'Like a dog'

A newspaper cartoon, published a couple of years before Independence*, seeks to represent the subservient position of the colonised mockingly observed by figures signifying British and American imperialism and (most significantly) an indigenous oppressive power group which aligns itself with them. Considerably, the state of subservience of the colonial people is represented through the figure of a dog: meek, enslaved, laughed at and deprived of basic human dignity. While the absolute aim of the nationalist movement must be independence, to not be independent citizens of a free nation, the picture seems to argue, is to not be human. It is to be dog-like.

This super-imposition on the image of the dog as a loss of everything that may be considered to be constitutive of a notion of humanity finds resonance across almost half a century on a different continent. In J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, the complexities of a post-Apartheid South Africa and the changing race relations are discussed through Lucy’s decision to give up her land to her former employee in exchange for his “protection”. The impulse behind the decision is brought out in the following exchange between David Lurie and Lucy:

" 'Yes, I agree, it is humiliating.[she says] But perhaps that is a good point to start from again. Perhaps that is what I must learn to accept. To start at ground level. With nothing. Not with nothing but. With nothing. No cards, no weapons, no property, no rights, no dignity.'

'Like a dog.'

'Yes, like a dog.' "

The reconfiguration of power in post-Apartheid South Africa involves, in the text, an ethic of divestment on the part of those who formerly enjoyed privilege. Once again the figure of the dog is used to invoke degradation and humiliation. To be dog-like in this case is once more entails a deprivation of basic human dignity: to start “with nothing”.**

However, despite the similarities in the connotation, the argumentative impulse behind the use of the image of the dog in both cases is contrasting. While in the first case the comparison with a dog is to highlight the prevalent state of marginalisation. The text assumes a privileging of that which constitutes as human over animality or, to be more specific, a dog-like status. It speaks of the injustice of such a subjection and voices a demand for independence and democracy. It speaks the language of rights. The second case, on the other hand, priviliges the dog-like status and talks of giving up rights: “To start at ground level.”

And yet perhaps the image of the dog seems to resonate with both, seems to willingly invite a conjunction. It perhaps seems to suggest that what is required ethically is work at both sides of the binary. A giving and taking at either end, both of which seem haunted by the image of the dog.

______________

*27 May 1945, The Hindustan Times. I found it in Thapar-Bjorkert, Suruchi. Women in the Indian Nationalist Movement. (2006)

** I am supposing provisionally a sort of gender neutrality in Lucy’s argument. Lucy’s refusal to file a complaint against her rapists and her decision to live with the family of one of them are undeniably and unmistakably hugely problematic – a result of imposing an argument of divestment not on a figure occupying the centre of power but the gendered margin. The act of humiliation here has been (just as with the ‘colonial people’ dog) something imposed, not an act of agency. This is opposed to Lurie’s own position as white upper class male to seek ‘disgrace’, implying an act of will.

Babyji

I have been reading Abha Dawesar's Babyji. What is so wonderful about it is the nonchalant manner in which it questions deeply entrenched notions about sex, sexuality and morality typical to an urban Indian middle class. It is provoking as it brings out in the open things propriety would dictate taboo. In short, I love it! And yes, there are several things I find problematic in the novel, but 'morality' has nothing to do with it. Maybe I'll write down those issues later. For now - some excerpts:

"In the Delhi I grew up in, everything happened. Married women fell in love with pubescent girls, boys climbed up sewage pipes to consort with their neighbors' wives, and students went down on their science teachers in the lab. But no one ever talked about it." ***

"Science had told us this century that nothing was certain. The universe was chaotic and relative; these aspects measurable. There were few hard facts on which one could base a way of living one's life. I'd always scoffed at religion as a crutch for the masses, so it wasn't even a consideration. We'd spent two thousand years only to find out that we didn't know. That moment, sprawled on my bed, changed my whole life. I was free all of a sudden. Free of the burden of knowledge and therefore of any morality that proceeds from knowledge. Only feelings counted. And sensations." ***

"Everyone was complacent and measured success and failure by the same yardsticks- car, house, electronic goods. Jhuggi [slum] people like Rani thought that a government job was the epitome of power and that a government servant was a very big sahib. She wouldn't understand why I adored writers and scientists, intellectuals who could only be measured by the volume of gray matter in their brains. She probably didn't even know what writers and scientists were. If you didn't have any education, could you know how knowledge itself was classified? But she did know what a doctor was. Almost everyone knew what a doctor was."

More Manto

I have two pending posts, neither of which I can seem to conclude. So till the time I can figure out my dilemma, I’m going to fill this place with one of my favourites: Saadat Hasan Manto. Below are some really short pieces of his writing (translated from the Urdu by Khalid Hasan, Mottled Dawn).

Some basic things to be observed:

-- The depiction of horrifying violence and insanity which informed Partition (and hence also Manto's works)

-- How women were among the worst affected since they were/are constructed as repositories of 'honour'; 'honour' which, by a perverse logic, needed to be protected and upheld in context of the Self and plundered, looted (and hence raped) with respect to the Other.

-- The systematic involvement of state machinery...

--...as well as how regular people became both victims and oppressors.

-- Mano's characteristic dark humour and irony.

-- And most importantly, the absence of mention of any particular religion or country, which goes to reveal how underlying a "pretense" of difference is actually a terrible sameness.

Enough said. The sketches:

Invitation to Action

When the neighbourhood was set on fire, everything burnt down with the exception of one shop and its sign.

It said, ‘All building and construction materials sold here.’

Losing Proposition

The two friends finally picked out a girl from the dozen or so they had been shown. She cost forty-two rupees and they brought her to their place.

One of them spent the night with her. ‘What is your name?’ he asked.

When she told him, he was taken aback. ‘But we were told you are of the other religion.’

‘They lied.’ she replied.

‘The bastards cheated us!’ he screamed, ‘selling us a girl who is one of us. I want our money refunded!’

Resting Time

‘He is not dead, there is still some life left in him.’

‘I can’t. I am really exhausted.’

Out of Consideration

‘Don’t kill my daughter in front of me.’

‘All right, all right. Peel off her clothes and throw her in with the other girls!’

Walcott, Universality and Criticism

“how chose/ Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?/ Betray them both, or give back/ what they give?”

-- Derek Walcott, ‘A Far Cry from Africa’

It is interesting to think how something like an informal discussion in class about Walcott’s poetry could teach me the extent to which certain types of criticism can be damaging. The thrust of the discussion was on the poet’s sense of fragmented identity and divided allegiance with a special emphasis on language and history. In a classroom full of Indian students only too familiar with this type of division, a comparison between the Caribbean and Indian context was inevitable. But the comparison somehow led to the declaration that Walcott’s concerns are “universal in nature”.

There are several things wrong with such a statement. I do agree that it is relevant (and important) to see how we, with our colonial inheritance, face a dilemma similar to that expressed in Walcott’s poetry over the use of language. It is equally significant to argue that, like in Walcott, our knowledge and response to history is similar. (By studying British literature, for example, I am aware of Britain’s political history. Yet I can not say the same is entirely true for some periods within Indian history, despite studying Indian writing.) But at no point of time am I willing to concede that Walcott is a “universal poet”. The reason for this is not only because I acknowledge the existence of people who happily face no such dilemma, of societies who have been fortunate enough to not be colonised, but also because of the connotations of such form of a reading. It would, for instance, be considered wrong today to read Shakespeare as illuminating the universality of human experience considering that this ‘universal experience’ usually connotes Eurocentric bourgeois ideals. Much the same way, it would be a mistake to accord a ‘central’ position to a different set of values/ themes/ concerns with the sole purpose of universalising them. Moreover, the argument that the text is a medium through which ‘experience’ can be directly transmitted from author to reader is problematic as well disallowing for its socio-political contextualising. Is it relevant to say that Walcott’s inability to completely denounce or embrace his cultural heritage is something every human being experiences without actually looking into the nature of that cultural heritage itself?

It is not simply a matter of preferring a particular critical approach to another. What is at hand is looking at what the critical approach consequently implies. Relegating Walcott’s lament “of being white in mind and black in body” to an aspect of the ‘human condition’ is a silencing so many immediate social concerns that Walcott and other writers from the Caribbean seek to voice. Such an approach then does more harm than good.

On Manto and ‘Other’ Things

[I haven't yet been able to write what I'd originally intended to post. The following is something I wrote quite a while ago. I don't particularly subscribe now to everything said below, but I'm still somewhat attached to this piece. It is, of course, not a critical analysis of the writer’s work but, among several things, a personal response which was evoked by a re-reading of some of his writing.]

************

My association with Sa'adat Hasan Manto began, unfortunately, only in a classroom. As an undergraduate student of literature, it was compulsory for me to study Partition literature and Manto was one of the prescribed writers. One lecture on, I was completely submerged into Manto’s world of thieves, madmen and prostitutes. His Toba Tek Singh was most tragic, his Thanda Ghosht most horrifying.

He is often set apart for his ‘objective’ characterisation. And what struck me most about him was his complete abstinence in delineating his characters in a particular manner solely on the basis of their religion/nationality. In class, the professor had passingly remarked about how ‘Manto stays with you forever’. She could not have been closer to the truth. Each side, in Manto’s work, mirrors the other, and questions the ‘reality’ of the Indo-Pak border.

Contrast this with what the children of this country are taught about the Partition at school. Notice how the history textbooks construct a story quite different. We, according to them, were “the good guys” and they (used on separate occasions to imply the British, Pakistanis, Muslims… ) were “the bad guys”. They were always responsible for all the 'bad, evil things' that happened to us. This difference between us and them is created at such a deep-rooted, intrinsic level and is accepted so passively that it becomes difficult, virtually impossible to unlearn this “truth”. Despite everything, there still remains a sense of mistrust of ‘the other’.

***

A few years back, among my list of internet friends included a Pakistani girl my age. We frequented the same discussion boards. We got talking and found we had much in common. We liked the same books, listened to the same music, cribbed about the same things. She, like me, had pre-occupations any teenage girl would be expected to: school, friends, television, movies, books, parties…

I was quite amazed how easy it was to talk to her. Inevitably, the Partition came up. We exchanged noted on how differently history was constructed on either side of the border. I toldher India’s Independence Day was on the 15 August, a day after theirs. She’d had no idea. It hadn’t been important. She told me about how they celebrate their Independence. (We discussed them as though they were different events.) I’d never before given it a thought.

All my life, I’d been conditioned into believing how all Pakistanis were ‘evil, twisted monsters’ whose sole purpose in life was to destroy our peace and ruin our happiness. And then I’d read her latest e-mail asking how school was, what movie I’d last watched, whether she’d be able to complete Anna Karenina within the next lifetime…

It was only this one-on-one interaction that initiated a change in my sensibility. I’m sure it was the same for her too. I’m aware that I can’t expect the same response from every Pakistani, just as it would be too idiotic to expect the same from every Indian. It did, however, teach me an important lesson. Instead of believing a ready made opinion, I discovered that I’d rather make up my own mind.

***

The fundamental point I’m trying to make (after a whole lot of digressions) is an old established one. It is the state machinery which relegates Pakistan(in this case) to the position of ‘the other’ in order to aid their self-definition, and thereby retain their authoritorial position. In other words, they are responsible for constructing Pakistan as ‘different’ from India - for if they both were ‘the same thing’, what point would it be for the state to exist?

[EDIT: I have managed to locate Manto's Toba Tek Singh online. It's a terrible translation though. But it was sadly the only one I could find.]