ABSTRACT
Mahendra, Gabriel Gradi. The Identity Re-Negotiation of Indian Sepoys in
Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace: A Postcolonial Reading. Yogyakarta: Department of English Letters, Faculty of Letters, Sanata Dharma University, 2015.
This study analyzes the process of identity re-negotiation found in Amitav Ghosh’s novel,The Glass Palace. The one who undergoes such process is named Arjun, an Indian man who decides to go soldiering in the British Indian Army. For this Army is an imperial institution, it implores also colonial discourses invented by the British. In this story, Arjun, who has formerly lived in Indian society with all its fatalism and social conceptions, finds freedom and access to modernity when he can be in the rank of Officers. However, at the end, he regrets about that fact, for by dwelling in the rank with other British Officers, he has accepted to be molded into ilusional identity. Thus, his struggle is then funneled to re-negotiate his identity, to re-collect his past and to find individual independence in a context where everything has been handled by British colonialism.
The objectives of this study are divided into three problem formulations. The first is to find how Indian society, with its values and prescriptions, develops the conception of Indian identity. The second is to know how British India military system in the British Indian Army articulates colonial discourses. The third is to understand the process of Arjun’s identity re-negotiation that participates both Indian identity and ‘English’ values he learns throughout his carrier.
I use postcolonial approach focusing on subject formation in postcolonial context. The theories that I use are Bhabha’s theories of hybridization, liminality, discourse of mimicry and colonial stereotypes. I also use some critiques to Bhabha’s theories which come from other theorists like Benita Parry and Stuart Hall. In the analysis I also use a theory of False Consciousness in scrutinizing the state of mind of the character being analyzed.
My method is library research. I found the evidence from literary texts and connect each evidence to give me information about the case.
ABSTRAK
Mahendra, Gabriel Gradi. The Identity Re-Negotiation of Indian Sepoys in
Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace: A Postcolonial Reading. Yogyakarta: Program Studi Sastra Inggris, Fakultas Sastra, Universitas Sanata Dharma, 2015.
Studi ini menganalisa proses re-negosiasi identitas di novel The Glass Palace. Karakter yang mengalami proses ini bernama Arjun, lelaki India yang memilih menjadi tentara di British Indian Army. Karena badan ketentaraan ini adalah institusi imperial, maka terdapat pula wacana kolonial yang dibuat oleh bangsa Inggris. Cerita ini kemudian menceritakan Arjun yang semula tinggal di masyarakat India bersama tatanan nilainya, justru menemukan kebebasan dan modernitas ketika dia bisa berada di kelas Officers. Akan tetapi, pada akhirnya Arjun menyesal bahwa dengan berada satu jabatan dengan tentara Inggris lainnya, dia telah setuju untuk dibentuk ke suatu identitas palsu. Dengan begitu, usahanya kemudian diarahkan untuk menegosiasi kembali identitasnya, menemukan kembali masa lalunya dan menemukan kemerdekaan pribadi di tengah situasi yang serba dibentuk oleh kolonialisme Inggris.
Tujuan studi ini dibagi menjadi tiga rumusan masalah. Pertama, studi ini ingin menemukan bagaimana tatanan nilai di masyarakat India membentuk konsepsi identitas mereka. Yang kedua adalah untuk mengetahui bagaimana institusi ketentaraan British India Army mengartikulasi wacana kolonial. Rumusan yang ketiga adalah untuk mengerti proses re-negosiasi identitas Arjun yang melibatkan identitas India-nya dan nilai-nilai kolonial Inggris yang dia pelajari selama berkarir sebagai tentara.
Saya memakai pendekatan pascakolonial yang berfokus pada pembentukan subyek dalam konteks pascakolonial. Teori-teori yang saya pakai adalah teori hibridisasi, liminalitas, wacana mimikri dan stereotip dari Bhabha. Saya juga memakai kritik atas teori Bhabha yang berasal dari Benita Parry dan Stuart Hall. Di dalam analisis, saya juga menggunakan teori ‘kesadaran palsu’ untuk membedah kondisi pikiran sang karakter.
Metode yang saya pakai adalah studi pustaka. Saya menemukan bukti-bukti dari teks dan kemudian menghubungkan bukti-bukti tersebut demi memberikan saya informasi mengenai permasalahan yang sedang ditekuni.
THE IDENTITY RE-NEGOTIATION OF INDIAN SEPOYS
IN AMITAV GHOSH’S
THE GLASS PALACE :
A POSTCOLONIAL READING
AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS
Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree ofSarjana Sastra
in English Letters
By
GABRIEL GRADI MAHENDRA Student Number: 104214075
ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAM DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS
FACULTY OF LETTERS SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY
THE IDENTITY RE-NEGOTIATION OF INDIAN SEPOYS
IN AMITAV GHOSH’S
THE GLASS PALACE :
A POSTCOLONIAL READING
AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS
Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree ofSarjana Sastra
in English Letters
By
GABRIEL GRADI MAHENDRA Student Number: 104214075
ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAM DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS
FACULTY OF LETTERS SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY
ASarjana SastraUndergraduate Thesis
THE IDENTITY RE-NEGOTIATION OF INDIAN SEPOYS
IN AMITAV GHOSH’S
THE GLASS PALACE :
A POSTCOLONIAL READING
By
GABRIEL GRADI MAHENDRA Student Number: 104214075
Approved by
Paulus Sarwoto, S.S., M.A., Ph.D. Advisor
ASarjana SastraUndergraduate Thesis
THE IDENTITY RE-NEGOTIATION OF INDIAN SEPOYS
IN AMITAV GHOSH’S
THE GLASS PALACE :
A POSTCOLONIAL READING
By
GABRIEL GRADI MAHENDRA Student Number: 104214075
Defended before the Board of Examiners on May 12, 2015
and Declared Acceptable
BOARD OF EXAMINERS
Name Signature
Chairperson : Dr. F. X. Siswadi, M.A. ………
Secretary : A. B. Sri Mulyani, M.A., Ph.D. ………
Member 1 : Drs. Hirmawan Wijanarka, M.Hum. ………
Member 2 : Paulus Sarwoto, S.S., M.A., Ph.D. ………
Member 3 : Elisa Dwi Wardhani, S.S., M.Hum. ………
Yogyakarta, May 29, 2015 Faculty of Letters Sanata Dharma University
Dean
STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY
I certify that this undergraduate thesis contains no material which has been previously submitted for the award of any other degree at any university, and that, to the best of my knowledge, this undergraduate thesis contains no material previously written by any other person except where due reference is made in the text of the undergraduate thesis.
Yogyakarta, April 29, 2015
LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS
Yang bertanda tangan di bawah ini, saya mahasiswa Universitas Sanata Dharma
Nama : Gabriel Gradi Mahendra
Nomor Mahasiswa : 104214075
Demi pengembangan ilmu pengetahuan, saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma karya ilmiah saya yang berjudul
THE IDENTITY RE-NEGOTIATION OF INDIAN SEPOYS
IN AMITAV GHOSH’S
THE GLASS PALACE :
A POSTCOLONIAL READING
beserta perangkat yang diperlukan (bila ada). Dengan demikian saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma hak untuk menyimpan, mengalihkan dalam bentuk media lain, mengelolanya dalam bentuk pangkalan data, mendistribusikan secara terbatas, dan mempublikasikannya di internet atau media lain untuk kepentingan akademis tanpa perlu meminta ijin kepada saya maupun memberikan royalti kepada saya selama tetap mencantumkan nama saya sebagai penulis.
Demikian pernyataan ini saya buat dengan sebenarnya. Dibuat di Yogyakarta
Pada tanggal 29 April 2015 Yang menyatakan,
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I have talked to relatively not so many people, hundreds of them, about my undergraduate thesis. Not because of an unwillingness to learn from other people, but I just felt that I became so depressed and confusing when talking about this thesis. Therefore, here I would mention those few who have helped me to feel enough with my inferiority and gave me a spirit to keep struggling to finish this academic achievement.
First of all, there is God the Almighty who I talked to in prayers, who keep giving me miracles until this day. I also talked in scheduled meetings with Paulus Sarwoto, Ph. D, my thesis advisor, and Elisa Dwi Wardani S.S., M.Hum. who told me the way when I felt lost in my mind. There are also others, whom I talked to in different occasions: Vania, Ari and Cuimbra who have become inspiring companions in my thinking process; Diyan who has introduced to me sweet acceptance; all my crews in Our Town play production who whispered to me a good hope by their friendships; Beny and Doni who shared with me passionate conversations and good hopes; Rm Andri who has supported me with gentle understanding.
I talked daily with my family: Ibuk, Brian, Gretto, Simbok. I seldom talked with them about my thesis, but they always enacted a sentence that says ‘Education will give us better living’. They mean a lot to me.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. The Caste System and Indian’s Social Behaviors …….. 37
2. The Centrality of Family and Village………. 41
3. National Awareness and the Growth of Westernized Indian Middle-Class……….. 45
B. Colonial Discourse in the British India Military System ... 49
1. The Mission of Liberation……….. 51
2. The Ambivalent Representation of British Indian Army……… 57
3. The Discourse of Mimicry………. 62
C. Arjun’s Re-Negotiation of Self……… 68
1. Arjun’s Discovery of False Consciousness in British Colonialism……… 70
2. Arjun’s Re-Negotiation of Self………. 73
CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION……… 78
ABSTRACT
Mahendra, Gabriel Gradi. The Identity Re-Negotiation of Indian Sepoys in
Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace: A Postcolonial Reading. Yogyakarta: Department of English Letters, Faculty of Letters, Sanata Dharma University, 2015.
This study analyzes the process of identity re-negotiation found in Amitav Ghosh’s novel,The Glass Palace. The one who undergoes such process is named Arjun, an Indian man who decides to go soldiering in the British Indian Army. For this Army is an imperial institution, it implores also colonial discourses invented by the British. In this story, Arjun, who has formerly lived in Indian society with all its fatalism and social conceptions, finds freedom and access to modernity when he can be in the rank of Officers. However, at the end, he regrets about that fact, for by dwelling in the rank with other British Officers, he has accepted to be molded into ilusional identity. Thus, his struggle is then funneled to re-negotiate his identity, to re-collect his past and to find individual independence in a context where everything has been handled by British colonialism.
The objectives of this study are divided into three problem formulations. The first is to find how Indian society, with its values and prescriptions, develops the conception of Indian identity. The second is to know how British India military system in the British Indian Army articulates colonial discourses. The third is to understand the process of Arjun’s identity re-negotiation that participates both Indian identity and ‘English’ values he learns throughout his carrier.
I use postcolonial approach focusing on subject formation in postcolonial context. The theories that I use are Bhabha’s theories of hybridization, liminality, discourse of mimicry and colonial stereotypes. I also use some critiques to Bhabha’s theories which come from other theorists like Benita Parry and Stuart Hall. In the analysis I also use a theory of False Consciousness in scrutinizing the state of mind of the character being analyzed.
My method is library research. I found the evidence from literary texts and connect each evidence to give me information about the case.
ABSTRAK
Mahendra, Gabriel Gradi. The Identity Re-Negotiation of Indian Sepoys in
Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace: A Postcolonial Reading. Yogyakarta: Program Studi Sastra Inggris, Fakultas Sastra, Universitas Sanata Dharma, 2015.
Studi ini menganalisa proses re-negosiasi identitas di novel The Glass Palace. Karakter yang mengalami proses ini bernama Arjun, lelaki India yang memilih menjadi tentara di British Indian Army. Karena badan ketentaraan ini adalah institusi imperial, maka terdapat pula wacana kolonial yang dibuat oleh bangsa Inggris. Cerita ini kemudian menceritakan Arjun yang semula tinggal di masyarakat India bersama tatanan nilainya, justru menemukan kebebasan dan modernitas ketika dia bisa berada di kelas Officers. Akan tetapi, pada akhirnya Arjun menyesal bahwa dengan berada satu jabatan dengan tentara Inggris lainnya, dia telah setuju untuk dibentuk ke suatu identitas palsu. Dengan begitu, usahanya kemudian diarahkan untuk menegosiasi kembali identitasnya, menemukan kembali masa lalunya dan menemukan kemerdekaan pribadi di tengah situasi yang serba dibentuk oleh kolonialisme Inggris.
Tujuan studi ini dibagi menjadi tiga rumusan masalah. Pertama, studi ini ingin menemukan bagaimana tatanan nilai di masyarakat India membentuk konsepsi identitas mereka. Yang kedua adalah untuk mengetahui bagaimana institusi ketentaraan British India Army mengartikulasi wacana kolonial. Rumusan yang ketiga adalah untuk mengerti proses re-negosiasi identitas Arjun yang melibatkan identitas India-nya dan nilai-nilai kolonial Inggris yang dia pelajari selama berkarir sebagai tentara.
Saya memakai pendekatan pascakolonial yang berfokus pada pembentukan subyek dalam konteks pascakolonial. Teori-teori yang saya pakai adalah teori hibridisasi, liminalitas, wacana mimikri dan stereotip dari Bhabha. Saya juga memakai kritik atas teori Bhabha yang berasal dari Benita Parry dan Stuart Hall. Di dalam analisis, saya juga menggunakan teori ‘kesadaran palsu’ untuk membedah kondisi pikiran sang karakter.
Metode yang saya pakai adalah studi pustaka. Saya menemukan bukti-bukti dari teks dan kemudian menghubungkan bukti-bukti tersebut demi memberikan saya informasi mengenai permasalahan yang sedang ditekuni.
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
A. Background of the Study
Postcoloniality is the context of global understanding today. We cannot understand the presence of today’s world unless we accept the history of
colonialism. At the aftermath of World War I, European countries have ruled over four-fifth of lands and seas of the world. Henceforward, it is not surprising today that almost all the tiny detail of our daily life is indicated with Western values and culture. However, we don’t have to be suspicious that the Enlightenment of Western philosophy and culture should be reasoned as a bad thing. As the history of the past records it, Western ‘civilization’has contributed in the development of better world, such as rules of government and justice, aesthetics in arts and literature. Yet, though highly certified for its contribution, opposition is still inevitable.
One fundamental cause is the development of homogeneous culture of man, and coincidentally, the oppression towards difference. Apartheid in Africa, seclusions of the Aborigines in Australia, and displacement in every colonized country are the evidence that colonial power has civilized the native people with exclusionary demand. Postcolonialism, then, was born when people started to realize it. It has its grain in the demand of justice for the deprived and oppressed.
Orientalismin 1978” (Young: 2001:74), this field still needs further elaboration in public consciousness. We should confirm, despite the globalizing awareness of inevitable tainted history, many people are still in ceaseless effort to retain the original, pure identity. It is shown in the nationalistic fetishism even in local level: people of second-generation of migrants are still constituted as minorities in some countries. Hence, the aim of this study is to learn how the postcolonial identity should be defined, as this demand exists also in some fictional works.
The Glass Palace (2001) is the case in which postcolonial theory will be used as the means of analysis. The Glass Palace is a novel by Amitav Ghosh, an Indian-born historian, journalist and writer who now lives in the U. S. The novel mainly tells about the struggle of a band of people in a turbulent transition. The displacement of Burmese Kinghood by British government, the course of World-wars, and migrations from one country to another seem to be the situational background in which the characters are bound. Postcolonial atmosphere permeates in this story because the story is conducted to tell the journey that exceeds the boundary of a nation, narrating an experience of cross-cultural interactions. .
The most haunting, and also tragic, moment in The Glass Palace is perhaps the struggle of the IndianSepoys, in which an Indian man named Arjun is among them. As one of the Indian Sepoys, men of arms who are native to India but working for British Indian Army, Arjun existence is somehow certified as only ‘tool’, without mind of his own; he “count[s] for nothing” (Ghosh, 2001:30).
In fact, Indian officers seldom realize it. They keep living in British military discourse and culture, unaware of the consequence. A reader would feel pity for Arjun when he is bewildered in realizing that he becomes the ‘British stooge’ indeed, after long years of attempt to be a sahib or a foreigner-like citizen: “…except for the colour of our skin, most people in India wouldn’t even
recognise us as Indians” (Ghosh, 2001:439). This unmet expectation has aroused
some questions: What would he do with his hybrid presence? How would he negotiate his identity? What aspects of himself would prevail in negotiating his identity?
This study focuses on the identity negotiation of Arjun. From the defeat he feels and his regret of a ‘tainted’ self-identity, Arjun shows the moment of agony
set forth by the truth of his search for ‘englishness’. In Bhabha’s term this revelation shows how the pursuit of ‘Englishness’ is just “a dream of the deprived,
B. Problem Formulation
This study will be based on answering three definite problems, which are: 1. How does the Indian value system preoccupy` Indian identity? 2. How does the British India military system rearticulate colonial
discourses?
3. How does Arjun re-negotiate his Indian rootedness, or Self, after participating himself in the British Indian Army?
C. Objectives of the Study
This study has three objectives. Its first aim is to provide a thorough analysis on how the society of India conceives a presumption of Indian identity. Secondly, this study aims to understand how British Indian military system, underlying all mechanism in the British India Army, rearticulates colonial discourses. Finally, the third objectives is to scrutinize how Arjun re-negotiates his ‘Indian identity’, or Self, after participating in the British Indian Army..
D. Definition of Terms
joined the British Commonwealth, sepoyshave constituted the majority in British Indian Army.
In this study, the phrase ‘identity re-negotiation’ is derived from an understanding fromHomi Bhabha’s bookThe Location of Culture(1994). Instead of thinking that culture and difference is pre-given, Bhabha states that from the minority perspective, difference is an “on-going negotiation that seeks to authorize cultural hybridities that emerge in moments of historical transformation” (Bhabha,2004: 2). So, we can infer that identity re-negotiation is a process of authorization of cultural hybridities signified by emerging difference, which is unique in postcolonial context. The prefix ‘re-‘ implies that Arjun has twice negotiated his identity: once in becoming like an ‘Englishman’, and twice
when he manages to rediscover his Indian Self.
The term‘postcolonial’ which is used in this study will relate to what John Mcleod has defined inBeginning Postcolonialism(2000):
“...we will be thinking about postcolonialism not just in term of strict historical periodisation, but as referring to disparate forms of representation, reading practices and values. These can circulate across the barrier between colonial rule and national independence” (Mcleod, 2000:5).
CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
A. Review of Related Studies
The Glass Palaceis notably a historical novel. It is stated By F. L. Aldama in Unraveling the Nation from Narration in Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace (2005). That assumption thus justifies for the ‘fictionalizing’ of real historical occurrences found in the novel. On the other words, The Glass Palace moves beyond the demands of truth and the facts found in archival, autobiographical sources, “the author of the historical novel is free to imagine and invent the ‘facts’” (Aldama, 2005:7). It is evident in a third-person narrator that “relates a story in a helical fashion that simultaneously fictionalizes and makes real historical subject and event” (Aldama, 2005:7). The parcel of this consensus is that historical event can give cause for deep psychological probing of the character’s inferiority.
Postcoloniality becomes a subsequent issue when The Glass Palacetakes the history of British sovereignty over India as its basis. Aldama described The Glass Palaceas a story“chock full of hyphenated [South Asian hybrid] characters who seek a sense of place and belonging– a home–within homelands torn apart by colonialist and imperialist invasions and civil wars” (Aldama, 2005:6). It is resonant with Tuomas Huttunen’s study (2003), stating that:
one of the central themes in The Glass Palace is the way colonial discourses (primarily the military discourse) have moulded the subaltern identity and resulted in severe alienation (Huttunen, 2003:65).
According to Huttunen, this self-alienation is most apparent in Arjun after he lives inside the British Indian Army. Huttunen confesses how colonial discourse and military system become so disabling and dooms Arjun, who has been inexplicably molded to be a war-machine under the imperialist discourse:
Arjun,.. can initially express himself only within the discourse of the military culture. As he finally realizes his condition as a puppet of this colonial discourse and manages to create some distance from it, he is left with nothing. He has nowhere to place his allegiances (Huttunen, 2003:65).
This finding shows how mimicry works unconsciously. The feeling just creeps up in him, and at the end military discourse has eaten up all his sense of self. He has been slowly alienated in his pleasure of being almost British. For me, it is enticing, and creating skeptical questioning, to know that Arjun ‘is left with nothing’. In what justification can we say that this mimic man is left with nothing,
Huttunen in The Ethics of Representation in the Fiction of Amitav Ghosh (2003). Huttunen’s Ethics is influenced by Radhakhrisnan’s theory (2003) and Levinas’ view of ontological problem of the Other (1969) which push Huttunen to
discover the mission of ethical levelling in the novel. In it he tries to show how Ghosh explicates indigenous tradition and values, Other’s culture, in order to make it intelligible. To achieve its aim, Huttunen focuses on Amitav Ghosh’s narrative strategy for an ethical representation of the colonized Others “across myriad discursive divides and asymmetries in various circumstances” (Huttunen, 2003:4). By ‘ethical representation’, Huttunen points out to Ghosh’s characters in the novels which stem “from varying social backgrounds” and come through as “caricatures of the ideologies they represent” (Huttunen, 2003:62). So, the characters become the symbols of diverse ideologies existing in the novel.
Another study considering the ethical representation in Ghosh’s novels has
been done by Shameem Black (2010). Black comments on Ghosh’s narrative style as an instance of ‘flattened aesthetics’ meant to make the linguistically diverse characters sound alike. This changing of style, as commented by Huttunen, markedly corresponds to the shift in the emphasis of concern “from the narrative appropriation of the target of representation to that of readerly openness” (Huttunen, 2003:62). Thus, we can infer that Ghosh in The Glass Palace has managed to use English as its linguistic medium in order to ethically represent the marginalized culture within the body of English philosophical system .
monograph of Ghosh’s works, John C. Hawley (2005) suggests that any critics working on Ghosh’s novels should acknowledge their generic heterogeneity and discursive inventiveness which enable Ghosh to attain such sensitivity to multifaceted colonial problems. By the same view, Radhakhrisnan examines the concept of imagination and space in Ghosh’s novels:
Space in Ghosh‘s narratives is manifested as a many-faceted problematic that brings together time, place (imaginary and real dimensions), location (whether geographical or discursive) and identity (both personal and national/communal/collective) (Radhakhrisnan, 2003: pp. 27-28).
These studies that I have reviewed give me an idea that any conceptual literary theories are challenged to examine the alterity found inThe Glass Palace. Most studies of The Glass Palace regards the evocation of colonialism from the colonised’s point of view, embodied by Ghosh as an Indian writer, as an ethical
representation of Eastern culture, the Other of European ontology. Hence, when I found that some characters in The Glass Palace are narrated as having complex self-questioning which is caused by severe alienation done by British imperialists, I then dedicate my own study to ethically represent Indian Self by examining his identity re-negotiation which is a struggle to counter colonial alienation. I imagined that by doing this, we can open up an opportunity for postcolonial societies in our present day, to have a chance to speak their thoughts.
B. Review of Related Theories 1. Elements of Fiction
elements are theorized as the Society in a novel and Characterization of fictional characters.
a. Society in a Novel
In life as is in art, what is defined as society is not a concrete thing, though exist. The emerging of society is a corollary of “patterned, formal
relationships among aspects of our experience" (Langland, 1984:5). Such abstract thing probably leads to an uneasy consensus: it can be everything in one’s milieu. The term society in a wide sense comprehends what we call ‘medium’: "not merely peoples and their classes but also their customs, conventions, beliefs and values, their institutions – legal, religious, and cultural–andtheir physical environment.”(Langland, 1984:6).
Society, as a medium, functions in an aesthetic framework. Elizabeth Langland calls this function as "formal roles of society" (Langland, 1984:4). The possible formal roles of society depend upon form and structure in the novel. Form is the embodiment of “statement of values”(Langland, 1984: 8). These values, which should be put outside ethical judgment, then affect the development of a novel’s structure. The structure includes “the elements of a
work subject to deliberate manipulation within the text" (Langland, 1984: 8). To speak of the formal role of society, then, we speak of “the ways in which structural elements of a particular depiction are combined and evaluated to make society itself an integral part of a novel's form”(Langland, 1984:9).
society secondary. Explained by Maurice Shroder, the primary position of the characters puts the novel's subject as an education“[for the characters] into the realities of the material world and of human life in society" (Langland, 1984: 7). So, the society in a novel isplaced as the context of the characters’ growth and self-realization; society is not there for the sake of itself. Though its basic role is a rather antagonistic one, society can acquire protagonist role but only in thematic term: "The individual characters remain central to the novel's movement, but their behavior reveals social rather than individual ethics" (Langland, 1984: 7).
The particular formal role or function of society depends on manipulation of three perspectives for judgment: that of “the protagonists, the perspective created by the medium and an evaluative framework that mediates between the other two" (Langland, 1984: 10). The medium to which a character responds and in which a character exists defines a set of values distinct from that of the character. Then, the narrator, interpreting the character in the medium, provides the evaluative framework for the whole. The adequacy of interpretation will depend on narrator's reliability: "If a narrator is omniscient, then his perspective will be definitive in interpreting the interaction of character with medium" (Langland, 1984: 9). In other words, an omniscient third-person point of view provides the most reliable testimony, since it knows whatever happen inside a character’s mind.
Society and social convention function as “yardsticks to measure individual moral growth and to make moral distinctions among individuals" (Langland, 1984: pp. 12-13). Society, despite its possibility for faults, can also be flexible enough to accommodate the full realization of individual possibility. Society can also be depicted as the destruction of human possibility. In some sociological-naturalistic novels the conflict is weighed between individuals and society in such a way that“the most admirable characters are most subject to destruction since their best qualities leave them more vulnerable" (Langland, 1984: 12). However, the twentieth century has also seen experiments that altered the basic relationships among protagonists, society, and narrator. The line between objectiveand subjective has blurred, “reality is in doubt”, but “a premise is that some essential truth, however inaccessible, remains”(Langland, 1984:14). In such genre, society functions in structure as an inner imperative giving objective force in the characters' lives.
b. Characterization of Fictional Characters
mind, but it has originated from the author’s ‘stream of consciousness’, and
therefore believable and qualified.
Moreover, Murphy also names some means of characterization that writers often use. The means of description include: Personal description (a person’s appearances); character as seen by another (through the eye and
opinions of another); speech (through what the person says); past life (letting the reader learn something about a person’s past life); conversation of others
(the things they say about him); reactions (how a person reacts to various situations and events); direct comments, and thoughts (Murphy, 1972: 161-171). Most writers seldom use these means individually, but blend them skillfully, so that the reader “carried along by the stream of the narrative” is often unaware of the means being used (Murphy, 1972: 173).
2. Postcolonial Theory
I focus my utilization of postcolonial theory for scrutinizing Arjun’s
re-negotiation of Self. Therefore, main body of the theories are related to postcolonial identity and some theories of colonial discourses.
a. Postcolonial Identity
According to Bhabha inThe Location of Culture(1994; Routledge ed. 2004), in the postcolonial text the problem of identity returns as “a persistent questioning of the frame, the space of representation, where the image… is
Bhabha’s statement of writing identity, or the strategy of doubling, tries to revise any understanding of identity whose basis is self-consciousness, which in his terms becomes the‘vertical dimension’of identity, the dimension of depth. This depth is a common language of identity to measure the Self, hence as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, “so far reaches the identity of that person” (Bhabha, 2004:69). The replacement of such depth with the strategy of doubling has grown from Bhabha’s understanding of identification:
Each time the encounter with identity occurs at the point at which something exceeds the frame of the image, it eludes the eye, evacuates the self as site of identity and autonomy and… leaves a resistant trace, a stain of the subject. We are [confronted] with the discursive strategy of the moment of interrogation, a moment in which the demand for identification becomes, primarily, a response to other questions of signification and desire, culture and politics (Bhabha, 2004:70-71). As a response to the Other the image’srepresentation is always spatially split – “it makes present something that is absent – and [it] temporally deferred” (Bhabha, 2004:73). From this point, Bhabha reassures that identity is never an affirmation of a pre-given identity, but rather a product of on-going process of negotiation and articulation of cultural hybridity.
b. Hybridity
Hybridity is the basic concept in Bhabha’s discourse of postcolonial
presencing” (Heidegger, 1971:152). The ‘beyond’ here is marked by the liminal, that which in the border or threshold of culture or identity. It is in this liminal space, the beyond, of settled identity or culture where interaction happens. The liminal is, thus, central of creation in new identity meaning, or as Bhabha suggests, the space becomes the sites of collaboration and contestation in redefining postcolonial identity. Nevertheless, though the ‘beyond’ signifies spatial distance and opens up collaborative process, our
project to ‘exceed the barrier of boundary’ isunknowable without “a return to the ‘present’ which, in the process of repetition, becomes disjunct and
displaced” (Bhabha, 2004:6). However displeasing this displacement might become,Walter Benjamin describes this disjunct moment as the establishment of the conceptual ‘present’ as the “time of the now” (quoted in Bhabha,
2004:6).To dwell in the ‘beyond’, then, is to
inhabit an intervening space, ... to be part of a revisionary time, a return to the present to redescribe our cultural contemporaneity; to reinscribe our human, historic commonality; to touch the future on its hither side(Bhabha, 2004:10).
Bhabha goes back to Fanon to suggest the importance of hybridity in colonial condition. It is Fanon’s narrative of colonial condition which illuminates the phenomenon of ‘psychic trauma’: a psychic damage when the colonial subject realizes that he cannot attain the whiteness he was taught to desire, or to shed the blackness he had learnt to devalue. Henceforward, Bhabha states that the reality of colonial sphere is, however, a split presence:
relation to this impossible object that emerges the liminal problem of colonial identity and its vicissitudes (Bhabha, 2004:117).
This colonial otherness not just evokes the ambivalence of colonial subject, but, as Bhabha suggests, is the effect of the colonial authority in circulating the stereotype of inequalities between the Colonized and the Colonizer. However, Bhabha thinks that colonial authority undermines itself by being unable to communicate its authenticity. In his essay, “Signs Taken for Wonders” (1985), Bhabha concludes that colonial authority is always ambivalent: “[it] split[s] between its appearance as original and authoritative
and its articulation as repetition and difference” (Bhabha, 1985:150).
Unavoidably, colonial authority has established a gap in its discourse, and it is in this gap that Bhabha puts his strategy of colonial resistance.
Engaging psychoanalytic language of subject formation has made Bhabha’s hybridity generalizing specific problem of identity. Loomba states “We cannot appreciate the specific nature of diverse hybridities if we do not
attend to the nuances of each of the cultures that come together or clash during the colonial encounter” (Loomba, 2005:150-151). To resolve the complexity
Recent studies and theories on postcoloniality has developed attitude in comparing hybridity with rootedness or nation. Kortenaar has reminded that neither authenticity nor creolization is an inherently progressive or regressive position (Kortenaar, 1995:40-41). Authenticity can be both enabling or destroying, as it is evident in some characters in postcolonial fictions. The task in scrutinizing postcolonial mixed identity, Loomba says, is then “to locate and evaluate their ideological, political and emotional valencies, as well as their intersections in the multiple histories of colonialism and postcoloniality”
(Loomba, 2005:153). c. Mimicry
Colonial mimicry, as Bhabha suggests, is “the desire of a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that isalmost the same, but not quite” (Bhabha,2004:122). Mimicry as the strategy, however, affects both the colonial subjects and the legitimation of colonial authority.
The ambivalence of mimicry,almost the same but not quite, makes the colonial subject and its authority share a somewhat ‘partial’ representation. Partial here, as Bhabha explains, means ‘incomplete’ or ‘virtual’:
It is as if the very emergence of the ‘colonial’ is dependent for its representation upon some strategic limitation or prohibition within the authoritative discourse itself. The success of colonial appropriation depends on a proliferation of inappropriate objects that ensure its strategic failure, so that mimicry is at once resemblance and menace (Bhabha, 2004:123).
comes from the prodigious and strategic production of conflictual, fantastic, discriminatory ‘identity effects’ in the play of a power that is elusive because it hides no essence, no ‘itself’ (Bhabha, 2004:128-129).
In Bhabha’s comment, the desire to emerge as ‘authentic’through mimicry is treated as “the final irony of partial representation” (Bhabha, 2004:126). However, this partial presence also exists in the colonial subject. The native people who accept the invitation to be mobilised in the discourse of mimicry efface“[the]effect of a flawed colonial mimesis, in which to be Anglicized is emphatically not to be English” (Bhabha, 2004:125). Despite any invocation of such characters, they put themselves in a discourse that refuses to be representational.
d. Althusserian Ideological Interpellation
In his book Ideology (2003), David Hawkes argues that truth can become “a rhetorical device by which the powerful maintain their dominance
(Hawkes, 2003:7). A multiple representation of reality is thus reduced to one conception by undialectical mode of thought. When this ideology, or false consciousness, is successfully maintained, it becomes canonical, firm and obligatory to a people; and as Althusser puts it in For Marx(1969), “its own problematic is not conscious of itself… unconscious of its ‘theoretical
presuppositions’” (Althusser, 1969:69).
(Smith, 1984:134). It is made possible by the ‘practico-social’ function
ideology is called upon to perform. Althusser describes this function as performing through a process of interpellating concrete individuals as “[a] centre of initiatives, author of and responsible for its actions” (Althusser,
1971:169).
C. Review of Related Backgrounds 1. India Under British Control
In the imperialism course India has acquired notable story. Her distinction is primarily developed by her acquaintance as the colony of the British Empire, a bond of allegiances to the King or Queen of Great Britain. As a country in which the Hindu caste system was so rigid in arrangement, India had maintained and justified for centuries a kind of segregation which was believed to be mandated by the sacred texts of that religion. Yet, the British seamen and missionaries, as the pioneers of the voyage to the Outside World, inferred that such ancient culture and social system should be placed upon by Western civilization. Here grew three reasons for the establishment of British Empire:
the desire to increase trade, the search for new homes for a population overcrowded in the mother country, and the impulse to confer civilisation, Christianity and decent government upon peoples who have lacked those advantages (Williamson, 1954: 3).
The Great Britain got their control upon India since the establishment of the East India Company. The Company was a trading company from London and its improvement was rapid. Two centuries later the East India Company, granted full authority from the Crown of English for the trading posts in India, has gained power and prosperity:
The actual state of affairs [in 1760] was, therefore, that the governor and council at Calcutta really controlled the country, since they could make or unmake the Nawab, and that the latter was much more a tax-collector for the British than an independent sovereign. It was a situation of which unprincipled men could take advantage, and it must be confessed that the company’s servants behaved badly… Europeans in India did not yet realize that they were the strongest power in the country. They thought of themselves as a feeble handful in face of vast native forces. The idea that they could be morally responsible for the welfare of the native multitudes had never occurred to them. They had been sent out, not as government officials, but as the clerks and merchants of a trading concern. No one had told them that it was their duty to provide just government for the native population; their primary duty was to make profits for the company and to defend its property from attack (Williamson, 1954: 200-201).
In 1773, a Regulating Act became a fact which gave the King’s ministers control upon the trading company. This Act concerns about providing good government in India for “events had made it evident that a trading company was not a fit
As it has been said earlier, the British government was so reluctant to undertake power in India inasmuch as any attempt to extensify British rule in India was said to be contrary to the declaration made by Pitt. It was sincerely meant, for any responsibility in India “seemed to entail more peril than profit”
(Williamson, 1954: 207). However, the British parliament, regarding themselves as “a peace-loving power, yet with a valuable trade to defend”, were the neighbors
of warlike native power who were likely to challenge the strength of the British; ultimately, it became a choice “between conquering or being conquered, with the Pax Britannica as the only permanent peace that India could hope to enjoy” (Williamson, 1954: 207). As the events became history, British parliament, as sometimes stated by historians, have a justification for its rule in India:
In practice it was much more of a liberating than a conquest of the peoples themselves, for it introduced equal justice and personal freedom where all had been violence and oppression. The trembling peasant had been used to bow low before his ruler and salute him as ‘Protector of the poor’ (Williamson, 1954: 207).
Acting as to ‘liberate’ indigenous people and to introduce equal justice, British sovereign then expresses their ideas that the lives of Indians should be improved. At this point, the British started to plant the seed of Western civilization within the Indian soil.
taking of life on pretext of religion (widow-burning and the murders by the thugs) and he introduced the European system of education in newly founded Indian colleges” (Williamson, 1954: 213). However, the well meant reform didn’t reach its aim and it was more visible when Dalhousie, a later official, became the chief official:
During Dalhousie’s rule India came more closely into contact with Western ideas than ever before. The new system of postage by means of adhesive stamps was a novelty displeasing to conservative minds, and still more so was the electric telegraph whose lines began to spread over the country. A beginning was also made with railway construction, although the great main lines of later days remained only in the stage of planning and discussion. European education and the efforts of missionaries had in some quarters a disturbing effect. These matters have often been described as contributing causes of the great rising that was to follow in 1857, and to a small extent they were, but their importance should not be exaggerated. The Mutiny was what its name implies, a revolt primarily of the soldiers, and their discontent was chiefly due to military reasons (Williamson, 1954: 217-218).
The Indian Mutiny happened in 1857 which was caused by military discontentment. It follows that in 1858 the parliament passed the Government in India Act which “ended the authority of the East India Company and transferred
all its functions to the crown” (Williamson, 1954: 220). Since that date, peace has prevailed throughout India and the government then devoted more revenues for military expenditure for “if it has been necessary to depose a reigning prince for
The first meeting of the Indian National Congress took place in 1885. It was a body of reformers who assembled to discuss their projects. Government (then under the viceroyalty of Lord Dufferin) regarded it as a healthy sign of interest in public affairs and was ready to make such concessions as were warranted by the state of the country. These did not include “swaraj”, or self-government, but they did extend to further consultation of Indian opinion. (Williamson, 1954: 359-360).
Though at the beginning there is no discussion of self-government, native remofmers have understood, after learning from English literature and living within Western sense of freedom and liberation, that they should assume more responsibility for their own nation.
The late of 19th century and towards the two world-wars India has undergone critical period. In that time, a most notable Viceroy, Lord Curzon, has made at least two great reforms that should be noted here. First was in defence: he reformed the Punjab province to the North West Frontier Province. This reform has been caused because the province is the neighbor of warring tribesmen who lived in the border between India and Afghanistan. Curzon also pursued “the plan
of enlisting irregular forces from the tribes, placing them under British officers, and letting them fight their refractory brethren when necessary” (Williamson,
1954: 358). The second is in education: “In 1904 he passed a Universities Act to
remedy the wasteful state of affairs by which multitudes of half-educated persons were turned loose upon society without any real competence for the jobs they aspired to fill” (Williamson, 1954: 359). There were those great reforms in India
From Curzon’s time onwards there were “alternate periods of intense
unrest and comparative quiescence” (Williamson, 1954: 359). The majority of
people seemed to enjoy the state of the country, but the revolutionries consisting in the minority were active and intelligent. At this time of political unrest, British government was effaced by difficult condition:
The National Congress became the platform of impassioned orators who pictured themselves as the future rulers of an independent India… [British officials] had the difficult task of restraining agitation whilst admitting that the agitators, from their own point of view, were not men who ought to be regarded as criminals (Williamson, 1954: 360).
Shortly after Curzon resigned from his office, a new Liberal government came into power. Its Secretary for India, Lord Motley, then proposed a clause that it is the British government which is responsible to lead India for the self-government. But he understood that any radical changes of sellf-government would resulted in chaos, so he thought that prolonged training was necessary to teach the inexperienced natives to work out a sound governmnet over “a population of three hundred millions amid all the difficulties that beset rulers of India” (Williamson,
1954: 360). That was the state of affairs before the first world war happened in 1914; there was growing sense of nationality, extrimists were noisy but few, but the majority were pleased by the existing government. At the home government in London, there also growing a proposal and the beginning of the Commonwealth of Nations.
policies. The problem was that it assumed a form of super-government which came into conflict with another feeling equally strong, “the nationalism of the dominions and the greater colonies” (Williamson, 1954: 371). India has also
included in the allegiance to the British sovereign, and at the warring time in the African Seven Years War and the First World War India gave a notable support:
Her vast population contained a majority of very poor and ignorant people with no conception of history or politics or the meaning of the issues at stake. Large sections of the Indian races were avowedly unmilitary and outside the scope of recruitment, the fighting peoples being in the minority. Yet from these latter a million men were sent into the field (Williamson, 1954: 379).
British statesmen has corrected their underestimation of India which was regarded as ‘young nation’ among the ‘old nations of ancient civilization of European’;
they then tried to find a way in expressing their made-up mind. It is then became the cause of Treaty of Versailles which has established the League of Nations with India become ‘distinct national member’, “accepting the same rights and
responsibilies as the other nations whether new or old” (Williamson, 1954: 381).
This League of Nations then became the British Commonwealth in 1919. The granting of the ‘same rights with other old nation’ doesn’t assume the
self-government for India, and Indian political leaders still not ceased to be impatient for it.
The First World War was guessed to be short, and it made any discussions of India’s self-government to be postponed. Eventually, the Indian National
Congress, formerly representing many shades of opinion, has fallen to the power of extrimists “[who] suspected that the British were playing false” (Williamson,
of the Congress and devoted himself to the ending of British rule. “He had a horror of cruelty and violence, and taught that British rule should be overthrown by moral resistance without the use of force”, nevertheless, his doctrines were the
cause of violence and bloodsheds, “for he roused his followers to a pitch of excitement in which neither could they control themselves nor he them”
(Williamson, 1954: 398). Gandhi began his non-co-operation to British authority in the 1920’s that advised that Hindu people should not enroll in the position of
British government in India. This has hardened and consolidated the Congress but different condition and assumption was flowing in the majority of Indians:
Many were employed in the public services and in the army, and they put loyalty to the state above revolutionary doctrines. Many moderate politicians saw that an estremists’ revolution would end in chaos and disaster for all India. They refused to boycott a government which meant to do its duty to the country, and they took office in the new ministries and learned to be competent administrators. These Indian liberals were patriotic men no less than the Congress leaders, and they were serving India to greater purpose. In the ten years that followed the Act of 1919 they made solid progress in creating a body of Indian ruling men fit to take fuller responsibility (Williamson, 1954: 399).
Formerly non-violences were placed by violence and assassinations of officials, in which “many of them Indians who were devotedly serving their country”
(Williamson, 1954: 400). It become the sacrifices for the upcoming self-governance.
Full province self-government has been achieved by some central provinces. But it was a fact that some princes was in conflict with this term because they “were satisfied with their existing positions and had no wish to
change it” (Williamson, 1954: 401). But the real difficulty was between the
The Moslems were incurably suspicious of an intended Hindu tyranny, and the proceedings of the Congress party gave ground for their fears. The British government could not resign control when the inevitable result would have been civil war (Williamson, 1954: 401-402).
Yet, finally, after the Second World War the British government has been ready for an all-Indian government after a long discussion mainly for the determination of the Moslems in having the separate state of Pakistan:
In 1946 the real decisions were taken. Mr. Attlee, the British Prime Minister, stated that the self-determination of India would be complete and that she would be free to leave the Commonwealth if she chose to do so… In England Parliament passed the Indian Independence Act, which created the two dominions of Pakistan and India and came into force on August 15, 1947 (Williamson, 1954: 426).
India chose to be a republic, having no allegiance to the King of Great Britain but still becoming the member of the Commonwealth, which becomes a new kind of relationship, “and was ratified… in 1949” (Williamson, 1954: 426).
2. The Indian Army
the situation, in 1858 the British Crown took over direct rule of British India from the former authority.
During 1903-1947, Lord Kitchener, as the Commander-in-Chief, took his responsibility to reform the Indian Army. His reformation includes the institution of “higher level formations, eight army divisions, and brigaded Indian and British
units” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Indian_Army).
By the early 1900s, despite the less prestigious postings than the British’s,
the pay of the Indian Army was significantly greater so that officers could live on their salaries. Moreover, vacancies of the Indian Army were much sought after and generally reserved for the higher placed officer-cadets graduating from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.
The term ‘Indian Army’ itself refers to the force in which personnel was
recruited locally and permanently based in India. As the sepoys have been recruited from local Indian in primarily Hindi areas, British officers were expected to learn to speak the Indian languages of their men. British officers commonly recruit the native soldier, or sepoy, from what the British called the ‘martial races’, including Sikhs, Awans, Gakhars, and other PunjabiMussulmans.
After the Kitchener’s reforms ended in 1909, the Indian Army was organized along British lines. An Indian Army division consisted of three brigades, in which three battalions were of the Indian Army and one battalion of British. The Indian battalions were “not segregated, with companies of different
At the clash of World War II, the Indian Army has enlisted 205,000 men. In supporting the British power, on the Second World War the Indian Army soldiers were raised up to 2,5 million all-volunteers men, becoming the largest in history. Additionally, with the establishment of two armoured divisions, an airborne division and also the providing of weapons, training and equipment the Indian Army had considerable independence. In this much sought war, the Germans and Japanese were successful in recruiting combat forces from Indian prisoners of war. Those Indians are prisoned men joining forces known as the Tiger Legion and the Indian National Army (INA). At that war, about three-fifths of 55,000 Indians, taken as prisoners in Malaya and Singapore, then joined the INA which fought Allied Forces in the Burma Campaign, and some others became guards at Japanese camps. However, some Indian Army personnel resisted to be recruited by Japan and remained prisoners and were taken to Japanese-occupied areas of New Guinea as forced labor.
On the aftermath of World War II, as a result of the Partition of India in 1947,
[the] formations, units, assets, and indigenous personnel of the Indian Army were divided, with two thirds of the assets being retained by the Union of India, and one third going to the new Dominion of Pakistan (Lapping, 1985:75).
D. Theoretical Framework
I use postcolonial approach in viewing the Identity re-negotiation of Arjun, a colonised subject in The Glass Palace. This perspective is applied in order to examine the problem of subject formation undergone by a mimic man in the British Indian Army. Bhabha’s hybridity and liminality are used to examine Arjun’s desire and resistance to the British imperialists, his former co-workers. Since his struggle is mainly caused by the discourse of mimicry, I use Bhabha’s psychoanalytic reading of mimicry and the theory of false-consciousness to analyze the vicissitudes and nature of colonial strategy. Given account to Loomba’s criticism on Bhabha’s generalized hybridity, I then take the point of Indian Society as the context in which Arjun’s hybridity should be learnt. The
information of this society is limited to begin in 1923, just as the year of Arjun’s
birth, to post-World-War II in which India Nationalist Movement sets its rebellion against the Empire. The theory of characterization becomes the tools to point out the ‘characterization’ of Indian Society and British Indian Army. I also refer to
CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY
A. Object of the Study
The Glass Palace (paperback ed. 2001) is a historical novel by Indian writer Amitav Ghosh. The title of the novel derives from the Glass Palace Chronicle, which is an old Burmese historical work commissioned by King Bagyidaw in 1829. This novel was published by HarperCollinsPublishers and now it has been translated and published in 25 different languages.
The Glass Palace has won several awards and prizes. This 522-pages novel was The Eurasian regional winner in the “Best Book” category of the 2001 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. On the same year, it was the Winner of Grand
Prize for Fiction in Frankfurt eBook Award. Also in the year 2001, New York Times includedThe Glass Palaceas the Notable Books of 2001.
Nay Win Myint, a Burmese writer, has translated The Glass Palace into Burmese and the novel was published as series in one of Burma’s leading literary magazines Shwe Amyutay. But, because the last part of the novel is an extended elegy to Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese Press Scrutiny Board asked for many cuts in that Burmese translation.
B. Approach of the Study
claims once made on behalf of literature by liberal humanist critics” (Barry,
2002:192). This idea of unseating liberal-humanist approach has born from the belief that in such universalism, “Eurocentric values, principles, norms and practices are beingpromoted” (Barry, 2002:193).
There are characteristics of postcolonial reading. Firstly, it refuses the perception for the non-European as exotic or immoral ‘Other’. This awareness is evoked also by a rejection on contemporary and modern nation, for it has been tainted with the colonial status. Secondly, it pays much attention on language. Some postcolonial writers have concluded that “The colonisers’ language is permanently tainted, and that to write in it involves a crucial acquiescence in colonial structures” (Barry, 2002:195). The third characteristic is that it emphasises on identity as doubled, hybrid, or unstable. Fourthly, there is
‘cross-cultural’ interaction in the transition undergone by postcolonial writers. This
interaction involves three phases:
... Adopt, when a writer tries to adpot the form of colonial literature; ... Adapt, since it is the phase where European style is adapted to a non-Western material; ... Adept, a phase in declaration of ‘cultural independence’ that the writer make a form of literature without any reference to Western norms (Barry, 2002:196).
and offering a radical redefinition of identity and culture, Bhabha has opened up a new ground for postcolonial study, mainly of postcolonial identity..
C. Method of the Study
This study is conducted as a library research. Mary W. George (2008) defines this method to involve “identifying and locating sources that provide
factual information or personal/expert opinion on a research question; necessary component of every other research method at some point” (George, 2008:6). Therefore the body of this study involves plenty of citations from experts in postcolonial study. The citations from their essays or books can be said as the trace of the development in the study of postcoloniality.
This study uses as a primary source a paperback edition of novelThe Glas Palace by Amitav Ghosh, published by HarperCollinPublishers in 2001. The secondary sources is a compilement from postcolonial books or essays. Among those books are The Location of Culture (1994) by Homi K. Bhabha and Colonialism/Postcolonialism(2005) by Ania Loomba,
CHAPTER IV ANALYSIS
The method of this chapter is contextual analysis. It emphasizes the interconnectedness between character and society. My assumption here to use that method is that the India society, as a medium according to Langland (1984), has provided certain set of values which conceives Indian identity. In The Glass Palace (2001), it is in relation to such conceptualization that an Indian named Arjun defines the core of his being. However, in the novel, I have identified the British-Indian military sytem as embodying another value system which position Arjun as the subject. Both systems have values that intervene and challenge each other. For India has a presumably older and rigid social prescriptions, a relatively ‘younger’ medium like the British-Indian military system, in fact, yields more effects. The problem is those effects are mostly disturbing and disabling. Arjun himself suffers from the identity effect which is self-alienation. He is, after all, caught in a tension between his India rootedness and English image he has learnt to desire. Therefore, the analysis in this chapter aims to provide the evidences of the re-negotiation process participating both systems, that leads to his decision of what values should prevail within and assume his identity.
A. The Identity of India as a Manifestation of India Value System
in which Arjun conceptualizes his Self. Although later in his life he joins the British Indian Army, and is exalted by his English image, he fails to ignore his India rootedness. Thus, by also trying to answer the first problem formulation of this study, here I describes the India value system to justify its impact to his re-negotiation process.
I use the phrase ‘Identity of India’ as the title of this subchapter. This is to refer to the general conception among the Indians that spring from a set of values that regulate the society where they live in. Langland (1984:6) proposes that a set of values, as an abstract regulator of society, can consist of everything in one’s milieu. It can be the ethics, beliefs, religious system or any institution that operate a certain area. SinceThe Glass Palacedoes not draw equal details on every aspect or value, I also uses the description of values from some co-texts to help us understand India society. However, the values cannot be arranged in a neat division. We should understand that in the society, systems do not work separately; so, we will find that those values affect each other and their connections are beyond deliberate organization. That is why, rather than discussing values in their usual domains like the religious or the ethics systems, I mention particular social phenomena and then discuss what values lay behind them and why they become significant.
from this definition also, his identity invests its chance for power and destruction. This is suchsense of Indian identity, or I like to say ‘rootedness’, that participates in Arjun and constitutes his re-negotiation of Self.
1. The Caste System and Indian’sSocial Behaviors
Ghosh in The Glass Palace depicts India as a country with an intense arrangement of religious practices. He narrates that after knowing Arjun is accepted in the Indian Military Academy, Arjun’s father“immediately organised an expedition of thanksgiving to the temple at Kalighat”(Ghosh, 2001:257). Also another figure, a Hindu widow named Uma Dey, is regarded a legend by her nephew for she chooses to escape a usual lot of her kind in expense for her political movement. Those are only some details that indicate a strong existence of religious teaching and formalities in the society.
The rigidity of religious custom in India can be scrutinized by consulting India’s history itself. According to Ronald Segal (1965:15), India was a Hindu society. Hinduism in India was not merely religious practice and principle, rather it was a way of life, the principles were the core of governing and social organization. In India, Hinduism was not limited to sacred rituals in a hidden temple or private murmurings; it existed everywhere, prescribing the multitudes of rights and obligations and thus conditioning the Indians in rigid social constraints.
system, a hereditary system of social levels that rank the society into many divisions by different tasks and obligations. The life of Hindu within the caste system was managed by the avoidance of rituals and castes pollution, thus constituting inflexible rules of every aspect of life. They in fact embodied the rule of living in India, the living principle of social behavior.
Ghosh as an author has put indifference and resignation to be India’s social traits. And one may assume the caste system as the main cause. He narrates in The Glass Palace how an Indian soldiers are always amazed at seeing the prosperity of other colonies like Singapore or Malaya, and are struck by the revelation of India’s poverty:
…in india, they would have taken such poverty for granted; that the only reason they happened to notice it now was because of its juxtaposition with Malaya’s prosperous towns… as though the shock of travel had displaced an indifference that had been inculcated in them since their earliest childhood (Ghosh, 2001:346).
