Rushdie argues that ‘‘Indian writers cannot use the language the way the British did ’’ (Rushdie, 17). This seems very logical since India has been colonized by the British for hundred of years, but had its own history and culture before. This idea is expressed by Ashcroft, in ''Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies'' where we can read : ‘‘In the case of India, for example, where many highly developed pre-colonial literary cultures flourished, there were also vibrant oral folk cultures that remained a vigorous part of popular culture and interacted with the literary traditions, ( Ashcroft, 165).
However, as Rusdie states, the British Indian writer cannot just reject English, because the language is central in forging a British Indian identity. Instead of rejecting it, Indian writers ‘‘need to remake it for their own purpose.’’
Chandra’s ''Love and Longing in Bombay'' illustrates the remaking of the English language for his own purpose. The book shows that there is a concialiation, a harmony, a dialogue and sometimes a tension between English and Indian traditions.
One of the most obvious evidences of tension or maybe conciliation between English and Indian traditions, is the use of both English and Hindi words in the same text. It can be seen as a tension since they don’t have the same typography : Hindi words are in italics, whereas English words are not. It can also be seen as a concialiation, since both languages occupy the same narrative frames. Interestingly though, contrary to some authors we have studied, such as Danticat, Chandra rarely provides his Western readers with a translation. Why not ?
There may be several reasons for that. One of them is mentioned in Rushdie’s article. When words are translated, something gets always lost, so it is a great risk.
Moreover, it gives Western readers the opportunity to travel in an intellectual way, a travel that echoes the literary travel undertaken by the author to his homeland, India.
In addition, these Hindi words constitute elements of Indian identity the author wants to share with his readers. When we take a close look at instances in which Hindi words are used, we notice that they have to do with food, music, peoples…In other words, with elements that define homeland. Regarding the food served at the wedding of Ganga’s daugther, we can read : ‘‘Everyone was eating around them. Sheila ate the puri bhaji and the biryani and the sticky jalebis…’’ ( Chandra, 67). The narrator also kept the Hindi name of Kshitih's cultural organization (Rakshak). Translation would take away a part of the authencity of the things designated.
This dialogue between Indian traditions and English culture is also reflected in the way the narratives are constructed. The author uses English, the language of the former colonizer, to talk about Indian traditions, superstitions and realities. English is a tool used by the author to convey the Indian tradition of story telling. In this way, the author invites Western readers to explore India oral traditions.
And it can be related to what Rushdie says at the end. He warns Indian authors against the ‘‘adoption of a ghetto mentality.’’He goes on by saying : ‘‘To forget that there is a world beyond the community to which we belong, to confine ourselves within narrowly defined cultural frontiers, would be , I believe, to go voluntarily into that form of internal exile which in South Africa is called the ‘homeland’’’(Rushdie, 19). As we have mentioned in class, Chandra’s deals with the period after the decolonization and does not deny its effects, the phenomenon of globalization, the movements of products, of people, the exchange of ideas, languages…His stories testify that he is an international writer, like Rushdie.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
A Precocious Blend
The motif Rushdie interjects into his piece is the presence of varying dualities. Additionally, stemming from these dualities he proposes their overlapping complexities, and in return reflects upon the simultaneity of their existences. One such duality is the presence of new and old worlds both in life and in literature.
He therefore states that literature, “offers a way of echoing in the form of our work the issues faced by all of us: how to build a new, ‘modern’ world out of an old, legend-haunted civilization, an old culture which we have brought into the heart of a newer one” (19). Analyzing this statement fully it is hard to ignore its relevance to the post-colonial issues present within the works of both Chandra and Achebe.
Thus, as Rushdie suggests, the majority of Chandra’s modern Bombay characters struggle to embody their new identities, whilst simultaneously being haunted by the legends of old. This is true for Jago as his new identity is haunted by the ghost of his earlier self; for Shelia as she tries to overcome the ties of old money (Dolly); for Sartaj as he attempts to justify his divorce within his relentless memory of Megha; and even for Subramaniam whose only way of conceptualizing the present is by telling the stories of the past.
In this same respect, Achebe depicts the later portion of Rushdie’s statement by which the old struggles to find identity within the new. The most exemplary form of this can be found through the use of proverbs, as discussed in class, in conjunction with the arrival of the missionaries. The proverbs therefore shift from being spoken as easily as one breathes, into a strained and urgent defense of an old culture within a new. Furthermore the severe and tragic destruction of Okonkwo’s character because he can not allow the two worlds to co-exist is telling of the reality of their presence as well.
In essence, Rushdie, Achebe and Chandra all ultimately claim that a homeland takes on the dual reality of both a ‘modern’ and an ‘old’ world. What is more noteworthy is how each prescribes that the two worlds not only exist, but function simultaneously: they are infused, and irrevocably unable to function separately. Each narrative is told with the characters actively living in both worlds, as if the two were in dialogue. Yet, from this precocious blend, humans, and the characters of the novels, are in effect forced to become “at one and the same time insiders and outsiders” (19) of their society.
Rushdie’s main argument then is to awaken writers to the endless possibilities that emerge from this inevitable pool of tangled emotions that trail along with our post-colonial worlds. Having fully explored these options, having “open[ed] the universe a little more” (21), writers may begin to reconcile the two in our present lives.
He therefore states that literature, “offers a way of echoing in the form of our work the issues faced by all of us: how to build a new, ‘modern’ world out of an old, legend-haunted civilization, an old culture which we have brought into the heart of a newer one” (19). Analyzing this statement fully it is hard to ignore its relevance to the post-colonial issues present within the works of both Chandra and Achebe.
Thus, as Rushdie suggests, the majority of Chandra’s modern Bombay characters struggle to embody their new identities, whilst simultaneously being haunted by the legends of old. This is true for Jago as his new identity is haunted by the ghost of his earlier self; for Shelia as she tries to overcome the ties of old money (Dolly); for Sartaj as he attempts to justify his divorce within his relentless memory of Megha; and even for Subramaniam whose only way of conceptualizing the present is by telling the stories of the past.
In this same respect, Achebe depicts the later portion of Rushdie’s statement by which the old struggles to find identity within the new. The most exemplary form of this can be found through the use of proverbs, as discussed in class, in conjunction with the arrival of the missionaries. The proverbs therefore shift from being spoken as easily as one breathes, into a strained and urgent defense of an old culture within a new. Furthermore the severe and tragic destruction of Okonkwo’s character because he can not allow the two worlds to co-exist is telling of the reality of their presence as well.
In essence, Rushdie, Achebe and Chandra all ultimately claim that a homeland takes on the dual reality of both a ‘modern’ and an ‘old’ world. What is more noteworthy is how each prescribes that the two worlds not only exist, but function simultaneously: they are infused, and irrevocably unable to function separately. Each narrative is told with the characters actively living in both worlds, as if the two were in dialogue. Yet, from this precocious blend, humans, and the characters of the novels, are in effect forced to become “at one and the same time insiders and outsiders” (19) of their society.
Rushdie’s main argument then is to awaken writers to the endless possibilities that emerge from this inevitable pool of tangled emotions that trail along with our post-colonial worlds. Having fully explored these options, having “open[ed] the universe a little more” (21), writers may begin to reconcile the two in our present lives.
"How are we to live in the world?"
“It may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is a part of our common humanity…but I suggest that the writer who is out-of-country and even out-of-language may experience this loss in an intensified form… made more concrete for him by the physical fact of discontinuity… this may enable him to speak properly and concretely on a subject of universal significance and appeal” (12).
In Salman Rushdie’s “Imaginary Homelands”, he speaks about creating imaginary homelands (of the mind), as well as those concerns dealing about writing from a “different place” in your past and even issues in looking for “new ways of describing the world”. Rushdie asks the question – “does literature seek to do no more than to describe?” – and then states that “all description is itself a political act” (13) Upon reading this, my mind recalled the beginning of Chandra’s Shakti, in which an exchange occurs between Subramanian and another man; the man says that “at the beginning of everything great and monstrous…is politics”, to which Subramanian replies that “the beginning and end of everything is a marriage” (Chandra 33). I believe that Rushdie touches upon this exchange (of “definitions” of sorts) when he states that “redescribing a world is the necessary first step towards changing it” (Rushdie 14).
Furthermore, he admits that “to be an Indian writer in this society is to face, every day, problems of definition”. It seems, however, that Rushdie not only accepts a “straddling [of] two cultures” but that it can even be a kind of aid in helping the writer answer Rushdie’s existential question: “How are we to live in the world?” (18).
I like what Rushdie suggests when he mentions living in the “physical fact of discontinuity…of being elsewhere”, that it may “enable [him] to speak properly and concretely on a subject of universal significance and appeal” (12). I think that Chandra, as well as Achebe, do a great job in dealing with “the past” and “the present”; and, Chandra, having studied and currently teaching in California seems like an appropriate example of that which Rushdie speaks. I think that is why I was so engaged with Chandra’s stories even though I have never set foot on Bombay – his including of Indian words and phrases within the English of the story help us immense ourselves as readers into what goes on in Bombay. As Rushdie says, Chandra has remade the [English] language “for [his] own purpose” as well as “embraces it” (17). I think that it is appropriate then that the word ‘translation’ comes from the Latin for ‘bearing across’; as Rushdie writes, “we are translated men”, yet we speak the same human language and try to figure out how exactly we are to live in the world. While we are “borne across the world”, it is our desire as humans to “open the universe a little more”.
In Salman Rushdie’s “Imaginary Homelands”, he speaks about creating imaginary homelands (of the mind), as well as those concerns dealing about writing from a “different place” in your past and even issues in looking for “new ways of describing the world”. Rushdie asks the question – “does literature seek to do no more than to describe?” – and then states that “all description is itself a political act” (13) Upon reading this, my mind recalled the beginning of Chandra’s Shakti, in which an exchange occurs between Subramanian and another man; the man says that “at the beginning of everything great and monstrous…is politics”, to which Subramanian replies that “the beginning and end of everything is a marriage” (Chandra 33). I believe that Rushdie touches upon this exchange (of “definitions” of sorts) when he states that “redescribing a world is the necessary first step towards changing it” (Rushdie 14).
Furthermore, he admits that “to be an Indian writer in this society is to face, every day, problems of definition”. It seems, however, that Rushdie not only accepts a “straddling [of] two cultures” but that it can even be a kind of aid in helping the writer answer Rushdie’s existential question: “How are we to live in the world?” (18).
I like what Rushdie suggests when he mentions living in the “physical fact of discontinuity…of being elsewhere”, that it may “enable [him] to speak properly and concretely on a subject of universal significance and appeal” (12). I think that Chandra, as well as Achebe, do a great job in dealing with “the past” and “the present”; and, Chandra, having studied and currently teaching in California seems like an appropriate example of that which Rushdie speaks. I think that is why I was so engaged with Chandra’s stories even though I have never set foot on Bombay – his including of Indian words and phrases within the English of the story help us immense ourselves as readers into what goes on in Bombay. As Rushdie says, Chandra has remade the [English] language “for [his] own purpose” as well as “embraces it” (17). I think that it is appropriate then that the word ‘translation’ comes from the Latin for ‘bearing across’; as Rushdie writes, “we are translated men”, yet we speak the same human language and try to figure out how exactly we are to live in the world. While we are “borne across the world”, it is our desire as humans to “open the universe a little more”.
“Fantasy, or the mingling of fantasy and naturalism, is one way of dealing with these problems. It offers a way of echoing in the form of our work the issues faced by all of us: how to build a new, ‘modern’ world out of an old, legend-haunted civilization, an old culture which we have brought into the heart of a newer one. But whatever technical solutions we may find, Indian writers in these islands...are capable of writing from a kind of double perspective: because they, we, are at one and the same time insiders and outsiders in this society. This stereoscopic vision is perhaps what we can offer in place of ‘whole sight’” (19)
In his essay “Imaginary Homelands,” Salman Rushdie makes many claims and puts forth many theories about memories, writing, homelands, and British-Indian citizens. Ultimately, he touches on many of the topics of postcolonial literature in general. It seems that the summation of all of these separate points says a lot about the power and influence of writers and writing. Literature can be thought of as “the mingling of fantasy and naturalism” (19). It can be a means for dealing with and attempting to make sense of social issues. Rushdie seems to see British-Indian writer’s double perspective as both a blessing and a curse. While this particular group of writers is beleaguered by a sense of guilt for leaving the Indian subcontinent and a disconnection from the homeland, they are at the same time gifted with a new perspective. The lens of the British-Indian writer is distinct because he is removed, by physical miles and more, from everyday life in India. This dichotomy, being both an insider and outsider, allows the writers to not only reflect their culture more clearly, but perhaps to offer solutions or help bridge gaps.
Quite often, novelists write about the past in order to tell a story about the present. It is only by looking back at our pasts that we can attempt to make meaning out of they way we are living today. It is much easier to realize the implications of our lifestyles by examining a bygone era, because we have perspective: “the book itself, as it nears contemporary events, quite deliberately loses deep perspective, becomes more ‘partial.’..I wasn’t trying to write...in the same way as I wrote about events half a century earlier. It would be dishonest to pretend...that it was possible to see the whole picture” (13). Immersed in the present day, we really don’t know the whole story, or have the “whole vision” just yet. Distance, in this case time, allows us to make sense of things. Rushdie applies the same logic to physical distance from India and British-Indian writers. Being physically distanced from India removes Rushdie from the “quotidian” activities of his homeland. He seems to suggest that if he were immersed in these activities, the lens with which he views the world might be blurred. He would not be able to write so effectively, and with such power. Physical distance, in the form of miles, gives Rushdie a “stereoscopic vision” which helps him build a new world through his work.
In his essay “Imaginary Homelands,” Salman Rushdie makes many claims and puts forth many theories about memories, writing, homelands, and British-Indian citizens. Ultimately, he touches on many of the topics of postcolonial literature in general. It seems that the summation of all of these separate points says a lot about the power and influence of writers and writing. Literature can be thought of as “the mingling of fantasy and naturalism” (19). It can be a means for dealing with and attempting to make sense of social issues. Rushdie seems to see British-Indian writer’s double perspective as both a blessing and a curse. While this particular group of writers is beleaguered by a sense of guilt for leaving the Indian subcontinent and a disconnection from the homeland, they are at the same time gifted with a new perspective. The lens of the British-Indian writer is distinct because he is removed, by physical miles and more, from everyday life in India. This dichotomy, being both an insider and outsider, allows the writers to not only reflect their culture more clearly, but perhaps to offer solutions or help bridge gaps.
Quite often, novelists write about the past in order to tell a story about the present. It is only by looking back at our pasts that we can attempt to make meaning out of they way we are living today. It is much easier to realize the implications of our lifestyles by examining a bygone era, because we have perspective: “the book itself, as it nears contemporary events, quite deliberately loses deep perspective, becomes more ‘partial.’..I wasn’t trying to write...in the same way as I wrote about events half a century earlier. It would be dishonest to pretend...that it was possible to see the whole picture” (13). Immersed in the present day, we really don’t know the whole story, or have the “whole vision” just yet. Distance, in this case time, allows us to make sense of things. Rushdie applies the same logic to physical distance from India and British-Indian writers. Being physically distanced from India removes Rushdie from the “quotidian” activities of his homeland. He seems to suggest that if he were immersed in these activities, the lens with which he views the world might be blurred. He would not be able to write so effectively, and with such power. Physical distance, in the form of miles, gives Rushdie a “stereoscopic vision” which helps him build a new world through his work.
Rethinking Post Colonial
Salman Rushdie presents several interesting arguments in his essay, Imaginary Homelands about the tension of the past and the present, the dependability of memory, and the importance of fragmented knowledge that keeps the writer in a constant search for meaning. The most compelling argument, however, resonates on a more humane and realistic level in its analysis of the definition of post colonialism. Rushdie writes:
Of all of the many elephant traps lying ahead of us, the largest and most dangerous pit fall would be the adoption of a ghetto mentality. To forget that there is a world beyond the community to which we belong, to confine ourselves within narrowly defined frontiers, would be, I believe, to go voluntarily into that form of internal exile which in South America is called “homeland” (19).
Rushdie cracks open the argument concerning the good and evil of colonialism and allows the reader to think of this phenomenon on anther level. Are we supposed to crawl into tiny balls and hide under our beds all day so we don’t interact at all? Do we avoid the risk of not agreeing? Absolutely not. This venture out of your own territory, Rushdie argues, is necessary to keep the world moving. Perhaps it is the mentality that is carried by those who colonize, who go to other lands only with the willingness construct their own homeland and replace a culture that they never gave a chance to, is where the problem of colonization arises. Not only must we leave our homelands to expand our world view, but we must break out of the shell of our internal homelands, and enable ourselves to feel the richness of other cultures. He asks the reader to look beyond the frozen image in a photograph (much like the one he describes hanging on a wall in the beginning of the article).
An important tension of breaking away from our homeland is the reality that we can never truly let go of our pasts. Rushdie’s reflections on this struggle reminded me of Subramaniam in Chandra’s Love and Longing in Bombay, who tells the narrator the stories that drive the text. Rushdie writes, “But the photograph tells me to invert this idea; it reminds me that it’s my present that is foreign, and that the past is home, albeit a lost home in a lost city in the mists of lost time” (9). I thought of Subramaniam as I read these words. I pictured him sitting in the seedy bar in Bombay, telling the narrator stories of people he may or may not have known, and may or may not have understood. The stories keep the book going. They are the past pushing against the present, Subramaniam’s way of making sense of the chaos occurring around him and simultaneously allowing the narrator and the reader a more complex look at Bombay.
We can’t let go of what has come before us, or hold our pasts tightly in our hands. They are gone, but not gone completely, and the struggle to move forward, and make sense of what has changed, is a challenge that resonates in the work of Chandra, Achebe, as well as our own lives. We are stuck in some state between the present and the past, where time goes by without asking, and people hurt each other for the wrong reasons only to go back and make the same mistakes. Chandra and Rushdie show the effects of Post Colonialism on more microscopic level, where specific cultures and religions are not clearly defined.
Of all of the many elephant traps lying ahead of us, the largest and most dangerous pit fall would be the adoption of a ghetto mentality. To forget that there is a world beyond the community to which we belong, to confine ourselves within narrowly defined frontiers, would be, I believe, to go voluntarily into that form of internal exile which in South America is called “homeland” (19).
Rushdie cracks open the argument concerning the good and evil of colonialism and allows the reader to think of this phenomenon on anther level. Are we supposed to crawl into tiny balls and hide under our beds all day so we don’t interact at all? Do we avoid the risk of not agreeing? Absolutely not. This venture out of your own territory, Rushdie argues, is necessary to keep the world moving. Perhaps it is the mentality that is carried by those who colonize, who go to other lands only with the willingness construct their own homeland and replace a culture that they never gave a chance to, is where the problem of colonization arises. Not only must we leave our homelands to expand our world view, but we must break out of the shell of our internal homelands, and enable ourselves to feel the richness of other cultures. He asks the reader to look beyond the frozen image in a photograph (much like the one he describes hanging on a wall in the beginning of the article).
An important tension of breaking away from our homeland is the reality that we can never truly let go of our pasts. Rushdie’s reflections on this struggle reminded me of Subramaniam in Chandra’s Love and Longing in Bombay, who tells the narrator the stories that drive the text. Rushdie writes, “But the photograph tells me to invert this idea; it reminds me that it’s my present that is foreign, and that the past is home, albeit a lost home in a lost city in the mists of lost time” (9). I thought of Subramaniam as I read these words. I pictured him sitting in the seedy bar in Bombay, telling the narrator stories of people he may or may not have known, and may or may not have understood. The stories keep the book going. They are the past pushing against the present, Subramaniam’s way of making sense of the chaos occurring around him and simultaneously allowing the narrator and the reader a more complex look at Bombay.
We can’t let go of what has come before us, or hold our pasts tightly in our hands. They are gone, but not gone completely, and the struggle to move forward, and make sense of what has changed, is a challenge that resonates in the work of Chandra, Achebe, as well as our own lives. We are stuck in some state between the present and the past, where time goes by without asking, and people hurt each other for the wrong reasons only to go back and make the same mistakes. Chandra and Rushdie show the effects of Post Colonialism on more microscopic level, where specific cultures and religions are not clearly defined.
"...open the universe a little more!"
Salman Rushdie’s essay, Imaginary Homelands, ties in nicely with the Vikram Chandra novel, Love and Longing in Bombay. Rushdie says, “…that we will, in short, create fictions, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind” (10). As Rushdie rightly points out later, memory is often distorted in the mind. “Indias of the mind” is a lovely image to conceptualize when one realizes that it is an imaginative activity. Being away from the homeland, one’s memory is all he or she has to work with when writing about that very homeland. Memory is not something whole; rather, it exists in fragments. He mentions the loss an individual suffers when he or she leaves his or her homeland. This begs the question, does a homeland constitute as an identity, or is it a piece, a fragment of one? The manner in which Rushdie regards the past resonates with Chandra’s novel as well. The latter offers a number of stories that, of course, occurred in the past. There is a nostalgic tone that incorporates, as the novel suggests, emotions of love and longing in addition to many others. The past and the ghosts of the past, as Rushdie seems to suggest, are what make up one’s identity. He goes on to find this loss of one’s past (the inability to keep a firm hold on the past) is a common thread which links humanity together: “It may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity. Which seems to me self-evidently true; but I suggest that the writer who is out-of-country and even out-of-language may experience this loss in an intensified form” (12). If the past is what truly makes up one’s identity, what may be said of it if it is also viewed as something lost? The likeness of a literal loss of a country to the figurative concept of a lost country which represents one’s past works together quite nicely. These are major questions that are always present within the canon of Post-Colonial literature.
To be an outsider to one’s own culture presents a strange kind of freedom. The circumstance of being outside of one’s homeland and/or culture presents a double perspective that may have been absent otherwise. Rushdie, who uses himself as an example more than once throughout the article, sees himself in a position where he may “straddle two cultures” as well as “fall between two stools” (15). This double identity provides for an inclusive as well as exclusive point of view. He views himself and other Indian writers who reside outside of the country, the homeland, to be both “insiders and outsiders” (19). This gives an individual the ability to see more than one side of an issue or a culture. He also talks about language and the English language in particularly. This is an issue taken up in Chandra’s novel. Personally, as a native English-speaker, I found it a bit strange at times to read a line that basically states that the last part of something a character just uttered was said in English. It stands out to me every time because I am and have been reading the novel in English the entire time, but the intention of the author is that the characters are not English-speakers. Of course, I would have to miss out on the reading experience had it not been in English. Language is, of course, a key component of culture. Rushdie articulates an intriguing idea that I found compelling and relevant to the Chandra novel as well. “Those of us who do use English do so in spite of our ambiguity towards it, or perhaps because of that, perhaps because we can find in that linguistic struggle a reflection of other struggles taking place in the real world, struggles between the cultures within ourselves and the influences at work upon our societies. To conquer English may be to complete the process of making ourselves free” (17). If you are truly a part of more than one culture, then you may acquire double or multiple perspectives that allow for one to be free. The struggle between different cultures is very much present in Love and Longing in Bombay. The relations and intermingling of the Hindu and Muslim cultures is very much a part of the real world (i.e. the story of Iabal and Rajesh). This may cause conflicts at times, but it will also ultimately allow for “cross-pollination” (20) as well. Diversity, elasticity creates a more complex environment which leads to a more open-minded and multifaceted view of humanity all around. The example and imagery of the dog in the final paragraph is both vivid and effective. More freedom of imagination and a more open universe may be achieved by making the world smaller through opening ourselves to many different ways of thinking, to many different cultures.
To be an outsider to one’s own culture presents a strange kind of freedom. The circumstance of being outside of one’s homeland and/or culture presents a double perspective that may have been absent otherwise. Rushdie, who uses himself as an example more than once throughout the article, sees himself in a position where he may “straddle two cultures” as well as “fall between two stools” (15). This double identity provides for an inclusive as well as exclusive point of view. He views himself and other Indian writers who reside outside of the country, the homeland, to be both “insiders and outsiders” (19). This gives an individual the ability to see more than one side of an issue or a culture. He also talks about language and the English language in particularly. This is an issue taken up in Chandra’s novel. Personally, as a native English-speaker, I found it a bit strange at times to read a line that basically states that the last part of something a character just uttered was said in English. It stands out to me every time because I am and have been reading the novel in English the entire time, but the intention of the author is that the characters are not English-speakers. Of course, I would have to miss out on the reading experience had it not been in English. Language is, of course, a key component of culture. Rushdie articulates an intriguing idea that I found compelling and relevant to the Chandra novel as well. “Those of us who do use English do so in spite of our ambiguity towards it, or perhaps because of that, perhaps because we can find in that linguistic struggle a reflection of other struggles taking place in the real world, struggles between the cultures within ourselves and the influences at work upon our societies. To conquer English may be to complete the process of making ourselves free” (17). If you are truly a part of more than one culture, then you may acquire double or multiple perspectives that allow for one to be free. The struggle between different cultures is very much present in Love and Longing in Bombay. The relations and intermingling of the Hindu and Muslim cultures is very much a part of the real world (i.e. the story of Iabal and Rajesh). This may cause conflicts at times, but it will also ultimately allow for “cross-pollination” (20) as well. Diversity, elasticity creates a more complex environment which leads to a more open-minded and multifaceted view of humanity all around. The example and imagery of the dog in the final paragraph is both vivid and effective. More freedom of imagination and a more open universe may be achieved by making the world smaller through opening ourselves to many different ways of thinking, to many different cultures.
Art vs. Politics
“Redescribing a world is the necessary first step towards changing it. And particularly at times when the State takes reality into its own hands, and sets about distorting it, altering the past to fit its present needs, then the making of the alternative realities of art, including the novel of memory, becomes politicized. ‘The struggle of man against power,’ Milan Kundera has written, ‘is the struggle of memory against forgetting.’ Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory. And the novel is one way of denying the official, politicians’ version of truth.” (14)
Reflecting on the inevitable “struggle” between art and politics Salman Rushdie describes in “Imaginary Homelands”, I began to question what the “truth” really is. He asks, “What right do we have to speak at all?” but I ask who doesn’t have a right to speak, which is echoed as Rushdie says that “literature is self-validating”. (14) All art is an expression of one’s own truth, what one learns about life, love, another, himself, etc. Must all art truly strive to “change” the “world”? I feel like there is a distinction between expressing the truth of what is and expressing what one sees the world could be. I think art can do either. I think politics can too, but I don’t necessarily see that those expressions must be in opposition to each other. Rushdie says that politics “distorts reality” and calls their “version of truth” a “lie” that literature exposes through its truth, but I cannot agree. I cannot succumb to the idea that Abe Lincoln’s devotion to the idea of equality opposes literature coming out of the Civil Rights Movement or out of the Holocaust. Lincoln’s political “reality” became a vision for a better world that was and is echoed in various art forms more than a hundred years later.
Within Love and Longing in Bombay it is apparent that Chandra makes a very political, religious and philosophical point or toleration and acceptance. We talked in class about the fact that the integration of the new and the old, the young and the old, the traditional and the modern, the Indian and the English cultures clearly advocated the interweaving of seemingly opposing cultures, religions, and beliefs. I think that’s moderation; I think that is the realization that the world isn’t black and white and that a clear path of right and wrong doesn’t exist in reality. Rushdie writes that “literature is in part the business of finding new angled at which to enter reality,” (15) that “art is a passion of the mind,” (20) that “imagination works best when it is most free,” (20) and concludes with Saul Bellow’s exclamation, “’For God’s sake, open the universe a little more!” (21) but I challenge Rushdie to open his eyes. No positive “change” will come out of rejection, exclusion and judgment. Just as Chandra points out the need for interfaith and intercultural dialogue, politicians and artists are more than capable of joining sides, hand in hand, fighting for the same cause.
Reflecting on the inevitable “struggle” between art and politics Salman Rushdie describes in “Imaginary Homelands”, I began to question what the “truth” really is. He asks, “What right do we have to speak at all?” but I ask who doesn’t have a right to speak, which is echoed as Rushdie says that “literature is self-validating”. (14) All art is an expression of one’s own truth, what one learns about life, love, another, himself, etc. Must all art truly strive to “change” the “world”? I feel like there is a distinction between expressing the truth of what is and expressing what one sees the world could be. I think art can do either. I think politics can too, but I don’t necessarily see that those expressions must be in opposition to each other. Rushdie says that politics “distorts reality” and calls their “version of truth” a “lie” that literature exposes through its truth, but I cannot agree. I cannot succumb to the idea that Abe Lincoln’s devotion to the idea of equality opposes literature coming out of the Civil Rights Movement or out of the Holocaust. Lincoln’s political “reality” became a vision for a better world that was and is echoed in various art forms more than a hundred years later.
Within Love and Longing in Bombay it is apparent that Chandra makes a very political, religious and philosophical point or toleration and acceptance. We talked in class about the fact that the integration of the new and the old, the young and the old, the traditional and the modern, the Indian and the English cultures clearly advocated the interweaving of seemingly opposing cultures, religions, and beliefs. I think that’s moderation; I think that is the realization that the world isn’t black and white and that a clear path of right and wrong doesn’t exist in reality. Rushdie writes that “literature is in part the business of finding new angled at which to enter reality,” (15) that “art is a passion of the mind,” (20) that “imagination works best when it is most free,” (20) and concludes with Saul Bellow’s exclamation, “’For God’s sake, open the universe a little more!” (21) but I challenge Rushdie to open his eyes. No positive “change” will come out of rejection, exclusion and judgment. Just as Chandra points out the need for interfaith and intercultural dialogue, politicians and artists are more than capable of joining sides, hand in hand, fighting for the same cause.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)