History and Memory in J. G. Farrell's the Siege of Krishnapur

International Journal of Research and Review www.ijrrjournal.com E-ISSN: 2349-9788; P-ISSN: 2454-2237 Research Paper History and Memory in J. G. Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur Sarah Zaré Farjoodi Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities, University of Guilan, Rasht, Iran ABSTRACT Unlike most Victorian novels in which the colonies and colonial matters are kept in the background, J. G. Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur, as the title suggests, brings the colonial affair to the fore and depicts the minutiae of an event in Victorian imperial history that brought about lasting anxieties, namely the 'Indian Mutiny' of 1857. Following Astrid Erll‟s study on the event as a shared lieu de mémoire, this essay examines the ways through which the text offers an alternative memory narrative to the British mutiny myth. Through unreliable narration, stereotypical characterization, unsettling the long-held hierarchies, widespread disillusionment, and role reversals, Farrell aims at undermining the British faith in progress and civilization that justified imperial encroachment on Indian land. Keywords: counter memory, disillusionment, neo-Victorianism, postcolonialism, uprising 1. INTRODUCTION combined critique and strong narrative line In an introduction to J. G. Farrell‟s [i] – the mix J. G. Farrell particularly wanted”. The Siege of Krishnapur and Troubles – the [1] The novel views the events form the two award-winning novels of his „Empire British outpost invaded by the sepoys. The Trilogy‟ [ii] – John Sutherland presents him community holds out for months until as “one of the finest post-colonial novelists finally, while retreated to the banqueting of his time”. [1] He even writes that Farrell hall and in a devastating, grotesque “was well-mixed, genetically, to be the condition, it is saved by the relieving force. obituarist of empire”. [1] Indeed, what It is mainly through the comically corroborates these claims is Farrell‟s trio of disillusioned character of the Collector, who novels pivoting around the theme of empire, believed wholeheartedly in the British on the second of which this study narrative of progress, that Farrell illustrates concentrates. The Siege of Krishnapur is the the decline of the empire. This essay outcome of Farrell‟s brooding over colonial examines Farrell‟s remarkable text as a India. Inspired by what he came across in medium of cultural memory that aims at the British Museum, namely Mark providing a counter memory to the Thornhill‟s Personal Adventures of a prevailing (imperial) narratives about the Magistrate during the Indian Mutiny, and so-called „Indian Mutiny‟. Following Astrid the Siege of Lucknow, “an iconic event in Erll‟s study on the Mutiny narratives, this British imperial history”, [1] he wrote the study argues that the text does not follow story of the eponymous fictional town under their inherent ideology and, in many siege during the rebellion of 1857. respects, aims at undermining the British Sutherland writes, “The intertwining of faith in progress and civilization that Thornhill‟s personal account with the justified imperial encroachment on Indian commercial rapacities of the British Empire land. International Journal of Research & Review (www.ijrrjournal.com) 134 Vol.5; Issue: 10; October 2018 Sarah Zaré Farjoodi. History and Memory in J. G. Farrell's the Siege of Krishnapur 2. “Indian Mutiny” and the Mutiny necessary. In this regard, the essay draws on Narrative Astrid Erll‟s selective study of these This section engages with the Indian conventions over one and a half centuries. Rebellion of 1857 and the narratives that Studying the „Indian Mutiny‟ as a later aimed at its illustration. What has been shared lieu de mémoire, [v] Astrid Erll, in her known as the “Indian Mutiny” was, indeed, essay, “Remembering across Time, Space, an uprising by the Indians against their then and Cultures: Premediation, Remediation British rulers. It broke out in Meerut, and the „Indian Mutiny‟”, relates the northern India as a rebellion of native different memories the term triggers in soldiers who were in the service of the different cultures, epochs, and media. British East India Company – i.e. sepoys – Maintaining that different images and and soon spread all over to Delhi and narratives have been associated with this Lucknow, joined by civilians, native rulers memory site, she writes: and princes that were disinherited by the For example, the Victorians, and indeed up British. What triggered the rebellion was the to the mid-twentieth century, mainstream sepoys‟ discontent at the new Enfield rifles, British culture associated the term „Indian the use of which they found in sharp Mutiny‟ with images of ferocious sepoys contrast with their religious beliefs – in raping English women, with British order to load it, they had to bite the end of cantonments on fire, with heroic Highland cartridges, which were believed to be soldiers charging into battle, and with lubricated by grease produced from animal narrative plots such as „last-minute rescue‟ fat, that of pigs and cows. [iii] It is needless and „last stand‟, „faith and delivery‟ and to say that what triggered the mutiny was „virtue rewarded‟. [3] merely a repercussion of the problems that Indeed, the person who remembers certain were much more deeply-rooted than the images of the event has to be “part of a greased cartridge issue would indicate. „media culture‟ in which representations of Indeed, the multiplicity of cultural conflicts the „Indian Mutiny‟ are constantly being reaches back to the beginning of the British circulated”. [3] Media (newspaper, literature, „colonial affair‟ in India. The rebels were movie, . ) play an ineluctable role in against the British policies that attempted to shaping these memories. After the uprising, change their long-held customs and beliefs. the British newspapers began reporting the They believed these policies among others „treacherous‟ event in detail, and soon aimed at destroying their religion and appeared “the atrocity stories” of rape, converting them to Christianity. Discontent treachery, massacre and mutilation. [3] grew and the cumulative effects of these Elaborating on the possible origins of these factors resulted in the uprising which, stories, Erll writes: “All of these are texts, however, was put down by the British who genres and images which an uninformed had regained power and called for relieving public resorts to in order to imagine and forces from other territories. From the make sense of an exotic and dangerous British perspective, the following atrocities reality which is barely understood”. [3] Thus, committed against the natives were justified she emphasizes the importance of as reprisals for the death of the British premediation, which is “a cultural practice residents and officers. However, in Indian of experiencing and remembering: the use history and cultural memory the events are of existent patterns and paradigms to remembered differently. [iv] Indeed, in order transform contingent events into meaningful to examine the ways the narrative of The images and narratives”. [3] Examining the Siege of Krishnapur could possibly be historical accounts of the period which regarded as revisionist, acquiring appeared right after the outbreak of the knowledge about the conventions of what rebellion, she concludes that along with are known as „the mutiny narratives‟ seems newspaper accounts, they provided the International Journal of Research & Review (www.ijrrjournal.com) 135 Vol.5; Issue: 10; October 2018 Sarah Zaré Farjoodi. History and Memory in J. G. Farrell's the Siege of Krishnapur material for the literary appropriations of the telling in that by depicting his (colonial) event. What is known today as the “British „gaze‟ and then marking it as (ridiculously) Mutiny writing” has its roots mainly in the wrong, the novel establishes its aim at latter part of the nineteenth century, engaging with the theme of empire. To the manifested in the period‟s “most prominent traveler‟s eyes, it is “surprising” that the literary genre”, the novel. [3] It flourished “dreary ocean of bald earth” surrounding the during the 1880s and 1890s with works like walls “is not quite deserted, as one might G. A. Henty‟s In Times of Peril (1881) and expect”. [4] Albeit: Flora Annie Steel‟s On the Face of the [A]t least to the eye of a stranger, within the Waters (1897). Erll demonstrates that in limit of the horizon there does not appear to literary narratives, for instance in Henty‟s be anywhere worth walking to, unless juvenile fiction, the heroic deeds of the perhaps to that distant town he has spotted; British figures are, more often than not, one part looks quite as good as another. But made bold and celebrated. Such a mode of if you look closely and shield your eyes remembering is “clearly meant to instil from the glare you will make out tiny imperialist values and norms in its young villages here and there, difficult to see readers”. [3] Conversely, British jingoism because they are made of the same mud as and glorified heroic actions have no place in the plain they came from; and no doubt they the Indian memory culture, specifically after melt back into it again during the rainy the Indian independence of 1947. What season, for there is no lime in these parts, no follows is an attempt at reading Farrell‟s clay or shale that you can burn into bricks, The Siege of Krishnapur with regards to the no substance hard enough to resist the aforementioned conventions of the British seasons over the years. [4] Mutiny myth. In other words, this study Therefore, since there seems to be asks how these conventions find expression “nothing that a European might call in this novel. Does the text offer an civilization”, [4] he is all the more alternative memory narrative to the British determined to move towards the white Mutiny myth? To what extent could the text walls.

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