Chapter -VI Conclusion
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Chapter -VI Conclusion Ihis is the concluding ciiapter of the study. Culture is a poiycenlric concept. There is no one way to define or describe cuUure. One can at the most explain it with the help of the domestic, social, national features of an individual. Though each one of us has one dominant culture, there are other less dominant cultures in every individual's life. Literature deals with human activities, their interactions with the others and their emotional upbringing. No human being in the world is without culture. Ihis necessarily means that culture generates literature. Culture and literature are closely linked with one another. The researcher has taken into consideration various views on culture expressed by the experts in the world at the beginning of the study. India has always been a land of many cultures staying together amicably for many centuries. Indian literature in various regional languages has always included characters, ideas and incidents having many cultural implications. This tradition continues even in Indian English literature today. The researcher has observed that culture believes and expounds good things. Whatever may culture mean, it cannot be bad. It does not have harmful elements in it. Multicultural individual or society is a self-explanatory term in sociology. Coming together of many cultures at one place renders the phenomenon multicultural property. European and American societies were mostly monocultural for many centuries. They had to start a political movement called multicultural movement in order to invite and accommodate people from various cultures of the world. Canada is supposed to be a pioneer of this movement. The population of Canada was so thin and sparse that, they had to make special appeals to the outsiders to come and stay there. The researcher has taken into consideration Indian perspective on multicultural movement. 192 The researcher found that hidian Enghsh literature is lull of characters belonging to different cuhural backgrounds. Writers from R. K. Narayan to C'iietan Bhagat include multicultural ambivalence in their writings without making any special efforts to incorporate them. Indian English novels deal with the people from different casts, cultures and nationalities. British rule in India brought Indians in contact with European people for various reasons. Indian writers in English included European characters in their writings. The interaction between the people from the East and the West enhanced multicultural environment in Indian writing in English. Indian attitude to these people varied from time to time. We had respect, fear, doubt, apprehension and anger for these people. Rudyard Kipling's famous statement that the East and the West cannot meet seems to be true in the beginning. Gradually Indians began to comprehend western people. Edward Said states, "Culture is never just a matter of ownership, of borrowing and lending with absolute debtors and creditors, but rather of appropriations, common experiences, and interdependencies of all kinds among different cultures."' The interaction between the two became an enriching experience for the Indians. Novels like R. K. Narayan's The Guide (1958), Mulk Raj Anand's Coolie (1936), Raja Rao's The Serpent and the Rope (1960) and Jai Nimbkar's Come Rain (1993) etc. show a fruitful amalgamation of various cultures in literature. The present study deals with the analysis of six novels from multicultural perspectives. There are two ways to talk about this perspective. One is normative multicultural perspective and the other is descriptive multicultural perspective. The normative perspective prescribes rules and regulations to be followed by the concerned cultural groups. It distinguishes between good and bad, high and low, rich and poor. The descriptive perspective does not prescribe but it describes the cultural 193 relations as they are. It abstains from value judgment. All the cultures are equal for descriptive perspective. I'he modern world believes in equality, liberty and fraternity. Multiculturalism and humanity are the two sides of the same coin today. Cultures are not the battlegrounds for people. This is reflected in the selected novels for the study. The first hypothesis of the study was that Indian novels in English are deeply rooted in Indian social milieu. The novels selected for this study prove this hypothesis. All these novels have Indian characters- their customs and conventions. Though the novels are not limited to Indian setting exclusively, main incidents take place in Indian minds only. There is a reference to Biju in America in Desai's The Inheritance of Loss. The White Tiger is fully set in India. The Immigrant may be set in Canada but it shows the journey of Indian mind from India to Canada. Home also takes place on the rich Indian soil. Amitav Ghosh's two novels namely The Hungry Tide and Sea of Poppies are set in the Indian subcontinent. Thus, we can say India frames locales of these novels. The names of the characters also reflect the Indianness of these novels. Proper names like Jemubhai, Gyan, Balram, Nina, Nisha, Ashok, Kalua, Nilima, Nirmal, etc. have Indian flavor. These names also suggest that they come from different parts of India having a variety of cultures. Jemubhai is Gujarati, Gyan is Nepali, Balram comes from Bihar, Nina is from Delhi, Nisha is from Delhi and Nilima is from Calcutta etc. All these characters have different social and cultural backgrounds. The novelists show the interaction and intercommunication among these characters to show the amalgamation of many cultures in Indian writing in English. The term culture is simultaneously related to caste, class, gender, nationality and heritage. Indian novelists in English have not been able to come out of traditional 194 teaUires ascribed to the characters. I'or example, a person iVom low caste or class has to play the secondary role in the action of the novel. Nepali cook in the service of Jemubhai Patel is shown to be a beggar, asking for God's favor. His attempts to overcome his conditions by sending his son to America fail miserably. Balram in The White Tiger has to work as a driver to a multimillionaire because he comes from lower caste. The difference between the two is that Biju fails but Balram succeeds. Multiculturalism is a theory to analyze and assess characters with compassion and sympathy. It expects readers and writers of fiction to go into the details of the action of the characters. We feel pity for the loss of inheritance of Biju and his father. Gyan may be wrong in joining terrorist camp but sympathetic reader may compare Biju with the Indian freedom fighters. Thus, multiculturalism expects us to read the situation from different angles. That is why Balram's action is not totally disapproved by the writer and the readers. It was considered to be a mortal sin to kill one's master in the past. Such action was related to religious preaching in the past. When the existence of God itself is doubted, the very idea of sin recedes into the background. Thus, the theory of multiculturalism expects readers to look at the history, culture and religion from a new angle. All these novels show that it can help us to look at our traditional culture with a new perspective. Woman is an important component of any culture. Indian woman led a life of suppression and dereliction for a long time. Even the women did not oppose to their exploitation. It is because they were studied from one cultural view only. When Indian men and women came into close contacts with the men and women from other cultures, they reviewed their position in Indian society. That is why they have started asserting their rights to live life like men. Multiculturalism brought freedom of thought and action for women. It has freed them from the tyranny of monocultural thinking. Nina and Nisha in The 195 Imniigranl cind Home respectively are prepared to challenge the male dominance in the I'amily. Both of them go out with their boyfriends, interact with them without guilt and shame. Nina has extramarital sexual relation with Anton, because she is dissatisfied with her disabled husband. Kiran Desai's The Inheritunee of Loss shows the failure of human efforts to acquire other culture at the cost of one's own culture. Jemubhai Patel, Biju and Gyan can be quoted in this respect. Jemubhai Patel was impressed by the British culture and wanted to become one of it. He hated his wife because he thought her simpleton. He tried to acquire British ways of life for a long time. The result was that he was cut off from his roots in India and he could not take roots in alien British culture. It never accepted him in its fold. The ultimate outcome in his life was the life of loneliness in the Himalayan ridges. He led a life of barrenness in the old age. If Jemubhai suffered in England, Biju was a victim of running away from one's own native land. Biju in America and his father in India looked at America as a land of opportunity but Biju had come back to India without a single dollar in his pocket. Biju's case is a revelation for many aspiring Indians. Biju could neither talk about his sufferings in America nor could he bear the humiliating inhuman experience there. He meekly tolerated the insults. Multicultural globalization in this way has made a man coward and secretive. Gyan is a very different case. He was fighting against India in India itself He and his Gorkha National Liberation Front thought that India was trying to obliterate their separate identity of worrier Gorkha. He also did not succeed in his mission to establish a separate identity for himself 196 Ihus.