[Tyr Zalo Hawk]: 712.Essays.Response Papers.Colonial Stuff

I must admit that my initial response to reading through this specific piece of literature was a resounding pit of condescending apathy. I must also admit, however, that this response was one fraught with the grand error of misjudgment. You see, I was under the distinct impression on my first reading that it was an introduction to a book mainly concerned about the dominating role of the English and their false superiority over the Indian peoples whom they had conquered. I had thought that Viswanathan was just another in a long line of critics trying to tell me that my white ancestors were wrong about everything the reasons they did everything, even if it all eventually led to some grand cultural and socio-economical changes. This is where I was, as my second reading proved to me, entirely wrong in my own false sense of superiority over someone with a crazier last name than mine.¹
As it turns out, what Viswanathan was saying behind her overtly polysyllabic essay was a surprising point which had never before been brought to my attention: English literature, as a study and as a whole, was practically holistically upgraded in an attempt to teach it to the people of the East. This was not only a shocking revelation, as I had considered the ‘proper’ study of English Literature almost as ancient as the English themselves, but a point which I could not help but laugh at. Viswanathan’s main argument can be summed up in her own words more richly than in my own.
“In what must be described as a wryly ironic commentary on literary history, the insadequacy of the English model resulted in fresh pressure being applied to a seemingly innocuous and not yet fully formed discipline, English literature, to perform the functions of those social institutions (such as the church) that, in England, served as the chief disseminators of value, tradition, and authority” (65)
This paragraph-sized sentence is the conclusion that she reaches, and one which I myself could hardly deny by the time I had reached it for the second time. Her claim is backed by a collection of facts and quotes which I can neither dispute nor deny. Indians had a rich, complex society with a well-educated upper class and their barbarism was really just a cultural misunderstanding forced upon them by a close-minded conquering force. The English, despite their paradoxical approaches to teaching, recognized both the beauty of the literary masterpieces that originated from India and the rest of the Eastern lands, as well as the inherent ‘danger’ in teaching such ‘questionable’ material to a people they were trying to morally educate. Being no fool, I can recognize as well as anyone that the only real problem with this mindset is thinking that people who can intellectually stimulate you are unprepared to read the things they’ve written and works on the same level. It was a problem solved by rapidly developing the literary system in a foreign country rather than at home, which turned out to be just what the English professor ordered. Still, it can’t just all be settled there.
In her final paragraph, as I’m sure couldn’t be helped, Viswanathan has to get political. “The introduction of English literature marks the effacement,” she remarks, “of a sordid history of colonialist expropriation, material exploitation, and class and race oppression behind European world dominance” (66). While I must admit that Viswanathan does have a point, she’s already made this point subtly beforehand in the rest of her essay. The careful reader notes that the English are obviously a single-minded people with no consideration for their conquered people other than indulging in their intellectual abundance without giving it any credit. Yet to come right out and say it, to me, discredits a large portion of the author’s argument. It is not necessary to bluntly point out such things when I’m sure that, by now, the world is aware of the travesties inflicted upon the territories Mother England and her armies overtook in their quest for global rule. Viswanathan’s contestations about English literature and the development of it through interactions with colonial India have been well-argued thus far and do not need such an overt glare at English history to support them any further. Thus, by ramming such an interjection as a ‘final word’ on the subject seems more like a personal vendetta rather than a logical conclusion to the work at hand. Perhaps it’s just my jaded nature from countless years of hearing this sentiment repeated at every twist and turn when learning about history, but can’t we just give a rest already?

¹ Admittedly, mine was the mistake of a tired college student recovering from surgery while under the influence of Hydrocodone, but it was a mistake nonetheless and I’m not afraid to admit that now that I’m relatively more clear-headed.