ups' on Hind Swaraj either

commending it for its broad and bold sweep or critiquing rashly its harsh views on
modern civilization or its day-dreaming of an alternative societal framework. There are
two major critical commentaries which, by and large, cover most of the basic points
elaborated by other scholars. What is more, both these commentaries came directly to
Gandhi in his own life time to which he sent his reasoned response. It is also interesting
to note that one of them came immediately after the publication of the English version of
Hind Swaraj in 1910 and the other nearly 35 years later in 1945. Besides, in both these
cases, the personalities involved were not only important people but also intimately
known to Gandhi. The two luminaries are none other than W.J. Wybergh, member of
the Transvaal Legislature and a good friend of Gandhi despite their differences on the
racial issues and Jawaharlal Nehru, one of his closest followers and his political 'heir'.

Gandhi had sent a copy of 'Hind Swaraj' to Wybergh soon after its publication in March
1910 seeking his opinion on it. Wybergh sent his considered opinion in May 1910
raising a number of critical points. Some of them were:

1. Wybergh contested one of the basic formulations of Hind Swaraj that Western
Civilization in nothing but a 'kingdom of Satan' and as such deserves to go lock stock
and barrel forthwith. More importantly, Wybergh asserted that 'the bulk of the Indian
population was required to be moved by the 'lash of competition and other material,
sensuous and intellectual stimuli which is easily supplied in a fair measure by western
Civilization. Hence Gandhi's prescription of 'liberation' as the immediate goal for the bulk
of the Indian populace would do more harm than good to them. In support of his
contention Wybergh quoted Annie Besant to the effect that the Indian people did not
need to give up 'desires and activities'. Rather these were to be increased as passivity
for them would mean continued stagnation and subjugation. For all these reasons
western civilization, Wybergh concluded, was not irrelevant to India.

2. Further Wybergh took up the question of 'passive resistance recommended by

Gandhi as a panacea for most of the ills of the world in general and its urgent need for
its application to Indian situation in particular. He argues that passive resistance, in
actual practice, would be nothing but 'transferring the battle and violence from 'physical'
to the 'mental, plane'. Therefore, it is neither 'spiritual' nor 'non-coercive'. Besides, as a
matter of principle, he raised strong objection to Gandhi's 'employment' of 'soul force' for
the attainment of 'physical and political object'. In fact, it could be taken as 'dangerous in
the extreme.

3. Wybergh raised a very fundamental philosophical and spiritual point whether 'passive
resistance' had anything to do with Christian concept of 'non-resistance'. In that case, it
could not be used for political ends as its primary aim was to transcend the world
altogether. Besides, the use of 'non-resistance' was primarily meant for saints. As such
its use by ordinary people might have 'pernicious and disastrous consequences'.

Gandhi quickly responded to Wybergfeletter and in the process he tried to counter and
clarify some of the points raised by him. Some of these clarifications were:

1. Gandhi asserted that his primary purpose was to mitigate and if possible to eliminate
violence both from private and public life. He left

Wybergh with no doubt that 'Home Rule' obtained by violence would be totally different
from the one obtained by 'passive resistance' as it involved the deeper question of the
means and the end. In other words, means would decide the nature of the end and not
vice- versa. Besides, violence seeks to obtain reform by external means, whereas
passive resistance through internal growth. And that could be obtained only through the
process of self-sufferings and self- purifications. In a word, passive resistance has both
moral and spiritual dimensions as it is based on the mastery over one's 'self'.

2.Gandhi defended his firm condemnation of the western civilization' on the ground that
judged on the scale of ethics, its spirit was nothing but 'evil'. He also contested
Wybergh's contention of need for the people to be roused by the 'lash of completion' as
that would hardly add even inch to their moral stature.

3. Gandhi further asserted that there was no harm in putting 'liberation' as the
immediate goal for everyone, though he accepted that it might not be possible to reach
out to it at the same time. He also refused to buy Wybergh's thesis that the talk of
'liberation' would hamper the peace of worldly activities of the people. He asserted that
Wybergh's fear was predicated on his premise of complete divorce between religion and
politics. Gandhi further asserted that he, in fact, was working to bridge the gap between
religion and politics as he wanted to test all actions on the touchstone of ethics and
morality.

If the Wybergh-Gandhi debate was more concerned with Gandhi's views on 'western
civilization' and 'passive resistance', the primary focus of Gandhi- Nehru debate was on
the kind of India to be built up in the post-independent era. The timing of Gandhi - Nehru
debate is also important. By 1945 Gandhi had already declared Nehru as his political
heir; and it was also becoming certain that India was going to be a free country in the
near future. In his letter to Nehru dated 5th October 1945, Gandhi pledged to stand by
'the system of government envisaged in his Hind Swaraj which had been confirmed by
his life-long experiences. In that letter, he made several points:

1. That to attain true freedom, the people will have to live in villages and not in towns.
This is so because it would never be possible for the crores of the people to live at
peace with each other in towns and palaces. Moreover, the village life alone would
provide congenial atmosphere for the practice of truth and non-violence without which
the world could hardly survive.

2. That the true joy and happiness could only come from contentment emerging out of
the fulfilment of their basic needs. That is the only way they could become self-sufficient
and would be able to enjoy their true freedom.

3. That the village of his conception would be a habitat of intelligent people; every one
contributing his/her mite to the commonweal. Such a village would provide enough
cleanliness, health care and would be full of activities. No one would remain idle, no one
would wallow in luxuries.

It is clear from the above that this was nothing but broad picture presented in Hind
Swaraj.

Nehru wrote back to him in the same month. He virtually rejected Gandhi's preference
for village life by saying that he could not understand why the village life would be more
suitable for practicing truth and non-violence than town life. He wrote: 'A village,
normally speaking, is backward intellectually and culturally and no progress can be
made from a backward environment. Narrow minded people are much more likely to be
untruthful and violent'. Presenting his own picture of India of his dream, Nehru further
asserted that heavy industries and modern means of transport would have to be
developed even for providing certain basic amenities to the people in terms of housing,
education, sanitation, food etc. Hence, India would have to go through the process of
industrialization and urbanization and technological and scientific advancement. Not
only that, even an army would have to be kept to protect the independence of India.
Otherwise she might fall a prey to another's acquisitive tendencies. Making a direct
reference to Hind Swaraj Nehru made it clear that the total picture presented therein
always appeared to be 'unreal'. Besides, the Congress, as an organization, had never
considered that picture much less even adopted it. Not only that, the Congress could
not, Nehru asserted, consider the issue at the moment as it would create confusion,
preventing it from other decisive actions which was the need of the hour. In any case, all
these issues would have to be considered by the people's representative of free India.
All this is all the more necessary as Hind Swaraj was written 38 years ago and the world
had gone though radical changes both in human and material terms during this period,
Nehru added. Subsequently they met in November 1945 with a view to thrash out the
issues involved. Gandhi again wrote a letter to Nehru on 13, November 1945 in which
tried to sum up the major points of agreement which emerged out of their meeting.
There points were:

1. That there should be equal right and opportunities for all.

2. That there should be parity between the villagers and the town dwellers in terms of
food, drink, clothing etc.

3. That the unit of the society would be village or a small and manageable group of
people who would be self-sufficient in terms of their basic necessities and would live in
mutual cooperation.

And that was the end of debate as no record is available about Nehru's response to the
above summing up. A number of points emerge if we give a close look at the issues
raised by Wybergh and Nehru in respect of Hind Swaraj. They could be summed up as
follows:

1. Hind Swaraj is not based on a realistic assessment of human nature taking into
consideration all human aspirations and desires and frailties. It sounds a little too
idealistic for the average man.

2. It takes a rather polemic view on the nature of modern civilization and India
civilization. In the process, it ignores a lot of truth about the nature and structure of both
these civilizations.

3. It is also important to note that Gandhi himself accepted some of the limitations of his
basic formulations given in Hind Swaraj, particularly in respect of Swaraj, role of
machinery and the role of modem state vis-a-vis civil society. For instance, in his
Foreword to the new edition of Hind Swaraj of 1921 he made it clear that despite his
personal commitment to the concept of Swaraj as enunciated in Hind Swaraj so far the
corporate life of India was concerned, he was working for the 'Parliamentary Swaraj' for
India. Similarly despite his faith in constructive programme, towards the end of his life,
he was more accommodative towards the use of machinery in national life including the
use of railways, health care facilities etc. Similarly, he became more agreeable in
assigning a greater role to the modern state in respect of even such contentious issues
like land reforms, and the use of armed forces as evidenced by his support to India's
decision to dispatch army to Kashmir to face Pakistani invasion of Kashmir.

14.The color purple as a novel with feminist orientation

FEMINISM IN ALICE WALKER’S –THE COLOR PURPLE

Feminism as a concept seeks to better the lot of women who are perceived to be
sidelined by men in the prevailing scheme of things in the society. Alice walker was a
gifted writer and she won prizes and scholarships. Alice walker was the first Afro-
American women writer who received the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, The color purple
(1982).

The present study analyses the important theme of walker’s well-known novel the color
purple; abuse of women in terms of feminism. As in the case in walker’s prize winning
novel, women are forced to line under the dominance of their rules, until one between
them realizes her value, stands against the abuses and declares her identity as
powerful women in the society.

The Color Purple, the well-known novel by Alice Walker will be analyses in terms of
Feminism. In the very opening of the novel, the reader is presented with a small girl who
is abused and raped by her stepfather. In her lonely world, she cannot find anybody to
trust in and share her despair. Since her step-father Alphonso says “You better not ever
to tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy.”(Walker, 11), she finds the only solution to
express her hopelessness in writing letters to God. Too insecure to even give her name,
we soon learn through the mouth of another that her name is Celie. While her mother is
away Alphonso, presumed to be her ‘Pa’ rapes Celie saying, “You gonna do what your
mammy wouldn’t.

Feminists from western countries were mostly interested in issues of contraception and
abortion, while women from ethnic minority groups and economically undeveloped
countries were more interested in issues of racial discrimination, poverty and family and
community violence. In Bryson’s opinion, more developed and systematic analysis of
the ways gender, class and race discriminations overlap, influenced various movements
of colored women, including womanism, to move beyond mere critique of white
feminism to develop original theory which has serious implications not just for white
feminism, but for all women .

The novel is an epistolary novel which consists of her, Celie, letters addressed to God,
and then to her sister Nettie. Letters becomes the only way for Celie to express herself,
and only key for reader to have a better and deeper understanding for Celie, the
protagonist. From the very beginning of the novel, the reader becomes familiar with a
fourteen year old poor girl who is used to do the works of her husband. In the novel,
Celie is just a servant who is responsible of looking after her husband, Albert, and his
four children and to meet the sexual desires of him. He always abuses Celie until she
declares her identity as an independent woman.

The popularity of Black feminism in the Western countries became common in the
1960s and 1970s, where it was motivated by the need to fight for equality between men
and women (Darmawanti, 2012). In the United States, the most popular black feminist
movement was abolitionist movement. The primary aim of the movement was to end
slavery in the country and ensure the equality of all citizens regardless of their social
status, race and gender. Black feminism does not only aim at dismantling the social
constructions of the dominant communities, but also promote the economic and social
development of black women. The concept of black feminism is evident in Walker’s
novel through the dilemma of the black women characters. In The Color Purple, Walker
shows the adverse impacts that oppression of black women has on their development.
Black women suffer from discrimination and oppression from black men and the white
men and women.

From her novel, the color purple Celie’s experiences some changes, and as a result of
these changes the novel turns out to be not only a story about pain and despair but also
a story of ultimate triump. Novel begins in the early 1900’s and ends in the mid 1940’s
and, between these time spaces, the readers witness Celie’s changing from a small girl
who is abused continuously in to a mature, young woman, realized herself. She frees
herself from her husband’s repressive control, and her conditions improved
dramatically. Improved by her friendships with other women, especially Shug Avery,
Albert’s mistress, and by her fondness for her younger sister, Nettie-who went to Africa
with a missionary group with the help of Celie, Celie decides to leave Albert and moves
to Memphis. She starts a business designing and making clothes, and becomes a
business woman and earns her own money.

The protagonist Celie symbolizes a good house wife who tries to look after her husband
and his children. Simone de Beauvoir, in his book The Second Sex says that "one is not
born a woman; rather one becomes a woman", and Celie is the most suitable example
to prove this thesis. She tries to do her best to provide a better life for them and even
her husband’s sisters realizes this. Albert’s two sisters, Kate and Carrie, comes to visit
them. They say “Celie, one thing is for sure. You keep a clean house. Good
housekeeper, good with children, good cook. Brother couldn’t have done better if he
tried.” (Walker,27-28) She is suitable for the social norms which support the idea of a
woman being a good housewife, a good wife and a good mother. With the development
Celie experienced, Celie adds something more to the idea of woman who just sits in the
house and look after the children, she also becomes a working woman and gain her
own money which gives her the self-confidence and the power to remain standing by
herself.

Black women are in the lowest position of humanity. As Celie’s life progresses, she is
forced to marry an older man in the neighborhood. Being a widower, one would expect
that he needs a wife to be his companion and to look after his four children. However,
this is not the case with the widower, who rejects marrying Celie at first until he is
offered cattle; an indication of the worthlessness of black women (Walker, 1985).
Walker links black oppression against women to racism. The cruelty of black men
presented in the story results from their frustration on being male in a white-dominated
region (Sattar, 2014). The AfricanAmerican men struggle to be accepted in the society
due to racial bias, and hence release their frustration on the colored female
(Jinke,2006). Explaining the predicament the double victimization of black women in the
society, Walker explains that they have no place in such a society. She describes how
the black women are regarded as slaves although the country is said to be free.
Furthermore, the black women experience gender bias in a male-dominated world.

Walker, in her novel describes a community that is characterized by social organizations

that are oppressive. Social organizations refer to relations that guide interactions of
people in the social setting. They are formed through the interaction of people in the
community. Among the aspects that describe social organizations in a given society is
gender, because people of the same gender interact differently. The other aspect that
influences social organization of the society is the structure of division of labor, as
indicated by discrimination in the recruitment agencies. Sexual orientation is the other
aspect that determines the social organization of the community. In the novel, it is clear
that social organizations in the society promote the oppression of black women.

In the novel, black feminism is unsuccessful at first because women are unaware of the
existence of their problems. They suffer in silence as each one of them feels that the
problems are unique to their lives. For example, Celie is reluctant to report Pa, even as
he rapes her repeatedly for the fear of losing her mother (Harris, 1986). Instead of
confiding in another person in the society, she prefers to suffer in silence and written her
letters to God. As time passes, Celie gets used to the brutality and chooses to remain
passive instead of acting on it. By refusing to share her experience with other women,
Celia lives a miserable life. However, her ability to open up the issue leads to her
realization that her problems are not unique and she makes a conscious decision to end
the oppression. She shares her experience with Shug after realizing that black women
do not have to tolerate oppression in the society. In the conversation below, Celie
expressesher realization that there is a better life, indicating success of black feminism.

To conclude, Walker's award-winning novel The Color Purple presents that women are
forced to live under the dominance of a man, either father or husband. In the course of
time, if one is really courageous enough and have the belief to make a better life for her,
then it can be possible for her to start a brand-new story. Celie is one of the good
example of these brave women to build a new life for herself and to declare her identity
as a working and self-confident woman and it becomes "a story about finding and
beingreconciled with God" (Walker-Barnes, 3). In this sense, Feminist Literary Criticism
sheds light to make theunseen details to be apparent. Starting with great wounds on the
heart, Celie becomes one of the leading voices to show the woman the possibility of a
new, better life, without the pressure of the men and without their help. Thus, from this
article, we see male domination over the women in every part of life, but in the course of
time , women want to release themselves from the abuses of man and be independent.

15.World view the emerges in Jamaica Kincaid's "A small place"(pdf)

16.Post colonial studies helps one to take into account the diversity without
erasing distinct diasporas of difference.(pdf)