Curse or the Karna

Hello everyone

This task is a response to the task assigned by Yesha Bhatt Ma'am as part of thinking activity. 

Who is T.P. Kailasm:-

Tyagraj Paramasiva Iyer Kailasam was a playwright and prominent writer of Kannada literature. His contribution to Kannada theatrical comedy earned him the title Prahasana Prapitamaha, "the father of humorous plays" and later he was also called "Kannadakke Obbane Kailasam" meaning "One and Only Kailasam for Kannada.

1) Interpret the 'end' of all Acts and scenes. 

The play begins with karna's completion of education at parshurama's Ashram. At the last moment of his departure from the ashram he loses all he has earned during his stay there.

 Parshurama comes to know that such a youth cannot be brahmins, as he has pretended to be, he must be no other than a kshatriya. Gets angry to the extent of cursing this sincere disciple thus: And for thy dastard of lie, listen to a Brahmins curse.

If EVER YOU SHOULD HENCEFORTH SORELY NEED THE USE OF ARMS YOU'VE LEARNT OF ME THE BAREST TALK, THE MEREST THOUGHT OF THY SUPPOSED SOOTHA BIRTH CROSSING THY MIND...WILL SWELL THY HEART TO SENSE OF SHAME, WILL DULL THINE EYES AND MIND, NUMB AND PARALYSE THY LIMBS BEYOND THEIR POW'R TO HELP THEE MAKE THE SLIGHTEST, SMALLEST USE OF KNOWLEDGE THAT YOU'VE LEARNT OF MEI AVAUNTI AVAUNTI, EREI INFLICT A FURTHER CURSE ON THEE.

In Act 2, Scene I, Karna is distinguished as a matchless hero and Arjuna is about to lose his position of the best archer in the world, but the Brahmins curse again appears before him for his credentials.

 None is there to recognize karna's merit irrespective of his birth and parentage. Without any shade of doubt he is a matchless warrior, but he repeatedly

discouraged by the pandits and the Pandavas.

In Act 3 again the Brahmins victimises karna, who is badly humiliated by Draupadi in her Swayamvara.As soon as he rises to try his chance, she boldly declares that even if the sutures son fulfils the condition of marriage she will not accept him.

 Here we can see the caste system and how the lower class was insulted by upper class people.

Act 4 presents the greatest moment of Karna's chivalry and nobility. With certain bold digressions kailasam presents the episode of Draupadi's humiliation in presence of the elders of kuru family.

In the original Mahabharata Draupadi is humiliated, dragged by hair to the assembly hall and an attempt is made to disrobe her by Dussaasana. Karna also passes certain insulting comments on Draupadi. But kailasam's karna instead of passing remarks, comes forward for his rescue and defies. The kauravas prince with boldness and courage of a true warrior. He warms Dushasana, "move but a step and you die".

In Act 5 Kuntee, the virgin mother of Karna appears before him to request him not to use the serpent shaft against the Pandavas.

He unhesitatingly sides with Duryodhana and fights against the Pandavas who are protected by Lord Krishna.

 Throughout his life Karna cannot make any use of the knowledge of arms that he has received from Parashurama because of his curse. Brahmins curse him that Karna's chariot wheel will be swallowed by the earth when he will be fiercely competing on the battlefield to kill his enemy.

The same happens when he engaged in a fierce fight with his enemy Arjuna.  In the end, at the instance of Krishna, Arjuna kills karna. The curse of Karna is tragedy thematic materials collectively contribute to the artistic excellence of the play.

Q-2- Is 'moral conflict' and 'Hamartia' there in Karna's character?

It is indisputable that Karna is one of the most fascinating characters in Mahabharata. He had sterling character and was a victim of circumstances. His fighting skills were unmatched and loyalty to his friend unflinching. But a combination of fate, personal traits and shrewd battle strategy of Krishna ensured that he would not deliver the result which his best friend Duryodhana was hoping for.

He faced injustice when he was born and that too from his own mother (who abandoned him when he was just born). He died because of injustice and that also from his own brother who killed him when he was weaponless.

He had a life full of wrong turns. He was always unlucky yet fought against luck bravely till his very end and proved to the world that talent, will power and hard work can even beat bad luck.

Karna was extremely gifted, kind-hearted, brave, giving, generous to a fault and righteous, all of his good qualities have always been misused and taken advantage of.

He fought for his friend, who somehow exploited him in the sense that made him involved in adharma which Karna inherently would not have wanted to do.

He spared the lives of his brothers, who were under the impression that Karna was merely an enemy and left no stones unturned to harm him. He was killed in the hands of his own brother. 

He fulfilled the wish of that mother, who abandoned him at birth and never acknowledged him as a son even when he was always in front of her eyes. Even though fulfilling her wish meant the cost of his own life.

He was known for being a great philanthropist , yet it was being used against him by Indra to ask for his Kavach and Kundal and by Kunti to ask for not killing her sons. These two turned out to be major reasons for his death.

He lied to God Parshurama about his caste, out of fear of being rejected as a student. As a disciple under Parshurama, he was very much dedicated to him, he learned quickly,he practised very hard and finally managed to impress God Parshurama, who is known for his anger, but it all went to vain when his preceptor came to know about his real caste and cursed him for the lie.

He was always alone in his struggles, no one to share pain, no one to guide, yet he stayed strong. Let’s say in the case of Arjuna, he had his brothers to support him emotionally and physically, Lord Krishna was there to boost and guide him.

In the war he always fought righteously yet got killed in an unrighteous way.

He was a Kshatriya by birth but lived the life of a suta and struggled all life and got insulted/ridiculed by people and was forced to be deprived of his rights unnecessarily.

He was well versed in Vedas and other scriptures, was noble by heart and inherently a very righteous person but the company he kept compelled him to become part of unrighteous things at times. He often suffered inner turmoil because of this which he had finally confessed to Krishna once.

Karna is the only character in Mahabharata who has been betrayed by so many people :-

Kunti : Abandonment at birth.

Parshurama & a Brahman : Cursed for his caste & unknowingly killing a cow.

Kunti & Krishna : He was emotionally weakened just before the war.

Indra : Disguised as Brahman to take his divine armour.

Shalya : His charioteer conspired against him too .

Krishna : The Shakti weapon that he had acquired from Indra to kill Arjuna, had to be used on someone else because of Krishna’s tactics.

Arjuna : Killed him unfairly. Yeah after all the above, still he could only be killed through deceit.

Q-3)Karna The voice of Subaltern

Meaning of subaltern

          

 It refers to the populations that are socially, politically and geographically outside of the hegemonic power structure of the colony and of the colonial homeland. As intellectual discourse the concept of the subaltern is problematic because it originated as a Eurocentric method of historical enquiry for Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The term “Subaltern” is used in the fields of history, anthropology, sociology, human geography and literary criticism.

There are so many characters in the great epic Mahabharata but Karna comes across as the most evocative one. One cannot but be awed by his towering personality and sheer strength of character, and at the same time help to identify oneself with the moments of frailty in his tragic life. It is the realistic mix of nuances that makes Karna such a credible and lifelike character. The intriguing story of a hero who despite being born to royalty was brought up lovingly by a lowly charioteer and his wife, his whole life was one great struggle against cruel destiny and all the odds placed in his way by the inequities of his time.

The story of Karna begins with the misfortune of his secret birth and unfolds itself amidst the unremitting gloom of injustice and insult. 

The intriguing story of a hero who despite being born to royalty was cast away by his mother brought up lovingly by a lowly charioteer and his wife, his whole life was one great struggle against cruel destiny and all the odds placed in his way by the inequities of his time. On the psychological front, the stigma of his perceived lineage never left him. It required Adhiratha, his father, to quote him the equally tragic story of Ekalavya to bring him out of depression into which Guru Dronacharya's rejection for his enrolment for higher studies had pushed him. His psyche again suffered a setback when he was debarred from the tournament on the basis of his lineage, despite being the best performer of the day. Another big shock came his way in the Swayamvar of Draupadi. The biggest ambition of any warrior is to display his powers in battle. But cruel fate even denied him that privilege when he was forced to sit out of the Kurukshetra war for the first ten days. He might have looked normal from the outside but his inner personality was surely impacted by these and many other tragedies. Rejected and insulted by society at every step, he developed some flaws engendered by a defiant spirit and nurtured by association with the devil designs of Duryodhana, his benefactor prince. But those very things seem to enhance and enliven the appeal of his character. At every stage in his life he had to endure immense hardships and yet, never did he deter from the path of righteousness. The various sacrifices he made were only one aspect of his towering, though complex personality.The commitment to his principles was so deeply embedded in his psyche that he could not breach the same even in the thick of battle and in his worst nightmares. Overall, all this made him a unique personality with no parallel among his contemporaries. Therefore Karna can be considered undoubtedly as the unsung hero of the Mahabharata.

Words Count -1776

Chimamanda Njogi

Hello everyone, 

This blog is a response to the task assigned by professor Dilip Barad sir as part of a thinking activity in which I would like to share my understanding of the given videos.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian writer whose works include novels, short stories and nonfiction.She was described in The Times Literary Supplement as "the most prominent" of a "procession of critically acclaimed young anglophone authors which is succeeding in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature", particularly in her second home, the United States.

Adichie has written the novels Purple Hibiscus , Half of a Yellow Sun, and Americanah, the short story collection. The Thing Around Your Neck , and the book-length essay We Should All Be Feminists. Her most recent books are Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions , Zikora  and Notes on Grief.

In 2008, she was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant. She was the recipient of the PEN Pinter Prize in 2018.

First video:- Another story

In this video she talked about her writing experience and the experience she got from society. When she began to write, at about the age of seven, stories in pencil with crayon illustrations that her poor mother was obligated to read, she wrote exactly the kinds of stories she was reading: All  her characters were white and blue-eyed, they played in the snow, they ate apples, and they talked a lot about the weather, how lovely it was that the sun had come out. This despite the fact that she  lived in Nigeria. She had never been outside Nigeria. They didn't have snow, they ate mangoes, and They never talked about the weather, because there was no need to.

What this demonstrates, according to her, is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story, particularly as children. Because all she had read were books in which characters were foreign, she had become convinced that books by their very nature had to have foreigners in them and had to be about things with which she  could not personally identify. Now, things changed when she discovered African books. There weren't many of them available, and they weren't quite as easy to find as the foreign books.

But because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye, she went through a mental shift in her perception of literature. She realised that people like her, girls with skin the colour of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature. She started to write about things recognized.

She shared her one experience with the Fide's family, The year she turned eight, They got a new house boy. His name was Fide. The only thing her mother told them about him was that his family was very poor. Her mother sent yams and rice, and their old clothes, to his family. And when she didn't finish dinner, her mother would say, "Finish your food! Don't you know? People like Fide's family have nothing." So she felt enormous pity for Fide's family. Then one Saturday, They went to Fide's village to visit, and his mother showed them a beautifully patterned basket made of dyed raffia that his brother had made. She was startled. It had not occurred to her that anybody in his family could actually make something. All she  had heard about them was how poor they were, so that it had become impossible for her to see them as anything else but poor. Their poverty was her single story of them.

Then she shared one more experience of her , When she left Nigeria to go to university in the United States. She was 19. Her American roommate was shocked by her. She asked her where she learned to speak English so well, and was confused when Chimamanda said that Nigeria happened to have English as its official language. 

What struck her was this: She had felt sorry for her even before she saw her. Her default position toward Chimamanda, as an African, was a kind of patronising, well-meaning pity. Her roommate had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe. In this single story, there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals. She  must say that before she went to the U.S., she didn't consciously identify as African. But in the U.S., whenever Africa came up, people turned to her. Never mind that she  knew nothing about places like Namibia. But she did come to embrace this new identity, and in many ways she think of herself now as African. Although she still get quite irritable when Africa is referred to as a country, the most recent example being her otherwise wonderful flight from Lagos two days ago, in which there was an announcement on the Virgin flight about the charity work in "India, Africa and other countries."

After she had spent some years in the U.S. as an African, she began to understand her roommate's response to her. If she had not grown up in Nigeria, and if all she knew about Africa were from popular images, she too would think that Africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, and incomprehensible people, fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreigner. She  would see Africans in the same way that she , as a child, had seen Fide's family.

This single story of Africa ultimately comes, she thinks, from Western literature.  Quote from the writing of a London merchant called John Lok, who sailed to west Africa in 1561 and kept a fascinating account of his voyage. After referring to the black Africans as "beasts who have no houses," he writes, "They are also people without heads, having their mouth and eves in their breasts." what is important about his writing is that it represents the beginning of a tradition of telling African stories in the West: A tradition of Sub-Saharan Africa as a place of negatives, of difference, of darkness, of people who, in the words of the wonderful poet Rudyard Kipling, are "half devil, half child." 

She began to realise that her American roommate must have throughout her life seen and heard different versions of this single story, as had a professor, who once told her that her novel was not "authentically African." Now, she was quite willing to contend that there were a number of things wrong with the novel, that it had failed in a number of places, but She had not quite imagined that it had failed at achieving something called African authenticity. In fact, she did not know what African authenticity was. The professor told her that her characters were too much like him, an educated and middle-class man. Her characters drove cars. They were not starving. Therefore they were not authentically African.But she must quickly add that too she was just as guilty in the question of the single story. 

It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power. There is a word, an Igbo word, that she thinks about whenever she thinks about the power structures of the world, and it is "nkali." It's a noun that loosely translates to "to be greater than another." Like our economic and political worlds, stories too are defined by the principle of nkali: How they are told, who tells them, when they're told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power.

Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person. The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story and to start with, "secondly." Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans, and not with the arrival of the British, and you have an entirely different story. Start the story with the failure of the African state, and not with the colonial creation of the African state, and you have an entirely different story.

She's always felt that it is impossible to engage properly with a place or a person without engaging with all of the stories of that place and that person. The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasises how we are different rather than how we are similar.

Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanise. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.when we reject the single story, when we realise that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.

Second Video:-

She started with her friend and then she talked about one journalist who gave advise to her that she should never called herself a feminist because "Feminist are women who are unhappy because they can not find husbands- so she decided to called herself 'happy feminist'. Then academic Nigerian woman told her that feminism wasn't our culture and that feminism wasn't African and that she was calling herself a feminist because she had been corrupted by 'western books' .  

We have different hormones, we have different sexual organs, different biological abilities, women can have babies, men can't. 52% of the world population is female but most of the positions of power and prestige are occupied by men.

The late Kenyan Nobel peace laureate wangari mathai put it simply and we'll when she said,

'The higher you go, the fewer woman there are'

The physically strong person was more likely to lead and men in general are physically stronger, but today we live in a vastly different world. The person more likely to lead is not the physically stronger person. It is the more creative person, the more intelligent person, the more innovative person and there are no hormones for those attributes. A man is as likely as a woman to be intelligent, to be creative, to be innovative.

"Gender matters everywhere in the world".

But she thinks about a utopian society where we must have raised our son differently. Our daughters are different. We do a great disservice to boys on how we raise them. We teach girls to shrink themselves to make themselves smaller. We says to girls

'You can have ambition but not too much'.

'You should aim to be successful but not too successful, otherwise you would threaten the man.'

In talking about marriage and relationship- the language is often the language of ownership rather than partnership. We used the word 'RESPECT'  to make something a woman shows a man but often not something a man shows a woman. We teach females that in relationships compromise is what women do. We raise girls to see each other as competition not for jobs or for accomplishments which could be a good thing But for the attention of men.

She gave some solutions and idea about how one should raise child:-

What if in raising children we focus on ability instead of gender? What if in raising children we focus on interest instead of gender? What if parents from the beginning taught both the boy and the girl to cook food?

We should unlearn many lessons of gender that internalised when we were growing up.

'GENDER MATTERS' Men and women experience the world differently. Gender colours the way we experience the world.

'CULTURE DOES NOT MAKE PEOPLE, 

PEOPLE MAKE CULTURE'

Chimamanda- I AM FEMINIST - 'A PERSON WHO BELIEVES IN THE SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC EQUALITY OF THE SEXES'

A feminist is a person man or women who says 'YES THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH GENDER AS IT IS TODAY AND WE MUST FIX IT, WE MUST DO BETTER'.

Third Video:-

She started a talk with a contemporary situation that we live in a culture of calling out a culture of outrage and you should call people out you should be outraged but always remember context and never disregard intent.

Absurd questions of America such as ' should we call a lie a lie when a lie is a lie. Why lie about giving honour to something to which you have no idea.

It is hard to tell ourselves the truth about our failures, our fragilities, our uncertainties, it is hard to tell ourselves. Maybe we haven't done the best that we can. It is hard to tell ourselves the truth of our emotions that may be what we feel is hurt rather than anger . Maybe it is time to close the chapter of a relationship and walk away. Bend always towards truth and by doing that make literature your religion which is to say read widely read fiction, poetry and narrative nonfiction. Make human story the centre of your understanding of the World. 

Sometimes in politicised spaces telling the truth will be an act of courage be courageous never set out to provoke for the same of provoking but never silent yourself out of fear that a truth you , speak might provoke be courageous, be courageous enough to acknowledge that even if there is no value in knowing what that position is listen to the other side at least the reasonable other side. Be courageous enough to acknowledge that democracy is always fragile and that democracy is always fragile and that justice has nothing to do with the political left and the political right. Be courageous enough to recognise those things that get in the way of telling the truth. She ends her talk with one moral: Whenever you wake it's your morning - what matters is that you wake up and the world calls you.

Words Count;-2339

J.M Coetzee - Foe

Hello everyone,

This blog is a response to the task assigned by Yesha Bhatt Ma'am as part of a thinking activity. In which I am going to answer questions related to the novel by J.M Coetzee - name - Foe.

Who is J.M.Coetzee?

John Maxwell Coetzee[m is a South African–Australian novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is one of the most critically acclaimed and decorated authors in the English language. He has won the Booker Prize (twice), the CNA Prize (thrice), the Jerusalem Prize, the Prix Femina étranger, and The Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and holds a number of other awards and honorary doctorates.

Introduction of Foe:-

Foe is a novel by J.M. Coetzee published in 1986. It is an entire rewriting of Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe, the canonical novel of British imperialism. It is a written challenge to recognise the colonial and imperial ideologies embedded in Defoe’s book and thus in our society. Foe is above all a novel about silence, the silence of Friday. Through Friday’s silence, the author shows us that language can be an instrument of colonisation.

The novel examines the creative process of storytelling, not only the content of the stories but also the problems of their production as well as issues of gender, race and colonialism.

Q-1)How would you differentiate the character of Cruso and Crusoe?

This Robinson Crusoe is much more in tune with his own reality and interested in his own accomplishments than Foe's Cruso. This is also evident in the number of tools and objects that Robinson Crusoe makes in comparison to Cruso.

Robinson Crusoe’s name is changed to “Cruso” which marks the first in a series of differences between the character of Cruso(e) in Foe and Robinson Crusoe. The Cruso that Susan describes in the quote is one who is completely disconnected from reality and confused about his own past. When Susan questions Cruso about his history on the island the details in his stories vary wildly each time they are told. When asked if Friday was a child when he came to the island Cruso would sometimes exclaim, “Aye, a child, a mere child”, but other times Cruso would say, “Friday was a cannibal whom he had saved from being roasted”. This uncertainty about events could stem from the fact that in Foe, Cruso is very against keeping written documentation of his days on the island; proclaiming,

 “Nothing I have forgotten is worth remembering”.

Cruso’s lack of journaling is a stark contrast to Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Robinson Crusoe is much less passive and senile in regards to his own development on the island. Crusoe kept a painfully detailed account of every action he does on the island in a journal he updates daily. Robinson Crusoe fills his multiple homes with various types of pots, tables, chairs, fences, and even a canoe. All of these items Crusoe builds are to improve and aide in his growth on the island, and he must be mentally sharp in order to build these items. Cruso in Foe has not put any effort towards building tools, as he only has a bed when Susan arrives at the island, and from the quote, it seems like he may not have the mental capacity to build these tools. Although Cruso does builds many terraces, he exclaims that they are for the future generations and not himself.

The difference in mindset and mental stability in the two Robinson Crusoe’s may be that in Robinson Crusoe, Crusoe felt that his island life had more value than Cruso did. Before becoming stranded on the island, religion wasn’t a focus in Robinson Crusoe’s life, and he frequently sinned; such as when he disobeyed his father. After becoming stranded on the island, Crusoe began to read the bible and incorporate God into his daily thoughts and actions. Crusoe expressed deep regret for his sinful past, and often attributed hardships to a lesson from God. This newfound lifestyle gave significant meaning to Crusoe’s daily actions as they represented growth in his faith, and a positive change in character. For Cruso, the island did not lead him to make any significant changes in his character or ideals. Therefore, his daily actions had less significance to him, and when his reality and sense of self began to slip away from him he was not concerned.

Q-2) Friday’s characteristics and persona in Foe and in Robinson Crusoe. 

Friday doesn’t need help, in reality, he’s a more complete and complex character in both Robinson Crusoe and Foe than any other character. Even Daniel DeFoe and J.M. Coetzee creates the illusion that the white European heroes in each of the stories know better than Friday and that their stories are more compelling than his, it can be argued, neither story's protagonists know best;  in spite of the rampant white saviour complex and promotion of colonisation ideology.

Friday slowly emerges as the heart of the novel. He is a slave who lives on the island with the man who is ostensibly his master. Cruso says that a slaver cut out Friday's tongue many years ago and Cruso never taught Friday any language beyond the most rudimentary instruction. This inability to communicate leaves Friday trapped in a silent world. Friday leaves the island and travels to England but it is only at the novel's end that he comes close to being able to express himself. The journey toward this act of self-expression emerges as the narrative of the novel. Friday attempts to express himself in a number of different ways. He ritually scatters petals on the sea, he plays music on his homemade flute, and he performs frenzied dances. Friday imbues these actions with a private meaning that is unknown to the rest of the world. Susan is the only person who attempts to glean meaning from these actions but she fails to understand their significance. Friday is shut inside his silent world even when he is trying to communicate. Friday eventually learns to write. Though he can only write a single letter over and over, it is the first step toward a shared understanding of Friday's pain. Foe and Susan provide Friday with a voice by teaching him to write. Meaning no longer has to be projected onto Friday's actions. He finally possesses the tools to make the world understand his pain.

Q-3) Is Susan reflecting the white mentality of Crusoe (Robinson Crusoe)?

Through the words of J.M. Coetzee, the character of Susan Barton describes her life during and after her time on the desolate island with Cruso. Barton’s time on “Cruso’s island” is spent in preoccupation with Cruso’s way of life, and life after her rescue is spent in reflection of her relationships with Cruso, Friday, and Foe. This female voice is presented through the words of a male author, J.M. Coetzee, who presents Barton as a submissive supporting actress to the extremely dominant character of Robinson Crusoe. 

Susan Barton, the narrator in Foe, finds herself shipwrecked on a desolate island with a man named Robinson Cruso. It does not take long for Barton to recognize her status on the island after she tells Cruso her story of being washed ashore. She says,

 “I presented myself to Cruso, in the days when he still ruled over the island, and became his second subject, the first being his manservant Friday”. 

Throughout the novel, even long after Cruso’s death, she describes the island as “Cruso’s island.” She finds herself as the mere female companion to the king and his manservant, Friday. Barton rationalises Cruso’s role of king as she sees him “on the Bluff, with the sun behind him all red and purple, staring out to see…I thought: He is a truly kingly figure; he is the true king of the island” . Coetzee makes Barton the woman behind the man, defining her as a “free and autonomous being like all human creatures that finds herself living in a world where men compel her to assume the status of the Other”. Barton is quick to assume the submissive role on the island as the assertive character of Robinson Crusoe takes the lead on the island and in her story.

Q. 4) Who is the Protagonist? (Foe – Susan – Friday – Unnamed narrator)

Susan Barton is Foe's protagonist and storyteller. The story is written in quotation marks, which further emphasises Susan's role in retelling her tale first with Cruso on the island and later with Friday in England. Susan struggles for voice and gradually that voice is rendered voiceless. Although she is European and essentially part of the hegemonic power structure, once she becomes a castaway on Cruso's island she becomes a subaltern character like Friday, both colonised others adhering to Cruso's authority and lifestyle.

Old Man Cruso, although once part of the elite class, becomes far removed from social conformities and expectations. He was at peace with the solitude the island brought him and he had no desire to leave it. Ultimately by the end of his life Cruso represented otherness even if it was by his own choice. His last fever came on at the time of the rescue by Captain John Smith.

Even in this weakened state Cruso resisted leaving his island: But when he was hoisted aboard the Hobart, and smelled the tar, and heard the creak of timbers, he came to himself and fought so hard to be free that it took strong men to master him and convey him below.

Susan's narrative voice is initially strong on Cruso's island. She is inquisitive and implores answers from Cruso. At one point Susan asks him why he had not built a boat: 

"Why in all these years have you not built a boat and made your escape from this island?".

 Cruso responds,

 "And where should I escape to?" 

Susan realises it is a "waste of breath to urge Cruso to save himself". Susan cannot get through to this man and it is the first glimpse of her struggle for voice. Later in the story, Susan struggles with Foe as she did Cruso: 

"Finding it as thankless to argue with Foe as it has been with Cruso, I held my tongue, and soon he fell asleep".

Mr. Foe is the only character that has elite or patriarchal power. He realises Susan is hiding or denying something from her experience in Bahia. As the novel escalates, Foe tries to persuade Susan to disregard her story and envision the possibilities that are in his mind. In doing so. Foe marginalises Susan's voice by insisting on writing the 'other' story that Susan resists telling. Susan struggles to regain control over her own story, persisting that the island tale is significant in and of itself. Her refusal to tell her 'other' story begins to discredit her character and her credibility starts to wane. The emergence of the little girl and the nanny strike a chord with Susan. A dark undercurrent becomes prevalent in the novel and Susan's denial of these characters questions her authority:

But if these women are creatures of yours, visiting me at your instruction, speaking words you have prepared for them, then who am I and who indeed are you?

Friday's voicelessness permeates through the story with a resounding silence that transforms into a voice of its own. Susan attempts to teach Friday his letters by drawing words on a slate. Soon after, Foe and Susan find Friday at the desk making 'rows and rows of the letter o. This exemplifies Friday's voicelessness. Like his mouth, the letter is open in suspended silence, Friday's silence is his choice; a victory of resistance against his postcolonial oppression and it becomes the most significant voice in Foe. Friday's defiance is evident in the last pages of the novel. The narration in the last section of Foe departs from Susan and Mr. Foe to an unidentified narrator that culminates in a pivotal display of metafictional literature. The narrator dives into the wreck and finds Friday:

But this is not a place of words. Each syllable, as it comes out, is caught and filled with water and diffused. This is a place where bodies are their own signs. It is the home of Friday.

Does it matter that Susan isn't able to tell her story? Does it matter that Friday does not tell him? Foe sets out to solve these questions but the non-solving of voice in Foe exacerbates the fact that there is a large gap in perception between a story and its teller.

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Future of Post-Colonial Studies

Hello everyone,

This blog is a response to the task assigned by professor Dilip Barad sir as part of the thinking activity in which I would like to share my understanding of that.

What is Post -Colonial Studies?

Colonialism can be defined as the conquest and control of other people 's land and goods. Colonialism is something which is done by everybody not only by white people. For example 'Foe' and 'Wide saragaso sea' in which feminism discourse, woman are colonised by man.

Post colonial idea broke the old mentality and you just need to change the form of things and people will happily accept it.

In the article one writer gives the idea about what is imperial, Empire and globalisation.

Hardt and Negri do not identify the United States as this new power, although they do argue that 'Empire is born through the global expansion of the internal US constitutional project', a project which sought to include and incorporate minorities into the mainstream rather than simply expel or exclude them. Likewise, the contemporary Empire is imperial and not imperialist' because it does not consist of powerful nations that aim to invade, destroy and subsume subject countries within its sovereignty' as the old powers did but rather to absorb them into a new international network.

The Empire can only be conceived of as a universal republic, a network of powers and counterpowers structured in a boundless and inclusive architecture. This imperial expansion has nothing to do with imperialism, nor with those state organisms designed for conquest, pillage, genocide, colonization, and slavery. Against such imperialisms, the Empire expands and consolidates the model of network power. Certainly... The expansive moments of Empire have been bathed in tears and blood, but this ignoble history does not negate the difference between the two concepts.

Postcolonial studies sometimes encompass, also aspects of British literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, viewed through a perspective that reveals the extent to which the social and economic life represented in the literature was tacitly underwritten by colonial exploitation.

11th September significant event in history but this is good for India because India is only complaining about terrorist and all. As America was attacked by terror group and it's terrible and no one imagined it before this. Colonialism shifted the way of looking at whatever British people do with us, but now our own people started to do that.

What is Globalisation?

Globalisation is a term used to describe how trade and technology have made the world into a more connected and interdependent place. Globalisation also captures in its scope the economic and social changes that have come about as a result.

In Globalisation working with whom and what it is important.

'Globalisation is just another name for submission and domination', an unemployed miner said at a demonstration this week in which Indian women... carried banners denouncing the International Monetary Fund and demanding the president's resignation. ``We've had to live with that here for 500 years, and now we want to be our own masters.'

Such a connection is precisely what many of the new writings on globalisation including Empire proclaim. Whereas the advocates of globalisation see the new economic order as already having engendered better lives for people, Hardt and Negri suggest that the new cultural, economic and political flows offer 'new possibilities to the forces of liberation' because global power can then be challenged from multiple sites by its multiple subjects whom they refer to as the 'multitude. They rightly draw attention to Etienne Balibar's important work on neo-racism which points out that a biological understanding of race has given way to a more culture-based understanding of difference.

For example , Indian film industry reached its peak production of 948 in 1990 and experienced a drop to 600 - 700 films by the end of the decade. This downturn reflects the propagation of television and Satellite broadcasting is becoming cheaper. Consequently, leading cinema managers left the profession, which, in turn, depleted the industry's morale. A wave of economic efficiency contributed to the further erosion of Indian cinema. Film production has always had a great gambling element. Innumerable pieces of equipment are required and many workers have to mobilise.

Many of the films were set in Western nations, and this appealed to Indian immigrants in those countries as they could relate to the surroundings, but it also appealed to Indians living within India, as many Indians had a fascination with the West during this time and wanted to immigrate abroad. Bollywood movies featuring famous cities such as New York, London, and Paris were very popular as they gave Indians a glimpse of what the Western world looks like.

The film My Name is Khan, precisely showcases the experiences that many Indians immigrants have faced in Western countries post 9/11. The film tackles themes such as Islamophobia and racism and was very well received for its accurate depiction of the diaspora's experiences.

Market fundamentalism:-

The international financial institutions have pushed a particular ideology-market fundamentalism-that is both bad economics and bad politics; it is based on premises concerning how markets work that do not hold even for developed countries, much less for developing countries. More generally, globalisation itself has been governed in ways that are undemocratic and have been disadvantageous to developing countries, especially the poor within those countries.

Market fundamentalism, also known as free-market fundamentalism, is a term applied to a strong belief in the ability of unregulated laissez-faire or free-market capitalist policies to solve most economic and social problems. It is often used as a pejorative by critics of said beliefs.

For example movie RA-ONE (2011)–The movie started its marketing campaign 200 days before the date of release with putting up 60% of their budget on Digital Marketing.

Making Audience a part of the production process by asking their decisions.

Bahubali (2015) – Makers of Bahubali started its marketing campaigns way earlier and regularly updated their fans with the movie process.

Bollywood Cast would change their social media accounts name in order to spread their upcoming film.

Other movies like ,The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Tiger which talked about the idea of marketing and how employees lose their job within a day or hour.

Market fundamentalism is work on hire and fire purpose. We have examples of Hollywood's film where we found such themes.

Up in the Air (2009)

This George Clooney classic involves him as a “corporate downsizer” whose job is to fire people from theirs. He flies from one destination to another, firing people and gathering miles on his airline travel.

But a new hire comes up with a digital transformation to fire people over video conferences. However, it comes with a fair share of problems in the ultimate lesson of why a “people-first” organisation always wins.

Another one is a book by Chetan Bhagat in which the characters had fear of losing their jobs anytime as they work under an American company. So they are always in a fear that the next morning if they will have a job or not.There is also a movie also based upon this novel named 'hello'.

How did the British Empire work?

The historian Erich S. Gruen has observed that Rome's expansion throughout the Mediterranean littoral may well have been motivated not by an appetite for conquest per se but because it was thought necessary for the security of the core homeland. The same is true for the United States worldwide, in an age of collapsed distances. This American imperium is without colonies, designed for a jet-and-information age in which mass movements of people and capital dilute the traditional meaning of sovereignty.

Kaplan offers ten rules for the US Empire, all of which require him to go back to the British Empire, but also to America's own past.

No. 1,- called 'Manliness', invokes the male bonding that supposedly existed between British colonists and the more refined of their subjects.

No. 5,- Be Light and Lethal, asks imperialists to openly appropriate and rewrite history: although many journalists and intellectuals have regarded US policy in Latin America as something to be ashamed of, the far more significant, operational truth is that it exemplifies how we should act worldwide in the foreseeable future'.

The British Empire has had a pretty lousy press from a generation of 'postcolonial' historians anachronistically affronted by its racism. But the reality is that the British were significantly more successful at establishing market economies, the rule of law and the transition to representative government than the majority of postcolonial governments have been.

Hardt and Negri, Empire can be challenged from multiple sites and is vulnerable to all manner of rebellions; they gesture towards the global multitudes' who have already begun to rise in revolt.

The core premise of post-colonial theory is that it is immoral for a scholar to put his knowledge of foreign languages and Cultures at the service of American power'

In another article by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak gives the conclusion of the second edition The Future of Post Colonial Studies.

She started with environment- ecology, environmental activist Vandana Shiva has exposed the connection between colonialism and the destruction of environmental diversity. She argues that the growth of capitalism, and now of trans-national corporations, exacerbated the dynamic begun under colonialism which has destroyed sustain- able local cultures; these cultures were also more women-friendly, partly because women’s work was so crucially tied to producing food and fodder. They believe that ecology and human culture are intricately linked. Ramachandra Guha and Juan Martínez-Alier point out, is evident in American environmentalism and its obsession with the wilderness. Rob Nixon

further notes that this wilderness obsession is celebrated in American literature as well as in natural history, where ‘There is a durable tradition … of erasing the history of colonised peoples through the myth of the empty lands. … a prodigious amount of American environmental writing and criticism makes expansive gestures while remaining amnesiac towards non-American geographies that vanish over the intellectual skyline’.

Post- colonial criticism has not engaged sufficiently either with this history or its legacies. Jodi A. Byrd and Michael Rothberg suggest that this is the result of ‘indigenous people’s sense of living under ongoing colonial projects—and not just colonial legacies—and from postcolonial studies’ over-reliance on models of colonialism in South Asia and Africa that do not necessarily speak to the settler colonies of the Americas, Australia and New Zealand’.

Palit discusses the ways in which the NBA developed new forms of resistance by drawing on the rich experience of the local people and their knowledge of the land. But its self-conception and practices were also shaped by the methods of the Gandhian anti-colonial struggle, and gathered enormous support from women’s groups, trade unions and left parties in the country, as well as connected with other people’s movements internationally.

The enclosure of the commons was, Karl Marx explained, crucial to the birth of capitalism. He described the process in England: beginning at the end of the fifteenth century, the forcible usurpation of communal property occurred first ‘by means of individual acts of violence’ and later through the Parliamentary Acts for Enclosures of the Commons this is not unlike the US takeover of Native American or Mexican territories, or the process Arundhati Roy describes in the case of the Indian constitutional takeover of tribal lands. Along with slavery and colonialism, the takeover of the commons and the conversion of various forms of collective property rights into private property involved dis-possessing large sections of the population, both in the colonising and colonised countries, so that wealth would be accumulated by a few. Marx described this process of dispossession and proletarianisation as ‘primitive accumulation’, remarking that the concept was as central to political economy as original sin was to theology.

Older histories of race, empire and dispossession are re-inscribed in the pattern of dispossession within the heart of the new empire. Examining subprime and debt crisis in the United States, Paula Chakravartty and Denise Ferreira da Silva trace the racialized logic of dispossession that is evident in the United States. Asking who is the most vulnerable to dispossession, they note that the question is one that Harvey does not even consider, one that he also seems to see as already asked and answered by the subprime mortgages themselves and their securitization, which is:

What is it about blackness and Latinidad that turns one’s house roof, protection, and aspiration and shelter into a death trap expecting to profit from unpayable loans without debtors who were already marked by their racial/cultural difference ensuring that at least some among them would not be able to pay? This is precisely what makes ‘high-risk’ securities profitable.

Chakrabarty insists that we will have to abandon our previous conceptions of human freedom that entailed thinking about ‘the injustice, oppression, inequality, or even uniformity foisted on them by other humans or human-made systems’ because ‘these critiques do not give us an adequate hold on human history once we accept that the crisis of climate change is here with us and may exist as part of this planet for much longer than capitalism or long after capitalism has undergone many more historic mutations’.

Examples:-

Climate change and the environmental issues today have brought to our notice the need to address them, create awareness, and take corrective actions. In India, Bollywood has a massive potential to reach out to the masses and create awareness about the same. It has the power to influence people’s actions and thus make a difference. The films can represent environmental issues and community problems efficiently and convey to the people the aftermath of their current deeds.

Kadvi Haava (2017)

This film is inspired by true events from the drought-prone Bundelkhand region. In this film, the village of Mahua is affected by scanty rainfall, barren land, crop failure, and climate change. All these factors add-up to farmers in debt. Farmer suicide becomes a frequent occurrence as they aren’t unable to pay back the debt. In this setting, a blind old farmer makes a pact with the debt recovery agent to save his son from the debt trap. This movie is a precise depiction of how climate change ends up killing people and their morals.

Jal (2013)

The film tells the story of two villages in Rann of Katch and their quest to find water. A young man named Bakka has a skill of divining water spots in the barren lands. A Russian woman comes here in search of flamingos native to Kutch. To her dismay, the number of flamingos had reduced because of water scarcity. Thus, she, Bakka, and a team of ecologists set out to find water. With this backdrop, the movie highlights how lack of water leads to forming classes and strain people physically and mentally. This film is yet another thought-provoking Bollywood drama.

Sherni:-

Sherni’ shows the links between humans, animals and forests. It underlines how the linkages in the ecosystem are being threatened. The film deals with the subjects like human–wildlife conflict and wildlife conservation.The title of the film is a bit of a misnomer, as in Hindi sherni properly refers to a lioness, while the formal word for a tigress is baghin.Though the word sherni is also frequently used to refer to tigresses.Sherni received positive reviews from the film critics for raising awareness about the importance of wildlife conservation and Balan's performance.

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