Reclaiming history
As I pointed out in the previous week’s column, one of the major
concerns of the postcolonial writer is reclaiming history. A fact that a
postcolonial writer should be aware of is the existence of the versions
of colonial history which often colours native with black.
Historiography has been a weapon at the hand of colonials. Promod K
Nayar observes, “As James Mill’s History of British India (1817) and
numerous other works have demonstrated, they were written from specific
racial, class, ethnic, and political standpoints, and appropriate for
imperial purposes. On occasion, such ‘white histories’ were used to
catalogue native ‘crimes’ as evidence of the latter’s barbaric nature”.
Many theorists have argued that the colonialism was grounded on the
very notion of ‘othernesses of the other. It has been pointed out that
the entire discourse of colonialism was based on the us/them, I/them
binary. In that binary, the Europeans stood for self while the native
for ‘Other’. What this binary means is that the power of defining and
governing the savage Other, naturally, vested with the Europeans.
Promod K Nayar has pointed out that such discourse on history has
been effectively used recently to justify war against ‘terror’.
“Perhaps, the best examples of such pseudo-evidentiary history –which
could then circulate as justifications for colonial tyranny, much as
discourses on non-white despotism and threats have been used recently to
justify was against ‘terror’- are available in the white narratives
about American Indians.”
In the narratives of captivity and battle from the 16th century
downwards, the Indians were depicted as vicious and the white immigrants
(to the New World) as the innocent victim. Nayar points out ‘Recorded
history of the New World Immigrants narrativised either European heroism
or their sufferings at the hands of the ‘villain’ Native and said
nothing about the massacre of thousands of Sioux or Micmac people. ”
Perception
What is obvious in such historiographies is that it is one
dimensional and single perception. Nayar citing the poem ‘Thanksgiving
Dinner During Pelting Season’ by Mary Moran, points out how Moran
captures the colonial version of the Indian-European encounter.
“The catholic church tells us stories about
Their early missionaries in Canada. They say
The Iroquois made savage attack on the clergy.
They say the Indians captured Anthony Daniel and
Flayed him. They say Iroquois strung a necklace
Of red-hot tomahawks around Jean de Breboeuf’s neck
Then “baptized” him in boiling water. They claim
The tribal members drank his blood and that
The Chief ate de Breboeuf’s heart. ”
Nayar observes that the focus of the poem is on the Indian’s
barbarism, the death of Europeans and the violence that marked the
encounter. Audre Lorde, writing about Apartheid, observes the
one-sidedness of the white man’s historiography.
“I reach for the taste of today
The New York Times finally mentioned your country
A half-page story
Of the first white South African killed in the “Unrest”
Not of Black children massacred at Sebokeng
Six-year olds imprisoned for threatening the state
Not of Thabo Sibeko, first grader, in his own blood
On his grandfather’s parlor floor…”
Propaganda
It is a fact, that during the anti-Apartheid struggle, the propaganda
played a major role and it can be concluded that the white man’s
historiography projected a one-dimensional history reinforcing the views
of the white minority in South Africa. The ultimate objective of such
exercises was to depict the European as the most civilised race and
native as barbarians.
“ ... such a historiography, supported by new discipline of
archaeology (which has been used to bolster Western values), located
Europe at the centre of the world and at the top of the human
evolutionary order, with Asians and Africans at the lower end of the
scale. This depiction of native culture in ‘definitive’ and
‘authoritative’ works of history –especially after history became a ‘
science’ in the nineteen century enabled the colonial ruler to justify
European presence. Dismissing native spiritual views in favour of the
material and the religious in favour of the scientific, anthropology,
history, and archaeology constructed the great colonial binary: savage
native /advanced Westerner. Further, these same biased works were used
to teach ‘native’, so that it produced natives who had assimilated the
white man’s values” states Nayar in highlighting the colonial project
which re-shaped or reconfigure the thinking of the native and the
pivotal role that the education played in the project.
Sri Lankan scene
The re-writing of the local history and righting the history has been
a dominant matrix in the corpus of pre-colonial and post-colonial
literary works in Sri Lanka. Though one may tend to dismiss the early
pre-colonial literary productions such as those by writers like Piyadasa
Sirisena and S. Mahinda thera as pure rhetoric and propaganda works on
account of their literary value, it is obvious that what they attempted
was to re-write colonial history in their own modes and manners. Often
they contested the spread of European culture and pagan religions.
This literary movement, on the one hand, was a natural outcome
against the backdrop of anti-colonial political campaign and the native
resistant to the alien culture and faith, on the other hand. Although
Martin Wickremasinghe chronicles the pre and post colonial history as a
sub-text to his famous trilogy Gamperaliya, Kaliyugaya and Yugantaya, it
is unclear whether serious attempts have been made, so far, to contest
the colonial history in Sri Lanka. Unlike in South Africa, Sri Lankan
case is that the authorised version of white man’s history seemed often
to be reinforced by the Sri Lankan historians. Re-writing or righting
the history seems not taken seriously by Sri Lankan literati in general
and those who claim to be ‘post colonial’ writers in particular. |