On its back cover itself, 'A Bend in the River' is described as 'the heir to Conrad's Heart of Darkness'. Not to condemn it to its fate at the hands of critics but I drew this parallel myself, perhaps only a little inspired by other readings which make this connection either scornfully or, as the back-cover literary critic seemed to, admiringly. There are several simply-stated, ever-resonant lines in A Bend in the River that harken back to Heart of Darkness, or, because I remember little of the novel itself, to the themes we discussed in IB English.
Chinua Achebe wrote that Heart of Darkness was racist because of Conrad's need to portray African civilization as a foil to European civilization: ‘as a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar’; so as to increase the apparent spiritual and moral standing of European society by comparison. This idea came as a shock to me. While on closer inspection it is evident that Conrad perceived Africans in the Belgian Congo as members of an atavistic society who didn't even exhibit rudimentary expressions of language or organized tradition (in any European sense at least), my first impression of the novel was that Conrad sympathized with the plight of the colonized at the hands of the colonizers.
Sympathy is, however, a form of patronization and dehumanization. He assigned his enslaved and attacked characters positions of victimhood, which disempowered them from taking their fate into their own hands. In their extreme position of victimhood, dealt unfairly with the double-blow of inherent backwardness, they could not initiate decolonization by themselves. My first impression of Heart of Darkness was that it was a message of sorts to Europeans that they needed to decolonize their horrors of imperialist ventures, and this seems congruent with the helpless portrayal of Africans in the novel. While the native Africans make efforts to resist the protagonist's journey into the forest, they are ultimately unsuccessful, and many times portrayed as archaic and savage in their methods.
In the subtle, convoluted, and often perhaps subjective material surrounding colonization and decolonization, there seem to be a lot of psychological tricks. In Middle Eastern History, we studied Napoleon's colonization of Egypt. Edward Said writes that in creating the great National Museum, the French were ultimately trying to dissect and analyze Egyptian history and culture to an extent greater than any Egyptian had tried thus far, and by mastering the civilization, come to dominate it. It is not immediately an intuitive concept, but if you think about it in other contexts, it becomes more so. For instance, when you come to know the ins and outs of a person you are close with, perhaps analyzing them and their patterns to an extent even they have not ventured, then you really know how to yank their chain. You can manipulate them to many ends, through subtle and subliminal control. This was the basic idea of the French conquest of Egypt.
But there is a counter to this pessimistic and enraged analysis; and to the similar diatribes of Chinua Achebe and Edward Said. Egyptology was created as a tool of colonization, and so was the National Museum. This careful documentation of history ensued in the preservation of intellectual and artistic wonders for centuries to come; a preservation that the disorganized, exploitative, entrenched Mamluk leaders Al-Jabarti describes in Napoleon in Egypt were wont to care about, let alone preserve. You would be hard pressed to find someone with any intellectual or cultural investments at all who does not think this preservation was, in the long term, beneficial.
I would call Napoleon's approach of dissecting his way to domination masterful and original if I did not upon further pondering find that it is more of a human undercurrent than a breakaway notion at all. I came to this realization while reading The Bend in the River, because when the main character, Salim, wishes to distance himself from the native Africans in his mind, he does so by analyzing them to a creepy and unprecedented extent. For instance, with the subtly uppity Ferdinand (whom Naipaul gave a subtly uppity name, for emphasis), Salim must prove to himself his superiority by analyzing the 'Africanness' of his face, comparing it to the set lines of an African mask, and slyly ridiculing the boy's school uniform and the way it looks on his black body; an all white uniform as it is. At the same time, Salim internally feels the need to justify to himself that he is not trying to do this; not trying to declare their class difference or separate the colonized from the colonizer: 'The idea came to me that I was looking at Ferdinand with the eyes of an African, and that was how I always looked at him. It was the effect on me of his face, which I saw then and later as one of great power' (37, Naipaul). But in his life and family history, which have been remarkable for nothing else, it is elevating and important for his self-esteem that he reiterate his perceived position in society as more than a created social construct, and instead as an inherent reality. Still, he realizes that it is a social construct after all, which contributes to his constant sense of shame. Indeed Salim is Indian: he is also the colonized, and in the last line of his musings on this page with Ferdinand, he realizes that he is closer in being to Ferdinand than he is to 'they', the white European movers and shakers in their world.
Colonization in the Middle East has historically been resisted mightily. Perhaps Egypt was the country in which European influence seemed to settle through some layers of society, and inspire some wonder and ass-kissing in the higher strata (this I glean from Al-Jabarti's chronicle). But the Black Panthers were Muslim, and so was Frantz Fanon; the inspiration for the violent annihilation, slate-cleaning style of bottom-up revolution practiced in the Algerian revolution. I am in no way connecting Islam to violence, because this is a fallacy. Instead, I would like to look back to Islamic philosopher Jamal al-din Al-Afghani, who proposed that Muslims had an unparalleled and unique strength in their religion, and that it was a religion favorable to innovation and science because it was, in its most rarefied interpretation, a philosophical system.
Egypt won independence from Britain in name only in 1922. It was not until Nasser that the Egyptian people at large felt that they were represented by their government as Egyptians and not as colonial subjects. Hassan al-Banna and the Muslim brotherhood did a great deal to bridge the cultural disconnect between the Wafd (British-controlled) government and the average Egyptian, between 1922 and Nasser. Al-Banna had an inspirational power similar to Al-Afghani's because he, too, asserted that it was possible to be Muslim while also being modern. Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum, who glorified Egyptian culture and native language more than the Islamic religion, similarly was a walking assertion that it was possible to be Egyptian/Muslim and also modern.
Contrast these means of resisting colonization to India, now. The British conquest of India was different than the British conquest of places like Palestine and Egypt, and my main evidence for this assertion is modern observation. I don't know a lot about Hinduism, but it seems to lack the structure even of some forms of Buddhism. I could not tell you of any guidelines about legal contracts, marriage, or property in Hinduism, but many of these are outlined in detail in the Q'uran. Reviving Islam and Arabic culture and language had to come before independence: Al-Jabarti realized that many Middle Eastern countries at the time had been weakened, and a cultural renaissance was in order.
Gandhi came to the same realization during the Indian Independence movement, and indeed a great part of his public asceticism; honesty (ahimsa), and movements towards Indian self-sufficiency (homespun, Salt March) were along this vein of thought. But one glaring difference I see between India and colonial Middle Eastern countries is the diversity in religion and culture. While there has always been a hot Shia - Sunni conflict paradigm, India's diversity is unparalelled (and ultimately, Gandhi could not keep it from tearing the nation into two...er....three....), and India has had to handle a many-faceted rather than deeply divided two-sided conflict. As such, Gandhi and other Independence leaders could not rely on religious or, even to some extents cultural (because Hinduism, Sikhism, and Jainism, to name a few, are as much cultures as they are religions) universality in the subcontinent to unite their people, to inspire bottom-up cultural renaissance and build a revolution from this tabula rasa. I'd say my analysis is pretty shallow here, but I think that their attempts at true national revival and unification were compromised by diversity. Proof of this is the partition: it was possible to unite the country only, it seems, behind the cause of gaining autonomy; but the Indian Independence Movement was not a revolution because the slate was not wiped clean, and the differences afterwards were the same as the differences before, even unleashing centrifugal forces that ripped the country apart.
Another way that the slate was not wiped clean in India is visible in the lingering influence of Britain and the West, to this day. For a long time, perhaps until the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, Indians had an inferiority complex. They found themselves inherently stuck in the mindset of the colonized because they did not wipe the slate clean. They maintained the educational, political, and infrastructural systems put in place by the British, almost to a T. They absorbed the educational curriculum and English language in teaching and day-to-day functioning; other than Europe, India is perhaps the most surprising place you will find English handily understood and manipulated. Culturally, India was the first and, I'm not sure, but perhaps still the only country with a movie industry that copied verbatim the name of the U.S's movie industry, except for one letter difference to signify one of India's most Westernized cities.
Bollywood is a hotbed of emotional soft-porn, garish, disgustingly cheesy, plotless fests of gyration and whirling bright colors to mimic your worst LSD trip. One of the most reiterated statistics about India is that its movie industry churns out the most movies in the world each year. It is regarded as a thing of wonder for any Westerner who has never witnessed the horror of Bollywood, and even for those who have and patronizingly regard it as cute, or watch because they like the 'pretty costumes' and the 'energetic dancing'. Bollywood musicals lack even the plot depth of American musicals, and I think this has to be something every American who says they like Bollywood has realized; but for the sake of being politically correct and culturally open-minded, we abandon our higher Western tastes to pander to some lower Eastern ones. (sarcasm). I, for one, think Bollywood provides generic, cookie-cutter movies that only make the inherent escapism of movies easier to tap for the high-stress, cramped, polluted Indian population; and therefore it is easy to understand why they are so popular when they are all the same and don't even feature any kissing (though the girls do appear half-naked, and the guys are beginning to as well). But I think that, while some of these movies should still be manufactured (yes: manufactured) every year because of the market and the fun factor, Indian artists and directors should stop trying to copy the West in the worst way possible. I see Bollywood as the innocuous but ever-present vestiges of the Indian post-colonial inferiority complex, the epitome of foiled mimicry and ass-kissing of the West. Indian artists and directors should begin exploring the richer artistic tastes that abound in the diversity and vibrance of everyday Indian life. India is a billion beautiful movies waiting to happen, and yet all that has come out of it is Bollywood?
My idea that the slate was not wiped clean in India and, therefore, that it was not truly a bottom-up revolution, is a little shaky when I try to contrast it to revolutions that have occurred in the Middle East. Ignoring the latest Arab Spring revolutions, I'd like to look back at Iran's 1979 revolution with Ayatollah Khomeini and the Nasser revolution in Egypt (if I might call it a revolution for these purposes). In the Iranian revolution, the general Iranian populace expressed their desire for a leader who wouldn't allow imperial powers unlimited access to their precious natural resources and who effectively rejected all aspects of Western influence (in any way, shape, or form). They publicly demonstrated in favor of religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini, who soon dispelled any pretenses of democratic government after he assumed power, but still initially soothed the Western-irritated population, who had now found the emulation of their cultural and religious identity. Drawing on Al-Afghani, they thought that Islam was the root of their unique strength. Khomeini became a dictator and a despot, distorting the original intentions of the revolution as he had projected them but that is, for the matter at hand, beside the point.
In the case of the Iranian Revolution, I would argue that, despite the success of the revolution, it can be argued (lol) that the slate was not wiped clean. I say this because of the despotism that Khomeini assumed after entrenching his power base; despotism was not an inherent Middle Eastern form of governance. For proof, you need only look at history, at Iran's Safavid Shah Abbas, one of the most equitable and just rulers of all time. Instead, Khomeini coopted Western methods of governance: imperial governments had employed despotism in their control of Iran's government, and had manipulatively supported despotic Shahs in Iran. Despotism was a method of retrenchment after Western abuses, because the attacked populations felt the need to centralize and, in effect, adopt some form of emergency rule, in order to shore up their defenses against the exploitative outsiders. As such, the slate was not wiped clean before the Iranian Revolution (and maybe this is why Iran sucks now) because Khomeini's rise and adoption of despotism were all based on the memory of imperialism, whether out of bitterness or emulation.
And what about Egypt and the rise of their beloved Nasser? Nasser did a lot for the country in terms of making them feel as though they were ruled by a true Egyptian again, most notably by nationalizing the Suez Canal. However, his management of the Aswan Dam project in the midst of Cold War tensions was, I think, symbolic of the fact that Egypt's slate had not been wiped clean. He sought foreign funding for the project, craftily playing the U.S. off the U.S.S.R during the Cold War; which helped maintain and even strengthen Egyptian sovereignty, but nonetheless, in my eyes, was an ideological sell out, only part of which was an open pursuit of Western aid. Looking at the Arab Spring, now, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is super symbolic that the slate was not wiped clean. A significant number of Egyptians do not seek a Western-style democratic government, because the slate is littered with past imperialist abuses. Instead, they seek the connection with kin and country and the uniquely Egyptian and Muslim form of leadership offered by the Muslim Brotherhood; for better or for worse, we can only speculate.
So it can be argued that the slate was not completely wiped clean in any of these cases, but in Iran and in Egypt, the people are beginning to recognize that this is true; which is why they are decisively turning away from the West. India, on the other hand, is decisively turned towards the West. They emulate the West in music, film, dress, hobbies, jobs (hey, outsourcing), education (increasingly), etc. Their emulation of the West is precisely why India is such a dynamic country in penetrating the market - nay - adopting, the entire world's production demands. Why the difference in reaction to ones' slate not being wiped clean? Well Khomeini's revolution and Egypt's Arab Spring were both revolutions bent on wiping the slate of past abuses clean; whether or not they did so effectively is another question. As I said before, the Indian Independence Movement was not a revolution; indeed it does not claim to be in its title; and so the slate remains littered with both the abuses and benefits of British imperial rule. (And yes, I would argue that there were benefits: the education system, the abolition of the sathi system, to name a couple.) This dirty slate means that Western influence, particularly British but now more and more American, continues to pervade Indian society.
Indian attitudes are changing with the realities, while attitudes in Iran and perhaps in Egypt (at least at the top), often remain blind and unchanging in the face of these realities. In India, for instance, while creeping servility to white people and foreign accents might have been the sickening norm not too long ago, I find that Indians are coming into themselves with a proud national identity more and more. While once everyone wanted to send their kids to the U.S. for their studies, when I went to India in my sophomore year of high school, a little Indian girl greeted my American accent and atire with 'so I hear studies are damn easy there, or what?'. But on the flip side, I feel that pride without direction can hinder progress.
Our minds can be clouded with anger and resentment, and I feel that shari'a Iran and Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood are both acting almost solely out of anger. This clouds their foresight and even sight of present realities, because it is widely predicted that neither of these governments will be the best in coping with the realities demanded by their modern populations, or by the rest of the world. In India, the British-infused inferiority complex and the botched imitation that is Bollywood make me want to retch; but I can safely say that the former is changing as (at least some minute fraction of) India's population advances naturally, through talent and effort, into being a major competitor in the modern world. And the latter continues because it is oh so popular in India; but I think it's safe to say that Bollywood is acquiring its own truly Indian bent, to cater to a truly Indian population. That is, I don't see it as Hollywood's ass-kisser any longer, even though I don't think it's necessarily gotten any better as an industry in creating art.
India's route and the route of Egypt and Iran are only two different ways that colonial experiments have turned out; there are so many things we don't know. But anger and pride have hindered the progress of many Middle Eastern nations, and it isn't their fault. In fact, their unity and identity-seeking are commendable over India's historic method of laying down flat and taking it (aww yeah). Colonialism is fucked up because of the lasting extent of the effects we observe, that linger far past the end of the colonial empire itself. A Bend in the River is impressive because, in just the first half of the book (which is all I have read thus far), it manages to explore all of the twisted psychological colonial and post-colonial phenomena I talked about here; and most impressively because Naipaul finds a relatable human to emulate each of these psychological effects. He introduces the imperialist who documents and dissects his way to control in the form of Father Huismans. The embittered, resistant colonized searching for his cultural, racial, and social identity, is presented in the form of Ferdinand; as an endearing sort of bildungsroman that you don't understand ties in until you consider colonial psychology. The ass-kissing recipient of imperial influence we find somewhat in the form of Salim, and somewhat in the form of Metty. We find stratification and artificial class differences imposed on the Indian and African residents of the town, which help the people police themselves, placing some in positions of supposed authority that goes straight to their heads. And there are the creeping servile men at the town's hotel, who have a prominent race inferiority complex that makes them kiss the white man's ass and jeer at the black man's requests. The confused, rage-blinded victims of dirty colonial psychological tricks are the various divided-and-conquered tribal populations, manipulated against each other frequently, who have been so adulterated that they cannot unite and direct their anger against the colonists. And this is the most powerful tool of the imperialist, one which has been universally successful as far as I know: divide-and-rule, manipulate-and-conquer.
There is, on the other hand, a great deal of subjectivity involved in interpreting colonial and de-colonial literature. I was curious how Chinua Achebe might interpret A Bend in the River after his diatribe against Heart of Darkness, which I didn't find to be completely fair in terms of his arguments. Achebe is speaking from a point of victimhood which, coupled with his minority race, means it's pretty taboo to question anything he says about racism in Heart of Darkness. But I think that his argument that Conrad was dehumanizing Africans is valid until his argument that the use of Congo and its inhabitants 'merely as a backdrop for the psychological degradation of the protagonist' (or something) is also dehumanizing. For if that were taken at face value, couldn't we go off and rage at all the other psychological novels ever in existence? In any psychological novel, the focus is almost solely on the main character, and for a reason. And I would argue that Achebe is harsh on Conrad and his book. After all, think of the time and place where Conrad lived: it is commendable even that he wrote a book criticizing imperialism in the first place, and revealing its horrors upon Africans. I think Achebe is himself blinded by rage (hint: connection back to the bad effects of rage-blindness in A Bend in the River and Middle Eastern history) when he goes on to say that Heart of Darkness, because of its hidden instances of racism, should not be studied or promulgated as a great work of literature. Well I think it's great that he wrote a piece alerting us to these dangers, but I doubt that even he would want to suppress the literary mastery behind the novel, let alone its place in history and sociology. After all, we would not have Achebe's antithesis without Conrad's thesis.
As for A Bend in the River, I am yet to draw a conclusion as to the ultimate nature of the book. Naipaul seems to have a healthy mix of colonial stereotypes and tongue-in-cheek exaggerations, which make the novel more of an exploration than a statement; which is, I think, true of both Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart. I enjoy the way each sentence is simple but esoteric, a resonant message about humanity and our psychological intricacies. Naipaul subtly shows how they can be manipulated for and against us by wiley outsiders, in a way that is both familiar and revelatory. I see A Bend in the River as less of a colonial abuse exposee or single-character psychological journey than an exploration of humanity at large, the way we are, the many ways it is possible to be, and the way our contexts affect us; with themes both glaringly colonial and universally applicable.
Another universal colonial method: co-optation of the elite.
|
