Lesson 2, Wednesday the 20th of March

Texts we have worked with today (homework and texts introduced in class)

-          Kanthapura by Raja Rao – class discussion

-          English For Better For Worse by Khushwant Singh – group work

 

How did we work with these texts?

-          Discussion in class

-          Group work

 

What were the main topics of today’s lesson?

India and the British

-          The language of the India people in England

 

What did we discuss?

1. What is the significance of gods in Indian culture? How do they behave, and how are they different to the Western concept of God?
- The Indians are polytheists, while the western, Christian populace is monotheist. The Indian gods often appear in mortal forms (human/animal), so that they have an identity, contrary to Christianity where god is an almighty being that is difficult to grasp. The Indian gods are assigned to different areas (f.eks. agriculture).

2. Why is it difficult for an Indian author to convey what he has to say in English?
- It is difficult, because of the language barrier between the two cultures. English is not a usable language to express the feelings and emotions of India, because they do not think alike. You cannot use a western language to express eastern lifestyle and feelings. = So some things will be lost in the translation.

3. What does Rao mean by “intellectual make-up” and “emotional make-up”?
- They wear the English language as make-up, because they will appear more intellectually. It is just like, we, in Denmark, utilize Latin to express ourselves, when we want to appear more intellectually. However they were not able to cloud their emotions through a mask.

4. What are the traits of the Indian language and Indian storytelling, according to Rao?
- “Not white, not quite” The Indians are trying to equalize the cultural differences with The British Empire by wearing “intellectual make-up”, because if they are able to speak as fluent and as proper as the English did, they are able to be equal to them – however this is hard, because they will never be as white as them.

Lesson 1, Monday the 18th of March

Texts we have worked with today (homework and texts introduced in class)

Today we have worked with:

·         The postcards from India (obviously not a text)

·         Raja Rao : “Kanthapura” from 1989

 

How did we work with these texts?

We spoke briefly about each postcard and analyzed them with focus on the main topics stated below.
As to Kanthapura, we read the foreword of the novel and thereafter worked with questions for the text. Anders went around to each group, listening to their answers for the questions (which I therefore cannot write down here). But Andreas and I wrote:

1. What is the significance of gods in Indian culture? How do they behave, and how are they different to the Western concept of God?

Gods are very significant because India is much more religious than any western country. They are depicted as heroes and there are a lot of legends written about them and their supernatural powers.

In the West we believe that there is one god and one god only. The Indians have a polytheistic society.

2. Why is it difficult for an Indian author to convey what he has to say in English?

Because his kind of English is different to the kind of English that is spoken in the West. Therefore some things can get lost in the process of understanding. The author believes that Indian English someday will be an accepted dialect like Irish English and American English.

3. What does Rao mean by “intellectual make-up” and “emotional make-up”?

He means that the English language is the more formal language but they are not yet comfortable with it so they use their native language to convey their message. Their feelings lie with their native language.

4. What are the traits of the Indian language and Indian storytelling, according to Rao?

The Indians does not have punctuation or the “ats” and “ons”. They just tell an interminable tale. Their texts are marked by informal every-day language… They write what they think.

The author has tried to copy these traits in his story.

 

What were the main topics of today’s lesson?

·         Post-colonialism

·         Colonialism

·         Social Darwinism

·         Superiority vs. inferiority

·         Equality vs. Inequality

·         India =production

·         White man’s burden

·         Hybridity vs. segregation

 

What did we discuss?

We discussed whether the postcards represented a colonial tendency of social Darwinism or whether the positive perspective on the white man’s burden was represented of the picture –whether the Brits were helping India or not by the colonization of India. This was done with the usage of the contrasts and different perceptions portrayed in the main topics and the terms stated under “useful terms”.

 

Useful terms:

·         Jingoism
”Is extreme patriotism in the form of aggressive foreign policy. In practice, it is a country's advocation of the use of threats or actual force against other countries in order to safeguard what it perceives as its national interests. Colloquially, it refers to excessive bias in judging one's own country as superior to others—an extreme type of nationalism.”[1]

·         Post-colonialism
“An academic discipline featuring methods of intellectual discourse that analyse, explain, and respond to the cultural legacies of colonialism and of imperialism.” [2]

·         Hybridity
“Hybridity commonly refers to “the creation of new transcultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonization.” Hybridization takes many forms including cultural, political and linguistic.”[3]

·         Social Darwinism
“Is an ideology of society that seeks to apply biological concepts of Darwinism or of evolutionary theory to sociology and politics, often with the assumption that conflict between groups in society leads to social progress as superior groups outcompete inferior ones”[4]

·         Colonialism
“is the establishment, exploitation, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. Colonialism is a set of unequal relationships between the metropole and the colony and between the colonists and the indigenous population”[5]

·         Racial segregation
”Is separation of humans into racial groups in daily life.”[6]

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingoism

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcolonialism

[3] http://www.qub.ac.uk/imperial/key-concepts/Hybridity.htm

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation

Notes, A Passage to India (excerpt)