First of all let’s see what is postcolonial Literature.?
- Postcolonial literature is the writings that are produced by the members of the native culture or by the settlers. Who have ties to both the invading culture and the oppressed one.
The post-colonial novel of today is the result of a political phenomenon that had reached a height of demonic dimensions by the end of the first world war. The roots of colonization go back to the most ancient days of civilization. Colonization, a system of political, economic, psychological and cultural domination of one country over the others, always spawns a pattern of cultural and political marginalization of the colonized country. It establishes a myth of intellectual, social, cultural, religious and physical inferiority of the colonized. The language of the master imposed on the native creates a typical colonized like situation. Colonized learns to curse and tell the colonial power. They says, “You taught me language and my profit is I know how to curse.” The victim may not always curse but very often, being aware of the weakness of the victimizer, discloses them to establish his identity.
In the recent years we can see the deteriorating effect of the colonization has given birth to a post-colonial consciousness. In fact the colonized and de-colonized are seized by a “double consciousness.” Thus, all post-colonial writings of the last decade is ambivalent about any stark dualism or native celebration of the post –colonial writer enables him to reject and accept the dynamics of power controlled by the imperialistic country. The dual perspective if on the one hand has introduced the quality of hybridity in all world literature on the other hand, post colonial literature has marginalized the centre that is for reducing significance of the westerns canon.
Amitav Ghosh’s ‘The Calcutta Chromosome’(1996) is an attempt to focus on the implications of a post-colonial novel and to ascertain the post-colonial characteristics to be found in the Chromosome. The fantastic world of the novel present a process of various thematic and technical experimentations and innovations. Many questions regarding the “fevers, delirium, and discovery.” are raised by Ghosh and to make the answers comprehensible to the reader, the writer plays with time, space, and the story-line. The parameters of the “post” in context of Indian English writings, in considered to be the literature after 1947. But the current implications of the word much enlarged, established the beginning of colonization from the early infiltration of the British traders into Indian ethos to the installation of the British Raj. The post-colonial consciousness begins a century before the first war of independence in 1857 and countinues distinctly through the present years. The meaning of post-colonization has spilled over into the realm of history, patriarchy, all kinds of boundaries, the nuances of selfhood and art.
Post- colonial literature, initially, of all forms of colonial way of life, gradually, also became a vehicle to communicate the disillusioned spirit of the natives. But such expressions are rare and not to be found in the ‘Chromosome’. Occasionally, a nostalgia for the English period is suggested by calling Murugan as Morgan, Raman Halder as Roman Halder or referring to the robinson street with its old colonial name: not the new Indian name. Ghosh would have departed from factual truth if he had filed to portray the reverential attitude of the Indians for all fair-skinned humans, a legacy of the colonial rule. The novel by Ghosh considered to be a “spine chiller,” must be read a second time to realise that it is not mere scientific thriller but a novel about mysteries of life and the many deep rooted carvings of man in general. In a scientific thriller, everything is resolved satisfactory at the end of the novel but in the chromosome the theme of search for immortality moves through a never- ending line of female characters: Mangala, Aratounian, Urmila, Tara and one also hopes to meet many more Laakhans, Murugans and Antars through the ages.
The story of the novel moves through the closing years of the nineteenth century into the whole of the twentieth century and then passes on the early years of the twenty first century. Apparently, it covers the colonial and post- colonial years of the Indian history. Of course, the exercized by the Ghosh. The novel opens in the early years of the twenty-first century when Antar an Egyptian computer programmer and system analyst in New York suddenly finds the ID card of one Murugan, an old colleague and researcher flashed on his computer screen. He discovers the Murugan had mysteriously disappeared on 21st August 1995, better known as the World Mosquito Day, from Calcutta. Murugan himself deeply interested in malaria parasite. Murugan firmly believed that there was an other mind behind this entire operation of research and discovery. It was his theory that through Ross was thinking that, “he was doing experiment on the malaria parasite” yet … “all the time it’s he who is the experiment.” He had uncovered that there is one Mangala who with her handy-man Lucthman, Laxman, Lachan, Lokan was carrying out the experiment through an indigenous method.
Ghosh through the story-line subvert the superiority of western scientific of the western scientific investigation and proves that not only were they far behind the scientific progress made by India but here, it had been spear- headed by woman. If “matter” and ‘science’ were the stronghold of the accidental world “anti-matter” and “counter science” was controlled by the oriental. It is a suggested conquest by the East of the West- A typical post- colonial framework. It is also an example of the defeat of the patriarchy and a victory of matriarchy. The search for ‘immortality’ is carried on by Mangala and Lutchman. Ghosh has granted them great liberty and decolonized the members of the lowest social strata- the sweeper and the scavenger class.
Foucault in the “Order Of Discourse” states, “Discourse is the power which is to be seized.” This power is traditionally controlled by colonizer. But in this novel the “discourse of silence”, typically female in nature, has been handed over to Mangala. It is stated in the novel: ….wouldn’t you say that the first principle of functioning counter-science would just have to be secrecy. The way I see it, it wouldn’t just have to be secretive about what it did( it could not hope to beat the scientists at that game anyway.) It also would have to be secretive in the way it did. It would have to use secrecy as a technique or a procedure.
The colonized Mangala is the upholder of the cult of secrecy and by this weapon she controls Ross, Farley, Grigson, Cunningham and all those so-called
White male investigator of the malaria parasite. Those who come in the way like Farley are cursorily destroyed. Mangala uses the potent weapon of silence to score intellectually, over her male counterpart Ross and others. She tries to find a cure for syphilitic paresis through “counter science” of faith. Ross endeavors to solve the mystery of malaria through science. Against this, the power of knowledge to control “ the ultimate transcendence of nature” is an attempt to improve the theory of “migration of the soul” or we can say that “transposition of the soul” is an extension of the Indian concept of the “transmigration of the soul”. In the novel, the boundaries between the real and unreal are quickly dissolved. The entire drama of the novel is seemingly accepted by The Hindus (Murugan Sonali, Urmila, Tara) The Muslim(Antar, Saiyad, Murad Hussain, Alias Phulboni) The Christian ( Mrs. Aratounian and Countess Pongracz). Ghosh in fact, suggests a board based acceptance of the theory of “transmigration of soul” by the colonized and the colonizer. The concept easily acceptable to the Hindus is an act of sacrilege for Christians and yet, Ghosh makes it possible because “post-colonial allegories are concerned with neither redeeming nor annihilating history, but with displacing it is a concept and opening up the past to imaginative revision.” A similar exercise is carried out by the historian in the Indian tradition.
In India, the Indian writers have gone back to their roots very seriously and yet, the Indian English writers have not totally rejected the language of the colonizer: they have very vigorously gone for hybridization. Of the adopted language and thus, the indigenous words have been very freely accommodated, in Salman Rushdie’s creative works one can clearly see the aesthetic use of Hindi and Urdu words. None of the Indian writers have distorted the master’s language as many of the Afro-American writers have consciously done. Ghosh has followed the Indian practice of using native words like “Bibi, Dhooli, Addad Al-Turab, Iskuti” etc. he has not disturbed the syntactic norms of the English language. What he has practiced is known as“abrogation” of the language of the centre ( refusal to give it a expression of post-colonial experience.)
Ghosh has not only employed an indigenous theme of the great mother goddess Kali but has also projected the awareness, nuances, and ambiguities of the post-colonial consciousness. In the novel, the two contrasting societies are clearly etched. The society of the colonizer led by Ross and the “other” culture conduct by Mangala. The irony of the situation is that the so called masters are mere puppets in the hands of this powerful woman. The colonizers were in search of temporal truth and the colonized natives were motivated by higher goal of “eternity”. The tussle between the Western and Eastern civilization is highlighted and victory is granted to the extensively oppressed and exploited. The equation of power is not limited to political overtones but is carried on to the world of mechanical and intuitive knowledge. Murugan and later Antar, two computer experts are chosen to be subsequent Laakhans to the succeeding Mangala that is Urmila and Tara. One comes to know during the course of the novel that Tara is being specifically cultivated to pilot this mysterious cult. The continuity of motivation action and achievement is never ruptured. The Indian philosophy of the Kalchakra is highlighted and reestablished. Counter- science always labeled as inferior, rising from some unknown depth of the human mind strikes back at its tormentor.
Thematically and technically Ghosh has deconstructed the traditional western forms. His constant “border-crossing” from fact to fiction, the disruption of the realities of the narrative technique in fiction. (plot, development, character, manipulation of time etc.) has been done away with as something ineffectual or superfluous, this experimentation has enriched him with a “double vision” that enables the writer to present a cross cultural critical analysis. Like Rushdie, Ghosh has employed “magic realism” to invoke the impossibility of the happening without losing the immediacy of its experience.
Allegory a characteristic form of post-colonial writing creates deconstructs, restructures, reaffirms, myths. The mythical character of the Ramayana. Laxman, and Urmila, Murugan the much revered god of south India. (the eldest son of goddess Durga.) are interwoven into the text simultaneously to reenact the eternal war between satya and asatya. Tara, Urmila and Mangala are introduced into the text to recharge to the concept of the mythical goddess durga. The story-line moves with many under tones. The historical incident of Ross’s invention is consciously shrouded in mystery. Ghosh the fiction writer turns himself into a historian. In fact his role is not much altered as “both history and literature are interested in power” and “etymologically the two worlds are the same and only in English have they separated in this way.” The constant blending of fact and fiction has generated a situation. Where past has lost its antiquity. By crossing over the physical time, the writer has invented new allegorical meanings. The collision between the west and the east has also been projected symbolically through an ideological conflict tradition and modernity, faith and reason, scientific knowledge and intuitive knowledge.
Post-colonial writing mystifies the real demystifies. It is not temptation of exotic expression that compels a writer to follow this intricate path but it becomes a necessity that gives his the magical power to represent the culmination of many dynamic, culture, and social forces. The pluralistic sensibility of post-colonial writings has a significant impact of the writers of the coming century. Amitav Ghosh in The Calcutta Chromosome as a post-colonial writer has rearranged the simplistic equation of life, death and immortality to prove that “word manipulated” artistically can establish theories that are and yet stranger than fiction.
No comments:
Post a Comment