Chapter 2 : The Concept and the Critical Tools

Section I
1. Post Colonialism :
Post colonial literature is a body of literary writings that reacts to the discourse of colo-
nialism. The interpretation and assessment of the present problem is based on Post-colonial
theory. Post-colonial criticism involves the analysis of literary texts produced in countries and
cultures that have come under the control of European Colonial Powers at some point in their
history. Alternatively, it can refer to the analysis of texts written about colonized places by
writers hailing from the colonizing culture. Both Nehru and Churchill fit this definition.
Post-colonialism also known as post-colonial theory, post-colonial studies comprises
methods of intellectual discourse that present analyses of, and response to, the cultural legacies
of colonialism and of imperialism. The researcher has treated the works of Nehru and Churchill.
Nehru's and Churchill's works as post-colonial literature in the sense that they react to the dis-
course of colonization. Post-colonial criticism has been influenced by Marxist thought, by the
work of Michael Foucault (whose theories about the power of discourses have influenced the
new historicism) and by deconstruction which has "Challanged not only heirarchical, binary
oppositions such as west/east and North/South but also the notions of superiority associated
with the first term of each opposition."*
In short, Postcolonialism (also Post-colonial theory, Post-colonial studies, and Post-
colonialism) comprises methods of intellectual discourse that present analyses of, and responses
to, the cultural legacies of colonialism and of imperialism, which draw from different post-
modern schools of thought, such as critical theory. In the field of anthropology, post-colonial
studies record the human relations among the colonial nations and the peoples of the colonies
they had ruled and exploited1*. To present the ideology and the praxis of (neo) colonialism, post
colonial critical theory draws illustrates, and explains with examples from the humanities –
history, architecture, anthropology, the cinema, feminism, human geography, linguistics, Marx-
ist theory, philosophy, political science, sociology, religion and theology, as well as post-colo-
nial literature. The researcher has treated Nehru's work from this point of view.

Definition
Post-colonial theory – as epistemology, ethics, and politics – addresses the matters of
post-colonial identity (cultural, national, ethic), gender, race, and racism, and their interactions
in the development of a post-colonial society, and of a post-colonial national identity; of how a
23
colonised people's (cultural) knowledge was used against them, in service of the coloniser's
interests; and of how knowledge about the world is generated under specific socio-economic
relations, between the powerful and the powerless. Identity politics comprise the perspectives
of the colonial subjects, his and her creative resistance to the coloniser's culture, and how that
resistance psychologically complicated the imperial-colony project for the European man and
woman. Hence, among the cultural media to aid colonisation was the anti-conquest narrative
genre, which produced colonial literature that ideologically legitimated the imperial domina-
tion of a people.

Characteristics
post-colonial studies entail the critical destabilization of the intellectual and linguistic,
social and economic theories that support the Western ways of thinking (Deductive reasoning,
Rule of Law, Monotheism), of perceiving, understanding, and knowing the world; thus is intel-
lectual space created for the subaltern peoples to speak for themselves, in their own voices, and
so produce alternative conversations to the dominant "Us-and-Them" discourse, between the
colonist and the colonized. Occasionally, the term post-colonialism is applied literally – as the
period after colonialism – which is problematic, given that the de-colonized world is filled with
"contradictions, of half-finished processes, of confusions, of hybridity, and liminalities"2*. Hence
does post-colonialism also denote the continuation of colonialism by other means – economic,
cultural, and linguistic – by the "Mother Country", which are relationships of colonial power
that control the production and distribution of knowledge about the world.3*
In Post-colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics (1996), Helen Gilbert and Joanne
Tompkins clarified the denotational functions :
The term post-colonialism – according to a too-rigid etymology – is
frequently misunderstood as a temporal concept, meaning the time after
colonialism has ceased, or the time following the politically determined
Independence Day on which a country breaks away from its governance
by another state. Not a naive teleological sequence, which supersedes
colonialism, post colonialism is, rather, an engagement with, and
contestation of colonialism's discourses, power structures, and social
hierarchies ... A theory of post-colonialism must, then, respond to
more than the merely chronological construction of post-independence,

24
 and to more than just the discursive experience of imperialism.4*
– Post-Colonial Drama (1996).
The Western Way of thinking about the world usually reduces the de-colonized peoples,
their cultures, and their countries, into a homogeneous whole, such as "The Third World", which
conceptually comprises Africa, most of Asia, Latin America, and Oceania. Post-colonial studies
analyses and criticises such an over-inclusive term, and its philosophic functions, to dem-
onstrate that such a fantastic place as the Third World is composed of heterogeneous peoples
and cultures, because the impact of colonialism varied by country, people, and culture.5* The
connections among the "heart and margins" of the colonial empire are demonstrated by
analyses of the ways in which "relations, practices, and representations" of the past are "repro-
duced or transformed", of how knowledge of the world is generated and controlled.6*
Post-colonial studies recognise that many of the intellectual, cultural, and religious as-
sumptions that underlie the logic of colonialism remain active in contemporary society.7* Some
post-colonial theoreticians, such as Homi K. Bhabha, propose that the idividual study of the
colonial dominant knowledge of the world and of the Subaltern knowledge of the world, as if
they exist in a binary intellectual-relation, perpectuates their existence as homogenous entities,
rather than as an ambiguous whole. Hence, the post-colonial world should give value to the
hybrid socio-cultural spaces wherein truth and authenticity are displaced by ambiguity, there-
fore, the condition of hybridity poses the most profound philosophic challenge to colonialism.8*

Critical Purpose
The critical purpose of Post-colonial Studies is to account for and to combat the residual
effects (social, political, and cultural) of colonialism upon the cultures of the peoples who had
been ruled and exploited by the Mother Country.9* As such, post-colonial theoreticians establish
social and cultural spaces in their respective academic fields of enquiry for the voices of the
peoples of the world – especially the voices of the Subaltern peoples who had been silenced by
the dominant ideology (value systems) of the colonial powers; in the European Western world,
Academia is the principal and initial place where such socio-cultural spaces are established. In
the book Orientalism (1978), Edward Said lucidly described how European scholars – who
studied what The West called "The Orient" (usually the Middle East and Asia) – disregarded the
intellectual and cultural perspectives of the Asian, Middle Eastern, and Muslim peoples proper,
whom the Europeans studied, and, in their stead, substituted their preferred, European in-
terpretations and representations of what is and what is not, and of who is and who is not
25
"Oriental", to support their self-ascribed intellectual and cultural superiority, which then
allowed the European West to name, describe, and define, and thereby control, non-European
peoples, places, and things; an attitude of absolute cultural superiority forged and facilitated by
colonial imperialism.
Philosophically, post-colonial theory establishes the critical discourses that destabilize
the ideologically dominant discourses of the European West, by intellectually challenging
the "inherent assumptions... [and the] material and discursive legacies of colonialism."10*
In order to challenge the cultural, intellectual, and philosophic assumptions and legacies of
colonialism, post-colonial studies are based upon working with tangible socio-cultural identi-
ties, connections, and processes, such as cultural identity in a colonized society; the dilemmas
inherent to developing a national identity after decolonization; the ways in which writers
articulate and celebrate that identity, often reclaimed from the colonizer, whilst maintain-
ing connections with the colonial Mother Country; the ways in which knowledge of the
colonized people was generated and used to solely serve the interests of the colonial power;
and the ways in which the literature of the colonial power justified colonialism with cultural
representations (literary and pictorial) of the colonized country as a perpetually inferior
people, society, and culture. In the event, post-colonialism permits the subaltern peoples'
reply to the colonial legacy of the Mother Country by writing back to the center, whereby,
using the colonial language, the indigenous peoples write their own national histories, and
create cultural legacies, for their own national purposes.11* In post-colonial praxis, Indigenous
decolonization is the intellectual impact of post-colonialist theory upon indigenous peoples,
usually manifest in their post-colonial literature.

Some Issues in Postcolonial Theory

Post-colonial theory deals with the reading and writing of literature written in pre-
viously or currently colonized countries, or literature written in colonizing countries which
deals with colonization or colonized peoples. It focuses particularly on
1. the way in which literature by the colonizing culture distorts the experience and
realities, and inscribes the inferiority, of the colonized people
2 on literature by colonized peoples which attempts to articulate their identity and
reclaim their past in the face of that past's inevitable otherness.
It can also deal with the way in which literature in colonizing countries appropriates
the language, images, scenes, traditions and so forth of colonized countries.
26
 The researcher found some of the complexities of the post-colonial situation, in
terms of the writing and reading situation of the colonized people, and of the colonizing
people.

The Literature(s) of the colonized

Post-colonial theory is built in large part around the concept of otherness. There
are however problems with or complexities to the concept of otherness, for instance :
1. otherness includes doubleness, both identity and difference, so that every other,
every different than and excluded by is dialectically created and includes the values
and meaning of the colonizing culture even as it rejects its power to define;
2. the western concept of the oriental is based, as Abdul JanMohamed argues, on the
Manichean allegory (seeing the world as divided into mutually excluding opposities):
if the west is ordered, rational, masculine, good, then the orient is chaotic, irrational,
feminine, evil. Simply to reverse this polarizing is to be complicit in its totalizing
and identity destroying power (all is reduced to a set of dichotomies, black or white,
3. colonized peoples are highly diverse in their nature and in their traditions, and as
beings in cultures they are both constructed and changing, so that while they may be
'other' from the colonizers, they are also different one from another and from their
own pasts, and should not be totalized or essentialized -- through such concepts as
a black consciousness, Indian soul, aboriginal culture and so forth. This totalization
and essentialization is often a form of nostalgia which has its inspiration more in
the thought of the colonizers than of the colonized, and it serves give the colonizer
a sense of the unity of his culture while mystifying that of others; as John Frow
remarks, it is a making of a mythical One out of many...
4. the colonozed peoples will also be other than their pasts, which can be reclaimed
but never reconstituted, and so must be revisited and realized in partial, fragmented
wasys. You can't go home again.
Post-colonial theory is also built around the concept of resitance, of resistance as
subversion, or opposition, or mimicry -- but with the haunting problem that resistance always
inscribes the resisted into the texture of the resisting: It is a two-edged sword. As well, the
concept of resistance carries with it or can carry with it ideas about human freedom, liberty,
identity, individuality, etc., which ideas may not have been held, or held in the same way, in
the colonized culture's view of humankind.
27
 On a simple political/cultural level, there are problems with the fact that to produce
a literature which helps to reconstitute the identity of the colonized one may have to func-
tion in at the very least the means of production of the colonizers -- the writing, publishing,
advertising and production of books, for instance. These may well require a centralized
economic and cultural system which is ultimately either a western import or a hybrid form,
uniting local conceptions with western conceptions.
The concept of producing a national or cultural literature is in most cases a concept
foreign to the traditions of the colonized peoples, who (a) had no literature as it is con-
ceived in the western traditions or in fact no literature or writing at ll, and/or (b) did not see
art as having the same function as constructing and defining cultural identity, and/or (c)
were, like the peoples of the West Indies, transported into a wholly different geographical/
political/economic/cultural world. (India, a partial exception, had a long-established tradition
of letters; on the other hand it was a highly balkanized sub-continent with little if any
common identity and with many divergent sub-cultures). It is always a changed, a reclaimed
but hybrid identity, which is created or called forth by the colonizeds' attempts to constitute
and represent identity.
The very concepts of nationality and identity may be difficult to conceive or convey
in the cultural traditions of colonized peoples.
There are complexities and perplexities around the difficulty of conceiving how a
colonized country can reclaim or reconstitute its identity in a language that is now but was
not its own language, and genres which are now but were not the genres of the colonized.
One result is that the literature may be written in the style of speech of the inhabitants of a
particular colonized people or area, which language use does not read like Standard En-
glish and in which literature the standard literary allusions and common metaphors and
symbols may be inappropriate and/or may be replaced by allusions and tropes which are
alien to British culture and usage. It can become very difficult then for others to recognize
or respect the work as literature (which concept may not itself have relevance.
There other are times when the violation of the aesthetic norms of western literature
is inevitable,
1. as colonized writers search to encounter their culture's ancient yet transformed heritage,
and
2. as they attempt to deal with problems of social order and meaning so pressing that
the normal aesthetic transformations of western high literature are not relevant, make
no sense. 28
 The idea that good or high literature may be irrelevant and misplaced at a point in a
culture's history, and therefore for a particular cultural usage not be good literature at all, is
difficult for us who are raised in the culture which strong aesthetic ideals to accept.
The development (development itself may be an entirely western concept) of hybrid
and reclaimed cultures in colonized countries is uneven, disparate, and might defy those
notions of order and common sense which may be central not only to western thinking but
to literary forms and traditions produced through western thought.
The term 'hybrid' used above refers to the concept of hybridity, an important con-
cept in post-colonial theory, referring to the integration (or, mingling) of cultural signs and
practices from the colonizing and the colonized cultures ("integration" may be too orderly
a word to represent the variety of stratagems, desperate or cunning or good-willed, by which
people adapt themselves to the necessities and the opportunities of more or less oppressive
or invasive cultural impositions, live into alien cultural patterns through their own struc-
tures of understanding, thus producing something familiar but new). The assimilation and
adaptation of cultural practices, the cross-fertilization of cultures, can be seen as positive,
enriching, and dynamic, as well as oppressive. "Hybridity" is also a useful concept for
helping to break down the false sense that colonized cultures -- or colonizing cultures for
that matter -- are monolithic, or have essential, unchanging features.
The representation of these uneven and often hybrid, polyglot, multivalent cultural
sites (reclaimed or discovered colonized cultures searching for identity and meaning in a
complex and partially alien past) may not look very much like the representations of bour-
geois culture in western art, ideologically shaped as western art is to represent its own
truths (that is, guiding fictions) about itselt.
To quote Homi Bhabha on the complex issue of representation and meaning from
his article in Greenbiatt and Gun's Redrawing the Boundaries;
"Culture as a strategy of survival is both transnational and
translational. It is transnational because contemporary post-
colonial discourses are rooted in specific histories of cultural
displacement, whether they are the middle passage of slaver
and indenture, the voyage out of the civilizing mission, the
fraught accommodation of Third World migration to the West
after the Second World War, or the traffic of economic and
political refugees within and outside the Third World. Culture
29
 is translational because such spatial histories of displacement --
now accompanied by the territorial ambitions of global media
technologies -- make the question of how culture signifies, or
what is signified by culture, a rather complex issue. It becomes
crucial to distinguish between the semblance and similitude of
the symbols across diverse cultural experiences -- literature, art,
music, ritual, life, death -- and the social specificity of each of
these productions of meaning as they circulate as signs within
specific contextual locations and social systems of value. The
transnational dimension of cultural transformation -- migration,
diaspora, displacement, relocation -- makes the process of cultural
translation a complex form of signification, the natural(ized),
unifying discourse of nation, peoples, or authentic folk tradition,
those embedded myths of cultures particularity, cannot be readily
referenced. The great, though unsettling, advantage of this
position is that it makes you increasingly aware of the construction
of culture and the invention of tradition."12*

The literature(s) of the colonists :

In addition to the post-colonial literature of the colonized, there exists as well the
postcolonial literature of the colonizers.
As people of British heritage moved into new landscapes, established new founding
national myths, and struggled to define their own national literature against the force and
tradition of the British tradition, they themselves, although of British or European heritage,
ultimately encountered the originating traditions as Other, a tradition and a writing to de-
fine oneself against (or, which amounts to the same thing, to equal or surpass). Every colony
had an emerging literature which was an imitation of but differed from the central British
tradition, which articulated in local terms the myths and experience of a new culture, and
which expressed that new culture as, to an extent, divergent from and even opposed to the
culture of the "home", or colonizing, nation.
The colonizers largely inhabited countries which absorbed the peoples of a number
of other heritages and cultures (through immigration, migration, the forced mingling of
differing local cultures, etc.), and in doing so often adapted to use the myths, symbols and
30
definitions of various traditions. In this way as well the literature of the hitherto colonizers
becomes 'post-colonial'. (It is curiously the case that British literature itself has been colo-
nized by colonial/postcolonial writers writing in Britain out of colonial experiences and a
colonial past.)
In this regard a slient difference between colonialist literature (lierature written by
colonizers, in the colonized country, on the model of the "home" country and often for the
home country as an audience) and post-colonial literature, is that colonialist literature is an
attempt to replicate, continue, equal, the original tradition, to write in accord with British
standards; postcolonial literature is often (but not inevitably) self-consciously a literature
of otherness and resistance, and is written out of the specific local experience.

Notable Theoreticians:
Frantz Fanon
In The Wretched of the Earth (1961), the psychiatrist Frantz Fanon analysed the
nature of colonialism and the detrimental effects of imperial European colonialism upon
the mental health of the coloured peoples who had been subjugated into economic colo-
nies. Hence, colonialism is a source of physical and mental violence that must be violently
resisted by the colonised peoples -- because it is the esssential nature of colonialism to
systematically deny "all attributes of humanity" of the colonised people. As such, Fanon
proposed that violent resistance of colonialism is a mentally cathartic practice that cleanses
the psyche, and restores the human self-respect, of the men and women whose political
oppression and economic subjugation was established and achieved by means of the dehu-
manizing epistemic violence of the institutions (social, economic, cultural) of the colonial
power; thus did Fanon support the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) in the Algerian
War (1954-62) for the independence of Algeria from Metropolitan France.
The socio-political analyses of the psychologically detrimental effects of colonial
subjugation presented by Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth were preceded, in
1909, by campaigns for Hind Swaraj (Indian self governace), by Mahatma Gandhi, which
proposed similar analyses of British colonial rule as harmful to the mental health of the
peoples of the Indian subcontinent. (See: Benoy Kumar Sarkar). Moreover, such analyses
of post-colonialism and its supporting theories, derive from Imperialism, the Highest Stage
of Capitalism (1916), by Lenin.

31
Edward W. Said :
Note (As the researcher has depended on Said's theory, detailed study has been given
in the following pages)

Homi K. Bhabha
Homi K. Bhabha (born 1949) is the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of English and
American Literature and Language, and the Director of the Humanities Center at Harward
University. He is one of the most important figures in contemporary Post-colonial Studies
and has coined a number of the field's neologisms and key concepts, such as hybridity,
mimicry, difference, and ambivalence. Such terms describe ways in which colonised peoples
have resisted the power of the coloniser, according to Bhabha's theory, one of his central
ideas is that of "hybridisation", which taking up from Edward Said's work, describes the
emergence of new cultural forms from multiculturalism. Instead of seeing colonialism as
something locked in the past, Bhabha shows how its histories and cultures constantly in-
trude on the present, demanding that we transform our understanding of cross-cultureal
relations. His work transformed the study of colonialism by applying post structuralist
methodologies to colonial texts. Bhabha's work in post-colonial theory owes much to post-
structuralism. Notable among Bhabha's influences include Jacques Derrida and
deconstruction; Jacques Lacan and Lacanian Psychoandysis; and Michel Foncault's notion
of dischrisivity. Additionally, in a 1995 interview with W.J.T.Michell, Bhabha stated that
Edward Said is the writer who has most influenced his thoughts.
In "The Commitment to Theory", an essay collected in The Location of Culture
(1994), Homi K. Bhabha foregrounds the unfortuanate and perhaps false opposition of
theory and politics that some critics have framed in order to question the elitism and
Eurocentrism of prevailing postcolonial debates :
"There is damaging and self-defeating assumption that theory is necessarily the
elite language of the socially and culturally privileged. It is said that the place
of the academic critic is inevitably within the Eurocentric archieves of an
imperialist or neo-colonial West."13*
What's ironic is that Bhabha himself -- perhaps more than any other leading
postcolonial theorist -- has throughout his career been susceptible to charges of elitism,
Eurocentrism, bourgeois academic privilege, and an idebtedness to the principles of European
poststructuralism that many of his harshest critics portray as his unknowing replication of
32
"neo-imperial" or "neo-colonial" modes of discursive dominance over the colonized Third
World. By means of a complicated repertoire of Lacanian psychoanalyst, Postmodern no-
tions of mimicry and performance, and Derridian deconstruction, Bhabha has encouraged a
rigorous rethinking of nationalism, representation, and resistance that above all stresses
the "ambivalence" or "hybridity" that characterizes the site of colonial contestation -- a
"liminal" space in which cultural differences articulate and, as Bhabha argues, actually
produce imagined "constructions" of cultural and national identity.
Bhabha's Nation and Narration (1990) is primarily an intervention into "essential-
ism" readings of nationality that attempt to define and naturalize Third World "nations" by
means of the supposedly homogenous, innate, and historically continuous traditions that
falsely define and ensure their subordinate status. Nations, in other words, are "narrative"
constructions that arise from the "hybrid" interaction of contending cultural constituencies.
In The Location of Culture, Bhabha extends his explanation of the "liminal" or "interstitial"
category that occupies a space "between" competing cultural traditions, historical periods,
and critical methodologies. Again utilizing a complex criteia of semiotics and psychoanalysis,
Bhabha examines the "ambivalence of colonial rule" and suggests that it enables a capacity
for resistance in the peroformative "mimicry" of the "English book". Discussing artists
such as Toni Morrison and Nadine Gordimer, Bhabha seeks to find the "location of culture"
in the marginal, "haunting", "unhomely" spaces between dominant social formations.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak:

The philosopher and theoretician Gayatri Spivak is concerned with the constraining
mechanisms of institutional realities that 'discipline' what knowledge is produced and if
and how it is disseminated. Chakravorthy suggests that History can only replicate the struc-
ture of a progress harrative in which Europe was there 'first' and the Third World, for in-
stance, can only follow. Chakraborty demonstrates that Europe remains the subject of all
history whether that history is Indian, Kenyan or Nigerian and recommends on intervention
that provincializes Europe.
The definition of the term Subaltern is the principal contribution to Post-colonial
Studies, by her about which she cautioned against assigning an over-broad connotation,
that :
"... subaltern is not just a classy word for 'oppressed", for
Other, for somebody who's not getting a piece of the pie ...
33
 In post-colonial terms, everything that has limited or no access
to the cultural imperialism is subaltern – a space of difference.
Now, who would say that's just the oppressed? The working
class is oppressed. It's not subaltern... Many people want to
claim subalternity. They are the least interesting and the most
dangerous. I mean, just by being a discriminated-against
minority on the university campus; they don't need the word
'subaltern' ... They should see what the mechanics of the
discrimination are. They're within the hegemonic discourse,
waiting a piece of the pie, and not being allowed, so let them
speak, use the hegemonic discourse. They should not call
themselves subaltern."14*
Spivak also introduced the terms essentialism and strategic essentialism to describe
the post-colonialism; the term essentialism denotes the perceptual dangers inherent to re-
viving subaltern voices in ways that might simplify the cultural identity of heterogeneous
social groups, thereby creating stereotyped impressions of the diverse identities who compose
the given group; the term strategic essentialism denotes a temporary, essential group-identity
used in the praxis of inter-group relations, discourse among peoples. Moreover, essentialism
occasionally can be strategically applied – by the so described group of people – to facilitate the
social-communication task of the subaltern, in being heeded, heard, and understood, be-
cause a strategic essentialism (a fixed and established subaltern identity) is more readily
grasped and accepted by the popular majority. The important distinction, between the terms,
is that "strategic essentialism" does not forego inter-group diversity, but that, in its practical
function, it temporarily minimizes inter-group diversity to support the essential element of
the group identity.
In a development of Michel Foucault's work, Spivak applied the term epistemic
violence to describe the destruction of non-Western ways of knowing the world, and the
resultant dominance of the Western ways of perceiving, understanding, and knowing the
world. Epistemic violence conceptually relates to the Subaltern, wherein the "Subaltern
must always be caught in translation, never truly expressing herself", because of the colonial
power's destruction of her culture, and the marginalization of her way of understanding and
knowing the world.

34
 Spivak further cautioned against ignoring the Subaltern people as "cultural Others",
and proposed that the West could progress – beyong the perspective of post-colonialism –
by means of introspective self-criticism of the basic ideals and investigative methods that
feature a superior Western perspective in the study of non-Western peoples and cultures.
Hence, the integration of the Subaltern voice to the field of social studies is problematic,
given the criticism, by social scientists, against the idea of studying "others", which thus
appeared infeasible; nonetheless, as an intellectual, Gayatri Spivak rejected such an anti-
intellectual stance by social scientists, and said that "to refuse to represent a cultural Other
is salving your conscience ... allowing you not to do any homework." Moreover, post-
colonial studies rejects the colonial cultural depiction of subaltern peoples as hollow mim-
ics of the European colonials and their Western ways; and also rejects the depiction of
subaltern peoples as the passive recipients of the power of the colonial country. Consequent to
the Foucauldian argument about the binary intellectual relationship of power and knowledge,
post-colonial scholars, such as the Subaltern Studies Collective, propose that anti-colonial
resistance always counters every exercise of colonial power.

Dipesh Chakrabarty
Dipesh Chakrabarty, writing in the nineties, made a major attempt to chart the
subaltern's history of the Indian struggle for independence. In his book Provincializing
Europe (2000) he seeks to counter scholarly eurocentric views by arguing that Europe should
only be seen as "one region among many".
Section II
Edward Said and Orientalism1*
The present study follows Said's theory and concept therefore a detailed study of
Said's work is given.
The researcher has followed Edword Said's crucial and canonical text of cultural
studies orientalism there is brief review of Said and orientalism.
Introduction
A man of great intellect and courage, Edward Said (1935-2003) taught English and
Comparative Literature at Columbia University. This Palestinian writer and activist was
widely respected for his ground-breaking research in the field of comparative literature and
on his incisive political commentary. As well, he wrote classical music criticism for The
Nation and political commentary for such publication as the Guardian, Le Monde Diploma-
35
tique, and al-Hayat, the Arab-language daily, which is printed in every Arab capital in the
world.
He was born in Jerusalem, and with his family he emigrated (1948) to Cairo, about
the time Israel declared its independence and the Arab-Israeli war began. The family moved
(1950) to the New York, so that he could attended college. Later, Said studied at Princeton
and Harvard, where he graduated Ph.D. in 1964. Most of his academic career was spent in
New York as a professor at Columbia, but he was also a visiting professor at many leading
universities.
Like Noam Chomsky, he became an intellectual of the first rank. Both activists
more or less see the public role of the intellectual in terms of being the outsider, the ama-
teur, and the disturber of the status quo. Both critique the media as impediments to an
understanding of what governments actually do behind closed doors, thereby promoting a
sense of resistance. He lectured at more than 150 universities and colleges in the United
States, Canada, and Europe. Because of his advocacy for Palestinian self-determination
and his membership in the Palestine National Council, he was only latterly allowed to visit
Palestine.
Orientalism
Said published many important books, including Orientalism (1978), a critique of
the Eurocentrism that had come to typify Oriental studies; The World, the Text and the
Critic (1983); Blaming the Victims (1988); Culture and Imperialism (1993), and Peace and
Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process (1995). His most
recent book, Out of Place: A Memoir (1999), was published by Alfred A. Knopf.
This ground-breaking critique of a set of beliefs known as "Orientalism" forms an
important background for such fields as Cultural Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Postcolonial
Studies, which have been gaining prominence since the 1970s. Said highlights the inaccu-
racies of a wide range of assumptions underlying Orientalist thinking; he uncovers the
operations of power in the Eurocentric constructions of the "Orient" across many sites of
knowledge production, thereby helping us appreciate the global dimensions of "race" and
"otherness" (Gray and Mcguigan, 1997, p.2). The researcher has based his study on this
theory.
To some extent, the Orient was a European invention; since antiquity, the Orient has
been a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, and remark-
able experiences. By the mid-seventies, it was disappearing. Perhaps it seemed irrelevant
36
that Orientals themselves might have an interest in the process. The main thing for the
European visitor was a European representation of the area.
In Orientalism Said has challenged the concept of orientalism or the difference be-
tween east and west, as he puts it. He says that with the start of European colonization the
Europeans came in contact with the lesser developed countries of the east. They found their
civilization and culture very exotic, and established the science of orientalism, which was
the study of the orientals or the people from these exotic civilization.
Edward Said argues that the Europeans divided the world into two parts; that east
and the west or the occident and the orient or the civilized and the uncivilized. This was
totally an artificial boundary; and it was laid on the basis of the concept of them and us or
theirs and ours. The Europeans used orientalism to define themselves. Some particular
attributes were associated with the orientals, and whatever the orientals weren't the occidents
were. The Europeans defined themselves as the superior race compared to the orientals,
and they justified their colonization by this concept. They said that it was their duty to-
wards the world to civilize the uncivilized world. The main problem, however, arose when
the Europeans started generalizing the attributes they associated with orientals, and started
portraying these artificial characteristics associated with orientals in their western world
through their scientific reports, literary work, and other media sources. What happened
was that it created a certain image about the orientals in the European mind and in doing
that infused a bias in the European attitude towards the orientals. This prejudice was also
found in the orientalists (scientist studying the orientals); and all their scientific research
and reports were under the influence of this. The generalized attributes associated with the
orientals can be seen even today in many ways.
Here is a brief summary of the book, followed by a critique by Malcolm Kerr.2*

Summary of Orientalism
Chapter 1: The Scope of Orientalism
In this chapter, Edward Said explains how the science of orientalism developed and
how the orientals started considering the orientals as non-human beings. The orientals di-
vided the world into two parts by using the concept of ours and theirs. And what was
theirs. The orients were regarded as uncivilized people; and the westerns said that since
they were the refined race it was their duty to civilize these people and in order to achieve
their goal, they had to colonize and rule the orients. They said that the orients themselves
37
were incapable of running their own government. The Europeans also thought that they had
the right to represent the orientals in the west all by themselves. In doing so, they shaped
the orientals the way they perceived them or in other words they were orientalizing the
orients. Various teams have been sent to the east where the orientalits silently observed the
orientals by living with them; and every thing the orientals said and did was recorded irre-
spective of its context, and projected to the civilized world of the west. This resulted in the
generalization. Whatever was seen by the orientals was associated with the oriental cul-
ture, no matter if it is the irrational action of an individual.
The most important use of orientalism to the Europeans was that they defined them-
selves by defining the orientals. For example, qualities such as lazy, irrational, uncivilized,
crudeness were related to the orientals, and automatically the Europeans became active,
rational, civilized, sophisticated. Thus, in order to achieve this goal, it was very necessary
for the orientalists to generalize the culture of the orients.
Another feature of orientalism was that the culture.

Chapter 2 : Orientalist Structures and Restructures

In this chapter, Edward Said points the slight change in the attitude of the Europe-
ans towards the orientals. The orientals were really publicized in the European world espe-
cially through their literary work. Oriental land and behaviour was highly romaniticized by
the European poets and writers and then presented to the western world. The orientalists
had made a stage strictly for the European viewers, and the orients were presented to them
with the colour of the orientalist or other writers perception. In fact, the orient lands were
so highly romanticized that western literary writers found it necessary to offer pilgrimage
to these exotic lands of pure sun light and clean oceans in order to experience peace of
mind, and inspiration for their writing. The east was now perceived by the orientalist as a
place of pure human culture with no necessary evil in the society. actually it was this purity
of the orientals that made them inferior to the clever, witty, diplomatic, far-sighted Euro-
pean; thus it was their right to rule and study such an innocent race. The Europeans said
that these people were too naive to deal with the cruel world, and that they needed the
European fatherly role to assist them.
Another justification the Europeans gave to their colonization was that they were
meant to rule the orientals since they have developed sooner than the orientals as a nation,
which shows that they were biologically superior, and secondly it were the Europeans who
38
discovered the orients not the orients who discovered the Europeans. Darwin's theories
were put forward to justify their superiority, biologically by the Europeans.
In this chapter, Edward Said also explains how the most renowned orientalists of
the 19th century, namely Silvestre de Sacy and Ernest Renan worked and gave orientalism
a new dimension. In fact, Edward Said compliments the contribution made by Sacy in the
field. He says that Sacy organized the whole thing by arranging the information in such a
way that it was also useful for the future orientalist. And secondly, the prejudice that was
inherited by every orientalist was considerably low in him. On the other hand, Renan, who
took advantage of Sacy's work was as biased as any previous orientalist. He believed that
the science of orientalism and the science of philology have a very important relation; and
after Renan this idea was given a lot attention and many future orientalists worked of in its line.

Chapter 3 : Orientalism Now

This chapter starts off by telling us that how the geography of the world was shaped
by the colonization of the Europeans. There was a quest for geographical knowledge which
formed the bases of orientalism.
The author then talks about the changing circumstances of the world politics and
changing approach to orientalism in the 20th century. The main difference was that where
the earlier orientalists were more of silent observers the new orientalists took a part in the
every day life of the orients. The earlier orientalists did not interact a lot with the orients,
whereas the new orients lived with them as if they were one of them. This wasn't out of
appreciation of their lifestyle but was to know more about the orients in order to rule them
properly. Lawrence of Arabia was one of such orientalists.
Then Edward Said goes on to talk about two other scholars Massignon and Gibb.
Though Massignon was a bit liberal with orientalists and often tried to protect their rights,
there was still inherited biased found in him for the orientals, which can be seen in his
work. With the changing world situation especially after World War I, orientalism took a
more liberal stance towards most of its subjects; but Islamic orientalism did not enjoy this
status. There were constant attacks to show Islam as a weak religion, and a mixture of
many religions and thoughts. Gibb was the most famous Islamic orientalist of this time.
After World War I the centre of orientalism moved from Europe to USA. One important
transformation that took place during this time was instances of relating it to philology and
it was related to social science now. All the orientalists studied the orientals to assist their
39
government to come up with policies for dealing with the orient countries. With the end of
World War 2, all the Europeans colonies were lost; and it was believed that there were no
more orientals and occidents, but this was surely not the case. Western prejudice towards
eastern countries was still very explicit, and often they managed to generalize most of the
eastern countries because of it. For example, Arabs were often represented as cruel and
violent people. Japanese were always associated with karate where as the Muslims were
always considered to be terrorists. Thus, this goes on to show that even with increasing
globalization and awareness, such bias was found in the people of the developed countries.
Edward Said concludes his book by stating that he is not saying that the orientalists
should not make generalization, or they should include the orient perspective too, but cre-
ating a boundary at the first place is something which should not be done.
***
Approach(es)
The researcher observed three approaches to apply to his study.
We can identify three designations for the term orientalism. These include
Area Studies
Note that the anthropologist, sociologist, historian, or philologist uses the term. We
think of Oriental Studies or Area Studies. True, specialists regard the term as too vague, if
not too general, because it suggests the high-handed executive attitude of 19th century and
early 20th century colonialism (p.43).
a style of thought
The term Orientalism also designates a style of thought based upon an ontological
and epistemological distinction, as in "the Orient" and "the Occident". Many writers, po-
litical theorists, economists, and imperial administrators work with this distinction between
the East and the West.
a discoure
Since the late 18th century, the term has designated the corporate institution (a dis-
course) for dealing with the Orient, i.e., a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and
exerting authority over it. My contention is that, without examining Orientalism as a discourse,
one cannot understand the systematic discipline by which European culture was able to
produce and manage the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifi-
cally, and imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment period (pp.43-44). This book argues

40
that European culture gained strength as well as identify by setting itself off against the
Orient as a sort of surrogate self (p.44).

The Terms
Key Words
The researcher derives the following Key Words from Said's Orientalism
The Orient signifies a system of representations framed by political forces that brought
the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness, and Western empire. The Orient
exists for the West, and is constructed by and in relation to the West. It is a mirror image of
what is inferior and alien ("other") to the West.

Orientalism is "a manner of regularized (or Orientalized) writing, vision, and study, domi-
nated by imperatives, perspectives, and ideological biases ostensibly suited to the Orient."
It is the image of the 'Orient' expressed as an entire system of thought and scholarship.

The Oriental is the person represented by such thinking. The man is depicted as feminine,
weak, yet strangely danagerous because poses a threat to white, Western women. The woman
is both eager to be dominated and strikingly exotic. The Oriental is a single image, a sweeping
generalization, a stereotype that crosses countless cultural and national boundaries.

Latent Orientalism is the unconscious, untouchable certainty about what the Orient is. Its
basic content is static and unanimous. The Orient is seen as separate, eccentric, backward,
silently different, sensual, and passive. It has a tendency towards despotism and away from
progress. It displays feminine penetrability and supine malleability. Its progress and value
are judged in terms of, and in comparison to, the West, so it is always the Other, the
conquerable, and the inferior.

Manifest Orientalism is what is spoken and acted upon. It includes information and changes
in knowledge about the Orient as well as policy decisions founded in Orientalist thinking.
It is the expression in words and actions of Latent Orientalism.

41
5. Earlier Orientalism
The first 'Orientalists' were 19th century scholars who translated the writings of 'the
Orient' into English, based on the assumption that a truly effective colonial conquest required
knowledge of the conquered peoples. This idea of knowledge as power is present through-
out Said's critique. By knowing the Orient, the West came to own it. The Orient became the
studied, the seen, the observed, the object; Orientalist scholars were the students, the seers,
the observers, the subject. The Orient was passive; the West was active.
Image : French harem fantasy with a black eunuch servant. The link between popularized
orientalism and libidinization is obvious. "Les petits voyages de Paris-Plaisirs." -- Paris
Plaisir, Feb: 1930. (Image and text from Jan Nederveen Pieterse'sWhite on Black; Images
of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture. New Haven: Yale UP, 1992)

6. Textual Quatations
The Researcher is guided by the following points discussed in Orientalism. It would
be appropriate to quote from the text.
"It is wrong to think that the Orient was (a) essentially an idea (or a creation) with
no corresponding reality. In fact, many Western scholars have found the East to be an all-
consuming passion (pp.44-45)." In addition, (b) ideas, culture, and histories cannot be un-
derstood apart from configurations of power. The relationship between the Occident and
the Orient is a relationship of power. One should never assume that (c) the structure of
Orientalism is nothing more than a structure of lies or myths. Orientalism is valuable as a
sign of European-Atlantic power over the Orient (p.45).
"Antonio Gramsci distinguished between civil and political society, the one made
up of voluntary affiliations and the other state institutions (the police say) whose role in the
polityis direct domination. We find culture in civil society, where the influence of ideas,
institutions, etc., works through consensus (p.46)."
"In any society not totalitarian, certain cultural forms predominate over others, just
as certain ideas are more influential than others. Gramsci calls this form of (cultural) lead-
ership "hegemony". This concept is indispensable for understanding life in the inddustrial
West. Hegemony/the result of cultural hegemony gives Orientalism the durability we've
been talking about. Orientalism is never far from the idea of Europe, a collective notion
identifying "us" Europeans from "those" non-Europeans/Orientalism depends for its strat-

42
egy on this flexible political superiority, which puts the West in a whole series of relation-
ships with the Orient without losing the upper hand."
my contemporary reality
"I see three ways out of the difficulties mentioned above :
(a) distinguishing pure and political knowledge
Distinguishing pure from political knowledge is never straightforward. It is easy to
argue that knowledge about Shakespeare and Wordsworth (say) is not political, whereas
knowledge of contemporary China or Russia is. We demand that knowledge be non-political,
i.e., scholarly, academic, impartial, but in practice the matter is problematic Orientalism is
not a mere political subject that is reflected passively by culture, scholarship, or institu-
tions; it is a distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, romantic, so-
ciological, historical, and philosophical texts; it is an elaboration of a whole series of "in-
terests" (pp.47-48).
Each humanistic investigation must formulate the nature of the connection between
knowledge and politics in the specific context of the study/the subject matter, and its his-
torical circumstances (p.49).
(b) methodological question
For some time, I have been interested in a problem that has plagued the human
sciences, i.e., formulating a first step, the point of departure, thereby marking off what
should be included in a study and what should be excluded. We have to make a beginning
for each project in such a way as to enable what follows. We are especially conscious of
this problem in the study of Orientalism (p.49).
The idea of "beginning", indeed the act of beginning, involves an act of delimitation
by which something is cut out of a great mass of material and which stands for a starting
point. Students of texts can utilize Louis Althusser's principle of the problematic, i.e., the
concern which unifies a text or a group of texts. In the case of Orientalism, we face not only
the problem of finding a point of departure, a problematic, but also the question of selecting
texts, authors, and periods." (Said)

What German Orientalism had in common with Anglo-French and later American
Orientalism was a kind of intellectual authority over the Orient in Western culture. This
authority must in large part be the subject of any description of Orientalism. Even the name
Orientalism suggfests a serious, perhaps pondrous style of expertise; when I apply it to
43
modern American social scientists (they do not call themselves Orientalists), I draw attention to
the way Middle East experts draw on the vestiges of Orientalism's intellectual position in
the 19th century (p.49). Authority is instrumental; it is persuasive; it is virtually indistin-
guishable from certain ideas it dignifies as true and from traditions, perceptions, and judge-
ments (pp.49-50).
We can use two methodological devices (critical techniques) to study the authority
(or the soundness) of the views expressed in these texts (p.50).
Strategic location, which is a way of describing the author's position in a text with
regard to the Oriental material he or she writes about, and
Everyone who writes about the Orient must locate himself or herself vis-a-vis the
Orient; translated into the text, this location includes the kind of narrative voice
adopted, the type of structure built, the kinds of images, themes, motifs circulated
in the text: all of which add up to a deliberate way of addressing the reader.
Strategic formation, which is a way of analyzing the relationship between texts
and the way in which groups of texts acquire mass, density, and referenial power
among themselves and thereafter in the culture at large.
As well, every writer on the Orient assumes some Oriental precedent, some previ-
ous knowledge of the Orient, to which he or she refers and upon which he or she
relies. The ensemble of relationships between works, audiences, and aspects of the
Orient therefore constitutes an analyzable formation.
With regard to cultural discourse, we must remember the following lesson: What is com-
monly circulated by a culture is not "truth" but "representations" (that is, social construc-
tions); language is a highly organized and encoded system, which employs many devices to
express, indicate, and exchange messages and information (p.50).
(Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism London: Arnold, 1997, pp.42-53).
7. Comments on "Orientalism"
Said is most famous for describing and critiquing "Orientalism", which he perceived
as the inaccuracies that are the foundation of Western thought toward the East. He claims
in his book, a "subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic peoples
and their culture."3* He argues that a long tradition of false romanticized images of Asia
and the Middle East in Western culture had served as an implicit justification for Europe
and the US's colonial and imperial ambitions. Said asserts that much western study of
Islamic civilization was political intellecturalism bent on self affirmation rather than ob-
44
jective study, a method of discrimination, and a tool of imperialist domination. Orientalism
had an impact on the fields of literary theory, cultural studies and human geography, and to
lesser extent on those of history and oriental studies. Taking his cue from the work of
Jacquest Derrida, and Michel Foucault, and from earlier critics of Western Orientalism
such as A.L.Tibawi, Anovar Abdel-Milek, Maxime Robinson, and Richard William South-
ern, Said argues that Western writings on the Orient, and the perceptions of the East preveyed
in them, are suspect and cannot be taken at face value. According to Said, the history of
European colonial rule and political domination over the East distarts the writings of even
the most knowledgeable, well-meaning and sympathetic western 'Orientalist' (a term that
he transformed into a pejorative):4*
Said argues that the west has stereotyped the east in art and literature, since antiq-
uity such as the composition of The Persians by Aeschylus. Even more so in modern times,
Europe has dominated Asia politically so that even the most outwardly objective western
texts on the east were permeated with a bias that western scholars could not recognize.
One can quote Southern,
"I doubt if it is outreversial, for example, to say that an Englishman
in India or Egupt in the nineteenth century took an interest in those
countries which was never far from their status in his mind as British
colonies. To say this may seem quite different from saying that all
academic knowledge about India and Egypt is somehow tinged and
impressed with, violated by, the gross political fact and yet that is
what I am saying in this study of Orientalism."5*
Western scholars appropriated the task of exploration and interpretation of the Orient's
languages, history and culture for themselves, with the implication that the East was not
capable of composing its own narrative.
"They have written Asia's past and constructed its modern
indentities from a perspective that takes Europe as the norm,
from which to "exotic", "inscrutable" orient deviates."6*
Said concludes that Western writings about the Orient depict it as an irrational,
weak, feminised "other" contrasted with strong, masculine west, a contrast he suggest de-
rives from the need to create "difference" between West and East that can be attributed to
immutable "essence" in the Oriental make-up.*7 After stating the central thesis, Orientalism
consists mainly of supporting examples from Western texts.
45
8. Criticism
Orientalism and other works by Said sparked a wide variety of controversy and
criticism.[Ernest Gellner argued that Said's contention that the West had dominated the
East for more than 2,000 years was unsupportable, noting that until the late 17th century
the Ottoman Empire had posed a serious threat to Europe.] Mark Proudman notes that Said
had claimed that the British Empire extended from Egypt to India in the 1880s, when in
fact the Ottoman and Persian Empires intervened.8*. Others argued out that even at the
height of the imperial era, European power in the East was never absolute, and remained
heavily dependent on local collaborators, who were frequently subversive of imperial aims.9*
Another criticism is that the areas of the Middle East on which Said had concentrated,
including Palestine and Egypt, were poor examples for his theory, as they came under di-
rect European control only for a relatively short period in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. These critics suggested that Said devoted much less attention to more apt ex-
amples, including the British Raj in India, and Russia's dominions in Asia, because Said
was more interested in making political points about the Middle East.10*
Strong criticism of Said's critique of Orientalism came from academic Orientalists,
including some of Eastern backgrounds. Albert Hourani, Robert Graham Irwin, Nikki
Keddie, Bernard Lewis, and Kanan Makiya addressed what Keddie retrospectively calls,
"some unfortunate consequences" of Said's Orientalism on the perception and status of
their scholarship.11* Bernard Lewis in particular was often at odds with Said following the
publication of Orientalism, in which Said singled out Lewis as a "perfect exemplification" of
an "Establishment Orientalist" whose work "purports to be objective liberal scholarship
but is in reality very close to being propaganda against his subject material". Lewis answered
with several essays in response, and was joined by other scholars, such as Maxime Rodinson,
Jacques Berque, Malcolm Kerr, Aijaz Ahmad, and William Montgomery Watt, who also
regarded Orientalism as a deeply flawed account of Western scholarship.12*

9. Supporters
Said's supporters argue that such criticisms, even if correct, do not invalidate his
basic thesis, which they say still holds true for the 19th and 20th centuries and in particular
for general representations of the Orient in Western media, literature and film21* . His sup-
porters point out that Said himself acknowledges limitations of his study's failing to ad-
dress German Scholarship22* and that, in the "Afterword" to the 1995 edition of Orientalism,
46
he, in their view, convincingly refutes his critics, such as Lewis 23*. Orientalism is regarded
as central to the postcolonial movement, encouraging scholars "from non-western
countries...to take advantage of the mood of political correctness it helped to engender by
associating themselves with 'narratives of oppression', creating successful careers out of trans-
mitting, interpreting and debating representations of the non-western 'other' 24*.
Said's importance in the fields of literary criticism and cultural studies is repre-
25*
sented by his influence on scholars studying India, such as Gyan Prakash , Nicholas
Dirks 26*, and Ronald Inden 27*, and Cambodia, such as Simon Springer 28*, and literary theorists
such as Hamid Dabashi, Homi Bhabha 29* and Gayatri Spivak 30*. His work continues to be
widely discussed in academic seminars, disciplinary conferences, and scholarship.

10. Influence
Both supporters and critics of Edward Said acknowledge the profound, transforma-
tive influence that his book Orientalism has had across the specturm of the humanities. But
whereas his critics regret his influence as limiting 31* his supporters praise his influence as
32*
liberating . Postcolonial theory, of which Said is regarded as a founder and a figure of
continual relevance, continues to attract interest and is a thriving field in the humanities 33*.
Orientalism continues to profoundly inform the field of Middle Eastern studies. He was a
prominent public intellectual in the United States, praised widely as an "intellectual super-
star", engaging in music criticism, public lectures, media punditry, contemporary politics,
and musical performance. His breadth of influence is regarded as "genuinely global", rest-
ing on his unique and innovative blend of cultural criticism, politics, and literary theory.
Milica Bakic-Hayden based her concept of Nesting Orientalisms on the ideas of
historian Larry Wolf and Edward Said's Orientalism. Bulgarian historian Maria Todorova
introduced another concept, a concept of "nesting balkanisms", which is related to concept
of "nesting orientalisms".
11. The Terms
The researcher has found the following terms useful to analyse Churchill's attitude
to India.
* The Orient signifies a system of representations framed by political forces that brought
the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness, and Western empire. The Orient
exists for the West, and is constructed by and in relation to the West. It is a mirror image
of what is inferior and alien ("Other") to the West.
47
* Orientalism is "a manner of regularized (or Orientalized) writing, vision, and study,
dominated by imperatives, perspectives and ideological biases ostensibly suited to the
Orient." It is the image of the "Orient" expressed as an entire system of thought and
scholarship.
* The Oriental is the person represented by such thinking. The man is depicted as femi-
nine, weak, yet strangely dangerous because poses a threat to white, Western women.
The woman is both eager to the dominated and strikingly exotic. The Oriental is a
single image, a sweeping generalization, a stereotype that crosses countless cultural
and national boundaries.
* Latent Orientalism is the unconscious, untouchable certainty about what the Orient is.
Its basic content is static and unanimous. The Orient is seen as separate, eccentric,
backward, silently different, sensual, and passive. It has a tendency towards despotism
and away from progress. It displays feminine penetrability and supine malleability. Its
progress and value are judged in terms of, and in comparison to, the West, so it is
always the Other, the conquerable, and the inferior.
* Manifest Orientalism is what is spoken and acted upon. It includes information and
changes in knowledge about the Orient as well as policy decisions founded in Orientalist
thinking. It is the expression in words and actions of Latent Orientalism.
12. Earlier Orientalism
The first 'Orientalists' were 19th century scholars who translated the writings of 'the
Orient' into English, based on the assumption that truly effective colonial conquest through-
out Said's critique. By knowing the Orient, the West came to own it. The Orient became the
studied, the seen, the observed, the object; Orientalist scholars were the students, the seers,
the observers, the subject. The Orient was passive; the West was active.
Image : French harem fantasy with a black enuch servant. The link between popularized orientalism
and libidinization in obvious. "Les petits voyages de Paris-Plaisirs." -- Paris Plaisir, Feb. 1930.
(Image and text from Jan Nederveen Pieterse's White on Black; Images of Africa and Blacks in
Western Popular Culture. New Haven; Yale UP, 1992).
One of the most significant constructions of Orientalist scholars is that of the Orient
itself. What is considered the Orient is a vast region, one that spreads across a myriad of
cultures and countries. It includes most of Asia as well as the Middle East. The depiction of
this single 'Orient' which can be studied as a cohesive whole is one of the most powerful
accomplishments of Orientalist scholars. It essentializes an image of a prototypical Oriental - a
48
biological inferior that is culturally backward, peculiar, and unchanging -- to be depicted in
dominating and sexual terms. The discourse and visual imagery of Orientalism is laced
with notions of power and superiority, formulated initially to facilitate a colonizing mission on
the part of the West and perpetuated through a wide variety of discourses and policies. The
language is critical to the construction. The feminine and weak Orient awaits the domi-
nance of the West; it is a defenseless and unintelligent whole that exists for, and in terms
of, its Western counterpart. The importance of such a construction is that it creates a single
subject matter where none existed, a compilation of previously unspoken notions of the
Other. Since the notion of the Orient is created by the Orientalist, it exists solely for him or
her. Its identity is defined by the scholar who gives it life.

13. Said's Project

Said calls into question the underlying assumptions that form the foundation of
Orientalist thinking. A rejection of Orientalism entails a rejection of biological generaliza-
tions, cultural constructions, and racial and religious prejudices. It is a rejection of greed as
a primary motivating factor in intellectual pursuit. It is an erasure of the line between 'the
West' and 'the Other'. Said argues for the use of "narrative" rather than "vision" in interpret-
ing the geographical landscape known as the Orient, meaning that a historian and a scholar
would turn not to a panoramic view of half of the globe, but rather to a focussed and com-
plex type of history that allows space for the dynamic variety of human experience. Rejection
of Orientalist thinking does not entail a denial of the differences between 'the West' and 'the
Orient', but rather an evaluation of such differences in a more critical and objective fashion.
'The Orient' cannot be studied in a non-Orientalist manner; rather, the scholar is obliged to
study more focused and smaller culturally consistent regions. The person who has until
now been known as 'the Oriental' must be given a voice. Scholarship from afar and second-
hand representation must take a back seat to narrative and self-representation on the part of
the 'Oriental'.

14. Literary Criticism

After expanding on his thesis to produce his first book, Joseph Conrad and the
Fiction of Autobiography (1966), Said, swirling with a wealth of ideas he received from
studying the works of Giambattista Vico and others, presented his award-winning second
49
book, Beginnings: Intention and Method (1974), a work on the theoretical underpinnings
of literary critical projects. Other literary critical texts by Said include The World, the Text,
and the Critic (1983), Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature; Yeats and Decolonization
(1988), Culture and Imperalism (1993), Representations of the Intellectural: The 1993
Reith Lectures (1994), and the posthumous Humanism and Democratic Criticism (2004)
and On Late Style (2006).
Fascinated, like his postmodern influences, with how people perceive things in cul-
tural contexts, and by the effects of society, politics and power on literature, Said is consid-
ered a founder of postcolonial criticism. His work on Orientalism is particularly important,
but his interpretations of Conrad, Jane Austen, Rudyard Kipling, Yeats, and other writers
have also proven influential among critics.

15. Conclusion
Orientalism controlled the nature and shape of knowledge, as well as how it was
produced and disseminated. This, as Said argued, was not 'disinterested' knowledge, al-
though much of it certainly operated under that guise. By questioning the distinction between
'pure' and 'political' knowledge and deestablizing the former, Said highlighted the fact that
cultural texts play a part in the great game of colony and empire of race and its deployments
"so that the last two hundred years of European imperialism had to be understood vis-a-vis
the cultural text that laid the ground work far and butterssed the structures of imperialism.
Orientalism Spawned an analysis of literary and other texts which foregrounded their im-
brication in the social and political worlds of which they were a part.

16. Further Reading

In addition to Said's work, the proceedings of two symposia at Essex University in
1982 and 1984, which were later published in the volumes titled Europe and Its Others,
included the works of Gayatri Chakrovarty Spivan and Homi K Bhabha. The Orient is not
only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe's oldest colonies, the source of its
civilization, especially language, its cultural contestant, and recurring image of the "other".
In addition, the orient had helped define Europe or the West as its controlling image, idea,
personality, experience. Orientalism expresses and represents that part culturally and even
ideologically as a mode of discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship,
imagery, doctorines, even colonial bureaucracies.
50
 References
Section-II

1. Said, Edward, (1977) Orientalism. London: Penguine.

2. Malcom Kerr, Vol.12, Edward, Orientalism reviewed by Malcolm Kerr, "Interna-

tional Study of Middle Eastern Studies. (December, 1980), 544-547. Journal-on-
line. Available from http://www.geocities.com/orientalism.org/kerr.htm.

3. Harish Trivedi, "Arguing with the Himalayas: Edward Said and Rudyard Kipling",
Asia Pacific Reader archive. University of Toronto. Accessed 6th January 2010.

4. "Bilan des etudes Mohammadiennes", Revve Historique 465.1 (1963).

5. Richard William Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages, (1978; Cam-
bridge: Harvard UP, 1962).

6. Said, Edward (1977), Orientalism. London: Penguine P.11.

7. Orientalism : PP 56-57.

8. Mark F. Prondman, "Disradi as an Orientalist: The Polemical Errors of Edward Said",

Journal of the Historical Society, 5 December, 2005.

9. Earnest Gallner "The Mightier Pen? Edward Said and the Double Standard of In-
side-out Colonialism" (Review of Culture and Imperialism by Edward Said).

10. Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalism and Their Enemies (London:
Allen Lane, 2006: PP 159-60, 281-1).

11. Bernard Lewis, "The Question of Orientalism", Islam and the West, London, 1993:
pp.99, 118.

12. Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory : Classes Natures, Literatures, London : Verso, 1992.

13. Robert Irwin, "Edward Said's Shadowy Legacy", Times Literary Supplement, 7 May
2008, Accessed 5 January 2010.

14. Irwin, For Lust of Knowing : PP: 8, 150-166.

15. Ibn Warraq, Defending the West : A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism, 2007.

16. O. P. Kejariwal, The Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Discovery of India's Past,
Delhi: Oxford UP, 1988: pp ix-xi, 221-233.

17. Edward Said, "Afterword" to the 1945 ed. of Orientalism : P.347.

51
18. Kaizaad Navroze Kotwal, "Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
as Virtual Really: The Orientalist and Colonial Legacies of Gunga Din," The Film
Journal No.12, April, 2005.

19. Bismamoy Pati, "Review : Who is Afraid of Edward Said? Social Scientist, Vol.20,
No.9 (May 1998), pp 3-7.

20. Orientalism, p. 272.

21. D.A.Washbrook, "Orients and Occidents : Colonial Discourse Theory and the His-
toriography of the British Empire" in Historiography, Vol.5 of the Oxford History of
the British Empire, 607.

22. Edward Said, "Between Worlds". London Review of Books, Vol.20. No.9 (May 1998),
pp.3-7.

23. Terry Eagleton, Eastern Block (book review of Robert Irwin's For Lust of Knowing),
New Statesman, 13 February 2006.

24. Malise Ruthven, "Obituary : Edward Said", The Guardian, 26 September 2003.

25. Gyan Prakash, "Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: World: Per-
spective from Indian Historiography"; Comparative Studies in Society and History
32.2 (1990) : 383-408.

26. Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind, Princeton UP, 2001.

27. Ronald Inden, Imaging India, New York: Oxford UP, 1990.

28. Simon Springer, "Culture of Violence or Violent Orientalism? Neoliberalisation and

Imaging the 'Savage Other' in post-transitional Cambodia", Transactions of the Institute
of British Geographers 34.3 (2009): 305-319

29. Homi K. Bhabha, Nation and Narration, New York & London: Routledge, Chapman
& Hall, 1990.

30. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, In Other Worlds : Essays in Cultural Politics, London:
Methuen, 1987.

31. Martin Kramer, Ivory Towers On Sand.

32. Andrew N. Rubin, "Techniques of Trouble : Edward Said and the Dialectics of Cul-
tural Philology". The South Atlantic Quarterly, 102.4 (2003) : 862-876.
33. Retrieved from http://en.wikipe dia.org/w/index.pup?title=postcolonialism.
* Moore-Gilbert, Bart. Post-Colonial Theory : Contexts, Practices, Politics. London :
Verso, 1997.
52
* Young Robert. "The Ambivalence of Bhabha". In Young, White Mythologies: Writing
history and the West. London : Routledge, 1990, 141-56.

* Easthope, Antony. "Bhabha, Hybridity and Identity." Textual Practice. 12.2 : 341-
348.

* Bhabha, Homi K. "Introduction : Narrating the Nation." In Nation and Narration.

Ed. Homi K. Bhabha. London: Routledge, 1990. 2002. 1-7.

* Bhabha, Homi K. "Culture's in-Between." In Questions of Cultural Identity. Ed.

Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage, 1996. 2005.
53-60.

Works Cited
* Black Sin, White Masks (1950) by Aime Cesaire.

* The Colonizer and the Colonized (1965), Albert Memmi.

* Ashcroft B., Griffiths, G., and Tiffin, T., Key Concept in Post-colonial Studies,
Routledge : 1998.

* Nandy, A., The Intimate Enemy : Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism.
1983.

* Mohanty, Ch. T., Under Western Eyes (1989).

* Narayan, U. "Contesting Cultures" (1997).

* Spivak, G. Ch., Can the Subattern Speak? 1988.

* Spivak, G. Ch., The Post-colonial Critic. (1990).

* Young, R.J.C., Colonial Desire : Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. (1995).

* Fanon, Frantz (1961, The Wretched of the Earth.

* Bhabha, Homi K. "Of Mimicry and Man : The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse."
Oct 28 (1984), 125-33.

* --- The Other Question : Difference Discrimination, and the Discourse of Colonial-
ism." In Literature, Politics and Theory. Ed. Francis Barker et al. London : Methuen,
1986, 148-72.
* --- Dissemi Nation : Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation." In
Nation and Narration. Ed. Homi K. Bhabha, London: Routledge, 1990-2002. 291-
322.
* --- The Location of Culture. London : Routledge, 1994.
53
* --- "Cultural Diversity and Cultural Differences." In The Post-colonial Studies Reader.
Ed. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth-Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. London, Routledge.

* Terry Eagleton, Eastern Block (Book Review of Robert Irwin's For Lust of Know-
ing), New Statesman, 13 February 2006.

* Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind, Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001.

* Ronald Inden, Imagining India, New York: Oxford UP, 1990.

* Homi K. Bhabha, Nation and Narration, New York and London: Routledge, Chapman
& Hall, 1990.

* Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, In Other Worlds : Essays in Cultural Politics, London:

Methuen, 1987.

* Ranjan Ghosh, Edward Said and the Literary Social and Political World, New York:
Routledge, 2009.

* Edward Said, "Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Victims" (1979) In the Edward
Said Reader, Vintage Books, 2000.

* Julian Vigo, "Edward Said and the Politics of Peace : From Orientalism to
Terrorology", A Journal of Countemporary Thought, (2004).

* Edward Said and David Barasumian, Culture and Resistance - Conversation with
Edward Waid, South End Press, 2003.

* Michael Wood, On Edward Said, London Review of Books, 23 October, 2003, ac-
cessed 10 February 2011.

* McCarthy, Conor, The Cambridge Introduction to Edward Said, Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University Press, 2010.
External Links
* The Edward Said Archive.
* Edward Said at the Electronic Intifada.
* Edward Wadie Said at the International Institute of Social Studies.
Retrieved from http://en.Wikipedia.org/w/index.php.title=Edward_Said & Oldid=.

Annexure
100 Books about Sir Winston Churchil
Comprehensive Biographies
1. Best, Geoffrey Churchill A Study in Greatness
2. Rose, Norman, Churchill an Unruly Life
54
3. Gilbert, Martin Churchill a Life (1991)
4. Pelling, Henry Winston Churchill (1974)
5. Taylor, Robert I Winston Churchill, An Informal Study of Greatness (1952)
6. Broad, Lewis The Years of Preparation; of Achievement 2 vols
7. Kraus, Ren. Winston Churchill A Biography (1940)
8. Ephesian Winston Churchill (1927)
9. Gilbert, Martin Winston Churchill (1979)
10. Martin Hugh Battle, The Life Story of Winston Churchill (1932-40)
11. Grant, R.G. Winston Churchill An Illustrated Biography
12. Manchester, Wm. The Last Lion 1874-1932
13. Manchester, Wm. The Last Lion 1932-40
Photo Biographies
14. Churchill, Randolph & Gemsheim, Helmut. Churchill- His Life in Photographs
15. Gilbert, Martin. Churchill- A Photographic Portrait
16. Miller & Sainthill. Churchill. The Walk with Destiny
17. Soames, Mary, A Churchill Family Album
18. ILN. An Eightieth Year Tribute to Winston Churchill
19. Thompson, Maleom. The Life and Times of Winston Churchill
20. Longford, Elizabeth. Winston Churchill
21. Tucker, Ben. Winston Churchill His Life in Pictures (1945-55)
22. The Times. 1874-1965 The Churchill Years
23. American Heritage. Churchill The Life Triumphant
Churchill as writer and painter
24. Weidhorn, Manfred. Sword and Pen
25. Alldritt, Keith. Churchill the Writer
26. Ashley, Maurice, Churchill as Historian
27. Woods, Frederick. Artillery of Words
28. Soames, Mary. Winston Churchill, His life as a Painter
29. Coombs, David. Churchill His Paintings
Books about specific periods
30. Chaplin, E.D.W. Winston Churchill and Harrow
31. Morgan, Ted. Churchill; Young Man in a Hurry 1874-1915
32. Sandy, Celia. From Winston with Love and Kisses
55
33. Higgins, Trumbull, Winston Churchill and the Dardanelles
34. Gilbert, Martin, The Wilderness Years
35. Sandy, Celia. Churchill; Wanted Dead or Alive
36. De. Mendelssohn, Peter. The Age of Churchill 1874-1911

First hand accounts by colleagues

37. Wheeler-Bennett, Sir John (editor). ACTION THIS DAY!
38. Bonham-Carter, Violet. Winston Churchill as I Knew Him
39. Montague Browne, Anthony, Long Sunset
40. Graebner, Walter. My Dear Mr. Churchill
41. Pawle, Gerald. The War & Colonel Warden
42. Birkenhead, 2nd Earl. Churchill 1874-1922
43. Cowles, Virginia. Winston Churchill: The Era and the Man
44. Colville, John. The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries 1939-1955 <![endif]>
First hand acconts by servants
45. Murray, Edmund. I Was Churchill's Bodyguard
46. Moir, Phyllis. I Was Winston Churchill's Private Secretary
47. Nel, Elizabeth.Mr. Churchill's Secretary
48. Howells. Roy. Churchill's Last Years
49. Moran, Lord. Winston Churchill The Struggle for Survival
50. Thompson, W.H. I Was Churchill's Shadow
51. McGowan, Norman. My Years with Churchill
The seventh catagory is collections of quotes and anecdotes. Czarnomski offers the best
indexing for finding quotes on a particular subject, but Kay Halle's book is probably the best fun.
The small books here are cheap and make good gifts to your friends.

Books of anecdotes and quotes

52. Halle, Kay. The Irrepressible Churchill
53. Willians and Rocter, The Wit of Winston Churchill
54. Sims, Victor. Churchill the Great, The Best Stories
55. Sykes and Sproat. The Wit of Sir Winston
56. Coote, Colin. Maxims and Reflections
57. Czarnomski, F. B. The Wisdom of Winston Churchill

56
58. Frewin, Leslie. Immortal Jester
59. Coote, Colin, Churchill - A Self-portrait

Churchill as Military Leader

60. Higgins, Trumbull, Churchill and the Second Front
61. Lewin, Ronald, Churchill as Warlord
62. Schoenfeld, Maxwell. The War Ministry of Winston Churchill
63. Hough, Richard. Former Naval Person
64. Roskill, S.W. Churchill and the Admirals
65. Cretton, Vice Admiral Sir Peter, Former Naval Person
66. Lamb, Richard. Churchill as War Leader
67. Nelson, James (ed) General Eisenbower on the Military Churchill

Collections of essays & commentaries

68. Stansky, Peter. Churchill, A Profile
69. Eade, Charles, Churchill by his contemporaries
70. WSC servant of crown and commonwealth (1954)
71. Blake & Louis, Churchill- A major new assessment
72. Churchill by His Contemporaries an Observer Appreciation
73. Taylor, A.J.P. et al, Churchill Revised
74. Parker, R.A.C. Winston Churchill Studies in Statesmanship
75. Kemper, R. Crosby, Winston Churchill Resolution Defiance Magnanimity Good Will

Books on specific aspects

76. Gilbert, Martin, In Search of Churchill
77. Kimball, Warren. Forged in War
78. Lee, J.M. The Churchill Coalition
79. Hall, Douglas. The Book of Churcilliana
80. Hough, Richard. Winston and Clementine
81. Bromage, Mary. Churchill and Ireland
82. Rabinowicz, Oskar. Winston Churchill on Jewish Problems
83. Urquhart, Fred, WSC: A Cartoon Biography
84. Kersaudy, Francois. Churchill and DeGaulle
57
85. Wilson, Theodore. The First Summit
86. Pilpel, Robert. Churchill in America
87. Barker, Elisabeth. Churchill and Eden at War
88. Young, Kenneth. Churchill and Beaverbrook
89. Berlin. Isaiah. Mr. Churchill in 1940
90. Bardens, Dennis. Churchill in Parliament
91. Thomas, David. The Member for Woodford
92. Hughes, Emrys. British Bulldog
93. Trukhanovsky, Vladimir. Winston Churchill, A Marxist Biography
94. Charmley, John. Churchill The End of Glory
95. Rhodes James, Robert. Churchill A Study in Failure
96. Irving, David, Churchill's War vol.1: The Struggle for Power
97. Ponting, Clive, Churchill
98. Thompson, R.W. The Yankee Marlborough
99. Germains, Victor. The Tragedy of Winston Churchill (1931)
100. Pearson, John, Citadel of the Heart
101. Addison. Paul. Churchill on the Home Front.
102. Paterson, Tony. A Seat for Life
103. Jaffa, Harry )ed.) Statesmanship: Essays in Honor of Churchill
104. Seldon, Anthony. Churchill's Indian Summer
105. Hyam, Ronald. Elgin & Churchill at the Colonial Office 1905-1908
106 Marder, Arthur. Winston is Back: Churchill at the Admiralty 1939-1940
107. Wolff, Michael. Winston Churchill (The Great Nobel Prizes)
108. Wallin, Jeffrey. By Ships Alone: Churchill and the Dardanelles
109. MacCallum Scott, A. Winston Churchill in Peace and War.

Jawaharlal Nehru
Book : Civilizing a Savage World
Author : Nayantara Sahgal
Publisher : Penguine Books, India : 2010
ISBN 9780670083572
Nayantara Sahgal's biography of Nehru is uncritical, yet thought provoking and fresh.
Forty six years after Nehru's death, Nehru's niece Nayantara Sahgal, author of several fine
58
novels has given a fascinating volume, Jawaharlal Nehru: Civilizing a Savage World. There
are references to all the principal pillars of Nehru's legacy to India – democratic institution
– building, staunch pan-Indian seculiarism, socialist economics at home and a foreign policy
of non-alignment. Sahgal writes with undisguised affection and admiration for an uncle
she saw as "a special shining being, than whom all men were lesser men" She outlines
Nehru's worldview and his internationalist convictions, drawing not only from his corre-
spondence and speeches but also from more personal sources – her own recollections and
those of her mother, Vijayalakshami Pandit who served her brother in a number of key
diplomatic assignments. There is no pretence of objectivity; Sahgal is uncritical of Nehru,
but her writing is too thoughtful and intelligent to be dismissed as mere hagiography. The
book offers many delights. There is an evocative description of the family atmosphere at
Anand Bhavan, illuminated with extracts from letters exchanged amongst several of the
hyper-articulate Nehrus. There are delightful asides, such as Pandit's account of a conver-
sation with the devout US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles:
"He would have had me believe the Lord himself had blessed America's
stand... It was tough explaining that my Prime Minister disagreed with
the Lord."
There is Nehru worrying in a letter to his sister about his first visit to the US;
"Which facet of myself should I put before the Indian or the Europe?...
... I am inclimed to think that the best preparation for America is not
to prepare and to trust to my native wit and mood of the moment...
I go there to learn more than to teach."
There are many touching descriptions, for example, the description of Nehru's concern for
the living conditions of his domastic staff. Sahgal also appreciates his openness: "What
you saw was what he was. What he said was what he meant... Transperancy was his public
and private style." The book is highly interesting.
To sum up, the book presents an intimate view of the influences encounters and
defining historical moments that forged the vision of India's first Prime Minister. Drawing
from the Nehru and the Vijayalakshmi Pandit papers and from Nehru's letter to Sahgal – his
niece, this book combines history with personal recollections to show how Nehru helped
navigate India's transition.

59
Book : Jawaharlal Nehru – A Biography
Author : Frank Moraes
Publisher : Jaico Publishing House Mumbai. 2nd edition, 2008

The Times Literary Suppliment wrote about this book "to read Mr. Moraes's book is
to understand Mr. Nehru better."
The Hindu wrote : "a substantial contribution to the literature on the history of India's
freedom and the part played in it by Pandit Nehru." Frank Moraes, was an editor of many
prominent newspapers in Post-independence India, including The Indian Express. He praises
Nehru as a national leader, as a writer, as a humanist. This work also traces the history of
freedom movement in India. The occasional glimpses of the family life of Nehru, given by
Moraes, are enliving. He was the most remarkable statesman, a man who enthralled every-
one with his magical personality, a leader who was literally hero-worshipped and an orator
of the order. Here, his colourful and complex personality is viewed through Indian eyes - a
fact which makes the book all the more interesting.

Book : Nehru : The Invention of India

Author : Shashi Tharoor
Publisher : Arcade Publishing, 2003

This is an incisive new biography of Nehru – the great secularist who – alongside
his spiritual father Mahatma Gandhi – led the movement for India's independence from
British rule and ushered his newly independent country into the modern world. Tharoor has
given a riveting account of a great statesman and a unique public intellectual and provides
a crisp idea of the principles that governed the life of Nehru. Shashi Tharoor himself in the
preface describes his book as a reinterpretation of an extraordinary life and career of this
great leader. Tharoor writes with unsparing objectivity, he states:
"The Indian consensus that Jawaharlal Nehru constructed as the nation's
first Prime Minister, has frayed: democracy endures, secularism is
besieged non-alignment is all but forgotten, and socialism barely clings
on. Nehru seems "curiously dated, a relic of another era. His goal of
creating "a just state by just means" has been undermined by the
centrifugal forces of Indian religious and cultural divisiveness."
60
 Tharoor's book never lacks for pithy phrases and strong opinion. Tharoor admires
Nehru as a the Thomas Jefferson of India – a foe of colonialism and adds that he was a
statesman of grace and style and a master of uplifting words – but whose leadership failed
in forcefulness and whose political heir were without his charm. Overall, this engaging
short biography is a scrutiny of a major twentieth century leader from his "Little Lord
Fauntleroy" beginning to his transformation into a historic figure wearing a halo in his own
lifetime.
Tharoor's analysis of the interwining between an individual's biography and the birth
of a nation is masterful. The book stays close to its subject – Nehru, but then ventures to
link his biography to many Indian Institutions, including seculiarism, democracy, non-align-
ment. The book also provides various examples of Nehru's cpirage. According to Tharoor
Nehru was a great blend of idealism and "courage to act" on that idealism.

Book : Nehru – A Tryst With Destiny

Author : Stanley Wotpert
Publisher : Oxford University Press, 1996
ISBN-10 0195100735

The book is well-researched insightful and beautifully written. Stanley Wolpert has
written a very honest account and has presented Nehru's good and bad sides without adding
or taking away anything.

Historian Wolpert relied heavily on published material to print this warts-and-all portraits
of India's brilliant and charistmatic first Prime Minister. He convincingly goes beneath
Nehru's exalted image to reveal some pesky demons. Nehru's power struggle with his fa-
ther, his differences with Mahatma Gandhi, and his close, enduring ties to his daughter and
political heir, Indira, are well detineated. Treatment of the Edwina Mountbatten liasion,
however, tantalize rather than satisfies. The book is strongest on the time period 1918
through 1947, when Nehru's frequent imprisonment for political activities gave him ample
time to assemble his written legacy to the world. Wolpert's post-independence era are
skimpier. He highlights Nehru's foreign and domastic policy failures and suggests that India's
George Washington, through egotism, stubbaruness and emotional blindness, made some
tragic mistakes for which his country paid dearly. The book is quite informative and analytical.
61
Book : Jawaharlal Nehru : A Biography. (3 volumes)
Author : Sarvapalli Gopal
Publication : Harvard University Press, 1976
Oxford India
Paperbacks, 2004 : Abridged

Gopal's biography remains the most scholarly as well as authorized work to appear
on Nehru. The researcher was benefitted by its comprehensiveness as well as close look at
how Nehru's mind was shaped by Indian politics, by colonialism, and by his birth within an
elite professional class.
Sarvapalli Gopal, Professor of History, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Fellow,
St.Antony's College, Oxford, has written truly a great biography. He writes with thought-
fulness. He tells about the joys and pains in Nehru's life in a original fashion. The
insightfulness and portrayal of characters are appealing.
Vol.1 covers period from 1889 to 1947. The first volume of this triology on the life
of Nehru brings us upto the transfer of power on the night of 14th August 1947 and ends
with a quotation from the "Tryst with Destiny" speech. The author also deals extensively
with the freedom struggle. Originally published in 1980 by Harvard University, Vol.2 cov-
ers the period from 1947-1956 deals with Kashmir and Hyderabad issues, the shaping of
foreign policy domastic pressures and twelve other sections are full of first hand informa-
tion. The third and final volume describes the last eight years of Nehru's life and Prime
Ministership.
Nehru's private papers and the author's firsthand knowledge of Nehru form a lauda-
tory account of life, education, personality and political career of India's first Prime Minister.
Gopal's biography remains the most scholarly as well as authorized work to appear on
Nehru. Its value lies in its comprehensiveness. Gopal stood out among the historians of his
generation. Gopal is a fine stylist, and has a sense of humour, too.

Churchill on India
Churchill's biograhers have observed his magnanimity, his pursuit of social justice
and Churchill's own statement:
"I hate nobody except Hitler –
and that is pofessional"
62
is often quoted. Yet it is unfotunate that Chuchill had a blind spot about India. There are
several occasions where his bias and negative stand is apparent.
He was never halfhearted in his pursuit of social justice and improvement in the
general standard of living "There was", he argued, no virtue at all leveling down, but the
miracle of science should be used to provide a bountiful supply of Victorians*1 and Churchill
had the idealism of both the liberals and Victorians. But not for India.
The present study analytically discusses Churchill's attitude towards India. Churchill's
mind having racial superiority, the Raj ego, colonialism, and typical imperial effect reflect
his bias attitude forming the "power" ego, as against Nehru's ever fresh sensitive and sym-
pathetic view of brotherhood that reminds us of his rich ancient heritage.
As Foucauldin theory*2 suggests, it is the narrative that weilds the power of history,
and the memoirs are Churchill's narrative, so far Churchill's impression of India is con-
cerned, he is to be held accountable.
Europe Unite (1950) is a collection of Churchill's speeches between 1917-1948. The book
embodies moving address to the Congress of Europe at the Hague in 1948 and other topics.
It contains the escaling violence in Palestine, up and down relations with America and the
Soviets, conscription, nationalization, the grim economy and above all Britain's precipitale
post war decline.
But nothing more typefies the last than India, for which Churchill has often been
excoriated as a die-hard imperialist, determined to preserve the Raj.
In the following pages the researcher has attempted to present factual evidence to
diagnose Churchill's attitude.
First and Last Exception
(Churchill's Sympathetic Attitude)
Ramchandra Guha wrote in The Hindu :
"Winston Churchill's first and last statements about
India were notably sympathetic to nationalist sentiments.
But his record in-between was 'truly dreadful'.*3
In April 1919, a group of soldiers led by a man named Dyer fired at a crowd of
unarmed Indians at the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. Speaking in the House of Commons,
Winston Churchill described this as :
"However we may dwell upon the Difficulties of General
Dyer during the Amritsar riots, upon the anxious and
63
 critical situation in the Punjab, upon the danger to Europeans
throughout that province, ..... one tremendous fact stands out –
I mean the slaughter of nearly 400 persons and the wounding
of probably three to four times as many, at the Jallan Wallah
Bagh on 13th April. This is an episode which appears to be
without precedent or parallel in the modern history of the
British Empire .... Let me marshal the facts. The crowd was
unarmed, except with bludgeous. It was not attacking anybody
or anything. It was holding a seditious meeting. When fire
had been opened upon it to disperse it, it tried to run away.
Pinned up in a narrow place considerably Smaller than
Trafalgar Square, with hardly any exists, and packed together
so that one bullet would drive through three or four bodies,
the people ran madly this way and the other. When the fire
was directed upon the centre, they ran to the sides. The fire
was then directed to the sides. Many throw themselves down
on the ground, and the fire was then directed on the ground.
This was continued for 8 to 10 minutes... If the road had not
been so narrow, the machine guns and the armoured cars
would have joined in. Finally, when the ammunation had
reached the point that only enough remained to allow for
the safe return of the troops, and after 379 persons had been
killed, and when most certainly 1200 or more had been
wounded, the troops, at whom not even a stone had been
thrown, swung round and marched away ..... we have to make
it absolutely clearly .... that this is not the British way of
doing business... our reign in India or anywhere else, has
never stood on the basis of physical force alone, and it would
be fatal to the British Empire, if we were to try to base
ourselves only upon it.:*4
(Speech in the House of Commons, July 8, 1920 "Amritsar" at the time Churchill was
serving as Secretary of State for War under Prime Minister David Llyod George.)

64
 He described it strongly : as "a monstrous event", "a great slaughter or massacre
upon a particular crowd of people, with the intention of terrorising not merely, the rest of
the crowd, but the whole district or country."*5 "This was most likely his first public utter-
ance on Indian affairs. His last such utterances date to the mid 1950s when he and Jawaharlal
Nehru were both Prime Ministers of independent nations. Now, Churchill expressed much
admiration for Nehru as a man who "conquered two great human infirmities : fear and hate.
In one fanciful moment, he even saw his fellow Harovian as the "Light of Asia", who was
shaping the destiny of hundreds of millions of Indians and playing an "outstanding part in
world affairs"*6. This is first and last expression about India which are compliments but
between these two the study focuses on what was said or written by Churchill.
Two Phases
Churchill's tirades against India and its peoples is found in two phases. The first
phase ran between 1929 and 1932, when the Gandhian movement for freedom was going
strong. The second one in 1940 and after when he wrote reminiscences of his military and
unjustly expressed his opinion on Indian army.

Churchill in India
In early October,1896 he was transferred to Bombay, British India. He was consid-
ered one of the best polo players in his regiment and led his team to many prestigious
tournament victories.
In 1897, while preparing for a leave in England, he heard that three brigades of the
British Army were going to fight against a Pashtun tribe in the North West Frontier of India
and he asked his superior officer if he could join the fight. He fought under the command of
General Jeffery, who was the commander of the second brigade operating in Malakand, in
the Frontier region of British India. Jeffery sent him with fifteen scouts to explore the
Mamund Valley; while on reconnaissance, they encountered an enemy tribe, dismounted
from their hourses and opened fire. After an hour of shooting, their reinforcements, the
35th Sikhs arrived, and the fire gradually ceased and the brigade and the Sikhs marched on.
Hundreds of tribesmen then ambushed them and opened fire, forcing them to retreat. As
they were retreating four men were carrying an injured officer but the fierceness of the
fight forced them to leave him behind. The man who was left behind was slashed to death
before Churchill's eyes; afterwards he wrote of the killer, "I forgot everything else at this

65
moment except a desire to kill this man. However the Sikhs' numbers were being depleted
so the next commanding officer told Churchill to get the rest of the men and boys to safety.
Before he left he asked for a note so he would not be charged with desertion. He
received the note, quickly signed, and headed up the hill and alerted the other brigade,
whereupon they then engaged the army. The fighting in the region dragged on for another
two weeks before the dead could be recovered. He wrote in his journal: "Whether it was
worth it I cannot tell," An account of the Siege of Malakand was published in December
1900 as The Story of the Malakand Field Force. He received 600 Pound for his account.
A year after Indian Independence Churchill's curious complex about India was still
highly evident. It was a complex which he developed when stationed in Bangalore, as a
subaltern in the Queen's Hussars, from 1896-1899. Throughout his time in India, he had
been more concerned with the prestige this position offered (horses and Polo Playing being
the outward trapping of health) and the possibility that it would lead to a political career,
than what he could learn from India, or the Indian Army, itself. His refusal to learn Hindi,
which he believed a quite unnecessary as all natives here speak English perfectly and I
cannot see any good in wasting my time acquiring a dialect which I shall never use. This
shows that he could not enter very fully into the thoughts and feelings of the Indian troops
which he encount red. But this does not stop Churchill from presuming that "there was no
doubt they liked having a white officer among them. Men fighting --- they watched him
carefully to see how things were going, if you grinned, they grinned. So I grinned"*8. As
year after he had arrived in India, Churchill was warned about catching Indian fever as it was
very difficult to get rid of. The fear never left him*9, Churchill never recovered and India
would always be his 'blind spot'. When it came to writing his memoirs, Churchill's almost
obsessive sentiment about India often affected his opinion on the Indian Army too.
About India he was obliged to give way by the sheer strength of the opposition.
Churchill was in opposition to the Government of India Bill in the 1930s when he did his
utmost to destroy Mr.Baldwin's liberal move in the direction of giving India increased self
government. Clearly, Churchill had a blind spot about India.
In conversation to Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India, the following quotation
is widely cited as written in "a letter to Leo Amery":
"I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion"*10.

66
 Phase I
The Emperial Churchill Against India's Independence
In 1930, the Labour Party began negotiation with India for Home Rule. When the Con-
servatives supported Labour. On this issue, Churchill resigned from the Shadow Cabinet of
Stanley Baldwin because this decision was not compatible with his concept of the British
Empire. In his attack on the Labour Position in India, Churchill was the leader of malcon-
tents in the Conservative Party. His role with the group, while it kept his name in the paper
through the 1930s hurt his influence in the party, and the nation.
In 1933, Churchill finally lost in his bid to lead the Conservatives against the India bill,
and this defeat was the subject of an editorial in The New York Times contrasting Churchill's
duplicity with Baldwin's steadfastness.
In October 1929, when the Viceroy (Lord Irwin) suggested Dominion Status for India,
Churchill called the idea –
"not only fantastic but criminally mischievious in its effects"*11
As an ambitious politician currently out of power, Churchill thought it necessary to
marshal "the sober and resolute forces of the British Empire" against the granting of self-
government to India. Over the next two years, Churchill delivered dozens of speeches where
he worked up, in most unsober form, the forces hostile to the winning of political indepen-
dence by people with brown (or black) skins. As the historian Sarvapalli Gopal writes, in
these speeches Churchill "stressed not only the glory but also the necessity of empire". The
glory was to India, as in his view, without the Raj there would be little peace and less
prosperity. And the necessity was to England, for if the Raj ended, then "that spells the
doom of Lancashire". Churchill seriously feared an economic recession if access to Indian
markets and goods was denied.
Speaking at the Albert Hall in 1931, he claimed that "to abandon India to the rule of the
brahmins (who in his view dominated the congress party) would be an act of Cruel and
wicked negligence". If the British left, "India will fall back quite rapidly through the centu-
ries into the barbarism and privations of the Middle Ages"*12.
Staneley Baldwin became Prime Minister again in 1935. Churchill did not seek nor
received a Cabinet Post or Ministry in Baldwin's government. The state of the British Em-
pire now dominated House of Commons debate and the press headlines. The "Crown jewel"
of the Empire was India. Baldwin and his Viceroy in India, Lord Halifax, had worked out a

67
settlement to give India its political freeoom, in response to mounting protests and riots led
by Nehru and Gandhi.
From the back benches, Churchill roared his opposition. India, he said : "India was not
a political but geographical term". There were "fifty different Indias" and only Britain could
hold the balance between them*13. He predicted that as many as a million people might be
killed in religious conflict between the Hindus and Moslems". In his attack against the
government bill, Churchill charged:
"Democracy is the argument the government uses, but aristocracy would be the result –
and India run by Brahmin born elites like Nehru & Gandhi, whose caste treatment of the
'untouchables' the lower classes, is brutal in their harshness"*14.
But there was more to Churchill's opposition than concern for "the untouchables". In
Churchill's mind, losing India was the first step in dismantling the Empire. Britain without
an empire to Churchill, was like Samson shorn of his locks; The Empire was the source of
Britain's strength as a world power. With hindsight, Churchill's prewar opposition to Indian
independence can be characterised as reactionary. In fairness, though, he truly believed that
a people with no tradition or history of civil liberties would experience corruption and
strite if exposed to democracy prematurely.

Churchill's View on Gandhi

Churchill opposed Mohandas Gandhji's peaceful disobedience revolt and the Indian
Independence movement in the 1930s, arguing that the Round Table Conference "was a
frightful prospect". Later reports indicate that Churchill favoured letting Gandhi die if he
went on a hunger strike. During the first half of the 1930s, Churchill was outspoken in his
opposition to granting Dominion status to India. He was a founder of the India Defence
League, a group dedicated to the preservation of British power in India. Churchill brooked
no moderation. "The truth is", he declared in 1930, "that Gandhi-ism and everything it
stands for will have to be grappled with and crushed.*15" In his speeches and press articles
in this period he forecast widespread unemployment in Britain and civil strife in India
should independence be granted. The Viceroy Lord Irwin, who had been appointed by the
prior Conservative Government, engaged in the Round Table Conference in early 1931 and
then announced the Government's policy that India should be granted Dominion Status. In
this the Government was supported by the Liberal Party and, officially at least, by the
Conservative Party. Churchill denounced the Round Table Conference.
68
 At a meeting of the West Essex Conservative Association specially convened so Churchill
could explain his position he said, "It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a
seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well-known in the East,
striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal palace...to parley on equal terms with the
representative of the King-Emperor." He called the Indian National Congress leaders "Brah-
mins who mouth and patter principles of Western political system.*16
He used to say "that old humbug Gandhi and his hunger strike." Indeed, his predic-
tion of violent religious conflict came true after a Labour government finally granted India
its freedom in 1947. "In time, of course, India proved Churchill wrong; although cultural
and religious unrest continues, the country remains the world's largest democracy. But in
1935 Churchill's fervent opposition won the day. The government bill to grant India au-
tonomy was defeated."*17
Churchill permanently broke with Stanley Baldwin over Indian independence and
never again held any office while Baldwin was prime minister. Some historians see his
basic attitude to India as being set out in his book My Early Life (1930). Another source of
controversy about Churchill's attitude towards Indian affairs arises over what some histori-
ans term the Indian 'nationalist approach' to the Bengal famine of 1943, which has sought
to place significant blame on Churchill's wartime government for the excessive mortality
of up to three million people. While some commentators point to the disruption of the
traditional marketing system and maladministration at the provincial level. Arthur Herman,
author of Churchill and Gandhi, contends, "The real cause was the fall of Burma to the
Japanese, which cut off India's main supply of rice imports when domestic sources fell
short ... [though] it is true that Churchill opposed diverting food supplies and transports
from other theatres to India to cover the shortfall; this was wartime.*18" In response to an
urgent request by the Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery, and Viceroy of India, Wavell,
to release food stocks for India, Churchill responded with a telegram to Wavell asking, if
food was so scarce, "why Gandhi hadn't died yet.*19" In July 1940, newly in office, he
welcomed reports of the emerging conflict between the Muslim League and the Indian
Congress, hoping "it would be bitter and bloody."
It seems that the passion which ruled Churchill's mind was colonizer's superiority
and racism. Guha notes, "through the late 1930s, Churchill thought and spoke little about
India. But then in 1940 he became Prime Minister and had to confront the question as to
what would happen to Indians after the Allies had won a war ostensibly fought to preserve
69
freedom. As the diaries of his Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery, makes clear, Churchill
was implacably opposed to all proposals for Indian self-rule.
In 1944, Amery wrote that "I am by no means sure whether on this subject of India,
he (Churchill) is really quite sane ...*20"
Guha appends the comment of Lord Wavell, who as Viceroy of India between 1943
and 1945, concluded in his diary, that the British Prime Minister (Churchill) "has a curious
complex about India and is always loth to hear good of it and apt to believe the worst.*21"

Phase II
Indian Army Portrayal by Churchill
(Churchill on India)
It is old adge that history is always about power. But, as, Alun Mauslow, writes, if
the 'past exists for us only as it is written up by historians' what then happens if that historian is
less than scruplous?*22" The same applies to Winston Churchill's portrayal of the Indian
Army's contribution to the Second World War as found in his six volume opus The Second
World War. This chapter will offer reasons as to why Churchill almost totally ignored the
Indian Army; reasons that go beyond the overly simple explantion of Churchill's inherent
racism. (Unless otherwise stated the term Indian Army is used in this chapter to refer to
Indian Army Units which were part of the British & Commonwealth force). It seems the
advent of Indian independence was so painful an experience for Churchill that it tainted his
portrayal of the Indian Army when the time came to compose his historical narrative. The
present study examines to what extent, his narrative influence subsequent official histories
and why did Churchill pay such little attention to the history of the Indian Army's achieve-
ment in the Second World War.
Although aptly described by A.J.Balfour "Churchill's autobiography disguised as
world history"*23, Churchill learnt how history could be manipulated and serve as a plat-
form for both self-vindication and self-justification*24. Having secured imperical Britain's
discomfiting retreat from India, Mountbatten returned to England in 1948. Attending a
party thrown by Anthony Eden in his honour, he encountered Churchill, Churchill approached
him, pointed to him and declared: "What you did in India was like whipping your riding
crop across my face!*25"
A year after Indian independence Churchill's curious complex about India was still
highly evident*26. It was a complex which he had developed when stationed in Banglore, as
70
a subaltern in the Queen's Hussars, from 1896-1899. Churchill probably spent a total of
twelve months in India as his four year posting was interprersed with various sorties as a
war correspondent in the Sudan and then South Africa and with several trips back to Lon-
don. As it has been noted earlier, throughout his time in India, he had been more concerned
with the prestige this position offered (horses and polo playing were his favourite activi-
ties), and the possibility that it would lead to a political career, than what he could learn
about India, or the Indian Army, itself. He refused to learn Hindi, which he believed it
"quite unnecessary as all natives here speak English perfectly and I cannot see any good in
wasting my time acquiring a dialect which I shall never use." This means he was not in a
mood to familiarise fully into the 'thoughts and feelings' of the Indian troops which he
encountered. But this did not stop Churchill from presuming that. "there was no doubt they
liked having a white officer among them when fighting ... they watched him carefully to
see how things were going, if you grinned, they grinned. So I grinned industriously"*28. A
year after he had arrived in India, Churchill was warned about catching Indian fever as it
was 'very difficult to get rid of*29'. When it came to writing his memories, Churchill's al-
most obsessive sentiments about India often affected his opinion on the Indian Army, and
vice versa.

Ancestral Prejudice :
Churchill briefly acknowledged the presence of the Indian Army in the trenches of
Northern France, during the First World War, when he wrote that, "the steadfast Indian
Corps in the cruel winter of 1914 held the line by Armentieres."*30 In reality, Indian troops
had served with distinction in the trenches of Northern France as well as Mesopotamia*31
and each of the major theatres of the First World War*32. Churchill's low opinion of the
Indian troops had been reinforced by his parents who, in turn, had been influenced by their
elders who had experienced the Mutiny of 1857*33. His own experiences in India had done
little to reverse this, and the Singapore Mutiny of 1915 did nothing to dispel Churchill's
already low opinion of the Indian Army*34. Yet he never looked at the reverse; that the
overwhelming majority of the 80,000 Indian Soldiers who saw action in France,
Mesopotamia, Palestine or Africa had fought valiantly alongside their British Officers and
counterparts and had remained loyal to the King.*35 It seems his imperial feeling was stron-
ger than his sense of historical fact.
It seems Churchill is led away by racism.
71
 Racism & Churchill
Oxford Dictionary defines racism as 'prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed
against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.
Churchill seems to believe that race is the primary determinant of human traits and
capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority.As Hitler's declara-
tion of his belief in a "masterrace" was an indication of the inherent racism of the Nazi so
also Churchill believed that there is a casual link between inherited physical traits and
traits of personality, intellect, morality and other cultural behavioural features and that the
British are innately superior to natives (Indians).
It is clear that Racism was at his heart when he reviewed Indian Sepoys. In fact, the
idea of RACE was inverted to magnify the differences between people of European Origin
and those of Asians. By viewing Asians as lesser human beings, the English justified colo-
nial rule and Churchill wanted to maintain this system of exploration while at the same
time portraying the British Empire as a bastion and champion of human freedom.
The next mention Churchill made of the Indian Army is telling. As he reminisced
about his return to the Admiralty in 1939, Churchill included a copy of a memo he submitted to
Prime Minister Chamberlain in which he recommended that the "only way in which our
force in France can be rapidly expanded is by bringing the professional troops from India,
and using them as the Cadre upon which the Territorials and conscripts will form"*36. What
Churchill alluded to, was that the British Officers of the Indian Army and not the Indian
Officers were the professional soldiers. In one sentence he had cast aspersions about the
nature, ability and professionalism of the small numbers of Indian officers that existed, let
alone Indian soldiers. Further, Churchill writes that 'in principle, 60,000 Territorials should
be sent to India to maintain internal security and complete their training.*37 This means in
Churchill's opinion India was good enough to be a training ground for troops from Britain,
yet Indian troops themselves were only capable of maintaining internal security. This point
clearly illustate how Churchill only referred to the Indian Army, and to the Indian troops
themselves, when and if it served his own purpose. He tenaciously refused to alter his late
nineteenth century view of the Indian Army during the war, but by including it in his mem-
oirs it proved that it was a view he maintained long after the fact.
In fact Churchill's opinion of India influenced his opinion of the Indian Army and
his opinion had neither softened nor moderated ever.

72
 Throughout the first two volumes of his memoirs, Churchill intimated that Indian
troops, like their 'native' African counterparts, were not to be trusted, ill-disciplined, inef-
ficient and not as professional as their British counterparts. Churchill discarded the status
of Indian troops to no more than relief soldiers when he wrote that 'a ceaseless stream of
Indian units' should be sent to Palestine and Egypt because 'India is doing nothing worth
speaking of at the present time. Churchill viewed them as inferior to both the Australian
and New Zealand soldiers who he thought were, in turn, below the standard of the British
troops. He also wrote that 'native' troops were to be mixed together so that 'one lot can be
used to keep the other in discipline'*38.
Churchill's depiction of the Indian troops varied to meet the needs of his narrative.
Of course, General Archibald Wavell did not share Churchill's views on Indian troops. In
November 1942, Wavell encouraged Churchill to consider 'sending a special message to
armed forces in India command' as this token of his appreciation would 'greatly hearten
them'. The belief in the superiority of the British soldiers over the Indian soldiers proved
itself to be outmoded and mistaken : "gone were the days when it had been supposed that
the example of Brtish troops was needed to fire Indians to valour"*39.
In short, when it came to composing his memoirs, Churchill was still overly emotional
when it came to the subject of India*40. It was proved at the time of Quit India movement,
and the horror of the devastating Bengal famine from 1943 onwards.
It was in the fourth volume of memoirs that Churchill made the noticeable distinc-
tion between the British and the Indian Army Unit. Until then, Churchill had described the
Indian Army as the 'British Indian Army'. Using what Raymond Callahan described as a
'clumsy locution.' Churchill's use of the term 'British-Indian Army' spoke volumes about
what he thought of the Indian Army (even if his writing did not)*41. For Churchill, the
Indian Army was essentially British, albeit including Indian soldiers. This was, perhaps,
general perception of the British Army Officers about Indian Army.
Churchill had been humiliated by the relative ease with which Japanese troops had
invaded and occupied Burma. But even more humialiting for Churchill was the fact that
victory over the Japanese was won by the Indian Army, an army that Churchill had always
regarded as inept, disloyal and nothing more than an armed Frankenstein's monster*42.
Churchill was reinforcing his notion that all the Indian Army needed was 'a white officer
among them when fighting'*43.

73
 Again, as work on the fifth volume of his memoires progressed, he wrote a note
which stated that he would not spare more than 3,000 words ... on the struggle in Burma*44.
This self-imposed word limit unabled Churchill to gloss over the significant contribution
made by the Indian Army to the war in Burma. The brief chapter in which Churchill por-
trayed the campaigns for the reconquest of Burma, 'Burma and Beyond', is located towards
the end of the fifth volume, 'Closing the Ring'. At this stage of the reconquest of Burma,
March to May 1944, some of the fiercest battles against the Japanese were being fought.
The aim of the Japanese offensive, U GO was to destroy the British and Indian forces
around Kohima and Imphal, advance up the Dimapur pass, and forge ahead across to India.
Churchill allocated less than two pages to his descriptions of the battles for Imphal and
Kohima. He mentioned the 5th and 7th Indian Divisions and how they were flown into
Imphal and Dimapur respectively.
Churchill also mistook, according to the Burma Star Association's battle histories,
the units of the 2nd Indian Division for units of the 2nd British Division*45. The Eighth
Army received several mentions, as did Alexander, Wavell and the American troops. But
no mention was made of the Armies fighting in Burma, let alone specific mentions of In-
dian or African troops. Churchill maintained this silence in his memoirs*46. It may be
surmised that Churchill did not include the troops in Burma because they were a constant
source of humiliation for him. After all, they had, to use Slim's phrase, turned defeat into
victory with very little help compared to the other theatres of war and, above all, it had
been the Indian Army which had been in the majority.
To include them by name, to remember the forgotten, would mean Churchill would
have had to revise his opinion of Indian troops. In fact, any post war discussion of Burma
would not only include the virtues of the Indian Army, virtues which Churchill could not
accept, but also it would reveal how Burma had been the 'tale of the rejection of one strate-
gic plan after another's due to the divergent and opposed American and British purposes*47.
Prasad succiently encapsulated the American and British perspectives on Burma:
"One seeking to utilise India for the object of keeping China in the
war and hitting Japan directly therefrom, the other keen to get back
their old empire in South-East Asia."*48
When the pivotal contribution that the Indian Army had made resurfaced in the
chronology of his tale, it became one more issue that Churchill gladly glossed over. No
doubt the advent of Indian, as well as Burmese, independence contributed to Churchill's
74
childish shubbing of the Indian Army's achievements, but Burma had exposed a mass of
raw nerves for Churchill. The Indian Army had proved itself to be a formidable lighting
unit. An army which quickly adapted to unfamiliar terrain and an army that learnt from its
mistakes and became adept at improvisation. Whilst Churchill's ignominious dismissal of
the Indian Army, and especially their role in the reconquest of Burma, was blatant through-
out his memoires. It may not be wholly fair to blame subsequent official histories for a
similar lapse.
Quasi-Historian : It is not enough to cite his dismissal by way of his imperialistic, racial
assumptions. After all, he changed his mind regarding the Japanese soldier, from non-threat-
ening throughout 1939 and 1940 to a vicious, brutal and dedicated professional soldier by
1943, yet he did not change his mind regarding the Indian soldier.
It seems compiling and editing his memoires was a world in which he wanted to remain
at centre stage. As the 1950s dawned, his reputation and status was enhanced by his por-
trayal of his history of the Second World War. Churchill once said to a young research
assistant of his,
"give me the facts .... and I will twist them
the way I want to suit my argument"*49
This illustrates the little respect he thought history as a discipline was due. One can say that
Churchill's narrative of the contribution made by the Indian Army to the Allied victory of
the Second World War is not going to be an example of responsible history. We can have
the factual, accurate record in The Tiger Strikes. The Story of Indian Troops in North Africa And
East Africa. The Indian Tiger had struck, it had killed, and it had triumphed.*50 The war-
time history was there for Churchill to include, and expand upon. For various reasons, he
chose not to. The reason being long history of colonization. The following pages will ex-
amine how Churchill's attitude was formed as natural off shoot of colonialism.

Reference
1. James C. Humes, Winston Churchill, London: AE & DK 2003.
2. Colin Gordon (ed.), Michael Foucault : Power knowledge; Selective Interviews and
other writings, 1972-77 (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980).
3. Ramchandra Guha, 'The Hindu' (Magazine, Past & Present). "Churchill's India Speak"
June 05, 2005.

75
4. Speech in the House of Commons, July 8, 1920 "Amritsar" at the time Churchill was
serving as Secretary of State for war under Prime Minister David Llyod George.
5. Ibid.
6. Ramchandra Guha, 'The Hindu' June 5, 2005
7. Sir Winston S. Churchill "The Story of the Malakand Field Force An Episode of Fron-
tier War" Archieved from the original on 14 July 2007. http://web.archive.org./web/
20070714183801.
7. Churchill, Winston My Early Life. Eland Publishing Ltd. P.143 ISBN 0-907871-62-3
8. Ibid
9. From Randolph S. Churchill (ed.) Winston S. Churchill Companion Volume 1, Part 2
1896-1900, London: Heinemann, 1967.
10. Entry for September 1942 in Leo Amery: Diaries (1988) ed. John Barnes and David
Nicholson, p.832.
11. 247 House of Commons. Debates 55 Col.755
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. "Churchill took hardline on Gandhi", BBC News. 1 January 2006 Retrieved on 12 April
2010.
15. Kevin Myers, The Irish Independent
16. Ibid
17. Gilbert Martin. Winston S. Churchill : The prophet of Truth 1922-1939 (c) 1976 by
C&T Publications Ltd. P.618
18. Leonardo A Gordon, Review of Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal : The Famine
of 1943-1944 by Greenough, Paul R. American Historical Review Vol.88, No.4 Octo-
ber 1983 P.1051
19. Gordon, 'American Historical Review', P.1051
20. "Exis Wounds", by Pankaj Mishra, 'The New Yorker' 13 August 2007.
21. Ramchandra Guha, 'The Hindu' (Magazine Past & Present), Churchill's Indiaspeak"
June 05, 2005.
22. Alun Munslow, Deconstructing History (London: Routledge, 1997), p.33.
23. As cited by Reynolds, In Command of History, P.5.

76
24. His involvement in the Dardanelles fiasco was instrumental in this regard.
25. As told by Mountbatten to Stanley Wolpert (unconfirmed) in 1975, cited in Stanley
Wolpert, Shameful Flight, The Last Years of the British Empire in India (Oxford, OUP,
2006) P.147.
26. Pendered Moon (ed.), Wavell, The Viceroy's Journal (Karachi: OUP, 1974), P.3
27. Randolph S. Churchill (ed.), Winston S. Churchill: Companion Volume 1, Part 2, 1896-
1900 (London: Heineman, 1967) Churchill to his mother, Lady Jennie Churchill, 18
Nov 1896, P.703, Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life, A Roving commission (London:
Thornton Butterworth, 1930), P.164.
28. Churchill, My Early Life, P.164
29. R.S.Churchill (ed.) Churchill : CV 7, 2, Lady Jennie Churchill to Churchill, 29 October
1897, p.826.
30. Gordon Carrigan, Sepoys in the Trenches (Stroud: Spellmount, 2006);
* Mark Harrison, "The Fight Against Disease in the Mesopotamitan. Campaign, in
Hugh Cecil and Peter H. Liddle (eds.), Facing Armageddon: The First World War
Experienced (London: Leo Cooper; 1996), pp.475-89.
* David E. Omissi, The Indian Army in the First World War, 1914-1918, 'in David
Marston and Chandar S. Sundaram. (Eds.) A Military History of India and the
South Asia (Bloomington: Indian University Press, 2008), pp.74-87.
* Churchill, The gathering Storm, P.5.
31. Charles C.Trench, The Indian Army and the King's Enemies, 1900-1947 (London:
Thames and Hudson, 1988), pp.75-90.
32. See Stephon P. Cohen, The Indian Army, Its Contribution to the Development of a Na-
tion (Berkely: University of California Press, 1971), pp.68-76; Philip Mason, A Matter
of Honour (London: Macmillan, 1986), pp.412-43; and Hugh Tinker, 'India in the First
World War and after, Journal of Contemporary History, 3:4 ((Oct.1968), 89-107.
33. Saul David, The Indian Mutiny 1857 (London: Penguine, 2003 edition); and
G.B.Malleson, The Indian Mutiny of 1857 (London:Saley & Co. 1891, 2001 edition).
34. Ian F.W.Beckett, 'The Singapore Mutiny of February, 1915', Journal of the Society for
Army Historical Research, (2:3 1984)
35. Chandar S. Sundaram, 'Grudging Concessions: The Officer Corps and Its Indianizationa,
1817-1940', in Marston and Sundaram (eds) A Military History of India and South Asia,
p.94.
77
36. Randolph S. Churchill (ed.) Winston S. Churchill: Companion Vol.1 Part 2 London:
Heinemann, 1967.
37. Churchill, The Gathering Storm, Churchill to Chamberlaine 1 Oct 1939, p.383
38. Churchill, Their Finest Hour Churchill to Wavell, through Ismay, 12 Aug 1940, p.377
39. 66, Mason, A Matter of Honour P.513
40. Wavell, Painted Churchill as overly emotional when it came to India; see Panderal Moon,
(ed), Wavell, the Viceroy's Journal (Karachi: O.U.P., 1974)
41. Whenever Churchill wrote 'British-Indian Army what he really referred to was the, 'British
Officered Indian Army which he had been a part of whilst stationed in Bangalore at the
end of the nineteenth century.
42. Mason, A Matter of Honour, P.522; Moon (ed.), Wavell, p.3.
43. Churchill, My Early Life, P.164.
44.(As, CP, BHUR 4/25A/18: Churchill to the Syndicate, 7 Nov. 1950.
45. Burma Star Association, http : // www.burmastar.org.UK/1944.4+m.Accessed & March
2012.
46. Slim did not hesitate to confront Churchill on how he and his men had been forgotten
all over again. Churchill was only too happy to inform him that the Army would get its
due within the final volume of his memoirs.
47. S.N.Prasad, K.D.Bhargava, and P.N.Khera (eds), The Reconaquest of Burma, Volume 1
(Orient Longmans: Combined Inter-Services Historical Section, India & Pakistan, 1958,
p.xxv
48. Ibid.
49. Maurice Ashley, Churchill as Historian (London: Secker & Warburg, 1968). p.18.
50. See Government of India Publications, The Tiger Strikes. The Story of Indian Troops in
North Africa and East Africa (London: HMSO,1942); The Tiger Strikes: The Story of
British and AIndian Troops with The 8th Army in North Africa. (London: HMSO, 1944);
and The Tiger Triumphs: The Story of Three Great Divisions in Italy (London: HMSO,
1946).

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 Works Cited
* Randolph S. Churchill (ed.) Winston S. Churchill Companion Volume 1, Part 2, 1896-
1900 London Heinemann, 1967.
* James C. Humes, Winston Churchill, AE & DK: London: 2003.
* Mukherjee Madhusree "History News Network Hnn.Us.http://www.hun.us./articles/
129891. html. Retrieved.
* Lonard A. Gordon, Review of Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: The Famine of
1943-1944 by Greenough Paul. R. American Historical Review Vol.88, No.4 (October
1983) p.1051.

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