The document discusses several topics related to literature and criticism including the ideas of nation, narrative, and cultural studies. It examines concepts from thinkers like Tagore, Gandhi, Umashankar Joshi, Homi Bhabha, and Farrukh Dhondy regarding nationalism and the relationship between nation and novel. It also covers four goals of cultural studies, narrative structures in memory novels, Kafka's views on literature, and Nietzsche's concept of the "Ubermensch." Specific texts discussed include The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga and passages are summarized.

1. The White Tiger – Aravind Adiga
Literary Appreciation
Dilip Barad
Dept. of English
M.K. Bhavnagar University
Bhavnagar – Gujarat
dilipbarad@gmail.com
www.dilipbarad.com

2. Let us discuss . . .
• Creative writing vs/and criticism!
• Tagore and Gandhi: The idea of Nation
• Umashankar Joshi – The Idea of Indian Literature
• E V Ramakrishnan – Relocating …
• Nation & Narration: Homi K. Bhabha
• Farrukh Dhondy – nation and novel
• A.K. Singh – Alternativism
• Terry Eagleton: Political Criticism
• Cultural criticism – four goals
• Narrative structure - Memory Novels
• Franz Kafka – on Literature
• Nietzche’s “Ubermensch”
• Rereading texts: Politics of awards/rewards/western audience
• The End of the novel and the Poetic Justice

3. Tagore & Gandhi
• Both Rabindranath Tagore and Gandhi were
against the nation-state – Swaraj vs Suraj
• For Tagore, the concept of India was not
territorial but ideational i.e. India for him was not
a geographical expression but an idea.
• His view of nationalism was more about
spreading a homogenised universalism than
seeking political freedom for India.
• Gandhi – ‘our struggle for freedom is to bring
peace in the world’.

4. Umashankar Joshi – ‘The Idea of Indian Literature’
• Umashankar Joshi – The Idea of Indian Literature –
“Indianness is rather an ongoing search for, a vision of, a
pattern of Indian literature and culture to which the
literature and culture in every part of the country is more
or less converging”.
• “… We shall always be viewing the composite identity of
Indian literature within the parameters of the composite
culture of India.”
• “…True Indianness transcends India and genuine
Indianisation is a synonym for humanization.”
• Indian ethos is one of synthesis rather than exclusiveness
… plea for swaraj in ideas.
• K. Satchidanandan – ‘Umashankar Joshi and the Idea of Indian Literature’ – Indian Literature 268)

5. Umashankar Joshi’s Idea of Indian Literature
• His recognition of the complexity of idea, the
gaps and silences in the earlier formulations,
the inherent plurality of Indian literature, the
importance of translation in the
understanding and sustenance of the idea and
the need for a relative and comparative
approach rather
than an absolute and normative one.

6. • He recognized possibility of the idea being
hijacked by the right wing Hindu ideologues –
idea means upper caste Hindu community.
• He was careful to distinguish himself from
these dogmatists who refuse to recognize the
multi-religious, multi-ethnic and multi-
cultural nature of the country and its
literature that lends itself to a plurality
of readings.

7. E. V. Ramakrishnan – relocate Indian literature
• We need to relocate Indian literature in the
context of caste gender, region, religion etc.,
where issues of everyday struggles for
subsistence in a living society find their
expression. . . The struggle against hegemonic
structures of power defines the nature of
lower-caste subjectivity. … Literature is
shaped by the material condition of society.”
• (From the Pedagogical to the Performative – Locating Indian Literature:
Texts, Traditions, Translations. Delhi 2011)

8. Homi K. Bhabha: ‘Introduction: Narrating the
Nation’ (Nation and Narration)
• Nation – the modern Janus: the uneven development
of capitalism inscribes both progression and regression,
political rationality and irrationality in the very genetic
code of the nation – it is by nature, ambivalent.
• Nation is narrated in ‘terror of the space or race of
the Other; the comfort of social belonging, the
hidden injuries of class, the customs of taste, the
powers of political affiliation; the sense of social
order, the sensibility of sexuality; the blindness of
bureaucracy, the strait insight of institutions; the
quality of justice, the commonsense of injustice; the
langue of the law and the parole of the people’.

9. Homi K. Bhabha: ‘Introduction: Narrating the
Nation’ (Nation and Narration)
• It is to explore the Janus-faced ambivalence of
language itself in the construction of the
Janus-faced discourse of the nation.
• Nation is an agency of ambivalent narration
that holds ‘culture’ at its most productive
position, as a force for ‘subordination,
fracturing, diffusing, reproducing as much as
producing, creating, forcing and guiding’.

10. Homi K. Bhabha: ‘Introduction: Narrating the Nation’
(Nation and Narration)
• The ambivalent, antagonistic perspective of
nation as narration will establish the cultural
boundaries of the nation so that they may be
acknowledged as ‘containing’ thresholds of
meaning that must be crossed, erased and
translated in the process of cultural production.
• What kind of cultural space is the nation with its
transgressive boundaries and its interruptive’
interiority?

11. Farrukh Dhondy: The Nation and the Novel
(3 Nov, 2012 – ToI)
• How is South Asian writing in a universal
human context to be evaluated? Perhaps as all
literature has ever been? The European short
story was born of the parable and the fable.
• The novel in England, France, Russia and
Germany was, in an important way, born of a
crisis of religious faith.

12. F.D.: Nation & Novel
• when a culture ceases to live and assess itself
by the laws of Moses or Jesus, when Dorothea
of Middlemarch or Anna Karenina or Emma
Bovary feel what they feel and do what they
do, they can call upon no strictly biblical
justification.
• It takes George Eliot, Tolstoy and Gustave
Flaubert to construct a form which captures
those nuances of feeling and brings an
inclusive sympathy to the possibilities of
human and social behaviour.

13. F.D.: Nation & Novel
• The novel in the European context was called
upon to supply in narrative the definition of
'love', 'faith', 'loyalty', 'generosity', 'compassion',
'priggishness', 'snobbery', 'war', 'peace' and every
other abstract noun in the dictionary.
• It took up where faith left off and did the
opposite of what heroic myths used to do. Some
European writing, the novels of Dostoevsky and
the philosophical works of Nietzsche took this
crisis of faith and the death of myth head on,
asking and explicitly answering questions.

14. F.D.: Nation & Novel
• And South Asia?
• Of which necessity was South Asian writing in
English born?
• The obvious answer is nationalism and the
struggle for Independence.
• The influence of the writing, though widely
translated, suffered from the limitation of
being in English.

15. F.D.
• At the same time as this contribution to
nationalism was formulated, a far more
influential media was coming into its own.
• Film became the lingua franca of India and it
exclusively dedicated itself to the various
purposes and themes of nationalism,
asserting India's great past (Raja
Harishchandra), and following a Gandhian
agenda in attacking untouchability (Achhut
Kanya) and elevating the status of women
(Razia Begum).

16. F.D.
• The cinematic definitions created and were
bound by myth. Modernity, the urbanisation
of India, new institutions, industrialisation,
global imports, rampant capitalism and
corruption (whew!) were changing India and
though the myths persisted, were modified
and increasingly seen to be fantasy or
escapism.

17. F.D.
• The task then of the new cinema and of South
Asian writing was to distance oneself from the
myth and describe and dissect the
personalities and possibilities of existence that
emerge.

18. Terry Eagleton: Political Criticism
• “There is no need to drag politics into literary
theory(text), it has been there from the
beginning.”
• This should not surprise – for any body of theory
(text) concerned with human meaning, value,
language, feeling and experience will inevitably
engage with broader, deeper beliefs about the
nature of human individuals and societies,
problems of power and sexuality, interpretations
of past history, versions of the present and hopes
for the future.
• Literary Theory: An Introduction

19. A.K. Singh – Alternative Vs /as Revolution
• Since the romantic self or human psyche remains
fascinated with the myth or romance of the
revolution, the ghost of revolution haunts us
despite a not so pleasant tryst with the history of
revolution.”
• “Probably, humanity to a large extent is either
fatigued with revolutions or it is incapable of
affording yet another disenchantment with
revolution and their failures.”
• In such a situation, an alternative is an
alternative to ‘revolution’.
• Critique as Alternative: End of Postmodernism
and Altermodern as new Modernity.
• (From Indian Literature – March-April 2012)

20. Cultural Studies
• Four Goals:
• First, Cultural Studies transcends the confines
of particular discipline such as literary criticism
or history.
• Second, Cultural Studies is politically engaged.
• Thirdly, Cultural Studies denies the separation
of “high’ and “low” or elite and popular
culture.
• Finally, Cultural Studies analyzes not only the
cultural work, but also the means of
production.
• A Hand book of Critical Approaches to Literature – Wilfred Guerin, Labor et all.

21. Narrative – Memory Novel: Dipesh Chakrabarty
• One needs to understand the relation between
memory and identity”, the “shared structure of a
sentiment”, “the sense of trauma and its contradictory
relation to the question of the past”.
• Trauma is memory.
• One of principal arguments seems to be that “the
narrative structure of the memory of trauma works on
a principle opposite to that of any historical narrative”.
• According to him, “a historical narrative leads up to the
event in question, explaining why it happened, and
why it happened when it did, and this is possible only
when the event is open to explanation. What cannot
be explained belongs to the marginalia of history.”
• ‘Memories of Displacement: The Poetry and Prejudice of Dwelling’ in Habitation of Modernity, pp
116-17.

22. In a November 1903 letter, found in the altogether enchanting compendium
Letters to Friends, Family and Editors (public library), Kafka writes to his
childhood friend, the art historian Oskar Pollak:
• Some books seem like a key to unfamiliar rooms in one’s own
castle.
• I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and
stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a
blow on the head, what are we reading it for? So that it will
make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy
precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make
us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to.
But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that
grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more
than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from
everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the
frozen sea inside us. That is my belief.
• http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/06/06/kafka-on-books-and-reading/

23. The White Tiger
• Title: Symbol of White tiger in Chinese myth
• Reading text:
• Blurb
• Pg. 6, 8, 10,12.
• You see, I am in light now, but I was born and
raised in Darkness . . . Please understand, Your
Excellency, that India is two countries in one: an
India of Light, and an India of Darkness. The
Ocean brings light to my country. .. But the river
brings darkness to India – the black river. (read
pg. 15)
• Pg. 19: Inside, you will find an image of a saffron-
coloured creature, half man half monkey…

24. • Stories of rottenness and corruption are always the best
stories, aren’t they?
• Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
• “But this is your fate if you do your job well – with honesty,
dedication, and sincerity, the way Gandhi would have done it…. I did
my job with near total dishonesty, lack of dedication, and
insincerity…:
• Read pg. 63, 64. about caste
• ‘The villages are so religious in the Darkness”
• Democracy! Pg. 96-102 “I am India’s most faithful voter, and I still
have not seen the inside of a voting booth’.
• Pg. 173:Indians invented everything . . . 174-175. Rooster coop.
• I was driver …. Master pg. 302… 304, 305
• 313, poor man kills rich man . . . I am woken – Buddha - 315
• Pg. 318:all the skin-whitening creams sold in the markets of India
won’t clean my hands again.
• Conclusion: pg. 319-320 – I will never say I made a mistake that
night in Delhi when I slit my master’s throat.

25. Narrative modeled on Self Help Book
Ideological Apparatus
• The capitalist project
– Be Positive > law of attraction > habits of . . .
– Hard work / smart work
– Be money minded > love job, not company
– Use and throw
– Earn and spend
– Dhirubhaism > Think Big > how big?
• Elephant’s cock?
• Detraditionalization, profit-minded,
• Micki McGee, Self-help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American
Life (Oxford 2005)
• Mohsin hamid: How to get filthy rich in Rising Asia
• Chetan Bhagat: One Night @ The CC

26. Globalization
• Under the mask of ‘Freedom’ and ‘Equality’. . .
• New shackles – and people found straining at the leash
• New economic circumstances: “And only two
destinies: eat—or get eaten up.”
• Moral code of conduct undergoes vital shifts
• Threatens skeleton structure of Indian Society > the
damage Moguls or British cannot do > this
phenomenon is doing. . .
• “For surely any successful man must spill a little blood
on his way to the top”

27. The Great Western Cultural Conspiracy
• Religio-Cultural segregation
– Islamic or Hindus > people’s religious and cultural
identities are attacked > break the back-bone
– The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of
World Order - Samuel P. Huntington
– What do the English and American Writers
do? Do they praise their culture/society?

28. • Social Relevance
• The voice of the Great Socialist came on. He was being
interviewed by a radio reporter.
• "The election shows that the poor will not be ignored. The
Darkness will not be silent. There is no water in our taps, and
what do you people in Delhi give us? You give us cell phones.
Can a man drink a phone when he is thirsty? Women walk for
miles every morning to find a bucket of clean—"
• "Do you want to become prime minister of India?" "Don't ask
me such questions. I have no ambitions for myself. I am simply
the voice of the poor and the disenfranchised."
• "But surely, sir—" "Let me say one last word, if I may. All I have
ever wanted was an India where any boy in any village could
dream of becoming the prime minister.

29. • "Any boy in any village can grow up to become the prime
minister of India. That is his message to little children all over
this land. . . Even a boy working and self-educating at tea-stall,
breaking coals and wiping tables . .
• Working in a tea shop. Smashing coals. Wiping tables. Bad
news for me, you say? To break the law of his land—
to turn bad news into good news—is the
entrepreneur's prerogative.“

30. Nietzche’s “Ubermensch” In Literature
• Balram Halwai can be understood in the literary
tradition of the Nietzchean “ubermensch,” and as such,
it is useful to understand the nature of that trope.
• Nietzche’s concept of the “ubermensch,” usually
translated as “super-man” or “over-man,” is a central
concept of Nietzchean philosophy, most significantly
discussed in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-85).
Nietzche’s ubermensch is a man of superior potential
who has thrown off the shackles of the traditional
Christian “herd morality,” instead constructing his own
moral system. Having moved beyond the confines of
moral thought, the ubermensch furthers the interests
of humanity by pursuing the realization of his own
singular moral code, and hence acting as a model for
those who follow.

31. Balram Halwai – the Ubermensch
• Balram’s actions in The White Tiger can be understood
within the framework of the Nietzchean ubermensch.
• Balram considers himself to be superior to his fellow men,
an extraordinary and rare “White Tiger” in the jungle of
the Darkness.
• He believes his fate to be separate from others of his
background, since he has awoken while they remain
sleeping.
• Accordingly, he breaks free of the system of morality that
binds the other people of the Darkness to the Rooster
Coop.
• He constructs his own system of morals, in which theft,
murder, and a deadly betrayal of his family become
acceptable and justified actions.
• Finally, he rationalizes his choices by believing that he will
serve as a model to those who follow.

32. Conclusion
• The question of selection between ‘suraj’ or
‘swaraj’ – has become more acute now.
• Now the alternative is no more visible.
• Why letter to Chinese premiere?
– Is it an anguish for the failure of Nehruvian socialism?
– Is it an eye-opener for both China and India against neo-
colonialism of ‘capitalism’?
• Is Balram’s rise an ‘x-ray’ image of super-neo-rich-
indifferent-middle-class and their morality?
• Is this what the ending of novel suggest?
– Why no regret? Why no poetic justice?
– Are we living Balram’s story in real world – the novel ended –
life continues thereafter . . .
– The Balrams – are rampant in our society: Global Capitalism,
Corporate Youth Icons, Corpo-friendly Political Icons!

33. It may not be easy to agree with either of the given statements about this novel:
• Aravind Adiga is wirting such novels for acceptance in West. The novels like
'The White Tiger' or films like 'Slumdog Millionaire' are given awards so that
it reaches to more people. Why? Let us see what Francis Gauteir has to say
in "Religion, Marxism and Slumdog": "We Westerners continue to suffer
from a superiority complex over the so called Third World in general and
India in particular. Sitting in front of our TV sets during prime time news
with a hefty steak on our table, we love to feel sorry for the misery of
others, it secretly flatters our ego, and makes us proud of our so-called
achievements".
• Aravind Adiga kind of writers are necessary. They awaken us from our sleep.
They break the frozen snow of our 'sukoon'. And such writers are found in
all countries, cultures and languages. U.R. Anantmurty does same in
Kannada language. Not for awards from West, Dickens (England),
Dostoevsky (Russia), O'Neill, Tennesse Williams (both in America), Taslima
Nasrin (Bangladesh) - and innumerable film-makers have tried to clean the
gutters of their socio-cultural rottenness. Thus, Adiga cannot be discarded
on the ground of postcolonial process of decolonizing the mind - and thus
stop to flatter the egos of Westerners.

34. Equally difficult it may be to say on the ending of the novel
• I believe . . . that it would have been more satisfying
if the novel ended with poetic justice. The murderer,
immoral protagonist should have been given some
punishment for his manipulation of great thoughts
to justify his violent act. We have seen murderers in
literature (Macbeth, Hamlet, Oedipus etc),but there
is remorse at the end. Balram is remorseless. It does
not give edifying or ennobling effect on the readers.
• I believe . . . that it is quite perfect ending. It may
not have poetic justice but it is true to life. We do
not find poetic justice happening every-time in real
world. The end is realistic. The reality it portrays it
bitter pill to swallow. But that is how the stories of
rags to riches are, in reality.

35. Thank You!
www.dilipbarad.com