Multiculturalism And Ethnic Identitydocx

=== Multiculturalism and ethnic identity ===

MULTICULTURALISM AND ETHNIC IDENTITY

There is no better time to talk about multiculturalism, a term so widely used in the modern literary criticism and in the literary criticism of post colonial literature, than this time of the year, when one important part of the globe is commemorating the first revelation of the Quran to Muhammad according to Islamic belief through Ramadan. This brought me to the consideration of finding an adequate formula to definde  humans due to their cultural and spiritual background, both conscious or unconscious.

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s children and Andrea's Levy’ s TheLong Song think in terms of the identity with plural implications of being Indian vs. Being Jamaican.

The idea of multiculturalism has acquired tremendous significance in the Post colonial India as there is a kind of prominence of Hindu culture, Islamic culture and Christian culture is common in the cultural study of India, while Jamaican survival becomes tangible and astonishing victory. These various subdivisions of culture, of course, are responsible for the concept of multiculturalism marking the ideal, peaceful and equitable coexistence of many diverse groups sharing unique cultural and ethnic identity. But,  multiculturalism, in Indian context, may be interpreted as an amalgamation of many cultures but in recognition to the diversity.As he recollects there seem to be no no multicultural implications in the Midnight’s Children:

There were people among whom I spent my childhood; Mr Homy Catrack,  film maker and race horse owner, with his idiot daughter Toxy who had to be locked up with her nurse, Bi Appah, the most fearsome woman I ever knew; also the Ibrahims in Sana Souci, old man Ibrahim. Ibrahim with his goatee and sisal, his sons Ismail and Ishaq, and Ismail’s tiny flustery  hapless wife Nussie, whom we always called Nussia- the – duck on  account of her wedding gait, and in whose womb my friend Sony was growing, even now, getting closer and closer to his misadventure with a pair of gynecological forceps.  (Rushdie, 111-112)

Rushdie practices a different and multiple philosophy. His philosophy denies every kind of fanaticism and it seems like he has more to do with the politics and the relationship between individual and history”, while Andrea Levy presents the reality of an abhorrently violent social system.

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children published in 1981, represents the political process responsible for the destiny of a common man. The narrator Saleem Sinai, rightly confesses that he has been ‘mysteriously handcuffed to history'  and  his ‘destinies have been ‘indissolubly chained to those of his country.’ (Rushdie,5), and it is this interdependence of history and human fate that the protagonist exclaims; Why, alone of all the five hundred million, should I have to bear the burden of history? (Rushdie, 457) The narrative is spread along a wide span of the time and space covering almost whole of the twentieth century. A large part of the narrative is centered on Bombay and Delhi but also at various points of space from Kashmir, Agra, Bangladesh, Pakistan and West Bengal and Southern part of India.

The Long Song is a wicked funny parody of life at Amity sugar cane plantation in Jamaica, in the years leading up to and just after emancipation of July 31, 1838. It is in many ways a comedy of manners on life in the great house, taking equal shots at despicable masters in all their evil, arrogance and pretentiousness, and their luckless slaves, who survive them through a combination of ingenuity, effective obsequiousness and hypocrisy, sabotage and resilient perversity.

In Midnight’s Children, the realization of the action of novel forces the narrative to include the elements of multiculturalism. The action which is a perpetual escape, begins with Kashmir with seemingly uniform culture dominated by Muslim ethics. But in the backdrop of Muslim background, the narrator fuses the elements of multiculturalism. The landscape with primitive beauty of Kashmir is delineated with the ‘temple of Sankara Acharya, a little black blister on a khaki hill’ that ‘dominated the streets and lakes of Srinagar.’ (Rushdie, 5)

The boatman Tai, who ‘has seen the mountains being born,’ is another important character that foretells the advent of multicultural elements in the narrative. ‘I saw that Isa,’ he claims, ‘that Christ when he came to Kashmir, and predicts the prominence of multicultural elements in the narrative that acquire shape and form in the coming phases of the narrative. The death of Tai ‘who was infuriated by India and Pakistan’s struggle over the valley,’ is strongly supportive of the multiculturalism which at this phase of the narrative can be taken to be biculturalism. Tai ‘walked to Chhamb with the express purpose of standing between the opposing forces and giving them a piece of his mind.’ (Rushdie, 36) 

The first major event of the novel is the gradual fragmentation by making hole in the perforated sheet that is used as veil to cover the Muslim girl. The symbol of perforated sheet represents the purdah system of Muslims to parody. The gradual perforation of the sheet eventually leads to the reconciliation of the landlord. ‘women giggled behind their palms…’(Rushdie, 30).

The symbol of perforated sheet invites another interpretation from the point of view of multiculturalism. The introduction of the perforated sheet structures the milieu of unicultural milieu in the introductory part of the novel and through the element of parody, Rushdie makes clear that a single culture structuring the background for the novel like this ceases to suffice and the reconciliation of the landlord confirms the invasion of multicultural elements in the narrative. The image of the perforated sheet is recreated with Jamila Singer. The image functions as parody.

The elements of multiculturalism and ethnicity acquire more space in the narrative with the Ahmad Sinai’s escape to the Bombay; the city that makes the cultural metaphor of Indian. The escape of the protagonists from Kashmir to Agra and then to Bombay, gradually intensify the scope and possibility of multiculturalism in the novel. Ahmad Sinai ignores Alia’s relationship with Nadir Khan and marries her. ‘Time for a fresh start,’ Ahmed tells Alia, ‘throw Mumtaz and Nadir Khan out of the window.’(Rushdie,70). There is always a ‘fresh start’ indicated by the protagonist father, who refers to the king of the new world which can aptly be defined in terms of synthesis of many cultures.

The protagonist and his birth itself are real testimonies of multiculturalism. He is an exchanged child, and his birth suggests his multicultural identity, being a permanent fragmentation of the identity of the protagonist realized in the multicultural background.

Levy's tale is of a torrid romance between the indomitable mulatto slave, Miss July, and her master, a spiritual contortionist, Robert Goodwin. She tells this tale through the voice of the self-taught July. Readers have no doubt this storyteller omits what she wishes, has wonderfully entertaining moments of kinship with Miss Malaprop and seasons what we read with drama, exaggeration and bias, as she sees fit. To balance this, Levy uses the device of July's once-abandoned, newly reunited son, now a printer, who acts as July's mentor and editor. With July's survival kit of defiance, rebelliousness, resourcefulness and ingenuity, stubborn and contrary, above all totally perverse, like the legendary Jamaican spider Anansi, she makes it through her life's calamitous journey to tell her story.

Perhaps July's voice is the sound of Jamaica's national character, and July, speaking to us from the past, reveals who Jamaicans are today. The Long Song is above all the female version of emancipation, though framed by the old-fashioned device of a foreword by the narrator’s son Thomas, a printer, the story is told by an old woman “impelled, by some force which was mightier than her own will”.

July is the child of Kitty, a giant of a woman, and the overseer Tam Dewar, and her tale begins with the casual rape of her mother by a man who then complains about Kitty’s screams nine months later during labour. A pretty girl, July is taken from her mother as a small child by the English plantation owner’s sister, Caroline, and renamed as her maid, Marguerite.

Racism works its poison even among the slaves, who despise each other for being “dull and stupid”. For that this is supposed to be the autobiography of a woman with “little ink”, edited by her anxious, seemly son, The Long Song. different from many American descriptions of slavery, through its Jamaican setting.

One of the most complex and revealing moments in "The Long Song" is the dinner party in which the servants are told to prepare an English-style Christmas feast, though few of the menu items are available. This wonderful chapter, a sly glance at Toni Morrison's "Tar Baby," marks the beginning of the end of slavery on Jamaica. Up until this point, resistance on Amity plantation is mostly passive-aggressive. When the mistress of the house complains about the cost of candles, her manservant explains, "It is not that things be expensive, it is just that you can not afford them." This earns the servant a blow to the face, but the victory is his. By the end of the Christmas feast, this psychological push-back pales as a full-scale slave rebellion is at hand.

July not only reports what happened, but in the telling realizes her own role in history. For a less personal account, she directs readers to a pamphlet called "Conflict and change. A view from the great house of slaves, slavery and the British Empire." Then she adds that if you prefer this account to her own, "away with you – for I no longer wish you as my reader."

References

Andrea Levy, The Long Song. London: Headline Review, 2010.

Madelyn Jablon, Black Metafiction: Self-Consciousness in African American Literature.Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1997.

Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children