Some years ago, when I was reading The Sign of Four, I recollect having been particularly disturbed by the description of the little dart-welding, dark skinned, deceptive Indian native that the villain, Jonathon Small, smuggles from the Andamans to carry out his nefarious plans in England. It was representative of a particular brand of racial stereotyping that was rampant in the writings of classic authors like Conan Doyle and Rudyard Kipling. Consider, for instance, this line from the Sherlock Holmes' mystery describing 'Tonga', the perfidious, snake-like havoc wreaking uncontrollable pygmy of an Indian:
But my thoughts in this vein were rekindled today, not by Conan Doyle's works, (which in spite of being masterful are filled with such racial innuendos) but by one of the most innocuous of authors in the English literature- the master comedian P. G. Wodehouse. While most of us fancy Wodehouse as light reading, I read Wodehouse carefully for I find his wit unparalleled and worthy of emulation. At the same time, his writing is pregnant with incredible perception and satirical irreverence of English orthodoxy. Dawkins' tells us how Wodehouse's writings were filled with extremely smart and appropriate biblical allusions (See The God Delusion):
Coming back to what whetted my appetite to write a post was a growing consternation at regular negative allusions to the 'tropics' and the 'natives of the subcontinent' in Wodehouse's classic bestseller, Life at Blandings. In an otherwise hilarious racket of a series, these instances seemed like bad notes spoiling a well-woven melody. The first instance that I quote is from Summer Lightning(1929), when Millicent discusses Schopenhauer with Sue Brown, who is posing as Miss Schoonmaker in Blandings Castle.
For all his mystical infatuations with the wisdom of the east, I am pretty certain that Arthur Schopenhauer would not have made a statement that even suggested a practice similar to that described above. But while The Sign of Four was published in 1890, Summer Lightning was published much later in 1929, sixteen years after Rabindranath Tagore had won the Nobel Prize in Literature and ten years after Srinivasa Ramanujan had left Wodehouse's country after one of the most successful collaborations in the history of mathematics with England's most famous mathematician then. In less than a year's time, India would have its first Nobel laureate in Physics - C. V. Raman. Gandhi was already world-famous and highly respected in England. Yet, Wodehouse's representation of India is reminiscent of the arrogant Maculay and James Mill (who is said to have written the first 'authoritative' history of India) as opposed to the likes of his own contemporary writers like E. M. Forster. As an other example, consider the following statement of Colonel Horace in Something Fresh(1915) when he speculates what must be wrong with Rupert Baxter's disposition:
"It was that little hell-hound; Tonga, who shot one of his cursed darts into him. I had no part in it, sir. I was as grieved as if it had been my blood-relation. I welted the little devil with the slack end of the rope for it, but it was done, and I could not undo it again."Some would say that such a characterization should not be used to read too far into the author's mind and if anything, should be written off as a peccadillo subsumed under the larger umbrella of artistic freedom. Nonetheless, it is surprising how deeply progressive writers such as Doyle (someone who was singularly responsible for popularizing the methods of science and deductive reasoning) had a part of their minds that still lived in the past. And this was a time when the moral Zeitgeist was undergoing rapid progressive transformation, thanks to philosophers and visionaries in the West. This was a time when slavery had long ended in America, a time when feminism was already a significant social force in Europe, a time when philosophers like T. H. Huxley and John Stuart Mill had broke open conservative traditions through critical reasoning. Three years after the publication of The Sign of Four, Swami Vivekananda's speech at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago would be greeted by a thunderous applause by a prominently white audience.
But my thoughts in this vein were rekindled today, not by Conan Doyle's works, (which in spite of being masterful are filled with such racial innuendos) but by one of the most innocuous of authors in the English literature- the master comedian P. G. Wodehouse. While most of us fancy Wodehouse as light reading, I read Wodehouse carefully for I find his wit unparalleled and worthy of emulation. At the same time, his writing is pregnant with incredible perception and satirical irreverence of English orthodoxy. Dawkins' tells us how Wodehouse's writings were filled with extremely smart and appropriate biblical allusions (See The God Delusion):
P G Wodehouse is, for my money, the greatest writer of light comedy in the language, and I bet fully half my list of biblical phrases will be found as allusions within his pages. (A Google search will not find all of them, however. It will miss the derivation of the short story title, 'The Aunt and the Sluggard' from Proverbs 6: 6.) The Wodehouse canon is rich in other biblical phrases, not in my list above and not incorporated into the language as idioms or proverbs. Listen to Bertie Wooster's evocation of what it is like to wake up with a bad hangover:I had been dreaming that some bounder was driving spikes through my head — not just ordinary spikes, as used by Jael the wife of Heber, but red-hot ones.
Coming back to what whetted my appetite to write a post was a growing consternation at regular negative allusions to the 'tropics' and the 'natives of the subcontinent' in Wodehouse's classic bestseller, Life at Blandings. In an otherwise hilarious racket of a series, these instances seemed like bad notes spoiling a well-woven melody. The first instance that I quote is from Summer Lightning(1929), when Millicent discusses Schopenhauer with Sue Brown, who is posing as Miss Schoonmaker in Blandings Castle.
Schopenhauer says suicide's absolutely O. K. He says Hindoos do it instead of going to church. They bung themselves into the Ganges and get eaten by crocodiles and call it a well-spent day.
For all his mystical infatuations with the wisdom of the east, I am pretty certain that Arthur Schopenhauer would not have made a statement that even suggested a practice similar to that described above. But while The Sign of Four was published in 1890, Summer Lightning was published much later in 1929, sixteen years after Rabindranath Tagore had won the Nobel Prize in Literature and ten years after Srinivasa Ramanujan had left Wodehouse's country after one of the most successful collaborations in the history of mathematics with England's most famous mathematician then. In less than a year's time, India would have its first Nobel laureate in Physics - C. V. Raman. Gandhi was already world-famous and highly respected in England. Yet, Wodehouse's representation of India is reminiscent of the arrogant Maculay and James Mill (who is said to have written the first 'authoritative' history of India) as opposed to the likes of his own contemporary writers like E. M. Forster. As an other example, consider the following statement of Colonel Horace in Something Fresh(1915) when he speculates what must be wrong with Rupert Baxter's disposition:
It's a well known form of insanity. Paranoia- isn't that what they call it? Rush of blood to the head, followed by a general running amuck. I've heard fellows who have been in India talk of it. Natives get it. Don't know what they're doing, and charge through the streets taking cracks at people with dashed whacking great knives.I was surprised to find not two but five or six instances throughout the Life of Blandings where the tropics were used with great dexterity and with to make fantastic allusions to degrees of madness and insanity that can manifest themselves in humans. I was far from outraged when I read these things :-). However, they invariably led me to reflect upon the biases that writers carry in spite of not wanting to be labeled as such. My only take-home from this is that in the process of being funny and witty, one just ends up being squarely obnoxious and unjust to a largely heterodoxical culture, worthy of kinder words. Such misrepresentation is more of an indicative verdict on the intellectual limitations of the author as compared to being defamatory on the an entire culture/community. I still stand by my love for Wodehouse and Conan Doyle - they are to me, the greatest comedy and mystery writers respectively and absolute masters of the English language. No reader can miss the feeling of a rejuvenated ability to write and speak after reading a single chapter of any book by either of them. But a writer must exercise caution; it is easy to get carried away forgetting that there is a thin red line separating satire and stupidity.
4 comments:
hey.. I read the sign of four a long time ago myself so i may be wrong but as far as I can tell such biases were expected from a character like Jonathan Small who was supposed to be a Britisher who had lived in India. It is quite in character for him to be bigoted towards Indians. I think it was more writing in context of character rather than any racial bias. Similarly for Wodehouse [ even though i havent read them] we can say that he was writing for a character then anything a plausible character might say is not really a bias but more a literary necessity.
Though the Intellegentsia were probably changing their opinions about India, there would have been many who continued to hold regressive ideas about the subcontinent. And if you had to use such ppl in your book their biases would have to creep in. What Kipling and party did was a systematic maligning of the Indian culture and is absolutely unpardonable. Wodehouse and Dolye are merely being writers.
As far as racial undertones are concerned, I can tell you that Conan Doyle's writings were abound with such latent misrepresentations of the subcontinent. At the same time, much is known about Conan Doyle's views outside of the Sherlock Holmes canon and it is believed that the time he served in India as an officer had diffused a conspicuous racial outlook in the man.
The same cannot be said about Wodehouse, however. There is no evidence to suggest that he harboured a sense of racial superiority in his personal life as far as I know.
While I agree with you when you say that Wodehouse was not a systematic maligner or sorts, I do not entirely agree that such writing is entirely devoid of 'bias'. There are about 6-7 such passages in his book (involving different characters) and all of them reflect a similar view of the subcontinent. But since we are making subjective comments here, I should perhaps like to elaborate the nature of bias that I believe is present here.
Such stereotyping may be a literary necessity and is by no means heretical or illegal. But it is possible, given the number and nature of such instances, to decipher the views of an author on such transcendental subjects. In this case, while my view of Wodehouse is not that of a systematic maligner/misrepresenter but that of a writer who ought to have been more socially judicious in his writing given that the time in which he lived was one where such social issues were being strongly discussed.
Good stereotyping is one of the best literary tools to make the opposite point. Consider Golding's 'Lord of the Flies' or 'MAUS' or 'Gulliver's Travels' that made excellent uses of the stereotype. But in all these cases, the author ensured that there was a higher consciousness to the text, one that made deep statements against the folly of stereotyping itself.
To illustrate my point, assume I wrote a novel one day (although
you are more likely to do that :) ) and it contained a father-son pair. The father forbids the son from playing in a particular area near the house because he believes it is inhabited by a certain caste of people who ate dead rats from sewers and hence, a vicious bunch. Now assume that there are five such instances in the novel when the father says this as-a-matter-of-fact-edly. Otherwise, the novel is about the son's dream of becoming a NASA astronaut and the father working hard to make this happen. In other words, an inspirational story about dreams coming true.
Now, do you really think that such stereotyping would be the same as another instance where, as an author I would have made the son reflect on his father's bias and perhaps question it? Or perhaps if I would have given some indication as to why the father landed up in the bias in the first place? These are the simple ways by which the author usually 'substantiates' the literary necessity of shaping his characters the way he chooses to. A writer, to a great deal, speaks through his characters.
The point I am trying to make is that in the absence of even a slight inkling of such a higher consciousness (which is abound in Wodehouse when he satirizes aristocracy, the intellectual degeneration among the Nobles, silly marriage laws etc and many-a-time he effects this through the omniscient narrator), it is difficult to interpret such systematic instances as anything other than a bias. Take something as irreverent as Southpark - it is abundantly clear when one sees a stereotype that there is a deeper purpose to it and that the creators of the cartoon are making a political statement. If that is absent, the author can only be seen as a person who has unfortunately shut his mind to some germane issues. Wodehouse must have been unaware of these peccadilloes himself, but I can assure you that these never came out of any substantial context or literary 'necessity'.
Yes, Wodehouse was merely being a writer. And so was probably Doyle. I am not suggesting otherwise. I am merely critiquing instances a reflect a 'bias'; a bias that is certainly significantly lesser than that of a Kipling but nonetheless suggestive of the author's world view.
I think that bias is introduced in these kind of books and similarly in dramas or comedy shows(e.g. Russell Peters) because in a way they are trying to use the already existing image of a country or anything else to identify with people. And people abroad to this day think of India as country of rattlesnakes and elephants.
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