REFLECTIONS: Reversing the Gaze: The ‘West’ in Indian Imagination Author(s): K. Satchidanandan Source: Indian Literature, September-October, 2001, Vol. 45, No. 5 (205) (September- October, 2001), pp. 10-18 Published by: Sahitya Akademi Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23344559 STOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholers, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon » wide Tange of content ina trusted digital archive. We use Information technology and tools to Incresse productivity and Facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support®jtor org Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://sbout jstor org/terms ‘s collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Indian Literature “This coment dowaloaed fram 91.23041 206 00 Tae, 13 Doe 2022 1813.35 UTC Alle subject p/abou toro ermREFLECTIONS Reversing the Gaze: The ‘West’ in Indian Imagination The borderline work of culture demands an en- counter with ‘newness’ that is not part of the con- tinuum of past and present. Tt creates a sense of the new as an insurgent act of cultural translation.....refiguring... (the new) as a contingent ‘in between’ space. (Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London, 1994, p.7) ‘The study of the rhetoric of the British Raj is ... to attempt to break down the incipient schizo- phrenia of a critical discourse that seeks to represent domination and subordination as though the two were mutually exclusive terms, Rather than examinea binary rigidity between these two terms—which is an inher- ently Eurocentric strategy—this critical field would be better served if it sought to break down the fixity of the dividing lines between domination and subordi- nation, and if it further questioned the psychic disempowerment signified by the colonial encounter. (Gara Suleri, The Rhetoric of English in India, Chicago, 1992, p.4) So it is time to reverse the gaze. Most of us have so far been concerned, understandably enough, about the colonizer’s perception of our world. We always knew that representations and modes of perception are used as fundamental weapons of colonial power to maintain its hegemony over the colonised. We knew too that co- lonialism manipulates the colonized subjects’ ‘consent’—to use a Gramscian term—to their rule by colonizing their minds and making them accept almost unconsciously, the colonial order of things, by persuading people to internalise its logic and speaking its language, to accept as natural the superiority of the coloniser in terms of race, language, knowledge and culture. We knew too, thanks to a number of books from Gandhi's This content downloaded from. 91.230.41.206 on Tue, 13 Dee 2022 13:13:35 UTC “All use subject to tips/fabout,jtororgitermsHindswaraj and Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin and White Masks to Edward Said’s Orientalism and Gauri Viswanathan’s Masks of Conquest, that the internalisation of colonial values was an effective way of disempowering people, making them look down upon their own values, traditions, knowledge-systems and modes of being and doing, that the West constructed the East through certain imaginative strategies that exoticised, estranged and emptied it of its reality and that the Eastern subjects also often absorbed this fantasy into their own self-perception. The Empire Writes Back, even with its serious limitations like the neglect of national and gender differences and its simplifying and universalist assumptions of all ex-colonial writing as anti-colonial, did help tum the attention of the academics to the aspect of resistance and its strategies, especially the linguistic ones in the literature from the colonies. Again the critics working with the analytical tools derived from Derrida, Foucault and Lacan in the 1980s tried to turn the discourse upside down by reading the texts of colonial representation against the grain to discover moments when the colonised subject resisted being represented in the colonial mould, while Homi K. Bhabha, through his concepts like ‘ambivalence’ and ‘mimicry’ pointed to the conflict between the text and the counter- text within the colonial discourse that renders the imperial strategies of representation incomplete if not ineffective. The subjects here are both within and outside western knowledge; the colonised subject is supposedly ‘the other,’ but in the very attempt to tame her, the master also dissolves that ‘otherness.’ Educating ‘the savage’ for example, is an ambivalent project from the very beginning as the ‘savage’ gets ‘civilized’ in this very process. So too the mimics: the masters grow anxious about the subjects who speak in their tongue as they challenge the imperial stereotypes and might at any moment turn against the masters. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak explored the possibility of retrieving the voices of the victims of colonial repre- sentations, especially women, by reading them as potentially disrup- tive and subversive. We are also aware of the sustained critiques of Said, Bhabha and Spivak done from different quarters and differing perspectives by Robert Young (White Mythologies : Writing History and the West,1990), Bart Moore-Gilbert (Post-colonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics, 1997) and Aijaz Ahmed (In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1992) as also literary studies inspired by them yet extending their scope. These attempts have also inspired the reading of texts produced by writers from countries with a history of colonialism, of texts produced by those who have migrated from countries with a history of colonialism and the re-reading of texts produced during colonialism in the light K. Satchidanandan / 11 This content downloaded from. 91.230.41.206 on Tue, 13 Dee 2022 13:13:35 UTC “All use subject to tips/fabout,jtororgitermsof theories of colonial discourses. Now we are able to perceive clearly the absences in Said’s argument: (1) that it made totalising and ahistorical assumptions about a vast, varied expanse of representa- tions over a very long period of history from Dante to 20th century writers. To quote Dennis Porter: “Said posits the unified character of Western discourse on the Orient over some two millennia, a unity derived from a common and continuing experience of fascination with and threat from the East, ofits irreducible otherness” (Orientalism and its problems, Williams and Chrisman, 150-61). John Mc Kenzie perceives Said’s Orientalism as ‘essentially ahistorical’ as it glosses over the variable factors that make historical moments unique, such as the ‘contrasting economic and social circumstances of different territories’ (Orientalism: History, Theory and the Acts, 1995). Said privileges latent Orientalism over manifest Orientalism by neglecting to think whether the representations of the Orient made by those in the West at particular moments might modify or challenge the enduring assumptions of the Orient (2) that Said ignores resistance by the colonised : Said does not examine how Oriental peoples received those representations, how these circulated in the colonies themselves, how they might have contested Orientalism and brought it to crisis. In some sense Said himself is prey to the Orientalist notion of the active West and the passive East and seems to have no notion of the colonised subject as a constitutive agent with the capacity for political resistance. In Aijaz Ahmed’s words, Said never thinks about how Western representations might have been received, accepted, modified, challenged, overthrown or reproduced by the intelligentsias of the colonised countries’ (In Theory: p.172) (3) that Said ignores resistance within the West, leaving no room for counter- hegemonic thought, thus making every European representation of the West as racist, imperialist and monolithically ethnocentric (4) that Said ignores gender difference by refusing to examine whether Western women’s writings reproduce the Orientalist stereotype of women as sensual, stupid and yielding, primarily a product of male power- fantasy. Here one may well remember Sara Mills’s analysis of Western women’s travel writings on the East (Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women's Travetwriting and Colonialism, 1992). Said does not look at the discursive pressures on the work of these writers and the splits and contradictions they engender; this is perhaps a blindness earned by Said’s refusal to recognise the polyphony of all texts and their ambivalences in signification. Harish Trivedi (Colonial Transactions, Manchester 1995) has pointed out that a critique of Orientalism is an ideological need of the Western academy rather than of the Eastern one. “What we need to be worrying about in 12 / Indian Literature : 205 This content downloaded from. 91.230.41.206 on Tue, 13 Dee 2022 13:13:35 UTC “All use subject to tips/fabout,jtororgitermsIndia is not so much the Western imperialist ideology and projection, as the Indian response to such a project in terms of practice, impact and transformation.” According to him we should look at “the assimilative or subversive strategies through which we coped with their Orientalism” and also perhaps parade choice examples of our misknowledge of the West, our ‘Occidentalism.’ 2 While this is the broad context of the reversal of the gaze we are talking about, we will agree that there is no one and only way in which India has imagined the West in the period under consideration. Itis easy to invert the logic of Orientalism and produce an Occidentalism ofa similar kind that shares the silences and blindnesses of Orientalism. But the question is much more nuanced and subtle as Caliban has been talking in many tongues and the strategies of subverting the colonial gaze have never remained the same. Again it may not be right to equate the Indian colonial situation with, say, the African, since the exchanges, transactions, encounters, struggles and negotia- tions assumed several different levels of relationship, reflected to some extent even in the strategies of our freedom struggle. There were even whole sections of the subjects who looked upon the West as liberators, like the victims of the inhuman caste system to whom emancipation from it was even more important than liberation from colonial oppression which they seldom felt as directly as the former. This is true of subaltern sections generally and is reflected in the ambivalent attitude of an Ambedkar in the recent past or a Kancha Haya in the present. Sree Narayana Guru the great reformist philosopher of Kerala from a backward caste, well known for his emancipatory and subversive use of Vedantic philosophy as well as upper caste Signs, icons and rituals, once said that ‘it was the White who gave us Sanyas~’ an uninhibited tribute to the liberal western ideology that infused the oppressed with egalitarian aspirations. That Colonialism, albeit unconsciously, gives its subjects also certain weapons for their emancipatory battles, is now an acknowledged fact. The role of English education and the Enlightenment ideas in our freedom struggle as well in the Renaissance in Bengal, Maharashtra or Kerala can hardly be underestimated. Let me take some examples from one literature I know somewhat intimately, viz. Malayalam: ‘Literature’ and ‘Author’ began to emerge as definite categories with the formation of the public sphere in Kerala that was part of a general democratic movement of dissent, reform and awakening. This renaissance which was in essence a self-criticism K. Satchidanandan / 13 This content downloaded from. 91.230.41.206 on Tue, 13 Dee 2022 13:13:35 UTC “All use subject to tips/fabout,jtororgitermsof the feudal caste society in Kerala was made possible at least partly due to the contact with the West that rendered visible the dividing practices and the inequalities till then accepted as natural and providential. English education and translation from English played a major role in the establishment of new norms and standards both in creative literature and in criticism. Scholarship in Sanskrit was found necessary but inadequate unless complemented by acquain- tance with Western classics and critical movements and procedures. The introduction of printing, chiefly for the propagation of Chris- tianity, also helped liberate literature from its ritual use along with the undermining of traditional world pictures by the basic ideology of fair exchange. While we cannot deny the significance of the pre-colonial re- form movements without which this turbulence and transfor- mation of the everyday would not have been possible, it may not be right to underestimate the West’s positive role in introducing liberal and socialist ideas into Kerala’s ~ and India’s ~ sogjal fabric The shift towards popular literature, already begun in the 18"" century culminated in the popularity of the new genre of the novel. O. Chandumenon, the author of Indulekha (1889) admitted that after having tried conveying the gist of English novels in Malayalam to his circle of intimates (vedikkoottam), and inspired by the example of Lord Beaconsfield’s Henrietta Temple that he first tried to translate and failed, he decided to write a new novel ‘after the English fashion” Indulekha articulates the concerns and tensions of a period of social reform and change in relationships in the upper caste middle class in Malabar following modern education. Madhavan, Indulekha’s professed lover, is English-educated, socially progressive, politically alive and at home with European customs, manners and knowledge. He is also well-grounded in Indian tradition though an adept at lawn tennis, cricket and other western games. He has ‘profound critical knowledge’ of Sanskrit literature, can appreciate the nuances of even Kathakali and can recite Malayalam poetry from memory. In some sense he sums up the contradictions within colonial hegemonization as also the new, evolving nationalist consciousness. Indulekha too was thoroughly grounded in English but, had learnt Sanskrit Drama, and could play piano, violin and veena. Her uncle wanted Indulekha “to possess the acquirements and culture of an English lady’.Yet she defends the Nair system of marriage while meeting Madhavan’s patriarchal argument against it as the new reform was going to upset the gender equality Nair women had enjoyed till then. Suri Nambudiri- 14 / Indian Literature : 205 This content downloaded from. 91.230.41.206 on Tue, 13 Dee 2022 13:13:35 UTC “All use subject to tips/fabout,jtororgitermspad, the ludicrous and fickle-minded libertine, aspiring to marry Indulekha, provides a contrast to Madhavan in every respect, as the very embodiment of the cultural ethos that the middle class in Malabar was contending with. Dr. K.N. Panikker in a socio-historical analysis of Indulekha (Culture, Ideology, Hegemony: Intellectuals and Social Con- sciousness in Colonial India, Delhi, 1998) has pointed to the function of the novel as a site of the conflict between the ‘feudal’ and the ‘modern’ as also between the ‘region’ and the ‘nation’ represented by the Suri Nambudiripad episode and Madhavan’s trip to Calcutta and the elaborate discussions he has on religion, the colonial state and the Congress Movement with his spiritual father and his liberal reformist cousin, his own position being that of a critical rationalist with nationalist leanings. Panikker points out how Indulekha collapses and encapsulates the historical process of nineteenth century Malabar with its ambiguities, contradictions and uncertainties into a literary genre consciously borrowed from the English. By internalising the colonial cultural values and political ideas the intelligentsia objectively fulfilled a legitimiz- ing role for colonialism. This diversion is effectively Projected in Indulekha through an emphasis in the modernizing potential of English education and the benevolent liberal character of British rule. The characters, conversations and authorial interventions unmistakably articulate this early consciousness. Madhavan and Indulekha are forceful representations of this colonial ideal. At the same time, a disjunction between the cultural consequences of English educa- tion and the liberalism of British rule is also posited z.Despite the influence of English education, Madhavan and Indulekha are not colonial cultural stereotypes. Their personalities are a complex admix- ture of the colonial and the indigenous, reflecting the cultural introspection embodying the intelligentsia’s alienation from the struggle against colonial culture, They are neither completely hegemonized by the colonial nor fully distanced from the tradition. (Panikker, pp.143-44). 3 This duality is perhaps characteristic of the whole period. The speaker of the following lines seems to almost echo the protagonists of Indulekha but in a seemingly reverse reaction: K. Satchidanandan / 15 This content downloaded from. 91.230.41.206 on Tue, 13 Dee 2022 13:13:35 UTC “All use subject to tips/fabout,jtororgitermsThave become a queer mixture of the East and West, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere. Perhaps my thoughts and approach to life are more akin to what is called Western than Eastern, but India clings to me as she does to all her children in innumerable ways... L cannot get rid of that past inheritance or my recent acquisitions ... 1 am a stranger and an alien in the West. I cannot be of it. But in my own country also, sometimes, ! have an exile’s feeling, The speaker of these lines, as you might well have guessed, is none other than Jawaharlal Nehru himself. (An Autobiography, London, 1947, p.596). Let us remember this is an ambivalence shared by several reformers of the time like Raja Rammohun Roy, Vidyasagar, Keshab Chandra Sen, Sayyid Ahmed Khan, M.G. Ranade and Veeresalingam in varying degrees. Gandhiji and Vivekananda perhaps represent another kind of reaction, of those who did imbibe the liberal egalitarian ideal but had greater confidence in the nation’s own traditions of thought, knowledge and practice. The Gandhi—Nehru letters exchanged in 1945 (See supplementary writings in Hind Swaraj and Other Writings by Gandhi, ed. by Anthony J. Parel, Delhi, 1997) leave us in no doubt about the differences in their positioning vis- a-vis western knowledge and culture. Gandhi too humbly admits his indebtedness to Tolstoy, Ruskin, Thoreau, Emerson and other writers alongwith the masters of Indian philosophy; but he has no doubt that the civilisation which seeks to increase bodily comforts is ‘irreligion,’ one that has intoxicated and maddened the people of Europe. It is self-destructive as it thrives on the labour of slaving men and women working under the most trying, circumstances. It is a Satanic civilization, it is Kaliyuga. The European parliaments are emblems of slavery: the English deserve our sympathy for they are afflicted by the sickness of modern civilization. Gandhiji here critiques the railways, the legal system, modern medicine, modern education: everything western civilization has given us. Civilization is to Gandhi a mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty. By observing morality, we attain mastery over our mind and know ourselves. Gandhi invokes pre-colonial professional practices where vakils and vaids were dependant on people, and institutions were within bounds. He is not blind to the evils like superstition, child marriage, ritual sacrifices and religious prostitution; they have to be fought. Swaraj to him is also swaraj in ideas, intellectual decolonisation, something to be experienced by each one by himself / herself, Gandhi also discusses the questions of ends and means, 16 / Indian Literature : 205 This content downloaded from. 91.23041.206 on Tue, 13 Dee 2022 13:13:35 UTC “All use subject to tips/fabout,jtororgitermspassive resistance, non-violence, the need to develop our languages and to have a common tongue. Gandhi did modify some of these ideas later, but always retained the essence as is evident from his own letter to Nehru on 5 October, 1945. Gandhi and Nehru thus provide two different modes of imagining the West and negotiating with it, 4 We may also look at the transactions between India and the West in the field of literature. Reading of, or translation from, English/ European literature have always preceded or accompanied new movements and trends in our literature eg. translations of Zola, Maupassant, Balzac, Chekhov, Luhsun, Mayakovsky, Neruda or Howard Fast in the case of the Progressive Movement, the French symbolists, Ezra Pound, W.H. Auden, TS. Eliot, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre etc. in the case of Modernist movement, Brecht, Beckett, Pirandello, Ionesco, Albee etc. in the case of the New Theatre movement, Aragon, Eluard, Brecht, Enzensberger, Yannis Ritsos, Nazim Hikmat etc besides Latin American and African writers in the case of the Radical Literature of the 70's, to cite examples from Malayalam. Harish Trivedi has given us some illuminating models for the study of such transactions in his Colonial Transactions like his study of the reception and teaching of Shakespeare in India and the translations of T.S. Eliot in Hindi, while our own Orientalist proclivities he illustrates through the translations of Rubaiyat from the Fitzgerald version, in different languages, particularly Bachchan's ‘Madiushala in Hindi. His studies of the representation or employment of the East in Byron, T'S. Eliot, E.M. Forster and Edward Thompson, and of the reception and impact of English literature on Indian creative writing and in the Indian academy are equally enabling. Interesting insights are also provided by Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, Lloyd I Rudolph and Mohan Singh Kanota in their introduction to Reversing the Gaze: Amar Singh's Diary, A Colonial Subject’s Narrative of Imperial India (New Delhi, 2000) where they look at the reflexive ethnographic aspects of Amar Singh's diary, the cultural and literary warrants for diary writing, including the tradition of charan poetry, Amar Singh’s liminal positioning, the roznamchas kept by rulers, merchants and landlords, and the charitra tradition, none of which provided the diarist with a precise motive or model for whom the diary was a ‘portable alternate self’ that kept him ‘alive and amused.’ We may also have to look at autobiographies, travel writings, historical fiction K, Satchidanandan / 17 This content downloaded from. 91.230.41.206 on Tue, 13 Dee 2022 13:13:35 UTC “All use subject to tips/fabout,jtororgitermsand other genres of literature besides sketches, paintings, photo- graphs, plays, films, television serials, cartoons, popular jokes, and other discourses to gain a deeper understanding of the way Indians have imagined, constructed, parodied, ridiculed, celebrated, chal- lenged and contained the West through acts of representation. The old impact—response paradigm is clearly insufficient here; we need subtler tools and modes of analysis to articulate the nuances of our representations of the West. JLede K. Satchidanandan Secretary 18 / Indian Literature : 205 This content downloaded from. 91.230.41.206 on Tue, 13 Dee 2022 13:13:35 UTC “All use subject to tips/fabout,jtororgiterms