The image of colonized Indians in colonial writings A critical study of the novel A passage to India
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Date
2010
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Abstract
This research examines how the web of the discourse images colonized Indians in the
text of the novel ‘A Passage to India'. It analysis how the discourse of the novel redescribes and re-contextualises the colonial cultural values as supreme and ideal
whereas colonized cultural values as inferior and ordinary. It also investigates how these ideologically constructed values are claimed as the central and universal for the rest of the world. The objective of the study is to understand the representation of
unequal power relations and the process of ideological construction in the web of
colonial discourse. ‘Discourse' is used here in Foucaldian sense of the term in which
knowledge and power are joined together. Knowledge for Foucault is ‘the product of
certain discourses' and this knowledge is produced by power. As the power of white
skin colonizers turns their statements as ‘factual knowledge' and the production of this knowledge from power is used as a ‘way to define and categorise others' (Bertens, p.
154-157). Norman Fairclough's model Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has been applied for the analysis of the text. The procedure for the critical analysis of the discourse is based upon three stages: description, interpretation and explanation (Fairclough, 1993). The analysis of the text has been conducted in Postcolonial and post structuralists' paradigm. Critical analysis of the text of the novel manifests that ideologically charged vocabulary items, metaphorical expressions, dichotomous pair, hierarchical oppositions etc. have been used to image British colonizers as ‘Centre' and colonized Indians as ‘periphery'. These Ideological framings have been constructed for imaging British colonizers as civilized, ordered, rational, enlightened and masculine; whereas, Indian colonized as
6 uncivilized, chaotic, irrational, unenlightened and feminine. Ideological constructions have been formulated as Commonsensical assumptions to image British rulers as superior and Indian natives as inferior. The interpretative analysis of the selected statements, taken as building blocks of colonial discourse, shows the constructed social identities by the colonizers as false assumptions.
This analysis finds constructed realities as the imaginary representation of the Indian
natives, their culture and also of their country. The web of the discourse of ‘A Passage to India' as a colonial discourse structures not only the image of colonized people but it also images colonizers, their relationship and the colony. The statements, which image the colonizer as ‘Self' and the colonized as ‘Other', appear as commonsensical assumptions. Ideologically constructed Social conventions have been presented as common sensical. For the projection of colonial practices as common sensical and universal, ideological power has been used. The explanation of the statements shows hierarchical binary oppositions as just western discursive constructions. The analysis, in postcolonial context, manifests Indian natives, the colony and its cultural values as vigorous, healthy and robust as they are in any other
culture of the world. The image of colonized Indian natives constructed in the novel is
imaginary and representational. The stereotypes, created in the controlled knowledge, exist nowhere in the subcontinent; and the Indian cultural values formulated in the systematic arrangement of the statements of the discourse are seen just representational. The analysis of the selected statements reflects that the image of British colonizers as ‘Self' and Indian colonized people as ‘Other' in the web of the discourse is just discursive construction. Description, interpretation and explanation of the statements 7
display the novel “A Passage to India” as colonial discourse which not only constitute
and construct the image of Colonizers as the ‘Centre' of the world; but also Indian
natives as ‘Peripheral'.
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Linguistics, Critical Study, analysis