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Counter Hegemonic Effects of Hybridity in Paul Scott’s The Raj Quartet Kifayat Ullah Khan* ABSTRACT: This paper aims to justify counter hegemonic effects of hybridity in Paul Scott’s The Raj Quartet from the subaltern perspective. This study explores linguistic, cultural, political and racial hybridization with its counter hegemonic effects upon the colonizers. The cultural contact zone is imbibed in ambivalence according to Homi Bhabha, which differentiates it from the pre-colonial culture. Macaulay’s Minutes of 1835 provide the basics for the creation of hybrid Indians to sustain the British Raj. Following his ideology the British writers as Kipling viewed the British culture and values as a civilizing mission for the natives. It was intended to produce mimic Indians to extend colonialism and annihilate resistance of the natives. But in the Quartet hybridity results in mocking the subjects and consequently acts as a site of resistance and democratic struggle against colonialism. Hence, the colonizers get the opposite of what is intended. Bhabha also holds that imperial ideology is contaminated by hybridity when colonized natives strike back through appropriation of the Western knowledge. The Anglicized Hari becomes a staunch anti-colonialist. Daphne established liaison with Hari and becomes the mother of the hybrid child Pravati. The western educated Kasim’s family struggles for decolonisation. Hence, the Quartet draws upon the agency of the Indians as the subaltern contrary to the stereotypical concepts of the British. Keywords: Hybridity, Hegemony, Colonial Ideology, Ambivalence, Mimicry, Mockery * Email: [email protected] Journal of Research (Humanities) 184 Introduction: Hybridity refers to “the creation of new transcultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonization” (Ashcroft et al. 118). It is the result of the relationship between the colonizers and the colonized which is ambivalent in nature. The ambivalence exists in a fluctuating relation within the contact zone contrary to the “assumption that the identities and positioning of colonizer and colonized exist in stable and unitary terms” (Moore-Gilbert 116). Homi Bhabha argues that “ambivalence disrupts the clear- cut authority of colonial domination” (Ashcroft et al. 13). The reason is that the colonizers need complete hybridity or mimicry of their values and language for their identity. But when colonized ‘mimic’ their masters, it slips into ‘mockery’ which is resented by Kipling and such colonizers as looking at the uneven mirror which distorts images. Thus, hybridity unsettles the hegemony of the colonial ideology. Analogously, the English also find it unforgiving if they see exact replica of their culture and language as they think it a threat to their identity and assumptions. Consequently, hybridity is regarded as an unwelcome aspect of colonialism. The case of The Raj Quartet (Quartet) seems more radical than the debate as McLeod argues that “these mimic men are not the disempowered, slavish individuals required by the British in India” (54). Hari Kumar is the dominant hybrid Indian who is intentionally adapted to the colonial values and education by his father, Duleep. The latter wants his son to defy the British in the English language and values. Hari’s hybridity empowers him to argue with Merrick and others hence jeopardize the colonial ideology which tries to devise obedient Indians or Bhabha’s mimic men. His beauty of an Englishman and a figure of attraction for the white women as Daphne and others represent the British’s ambivalence and the counter hegemonic effects of the text. Similarly, Kasim’s family is also hybrid and western educated. They interact in English language yet they appropriate it for the cause of decolonization. Next hybrid character is the white girl, Daphne who falls in love with Hari while she is aware of the danger of “doing something unconventional” (The Jewel 379). She notes that loving him would be “the breaking of the most fundamental law of all – that although a white man could make love to a black girl, the black man and white girl association was still a taboo” (The Jewel 379). The love between the white girl and an Indian also represents the rejection of the colonial ego and the generic convention in which white woman is the site of attraction for the colonized. But Daphne as the symbol of the West is feminine Counter Hegemonic Effects of Hybridity in Paul Scott’s The Raj Quartet 185 while Hari as the symbol of the East is masculine to whom she surrenders (Goonetilleke 817). This departure from the Orientalist model can be made possible through hybridity. The study aims to prove subversive effects of hybridity upon the hegemonic culture of the British. Hybridity was inevitable for the Indians as they were subjected to colonialism. Hence, hegemonic culture affected the Indians. But the Indians appropriated it for decolonization. Bhabha argues that the Indians are empowered “to menace the colonizers because they threaten to disclose the ambivalence of the discourse of colonialism” (McLeod 54). Apart from this the British were also affected by the native cultures which disillusioned them with their own colonial ideology as Leela et al. argue that “the coloniser—as much as the colonised—is implicated in the transcultural dynamics of the colonial encounter” (131). Resultantly ambivalence of the colonizers came to the limelight. This study seeks to answer such questions as how the hybridity of the Indians disrupts the colonial ideology? How does the aspect of hybridity as mimicry and mockery destabilize the civilizing mission of the British? Does hybridity of the British break the taboo of colonialism and reveal contradictions in the assumed sense of superiority? The case is Paul Scott’s The Raj Quartet which dramatizes the last seven years of colonialism. This study will fill the gap that the colonized people cannot be represented as Spivak proposed and all the colonial texts bear colonial ideology which Edward Said discussed. As a result of this study it can be found that the Indians find representation and voice and dislocate the colonial ideology in the four novels written by a colonial writer. This is qualitative research based upon the case study of Paul Scott’s The Raj Quartet while applying the concepts of postcolonial theory. Hybridity and subaltern perspective are appropriated to the in order to analyse the cultural effects of colonization. Bhabha’s theory of ambivalence has certain role in the study of hybridity which helps to dislocate the colonial assumptions. Bhabha and Spivak themselves utilized this strategy as discussed by Moore-Gilbert (115). Spivak’s strategic essentialism and Gyan Prakash ‘reading from below’ help in establishing subversive approach to the study of colonial mission in Paul Scott’s The Raj Quartet. Literature Review Hybridity as a celebrated aspect of postcolonial theory is much criticized since it undermines any prospect of recovering pre-colonial culture. The Journal of Research (Humanities) 186 cross-cultural contact in colonial power structure gives rise to unequal shares of the two cultures and leads to the dominant place of the hegemonic culture. Hence, Moore-Gilbert argues that the relationship between the colonizers and the colonized is very important for “Bhabha seeks to emphasize the mutualities and negotiations across the colonial divide” (116). Kipling is against hybridity “unless actively and persistently cultivate, such hybrids would inevitably revert to their primitive stock” (Ashcroft et al. Key Concepts 120). While Gorra argues that for Englishmen, “mimicry is reassuring only when one can see its flaws and its exaggerations and thereby can tell the copy from the original” otherwise “it forces the white English to confront the nature and the basis of their own cultural identity” (41). Young discusses hybridity with reference to Bakhtin as the latter points out the conscious and unconscious processes of hybridity. In the case of conscious process, it enables the hybrids to adopt subversive forms in order to break the colonial homogeneity. Hence this is the potential of hybridity which reverses “the structure of domination in the colonial situation” (Young 2). Hari was ‘unconsciously English’ in the beginning but the ‘cultural shock’ and the British racism turned him into consciously English (Gorra 44). Young argues that Bhabha transformed ‘Bakhtin’s intentional hybrids’ into an active agent of ‘challenge and resistance’. Thus, hybridity deprives the imperialist culture of its authenticity. But Young “warns of the unconscious process of repetition” of the colonial cultures (Ashcroft et al. Key Concepts 121). Bhabha sees hybridity as a residual of colonialism and a positive factor as it provides a space in which the colonial and the subaltern can convert and annul the binaries of colonial project. Colonial ideology aims to construct certain assumptions on the basis of race, colour and land to justify their colonialism and prove the colonized as racially and biologically inferior to the colonizers. Hence it is named as chromatism which refers “to the essentialist distinction between people on the basis of colour” (Ashcroft et al. Key Concepts, 37). In other words, it points out the situation when races are distinguished on the basis of their skin colours. Gorra argues that “[t]he juxtaposition of the dark skin and light underlines the difference between the races” (3). McLeod argues that “this important aim is never fully met” or in other words the colonizers fail to actualize this assumption (52). Scott refers to the role of chromatism or colour in The Raj Quartet when the Indian characters are treated as racially inferior due to their ‘dark skin’ by the British. Fanon’s speculations about the psychological trauma of an individual who is the object of derision and hatred on the basis of skin colour are of peculiar interest. He Counter Hegemonic Effects of Hybridity in Paul Scott’s The Raj Quartet 187 narrates his feelings when his blackness was pointed out by the Whites as a sign of derogation (Fanon 112).

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