7/28/2019 The Imperishable Empire - A Study of British Fiction on India

1/4

The Imperishable Empire: A Study of British Fiction on India

Ketu H. Katrak

MFS Modern Fiction Studies, Volume 36, Number 2, Summer

1990, pp. 283-285 (Review)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

For additional information about this article

Access Provided by Virtual University of Pakistan at 06/17/11 7:50AM GMT

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mfs/summary/v036/36.2.katrak.html

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mfs/summary/v036/36.2.katrak.htmlhttp://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mfs/summary/v036/36.2.katrak.html

7/28/2019 The Imperishable Empire - A Study of British Fiction on India

2/4

nrfr

Rashna B. Singh. The Imperishable Empire: A Study of British Fiction on India.Washington: Three Continents, 1988. 287 pp. $28.00 cloth; pb. $14.00.

7"Ae Imperishable Empire is a thoroughly researched and scholarly work. Singh'sanalysis covers fiction by "Anglo-Indians in its original sense," that is, "the Englishwho colonized India"a category separate from contemporary Anglo-Indian (orIndo-Anglian) writers, so named because they write in English. The book discussesfive of the "minor" authors (William Delafield Arnold, Sir Henry Cunningham,Philip Meadows Taylor, Maud Diver, Edward Thompson) and all the "major"Anglo-Indian writers (Rudyard Kipling, E. M. Forster, George Orwell) in theperiod before independence, because these writers represent "major types of Anglo-Indian fiction," and together they encompass the entire period of British Raj.The aim, however, is not to undertake detailed analysis of any particular writer

but rather to examine "the interfusion of forces in the formation of this fiction

and its influence on its reading public."Singh analyzes several novels by "apparently minor novelists," although,

as she remarks, in terms of "appeal and influence" the distinction between majorand minor novelists would have to be inverted. One structural flaw of the entire

study is present incipiently in the very categorization of works as major and minor.The book is divided into nine chapters, with headings like "The Imaginative Ap-peal of India," "The Role and Significance of India," "Perception and Depic-tion of Reality"compartmentalizing concepts that in fact necessarily overlap.This leads to repetition, taking away, at times, from the overall argument. Givensuch categorization, the rationale for including certain texts in one chapter ratherthan another is not clear.

Among the major writers that Singh covers, she follows a useful methodliterary productions of E. M. Forster, George Orwell, and Paul Scott are readin conjunction with memoirs, journals, letters, and critical reviews, hence reveal-ing several contradictions between their alleged aims and literary representations.Singh also demystifies the "greatness" of these writers by placing them as partof a dialectic between writer and reader and, further, by locating them withinan arena of social responsibility in creating and sustaining certain images of Indiafor their largely, in this case, British readers. The impact on the British reading

public (both in India and in Britain) of literary images powerfully presented insuch cultural productions is an especially fascinating aspect of Singh's project.

Singh's historicist approach analyzes British writers in relation to such largerpolitical configurations as race, class, and Empire. She raises several conceptualissues: orientalist representations and their impact on readers' and writers' im-aginations and interpretations; configurations of Empire and the sharing of "acommon consciousness" by writers and readers, mutually reinforcing severalstereotypes. This validates the equivocation of historical material through the useof "coded terms" that describe Indian characters in dangerously generahzableterms.

RECENT BOOKSBRITISH AND IRISH 283

7/28/2019 The Imperishable Empire - A Study of British Fiction on India

3/4

Singh suggests that women writers, some of whom after retirement and returnto Britain could not quite forget India, seemed particularly susceptible to suchgeneralizations. The titles of some of their novels7"Ae Romance of a Nautch Girl,A Mixed Marriage, Love by an Indian Rivertell the tale. For their audiences, storiesof love and adventure reveling in "mystery and exoticism," remarks Singh, "re-mained a far more appealing aspect of the country than its history or politics.""A story about India is not necessarily a story of India." Even some of the betterknown women writers such as Maud Diver describe India as "an uncomfortable

reality." The romances are more about English life in India than about Indiaitself. Diver depicts characters who were "watchdogs and builders of the Em-

pire," sometimes continuing a family tradition of service and civilization, fulfill-ing the White Man's Burden.

Singh also discovers in Diver the image of India as genderedfeminine, sub-missive, embodying inexplicable and mysterious charms. "England always as hus-

band of India," writes Diver. At other times, the country is described as "apassion," as "seducer," as "goddess." Such mystification ensured that Indiaappealed "to the heart rather than to the mind." Singh adds that this is true

even in Forster's A Passage to India: "How can the mind take hold of such a country?Generations of invaders have tried but mey remain in exile." When Adela remarks,"I want to see the real India," such desire is confined to India as exotic landrather than to knowing its people, customs, and religions, which Adela, perhapssubconsciously, holds in contempt.

It might be more or less a commonplace now to remark that the British "in-vented" an image of India that was full of myths. Singh extends this analysisto state that the British did not evolve this image "out of [their] experience inIndia but out of the exigencies of a historical and political situation." Further,the fictionalization of this "invention" is what concerns Singh in her analysis

of the novels. She also explores historical reasons for such positionsshe presentsnonliterary sources such as Lord Bentinck's words (Governor General of Madras,1803-1807), namely that the British knew very little of Hindu customs or Indianlanguages. Such positions include Mill's type of arrogance that could not con-ceive the need to see India or to understand her people firsthand but that couldwrite volumes about it. At times, Singh's analysis of such sources is more usefulin determining the gaps between appearance and reality than in her analysis ofthe literary material. Fiction is, after all, a representation of reality; hence Singh'sunmediated discussion of distortions of "reality" becomes problematic. This isnot to say that arrogance and racism in the fiction cannot be criticized withoutliterary and theoretical mediation.

As a whole, Singh's compelling analysis and careful scholarship (includingextensive bibliographies of texts, pamphlets, and reviews) make this a usefulwork to students and scholars in the field. It is also a welcome addition to the

ongoing challenge of countering stereotypes of the mystic and inscrutable Easttrapped in abject poverty and exotic timelessness. Cultural productions in the Westcontinue to sustain and validate such stereotypesBritish renditions of the Rajin such films and television shows as The Jewel in the Crown and The Far Pavilions"have contributed to a revival of interest in the entire era of British India," remarksSingh, "an interest that, alas, does not reach below its surfaces." A scholarly

284 MODERN FICTION STUDIES

7/28/2019 The Imperishable Empire - A Study of British Fiction on India

4/4

work such as The Imperishable Empire admirably reaches "below the surfaces" andreveals certain fictional and fictionalized truths embedded in that historical and

cultural past.

KETU H. KATRAK

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

rrfr

T. J. Binyon. "Murder Will Out": The Detective in Fiction. New York: Oxford UP,1989. 174 pp. $19.95.

Charles Viney. Sherlock Holmes in London: A Photographic Record of Conan Doyle's

Stories. Boston: Houghton, 1989. 168 pp. $24.95.Walter Shepherd. On tL Scent with Sherlock Holmes. Bloomington: Gaslight Publica-tions, 1987. 85 pp. $14.95.

In "Murder Will Out," which the author describes as "an attempt at a history... of a type of fictional character," T. J. Binyon classifies and discusses "thefictional detective in all his guises," especially series characters. He divides detec-tives into three main categories: the "professional amateur"private detectiveslike Holmes and Poirot; the "amateur amateur"dilettantes like Dupin and LordPeter Wimsey; and the "professional"policemen like Gideon and InspectorFrench. He then breaks each classification down into subcategories: for example,under the "professional amateur" he places lawyers, doctors, journalists; underthe "amateur amateur," academics, priests, husbands, and wives. No classifica-

tion is rigid, and certain detectives may at times cross from one category to another.Binyon also includes short sections on comic detectives, fictional villains, burglars,and Robin Hood types. Moving chronologically according to the first publishedappearance of each fictional detective, Binyon discusses mainly the story in whicha particular detective debuted, but he occasionally also notes subsequent titles.And he records authors' names, pseudonyms, and birth and death dates.

Binyon ignores many psychic detectives, such as Algernon Blackwood's JohnSilence and Seabury Quinn's Jules de Grandin, when he states that William HopeHodgson's Carnacki "is unique among fictional detectives, to my knowledge, inthat he concerns himself solely with occult phenomena." He never mentions thefact that E. W. Hornung (Conan Doyle's brother-in-law) meant his gentlemanthief Raffles to parody Sherlock Holmes. He gives the title of the annual in whichthe first Holmes story was published, as "Beeton's Xmas Annual." Xmas also ap-

pears in the index. He probably abbreviated Christmas in his notes and forgotto translate it back, but this is careless work. The greatest difficulty with thisbook, however, arises necessarily from the fact that Binyon treats over 400 fic-tional detectives in less than half as many pages. Aldiough he occasionally devotesa paragraph or two to an individual, he often moves so quickly from one detec-tive to another mat he creates only a run-through catalogue of names, tides, aumors,and dates.

RECENT BOOKSBRITISH AND IRISH 285