The Glass Palace " Amutha Dhanaraj* and J

24171 Amutha Dhanaraj and J. Sundarsingh/ Elixir Literature 70 (2014) 24171-24173 Available online at www.elixirpublishers.com (Elixir International Journal) Literature Elixir Literature 70 (2014) 24171-24173 Post Colonial Perspective in Amitav Ghosh's " The Glass Palace " Amutha Dhanaraj* and J. Sundarsingh Department of English, Karunya University, Coimbatore. ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history: This paper traces the colonial perspective in Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace , a Received: 26 March 2014; historical novel that presents the colonization of Burma and its impact on the royalty as Received in revised form: well as the commoners. Post Colonial Literature is a body of literary writing that deals 25 April 2014; with the problems and consequences of the European colonization of the Middle East, Accepted: 9 May 2014; Asia and Africa. The novel deals with the European greed and the cruelty of colonization as it unfolds over a period of hundred years of pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial Keywords Burmese history from the late 19 th century to the end of the 20th century. It describes the Post-colonialism, effortlessness with which the country is captured by the British and the Burmese royalty Burmese history, deported to India and the aftermath of this incident in the lives of people. Through the life Ecological aspects, of RajKumar, the protagonist of the novel, the author unfolds the poignant accounts of Human life, people scattered through post- imperialist dislocation in various parts of the Asian Aspirations, Continent. The natives are presented as victims rather than foes of the colonizers. This Disappointments. paper presents the sordid reality of imperialism and its destructive effect on the social, psychological and ecological aspects of human life. The aspirations and disappointments of the colonized people are also brought forth as they try to ‘figure out their place in the world’ © 2014 Elixir All rights reserved Introduction sepoys force the surrender of the Burmese army, march up to The term ‘post-colonial’ is used ‘to cover all the culture The Glass Palace, capture the king and exile him to India. affected by the imperial process from the moment of Colonial greed is presented as the animating force behind colonization to the present day.’ (Ashcroft, p.1) The British East the Anglo Burmese war. ‘... They want all the teak in Burma. India Company entered the Indian sub continent as the The king won’t let them have it so they are going to do away honourable East India Continent in 1708, took advantage of the with him.’ (15) Once the king was defeated and the city in-fighting between the kings of the independent states that conquered, the palace was looted by British soldiers and people made up erstwhile India and by 1757 brought the entire country saw them marching out of the fort with sacks of loot. The king under their rule. They also overpowered the neighbouring was sent to a place of obscurity, Burma was integrated into the countries like Bangladesh, SriLanka and Burma and drained empire and forcibly converted into a province of British India them of their natural resources. During the imperial rule the which gave them the freedom to freely plunder its natural native populations were subjected to a range of social, resources. The queen is right when she says, ‘In a few decades economic, physical, psychological and political subjectivities. the wealth will be gone- all the gems, timber and oil ... A Post-colonial literature analyses the political ideologies which hundred years hence you will read the indictment of Europe’s legitimated the modern invasion, occupation and exploitation of greed in the difference between the kingdom of Siam and the inhabited lands by colonial powers. state of our own enslaved realm.’(88) The Glass Palace , by Amitav Ghosh unfolds over a period The novel projects not only the greed of the colonizer but of hundred years of pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial also that of the colonized. As a colonized subject from Bengal, Burmese history from the late 19 th century beginning with the Rajkumar becomes a colonizer in Burma. He makes quick demise of Konbaung dynasty through the Second World War to money by transporting indentured labourers from India to the the end of the 20th century with the emergence of a democratic teak forests and oil wells in Burma and the rubber plantations in movement. With this historical background the novel depicts the Malaya. Many foreign companies were busy digging for oil mingled fates of three families- that of Rajkumar a Bengali transporting trees from the forests of Burma that they were emigrant to Burma , his mentor Saya John and his son Mathew desperate for labour. Poor Indian peasants were allured to the and Uma, the widow of the collector of Ratnagiri and three land of Burma, which was projected to them as the golden land countries- India, Burma and Malaya. by Rajkumar. Some came forward eagerly while others were The story opens in Mandalay in 1885. The protagonist sent forcibly by their fathers and brothers. In three years time Rajkumar, an 11 year orphan from Chittagong arrives in Rajkumar had made nine trips to India to bring labourers and Mandalay as the British are taking over the country. A distant accumulated savings which amounted to two- thirds of the booming sound is heard but the natives are not perturbed by it. asking price of a timber yard in Rangoon. Rajkumar recognises it as ‘English canon’ and informs that ‘A Moreover as a partner in the rubber plantation in Malaya he whole English fleet is coming this way.’ (18) The boy’s words had been responsible for ensuring a steady supply of workers presage the downfall of the Burmese sovereign king Thebaw. from India. While he made a lot of money in transporting people Not long after the explosions British soldiers mostly Indian to the rubber plantation, the plantation workers were forced to live in squalid conditions . The workers shacks were tiny hovels Tele: E-mail addresses: [email protected] © 2014 Elixir All rights reserved 24172 Amutha Dhanaraj and J. Sundarsingh/ Elixir Literature 70 (2014) 24171-24173 with roofs made of branches and leaves, the squalor in the mud- commercial hub and there was a plunder of its material walled hut where they went to be treated when they fell ill was resources, ‘...resources were being exploited with an energy and unimaginable and the floor was covered with filth. These are efficiency hitherto undreamt of’. The Mandalay palace was two sides of the same coin. On one side Indian labourers were refurbished to serve the conqueror’s pleasure and the gardens made to work in docks and mills, to pull rickshaws and empty ‘dug up to make rooms for tennis courts and polo grounds.’(66) the latrines. On the other some of the richest people in the city The callous cutting of jungles through systematised, were Indians and most of them began with nothing more than a mechanical ways feels so cruel. Teak trees were killed during bundle of clothes and tin box. the dry season and left to dry sometimes for three years or even According to Ashcroft, a major feature of post-colonial more for the density of teak is so high that it would not remain literatures is the concern with place and displacement. Young afloat when the heartwood is moist. The killing was achieved Indian men were dislocated by the colonizers to Burma, with a girdle of incisions, thin slits carved into the wood. When Singapore and Malaya as soldiers. Out of the ten thousand they were judged dry enough to float that they were marked for soldiers in the British invasion force of Burma, two thirds were felling. Ghosh uses words like dead, killing and assassinated to Indians- ‘seasoned, battle hardened troops ... had proved their show the ruthless exploitation of the environment. The trees worth to the British over decades of warfare, in India and themselves seemed protest against this devastation. ‘Dead abroad.... had stood steadfastly by their masters, even through though they were, the trees would sound great tocsins of protest the uprising of 1857, when most of northern India had risen as they fell, unloosening thunderclap explosions that could be against the British.’(26) Narrating his experience as an orderly heard miles away.’ (69) When a tree was cut it brought down in a hospital at Singapore, Saya John talks about the plight of everything in its path, rafts of saplings and thick stands of Indian soldiers, fighting wars for their English masters- peasants bamboo were flattened in moments thus destroying the entire from small countryside villages. He could still remember the surrounding. Such was the colonial greed for teak that Ghosh smell of gangrenous bandages on amputated limbs; the night points it out as ‘a tree that had felled dynasties, caused screams of twenty-year-old boys. For a few coins, not much invasions, created fortunes, brought a new way of life into more than a dockyard coolie they allowed their masters to use being. them as they wished, ‘to destroy every trace of resistance to the Human greed is the cause for the devastation of power of English.’ (29)They were fighting neither due to enmity environment. Saya John introduces rubber to Rajkumar, as the nor anger, but in submission to orders from superiors, without tree on which money could be said to grow In Malacca rubber protest and without conscience. Years of enslavement has made saplings replaced spice gardens where pepper plants grew on them just tools in the hands of the British without minds of their vine. The dense, towering, tangled, impassable jungle with the own.

Load more