The Critiques of the English Canon in India: An Intellectual Movement

                                                                                       -Debarati Ghosh and Anannya Mitra.

(This article was written as a classroom assignment under the guidance of  Dr. C. Vipin Kumar for the course "A Begginer's Guide to Cultural Studies" at The English and Foreign Languages University, Lucknow Campus)

Introduction   
               

The study of English literature had been revered as a humanizing enterprise for Indians in the colonial times. English literature was basically termed as a scholarly endeavor that disseminates humanist and aesthetic values. Contrary to this traditional view, in her first book, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India (1989), Gauri Viswanathan depicts the use of the medium of education by the colonial masters as an imperial tool to manipulate and secure consent of the colonized subjects.By an extensive archival research, she has come up with her path-breaking study which has sown the seeds for the demystification of the commonly held conceptions about the English Literary studies. She challenged the assumption that the origins of English literature could be traced to the literary history of the Chaucerian days and argued that English literature had its emergence instead during the 19^th century in colonial India.

While evaluating the role of education in support of the political and social control, Gauri Viswanathan’s work traces the origins of the modern English canon to its colonial roots and how these motives had been an integral part in deciding the academic curriculum. Her research dismantles the historicist conceptions and myths about the evolution of English Literature by unraveling the politics of the institutionalization of English literature in India. Gauri Viswanathan critiques the political history of English literature in India in a way which has been unfamiliar to the readers hitherto. Drawing upon the works of Antonio Gramsci, she postulates the strategy by which the British established their hegemonic propaganda through a nuanced study of the Indian culture, religion, texts and way of life. Her arguments are carried further in Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity and Belief, Power, Politics, and Culture (Interviews with Edward W. Said)

The aim of this paper is to write a history of the critical studies on English literary canon in India. Based on the “beginnings” of the English canon in Gauri Viswanathan’s critique, this paper will explore the critical works that were inspired by her seminal work. This attempt is necessitated by the emergence of the recent enquiries which have questioned the unassailable position of English literature in the Third World countries.[1] We will discuss issues pertaining to various constituents of the English canon such as the syllabus/curriculum and the evaluation system which help in reinforcing the prevalent importance of the English canon in India and the consequent alienation experienced by the Indian students,

Introducing the Critiques of the Canon

Most of the works which critique the relevance of English as a discipline in India resulted from various discussions in conferences. These conferences occurred due to a general dissent among the scholars as well as students of English Literature who could not relate to the content of the texts. Govind S. Shahani, in his essay ““It Will Always Be Necessary to Go Again to Hyde Park”: Raymond Williams and English Studies”, outlines the involvement of the dominant class and its control over the institutionalization of the subject. The exclusiveness of the curriculum alienated the pursuers of the subject who came from different social backgrounds. The entry of the women scholars and members of different caste groups exposed the exclusionary nature of the curriculum which they could not relate to. Thus, these conferences emerged from a need to change the curriculum and make it accommodative towards the divergent audiences. The edited compilations of Svati Joshi’s Rethinking English: Essays in Literature, Language, History (first published in 1991) and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan’s Lie of the Land (first published in 1992) consist of papers which were first conceived in the seminar on English Studies in India conducted by the English Department of Miranda House, University of Delhi in April 1988. Susie Tharu has also significantly contributed to these studies in her edited compilation, Subject to Change: Teaching Literature in the Nineties (first published in 1998).

Predominance of Women Scholars

The entry of women scholars in the academic institutions occurred under the surveillance of patriarchy in India. The domain of humanities was supposed to uphold feminine values and codes of conduct for women. This encouraged the choice of English studies as a justified subject to be pursued by women since it had the potential to carry forward their subjugation. However, several women were dissatisfied with the paucity of their representation in the texts, the subverted image of the figure of woman, the trivialization of their role and the restrictions against feminist approaches to the curriculum. In “English Studies via Women’s Studies”, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan harps upon the use of the female characters in the canonical texts to fashion the women of the country to suit their purposes. This dissent and disavowal amongst women made them question the content and the choice of the texts within the curriculum.

Hence, the majority of the critical works against the English canon has been conducted by women scholars. For instance, there have been various feminist works by scholars like Tharu’s Women Writing in India: 600 BC to the Present, Sunder Rajan’s co-authored essay, “Shahbano,” which first appeared in Signs (1989) and her own Real and Imagined Women: Gender, Culture and Post colonialism. Moreover, the clear majority of women scholars in the field is represented by Rajeswari Sunder Rajan’s Lie of the Land, an anthology of crirtical essays, which consists of 14 women authors among 17. While analyzing the crisis in English studies, Tejaswini Niranjana questions the pre-ordained notion of English being distinctly a subject for women’s studies in India in her essay Questions for Cultural Politics. Her argument is based around the new modes surrounding the critique of English being conducted in India. The issue of gender becomes relevant here by virtue of the conspicuous absence of female representation in the individual texts as well as the curriculum as a whole.

Cultural and Social Alienation

Since its inception, the study of English literature was mainly the prerogative of bourgeois elites. But reservation, as recommended by the Mandal Commission established in 1979 and implemented in 1989/1990; ensured the presence of lower-class students in the classrooms. Though this facilitated their accessibility to the commonly revered texts of English literature, their alienation with such texts was evident. Such an inadequacy on the part of this discipline constitutes another reason to interrogate the canon. In her critical essay “Government, Binding and Unbinding: Alienation and the Subject of Literature”, Tharu’s main concern is ‘alienation’, which is faced during the teaching of literature in India. In her other work “The Arrangement of an Alliance: English and the Making of Indian Literature”, she refers to Thomas Macaulay’s eulogizing of the literature of Britain, which is inseparable from the British notions of virtue and freedom. The teaching of literature has been identified as an important vehicle for fostering this ideology among the readers of the developing countries.

The Orientalists and vernacularists used the method of translation to graft these normative aesthetics within the students. But in their conflicting versions of translations, a very incoherent presentation of culture was depicted. This brought about a sense of alienation which could have disrupted the hold of the empire over its subjects, the resolution to which was found in the medium of English education. The Orientals have been therefore interpellated by the universalistic tools of “comparativist method, humanism and history”[2] which were clearly installed to fulfill political agendas². In Translation, Colonialism and the Rise of English, Tejaswini Niranjana provides a different facet of translation which attempts to interpellate the colonial subjects by offering a rational reason for the introduction of English education. The Indian students have since been observed to inhabit a space alongside Western mythologies, poems, heroic figures, without giving attention to indigenous texts. Moreover, the dalit students who have been oppressed and “crushed down” in all spheres of life, feel the burden of alienation rooted within the texts which fail to include their stories and versions of reality. The irrelevance of the English canon in India thus invariably creates alienated students within the educational system.

Institutionalization of the Canon

The Charter Act of 1813 paved the way for the introduction of English literature in India. The bedrock of the canonical foundation resulted from a collaboration between the colonial authorities and the indigenous bourgeoisie in India. Jasodhara Bagchi writes in her essay “Shakespeare in Loin Clothes: English Literature and the Early Nationalist Consciousness in Bengal”, that the institutionalization of the English studies was demanded by the newborn bourgeois elites. This emergent class primarily consisting of educated Hindu elites wanted to uphold the prevalent orthodox Hindu hierarchy in society even within these new educational institutions. This paradoxical approach of modernity and orthodoxy can be exemplified through the establishment of the Hindu College in Kolkata in 1817. Though deemed as an embodiment of “modernization”, the institution had strict requirements on the basis of caste and creed to be fulfilled by the potential applicants in order to be accepted. This dominant caste prejudice could not be erased even through the secularizing attempt of renaming the institute as Presidency College in 1885.

Role of Syllabus/Curriculum

Syllabus is a subjective creation. It is created through both inclusion and exclusion of texts. It is political and made by obscure authorities in favour of the white male tradition, thereby giving it an objective semblance. Srividya Natarajan, an English scholar, finds the syllabi and pedagogy to be still upholding this unbalanced hierarchical power relations of submission and domination manifested in student and teacher relations. The teacher sanctions the generalized presuppositions about the literary quality of the canonicity of English literature through the subjectivity of the syllabi formation. In “Anatomy of a White Elephant: Notes on the Functioning of English Departments in India”, an essay jointly authored with Nigel Joseph and S.V. Srinivas, she questions the higher education in English and ponders over its irrelevance and its conflicting interests with the vernacular language. She finds the claims of universality and humanistic values of the English studies to be insufficient to hide its function in creating power relations between the colonizer and the colonized.

The English curriculum in India is a political scholarship which envelops its students in a mystified and prejudiced practice of the subject. Ania Loomba, in her essay “Teaching the Bard in India”, identifies two groups, one of which is devoted to the traditional methods of teaching the value of canonizing English literature and the other one which seeks to resist this traditional method and encourages the students to view critically the politics engaged in the introduction and continuing trend of worship of the canon. She brings forth her point by critiquing the most widely accepted prominent figure of the English literary canon, William Shakespeare. Every student of English literature, since its inception in the 19^th C India, has inevitably been acquainted with “the bard” at some point or the other. Though the immortal and unassailable position of the Shakespearean texts still prevails, a significant change has occurred in the eulogizing attitude towards their understanding. These critical works are dedicated to the dismantling of the myth of English canon as being a pure coalescent domain of great works. Hence, scholars have started discussing alienation not as topic to be accepted or rejected but rather which initiates a whole new debate and demands engagement to formulate a solution.

Role of the Evaluation System

Evaluation holds a primary position in the education system. But the conventional method of evaluation followed by the academia upholds and reproduces the dominant ideologies of the canonical texts. The indisputable power relations within the classrooms make it difficult for students to raise questions against the norm of reverence towards the canon. Nigel Joseph states that within the constraints of the canon, both the teacher and the students are restrained by clearly demarcated territories of the apparently unquestionable syllabi which evade their originality.[3]

In any literature classroom, the yardstick of success for a bourgeoisie student depends on her ability of quoting Shakespeare. This practice is further reinforced by the encouragement of the senior teachers, who tend to favour the teaching of canonical figures like Shakespeare, John Milton, Jane Austen and William Wordsworth. However, the underprivileged students usually fail to grasp the apparent relevance of this canon and hence are considered to be utter failures by this group of teachers. It is not the lack of competency on the part of a dalit student in a literature classroom when she fails to comprehend Shakespeare, rather the problem lies in Shakespeare’s royalist undertones which are overtly embedded in his works.

The students from bourgeois families have prior acquaintance with the subject due to their family backgrounds. But the dalit students and students from other underprivileged classes of society lack the luxury of this familiarity with the subject. They need special guidance and a radical method of evaluating their understanding of the subject. However, the orthodox evaluation system does nothing to include their interests and opinions. This general inconsideration leads them to disaffection regarding the subject and ultimately creates drop-outs. S.V. Srinivas exposes the liberal-humanistic claims made by the proponents of English literature through its self evident creation of discriminations in Indian classrooms. So much was it ingrained in the minds of Indian indigenous writers that even though their content was indigenous, the form and structure followed was western. The English departments across the country tend to be the biggest contributors to the percentage of dropouts from the masters degrees due to the failure of the subject to encompass the non-elites within its ambit.

The Impact of the Critical Movement Against the Canon

The failure in attainment of the future promised by English education has followed from the logic that the ulterior motive of the introduction of the discipline was not to create an empowered liberal bourgeoisie as was dreamt by Raja Rammohan Roy, but to generate a stunted caricature of modernity to successfully keep them under subjugation.[4] The endeavors to critique the foundations of the discipline have borne out a different lineage of academicians who endorse a new pedagogical function directed towards reformation. Among the disillusioned scholars are Badri Raina and Satish Poduval, who after marveling in the comfortable confines of the canon and the orthodox medium of instruction, have come to see its ramifications as cultural organizer and the anomalies in its historical origin.

Poduval, for instance, in his essay “To Be in Eng. Lit., Now That… The Voyage Out”, outlines the need to approach ‘literature’ with a serious eye. He points out the penetrating power of Indian literary studies in English to deal with the ideologies of both Western and Indian cotemporary writings. The medium of English writing can be used by the students from all over the world to raise their voices against oppression from colonialism, patriarchy, racism and segregation. The Indian student needs to be equipped with a new form of evaluating “socio-cultural artifacts” for a better understanding of the relations between several institutions, society and power. The questions raised by the critics of the English canon have drawn attention to the areas which need to be reworked and radicalized.


Conclusion

The tension within the domain of English studies creates dismantled scholars, though few in number, who engage with the cannon as a problematic. With brevity, Satish Poduval lays bare the changing face ofteaching of the canon which had once composed one of the “masks of conquest” and can now be used to tear apart and expose the entire system of hegemonic machinery working in society. The need of the hour is the salvation of English studies from all political influences and the empowerment of the student to independently use her discretion in the understanding of the text. Instead of presumably reflecting life, the canon in actuality alienates the Indian student as it fails to reach out to them and bear relevance. Poduval says that a critique of the entire manipulating institution of western education is not only confined to English literature but percolates to every discipline which has its roots in the era of European Enlightenment. In “Rethinking English: An Introduction”, Svati Joshi suggests that while we try to reorganize the discipline, care must be taken not to replace the revered canon with another similar structure which would garner similar reactions from the readers. Instead, we must learn to situate the Indian and English literary texts in accordance with their converging histories. It is apparent that English is structured as a subject to be studied as an independent discipline, unlike other streams for which the skill of English must be acquired, thereby raising a need for “radical revamping” of the domain of education.

The critiques of the English canon in India have carved a niche for arguments, discussions and debates which go against the grain of assumptions. The shifting terrain of criticism coincides with the questioning of the new forms of internal Orientalism, social and cultural hierarchies. The dissent against the canon has had parallel manifestations in the areas of film studies, cultural studies and dalit studies, to name a few. The stake of a reader has urged and enabled her to intellectually engage with the pursued subject and not just uncritically accept the canon. The medium of literature, with a changed perspective, has immense scope of both including and representing the concerns of the marginalized groups. The amalgamation of the English studies into the domain of cultural studies holds the possibility of true emancipation of the downtrodden. The angelical texts are insignificant to the ostracized widow or the unrepresented dalit. But the medium of poetry and prose, when politicized to represent their voices, hold the key to a social transformation.

[1] Aijaz Ahmad explores the conception of ‘colonial discourse’ and ‘Third World Literature’ from political and ideological forces which determine the institutional and academic establishment of English Literature
[2] Susie Tharu points out the three universalist logics that bind the Indian subject to the predications of the dominant authority’s discursive regime in her essay, “Government, Binding and Unbinding: Alienation and the Teaching of Literature”.
[3] Natarajan, Srividya; Joseph, Nigel and Srinivas, S.V, “Anatomy of a White Elephant: Notes on the Functioning of English Departments in India” in Subject to Change: Teaching Literature in the Nineties.
[4] Sumit Sarkar,A Critique of Colonial India.pp.1-17

References:

Bagchi, Jasodhara “Shakespeare in Loin Clothes: English Literature and the Early Nationalist Consciousness in Bengal” in Rethinking English: Essays in Literature, Language, History.

(ed) Joshi, Svati (1991), Rethinking English: Essays in Literature, Language, History. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press 1994)

Joshi, Svati “Rethinking English: An Introduction” in Rethinking English: Essays in Literature, Language, History.

Loomba, Ania “Teaching the Bard in India” in Subject to Change: Teaching Literature in the Nineties.

Natarajan, Srividya; Joseph, Nigel and Srinivas, S.V, “Anatomy of a White Elephant: Notes on the Functioning of English Departments in India” in Subject to Change: Teaching Literature in the Nineties.

Niranjana, Tejaswini Questions for Cultural Politics in Subject to Change: Teaching Literature in the Nineties.

Niranjana, Tejaswini “Translation, Colonialism and the Rise of English” in Rethinking English: Essays in Literature, Language, History.

Poduval, Satish “To Be in Eng. Lit., Now That… The Voyage Out”  in Subject to Change: Teaching Literature in the Nineties.

Shahani, Govind S. ““It Will Always Be Necessary to Go Again to Hyde Park”: Raymond Williams and English Studies” in Subject to Change: Teaching Literature in the Nineties

Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari “English Studies via Women’s Studies” in Subject to Change: Teaching Literature in the Nineties.

Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari Real and Imagined Women: Gender, Culture and Post colonialism  

Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari “Shabano” in Signs (1989)

(ed.) Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari The Lie of the Land: English Literary Studies in India (New         Delhi: Oxford  University  Press,  1992).

Tharu, Susie “Government, Binding and Unbinding: Alienation and the Subject of Literature” in Subject to Change: Teaching Literature in the Nineties.

(ed) Tharu, Susie (1998), Subject To Change: Teaching Literature in the Nineties. (New Delhi: Orient Longman Limited)

Tharu, Susie The Arrangement of an Alliance: English and the Making of Indian Literature in Rethinking English: Essays in Literature, Language, History.

Tharu, Susie Women Writing in India: 600 BC to the Present

Viswanathan, Gauri, (1989) Masks of Conquest Conversion, Modernity and Belief, Power, Politics, and Culture (Interviews with Edward W. Said): Literary Study and British Rule in India

Viswanathan, Gauri (1998) Outside the Fold: