Assignment

Assignment writing: Paper 202: Indian English Literature – Post-Independence.

This blog is Assignment writing on Paper 202: Indian English Literature – Post-Independence assigned by Professor, Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Head of the English Department of Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

• Name: Nidhi Dave
• Roll no: 16
• Enrollment no: 4069206420210005
• Email ID: davenidhi05@gmail.com
• Batch: 2021- 23( MA Semester 3)
• Submitted to: Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

POSTCOLONIAL INDIA IN SALMAN RUSHDIE’S NOVEL MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN:

Midnight’s Children tells the dramatic and extraordinary story about postcolonial India. The novel depicts the historic events which shaped the life of India that we know today through the portrayal of the personal history of the Sinai family. Midnight’s Children is a critique of Indian mentality, diversity, politics and history, but at the same time a study on human relations.

Introduction: 

Midnight’s Children, one of the most victorious novels written by a renowned author Salman Rushdie, was published in 1981. To say that this piece of art won many awards and received an immense critical acclaim would be an understatement. It won the Best of the Booker prize, earning the reputation of being the best novel that has been given the prestigious Booker award.

Saleem Sinai, the protagonist of Midnight’s Children narrates the intriguing story about postcolonial India. This story does not seem to cease to amaze people for it is a universal study of plurality and diversity. Readers can relate to the characters, either because they discover their own personality traits in them, or because they find parts of their country’s history in the depiction of conflicts and wars, or simply because they link the actual stories of the people who were going through these tragedies with the newspapers headlines they read about. 

Saleem Sinai is aware that his story will not be suitable to everyone’s taste, but he still insists that he is telling the most truthful version he knows and that he is doing it out of love for his country: “One day, perhaps, the world may taste the pickles of history. They may be too strong for some palates, their smell may be overpowering, tears may rise to eyes; I hope nevertheless that it will be possible to say of them that they possess the authentic taste of truth… that they are, despite everything, acts of love.”

Harold Bloom describes the novel in the following manner: “Midnight’s Children” is an ironic, quirky, but deadly serious critique of quiescence, of withdrawal, of forgetting.”It is indeed a fascinating account of one of the most captivating countries in the world, but simultaneously it is a tale about a family, their emotions and their struggles in the face of a tragedy that befell their country. However, in generously sharing the story of himself, his people and his country, Salman Rushdie also teaches us a lesson in the hope that we will come to learn to appreciate diversity and not repeat the same mistakes India has made.

Historical context

The history of Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie was born on 19 June 1947, two months before India gained its independence from Britain. He originated from an affluent family who lived in Bombay. His father was a businessman who graduated from the Cambridge University and his mother was a teacher. The Rushdies were Muslims, but very liberal when it comes to their viewpoint on other religions and nationalities. After the Partition of India, many Muslims immigrated to Pakistan, but the Rushdie family decided to stay at their home in Bombay. 

When Salman was 13, he attended a school in London and at very early age he encountered racism: “Of course, I knew that racism is not confined to the British. I come from a society where racism is commonplace, between one Indian community and another. But you have to combat racism wherever you find it.” Therefore, already in his early age his thoughts were directed at different types of racism. After studying history at Cambridge University, Rushdie moved to Karachi, Pakistan, where his family immigrated in the meantime. Even though he found a job at the television, with his European-educated mind, he had difficulties accepting censorship that prevailed in all the aspects of Pakistani life in regard to religion. As a result, he moved back to London. The binaries that were presented in his personal life when it comes to his origin and his personal sense of belonging were the inspiration for the central plot of Midnight’s Children. Goonetilleke writes that: “Rushdie is the kind of cloven writer produced by migration, inhabiting and addressing both worlds, the East and the West, the world of his mother country and that of his adopted country, belonging wholly to neither one nor the other.” Perhaps for this reason he is the best man for the job – the job of describing the true gist of Indian colonial history and all the consequences stemming from it.

Rushdie has been writing Midnight’s Children for five years: 

 “He dedicated it to Zafar as an inheritor of India’s legacy and as a sign of his own connection to it and to Islam (his son is given a distinctively Islamic name, though he had settled down in Britain and married a British woman).”

It is quite obvious that Midnight’s Children is, in its greater part, an autobiography. When asked about it, Rushdie admitted that the character of Saleem was based on Rushdie himself:

 “I gave Saleem certain parts of my childhood, so essentially he lives in my house and goes to my school. His friends are composites of people I went to school with. The school bullies know who they are.

In the same interview, Rushdie explained that the purpose of writing this novel was also to highlight all the aspect of freedom, not all of them being positive: 

 

“The idea of the Midnight’s Children was, yes, it was about my generation, but I also wanted them to embody the possibility. The idea behind giving them magic powers if they were born in the midnight hour was to say, “Freedom is a magical moment, and here is the potential of that freedom.” 

The history of India

After the secession of the British rule over India, Britain passed the sovereign power to the two newly formed countries – the Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. The Partition of India did not only bring the creation of the new countries, but also brutal conflicts which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. “Never before had anything even remotely like it been attempted. Nowhere were there any guidelines, any precedents, any revealing insights from the past to order what was going to be the biggest, the most complex divorce action in history, the breakup of a family of four hundred million human beings along with the assets and household property they had acquired in centuries of living together on the same piece of earth.”Its consequences were also the 1965 Indo-Pakistani war over Kashmir and the 1971 conflict over Bangladeshi independence. 

The novel is politically centered around the figure of Indira Gandhi. She was the daughter of the former Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. She was politically popular because of various reforms she employed as well as for the Indian victory in the conflict with Pakistan that resulted in the creation of independent Bangladesh. She declared the State of Emergency in the country between 1975 and 1977, when she was found guilty of election fraud. With the State of Emergency she limited many civil rights and liberties, censored the media and started the sterilization process. In the novel, “Under the rule of the Widow, India is being made impotent, literally, through vasectomy and, metaphorically, too, as exemplified by the Midnight’s Children and Saleem himself. Midnight’s children have no power, no hope and no future.” Rushdie addresses Indira Gandhi as a “widow” in the novel, not only because she was the widow of Feroze Gandhi, but also because “A widow is a figure of ill-omen in Indian culture.”

“Midnight’s Children aims at demonizing Indira Gandhi and pursues a remarkably elaborate and persistent strategy in order to achieve this. Both the derogatory connotations of widowhood and witchcraft are combined to create the phantasmagorical image of the witch-like Widow who haunts the novel but who is only disclosed at the very end as identical with Indira Gandhi.”Midnight’s Children aroused considerable controversy with its publication. The novel was banned in India for the way it depicted the Nehru dynasty. Additionally, Indira Gandhi sued Rushdie for libel and won. India has always been characterized by the diversity of the people living in it. The Partition was nothing else but an attempt to divide the country along the religious lines and make the Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. What the people aiming to do this failed to realize is that you cannot ask the people to move to another country based solely on the religion. What has to be taken into account is a sense of belonging, many people felt attached to India, to the country India used to be, and in spite of that, there were forced to leave their homeland.

Saleem as the representation of the postcolonial India

The story of Saleem Sinai is the story of postcolonial India. The exact moment of his birth was 15 August 1947, at the stroke of midnight. This moment completely coincides with India’s gain of its independence from Britain. His birth ties him closely to the country’s fate and the future. Accordingly, his life is a reflection of the country’s ups and downs, good times and bad times. “More than a mirror of India, Saleem is the multitude of India.”

During the first hour of independence, 1001 children were born, all of them with astounding magical powers. The closer to midnight the child was born, the more magnificent and extraordinary their power was. 581 midnight’s children were alive by the time Saleem discovered their special gifts. His was the gift of telepathy, he was able to enter other people’s minds and get to know their most intimate thoughts, emotions and desires. 

Saleem’s gift of telepathy allows him not only to immerse himself into the minds of other midnight’s children, but also into India itself, he is connected to the country through his gift. He is able to hear all of India, through all of its diversity, including different religions. Midnight’s children are the most exquisite reflection of India itself. They represent the main characteristics of Indian country – the diversity and plurality. They are all different, they all come from different backgrounds, religions, but they are connected to each other by the precious gifts that they own, gifts which are not always a blessing. “The children of midnight were also the children of the time: fathered, you understand, by history. It can happen. Especially in a country which is itself a sort of dream.” The children are 

embodiment of the country, of the nation, of its present and its future. Owing to his own special power, Saleem organizes a Midnight’s Children Conference, so they all meet in his mind for one hour every day. Shiva, who was born at the exact same time as Saleem, has the power of war. He suggests to Saleem that they should be the leaders of the group, which Saleem rejects, wishing for the group to have a greater purpose. Saleem and Shiva, both being born at midnight, represent contrasting personalities. Shiva is named after the God of destruction, while Saleem represents Brahma, the God of creation. Shiva’s personality stems from his upbringing, he was born into great poverty, he was expected by his father is a beggar, so a lot of his personal frustration and anger can be justified. They together manifest the core differences striking India – rich and poor, Hindu and Muslim. “If Saleem embodies the Indian history of pluralism, Shiva embodies India’s parallel history of oppression and intolerance.”

India had very high expectations of its newly acquired freedom. The “Times of India” announced a prize for any child born at the exact moment of independence. India manifests its hopes for a better future through its celebration of independence. People are ecstatic, glorious celebrations are organized, and Saleem himself receives a letter from Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister, who predicts Saleem’s connection to the country: 

“Dear Baby Saleem, My belated congratulations on the happy accident of your moment of birth! You are the newest bearer of that ancient face of India which is also eternally young. We shall be watching over your life with the closest attention; it will be, in a sense, the mirror of our own.”

When Parvati gets pregnant with Shiva who completely abandons her after hearing the news, Saleem agrees to be the father to her child, as in this case the child would be entitled to their actual grandparents. At midnight on 25th of June, the Prime Minister declares a State of Emergency, allowing her to arrest her opposition and censor the media. 

At the same moment, Parvati’s son is born, continuing the tradition of grand events of Indian history corresponding to major events in Saleem’s life. They lived in the magicians’ ghetto when the soldiers broke in and killed most of the people residing there. Saleem was captured by Shiva and taken away to Indira Gandhi’s imprisonment. Saleem tells his interrogators about the rest of the midnight’s children and all of them undergo the sterilization process which results not only in the loss of their reproductive powers, but also in the loss of their magical powers.

Saleem’s birth represents the creation of Midnight’s Children, while his son’s birth represents their destruction. While Saleem was born at the time of great optimism and hope for the Indian country, his son was born at the State of Emergency, at the time of despair and chaos. However, even though all the magical powers of the Midnight’s Children are gone, Saleem’s son's magical powers remain. He has big ears, and his power is the ability to hear his father’s story. Aadam’s first word, “Abracadabra”, symbolizes that the magic is not dead just yet, it survived in the new generation of Midnight’s Children. At the end of their lives, Shiva and Saleem seem to be restored to the destinies they should have had. Shiva, a child who should have been born wealthy, lived a life of a struggling poor man, but eventually became rich and respected. Saleem, who should have been born poor, lived an affluent life to end up being poor with no house and no family. By destroying Midnight’s Children, Indira Gandhi destroyed the hope for the better future, she ruined the best embodiment and characteristic of India, its diversity.Considering the fact that Saleem is the metaphor of India, he himself could be blamed for the tragedy that befell the country resulting in the destruction of everything and everyone that is unique and different. 

Midnight’s Children itself, to provide a vision of the country he wants India to be: an attempt to imagine a unifying form for the subcontinent as a whole, from Kerala to Kashmir, from Bombay to the jungles of Bengal, a country that has indeed made a fresh start at the moment of independence, in which the differences between Hindu and Muslim and Sikh, Brahmin and beggar, are contained within a single structure.”20 It seems that Rushdie’s novel remained a dream as well.

Conclusion

“Rushdie specifies the ideals that Midnight’s Children celebrate: “My India has always been based on ideas of multiplicity, pluralism, hybridity: ideas to which the ideologies of the communalists are diametrically opposed. (In Midnight’s Children) the defining image of India is the crowd and a crowd is by its very nature super abundant, heterogeneous, many things at once.Midnight's Children remains the biggest celebration of the plurality, diversity, distinctions and differences of India. It shows us how far the things can go if we have a singular point of view. It teaches us to accept other religions,nationalities and cultures, to respect them and cherish them. Rushdie’s novel can also be observed not only through India, but globally, through the whole world: “Rushdie may epitomize the migrant writer par excellence with all its potential for reinventing the world and the subject of human identity, but the Rushdie affair also places him in a position in which he seems to personify the flip side of globalization – that is, the clash of civilizations, the increasing gap between cultures, and the proliferation of fundamentalism”.

 

Work Cited:

• BRATANOVIĆ, EDITA . "POSTCOLONIAL INDIA IN SALMAN RUSHDIE’S NOVEL MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN," International Conference on Social Science, Humanities and Education , p. 14, WWW. ICSE.org. Accessed 5 Nov. 2022.

• https://greenglobaltravel.com/salman-rushdie-midnights-children-movie

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Assignment

Assignment writing: Paper 201: Indian English Literature – Pre-Independence.

This blog is Assignment writing on Paper 201: Indian English Literature – Pre-Independence assigned by Professor, Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Head of the English Department of Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

• Name: Nidhi Dave
• Roll no: 16
• Enrollment no: 4069206420210005
• Email ID: davenidhi05@gmail.com
• Batch: 2021- 23( MA Semester 3)
• Submitted to: Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

🌟The Home and the World as a political novel.

 🔸Introduction:

 Irving Howe, in his discussion of the nature and types of novel, defines a political novel as a work of fiction ‘in which political ideas play a dominant role or in which political milieu is the dominant setting.’ Now, what Howe implies is that a political novel treats some political events of significance in a politically based situation. Naturally, this genre includes political thoughts, confrontations and problems. Tagore’s The Home and the World satisfies all the above mentioned requirements and hence its claims to be a political novel seems to be just and relevant. 

Rabindranath Tagore's novel The Home and the World (1916) is set in India during the early twentieth century, a time when England still held power over the country. Tagore writes each chapter from the perspective of either Nikhil, Bimala, or Sandip to reflect the political turmoil and lack of unity in India at the time the novel is set.

The Home and the World is set during the height of the Swadeshi movement, a boycott of British goods that was initiated in 1905 as a protest against Great Britain’s arbitrary division of Bengal into two parts. At first, Tagore was one of the leaders of Swadeshi, but when protests evolved into violent conflicts between Muslims and Hindus, Tagore left the movement. In The Home and the World, he explained why he did not approve of what Swadeshi had become.

🌟The Background of the novel:

 The background of Tagore’s novel is based on the wide canvas of the national uprising of 1905, particularly in Bengal. The partition of Bengal by British rulers in 1905 and its consequent repercussions – the Swadeshi movement and boycott of foreign goods, the indiscriminate burning of foreign goods and clothes, anarchical agitations, political plunders and secret murders- are all included in its purview. Even the oppression of the British rulers and the fanatical activities of the extremists find a brilliant representation in Tagore’s fiction. 

🌟The Home and the World as a political novel:

Rabindranath Tagore’s Home and the World is a product of the crisis of that time, and as a political novel it echoes through its narration a large number of attitudes, not always compatible with the colonial experience. The novel deals with the experience of modernity and the price one has to pay for it. The controversial nature of the subject matter, in which Tagore takes the opportunity to launch his fiercest attack yet against the ideology of nationalism, contrary to its rising popularity both in India and the West, was also a reason it drew much attention, mostly in the form of reprobation and scorn, from readers both in and outside Bengal.

 The novel deals with the experiences of three characters during the volatile period of swadeshi: Nikhil, a benevolent, enlightened and progressive landlord; his childhood friend and a voluble, selfish but charismatic nationalist leader, Sandip; and Nikhil’s wife, Bimala, who is happy at the outset in her traditional role as a zamindar’s wife but who, encouraged by her husband, steps out of home to better acquaint herself with the world and find a new identity for the Indian woman. At the sight of Sandip, she emotionally trips, vacillates between him and her husband, until she returns home bruised and humiliated but with a more mature understanding of both the home/self and the world.

The novel has a certain allegorical quality in that Nikhil and Sandip seem to represent two opposing visions for the nation; with Bimala, torn between the two, not knowing for sure what should be her guiding principle - signifying Bengal tottering between the two possibilities. Nikhil’s vision is one of enlightened humanitarian and global perspective, based on a true equality and harmony of individuals and nations. On the other hand, Sandip’s parochial and belligerent nationalism, which cultivates an intense sense of patriotism in individuals, threatens to replace their moral sensibility with national bigotry and blind fanaticism. Seen from this perspective, Nikhil’s death at the end of the novel, just when Bimala is turning the corner and returning to her senses after a prolonged infatuation with Sandip and his views, also signals Tagore’s pessimism about the future of Bengal. In the absence of truly benevolent leaders like Nikhil, she would be mutilated, divided in two (currently Bangladesh and West Bengal), with millions of her children paying with their lives to meet the apocalyptic wishes of self-seeking, immoral, power-hungry politicians, determined to carve out her body on religious communal lines.

Nikhil loves his country as much as, if not more than, Sandip, but he will not allow his love for the country to overtake his conscience. Sandip, on the other hand, believes that ‘a country's needs must be made into a god’, and one ought to set ‘aside conscience [by] putting the country in its place’. This reckless deification of the nation and his belief that any action, no matter how heinous or unscrupulous, is justifiable if undertaken for the nation’s sake eventually turns him into a frightful terrorist and appalling criminal. He does not mind using intrigue or violence to accomplish his mission, even if it means harm to his own followers. As long as the mission is accomplished, the end justifies his means. He adroitly persuades Bimala to give all her jewelry to him to finance the movement, and steal money from the family safe. He also uses Amulya, an impassioned but idealistic youth (emblematic of the many adolescents who were influenced by the movement), exploitatively. When Mirjan, a Muslim boatman, refuses to stop carrying foreign goods, as it will take away his livelihood, Sandip arranges to sink his boat in midstream.

It is really to be admitted that the political flame of 1905 steers the story of The Home and the World. The story starts with the quiet, happy conjugality of Nikhil and Bimala. Their home was all peaceful, amorous and congenial. All that Nikhil desired was to bring his wife out of the narrow home to the wide world in order to know her more fully. However it was Sandip’s arrival, his intoxicant political views and his personal enchantment that stirred Bimala’s serene center- her home – and brought her out of the whirlwind of politics in the wide world outside. She was fascinated by Sandip’s stirring speeches and Swadeshi slogans and also by his romantic adoration of her as Mother India. Again Sandip was crafty enough to bring a stir among the young generation of Nikhil’s area. In other words Sandip and his associates lit up the political fire with noble intention but unfortunately the fire spread in a destructive manner. 

 Truly, there is nothing to question the Swadeshi background of Tagore’s novel. Yet questions may be raised about the actual political scenario of The Home and the World. The politics of Swadeshi is deeply rooted in the center of the work and spreads its boughs and twigs all over the story. Still the movement is not dominant in its real flame and fervor. Except Sandip’s catchy, agitative speeches and the reckless burning of foreign clothes at his instigation, The Home and the World presents no scene worth mentioning of the Swadeshi movement. The history of political unrest and the desperate conflict between the English rulers and the poor rulers of India is absent in Tagore’s artistic canvas. Nothing of the country- wide revolt by the young patriots, the fearless acts of terrorism and the glorious self-sacrifice by many dedicated souls has got a space in the novel. Therefore judged from this very angle, it remains impossible to group The Home and the World together with the classic political novels like War and Peace, A Tale of Two Cities and The Mother. 

However, many would feel that the real meaning and interest of the novel lies in its moving portrayal of man -women relationship, in the psychological conflict, in the personal drama of husband and wife knowing each other both at home and in the world. The swadeshi agitation is a necessary political backdrop only because it is through this upheaval that an Indian wife can suddenly tear the moorings of a sheltered domestic life and float adrift in the high seas of a countryside agitation. The novel is full of political discussions and they are important only insofar as they help to reveal the working in the minds of Sandip, Nikhilesh and Bimala. Ibsen’s Nora (A Doll’s House) and Tagore’s Bimala belong to two different worlds. The former stands far from an idea, while the latter is an individual woman who may be distantly connected with an idea. Unlike Nora, Bimala does not stand for women’s liberation. When, early is the novel, Nikhil urges Bimala, so long a typical Hindu wife to come out of her secluded existence and to meet the world, Bimala is at first indifferent to the idea, saying ‘what do I with the outside world.’, Nikhilesh is not a Torvald Helmer and does not make a doll of his wife, neither does he try to impose anything of his own on her. A mighty political agitation that sweeps over the country and breaks the barriers of age, gives the Indian wife an opportunity to come out of her secluded existence. Not only does Bimala leave the introverted; but her mind and sight, her hopes and desires become red with the passion of the new ages. And it is at this time she meets Sandip, a fiery nationalist, who thinks and feels differently from her husband. Sandip is frankly a champion of greed and of the Nietzschean will to power. Bimala is fascinated by Sandip's impetuous vitality beside which her husband’s lour for truth, eternal and absolute, seems to be very thin. Bimala’s burning devotion to her country is mined up with her attraction for the country’s hero Sandip, who flatters her as the incarnation of shakti , the goddess from whom the son of Bengal will derive inspiration and energy.

Bimala does not share Nikhilesh's ideas, and therefore, although she notices that Sandip’s eloquence grows when he catches sight of her, she lets Sandip worm his way into her heart. Even when she finds herself on the high tide to excitement, she argues with her husband in support of Sandip’s doctrines. Although Bimala and Sandip are drawn towards each other by what seems to beam insuperable attraction, the adulterous impulse is soon checked, Bimala discovers that behind the sparkle of Sandip’s brilliance there is in him the slime of weakness, meanness and cowardice and she recoils in disgust.

Again on the basis of the stark contrast between Nikhil and Sandip Tagore’s The Home and the World has suffered much criticism from the contemporary Swadeshi leaders. Contextually Bipin Pal commented, “Rabindranath had not understood the essence of Swadeshi itself.” However, a reasonable analysis of the novel establishes a different truth. It is then we confront the fact that the author is not speaking against Swadeshi. Rather he is speaking for those poor natives who suffered the extreme as a result of the propagation of the movement which dealt with the destruction of their livelihood. The question is not then, how far Nikhil and Sandip are real historical personages. What is important here is that Tagore by the means of his novel originally intended to show the negative aspect of the movement, which had been given birth by sincere patriotic thoughts. The novel therefore remains as it does a specimen of Tagore’s remarkable understanding of the fragility of the destructive temperament, during the Swadeshi era. Herein Nikhil’s comment seems to be the most relevant since he in the course of the novel acts as Tagore’s spokesman- “you should not waste even the tenth part of your energy in the destructive excitement.”

 

Work Cited:

• https://ardhendude.blogspot.com/2014/10/analysis-of-tegores-home-and-world-as.html?m=1
• Datta, Sandip Kumar. Rabindranath Tagore's The Home and the World: A Critical Companion. Anthem Press, 2005
• https://www.literaturewise.in/mdl/mod/page/view.php?id=84
• https://surendranathcollege.ac.in/new/upload/RIMA_CHAKRABORTYHOME%20AND%20THE%20WORLD%20AS%20A%20POLITICAL%20NOVEL2021-01-29HOME%20AND%20THE%20WORLD%20AS%20A%20POLITICAL%20NOVEL.pdf.

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Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity:  My Daughter Joined A Cult: 

Hello friends, 

I am Nidhi Dave, a student of the Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University. This blog is a response to my thinking Activity given by professor Yesha Ma'am. Here I discuss the Documentary My Daughter Joined a cult.

🌟My Daughter Joined a cult:

My Daughter Joined a Cult', a docu-series about self-proclaimed godman, Swami Nithyananda.

In 2019, Netflix released a documentary feature, Bikram: Yogi, Guru & Predator, detailing the many sexual misconduct allegations against popular yoga guru Bikram Choudhury. A year later came Bad Boy Billionaires, which singled out the shady dealings of Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Subrata Roy. A damning portrait emerges of another absconder, Nithyananda, in the three-part documentary series My Daughter Joined a Cult, which streams on discovery+. Using news footage, a lot of it from local media in Karnataka, talking heads of ex-devotees and journalists, and video bytes of the godman’s sermons, the show tracks the quick rise and subsequent fall of Swami Nithyananda. 

🌟Title:

My Daughter Joined The Cult’

The title is certainly eye-catching, but closer inspection reveals it's a nod to the kind of obfuscating rhetoric that has allowed the self-professed godman to escape punishment. The documentary starts in 2019 as Janardan Sharma and his wife arrive at Nithyananda's ashram after their two daughters were taken from Bengaluru without their knowledge.

"Please ask them. Ask them where my daughters are!" The mother screamed at the assembled journalists, who had only recently begun piecing together the ashram's evil schemes.

It was the father who took his two daughters to meet the guru in 2014, completely unaware of Nithyananda's intentions. Till today it is a mystery for this family as they are still in search of their daughters that went missing in 2019. Nithyananda was accused of rape and fled the country in 2019 fearing arrest for a rape case. 

🌟The process of Brainwashing – (Indian followers – White followers):

“The moment you sit in front of me, enlightenment starts,” says Nithyananda to his audience. It is one of the many declarations the godman makes, which leave us questioning what made people fall for him. His legion of followers includes influential and wealthy people, who are unnamed, and like many Indian spiritual gurus he has his share of foreign devotees. There are accounts from followers-turned- whistleblowers. The most insightful voice here belongs to an anonymous woman whose experience suggests that Nithyananda knew how to target the vulnerable and make people commit to him so much that they’d be ready to sever ties with their families. 

Nithyananda’s controversial life—the foremost being the “sex tape” which rubbishes his claims of being a celibate; accusation of rape from erstwhile follower Aarthi Rao, and the sudden death of a young woman at his ashram in Bidadi near Bengaluru. These hardly deter his followers, who instead launch a malicious campaign against his detractors.This process is responsible for brainwashing all the followers.

🌟Concept of ‘Bhakta’ – (Blind followers):

While talking about the Bhakta and followers of saints, it is obvious that it is connected

 with religion and its sentiments. Nithyananda dismisses the notion of ‘karma’ as being legitimate: “Karma means that the effect of our actions will come back to us in the future, is a myth. There is no CCTV recording going on in the cosmos… where your actions will be bringing suffering to you in the future. God is not playing the game of judgment.” In the series, we also learn that a summons from the court does not reach the godman, because his security team quite literally does not allow it to pass. When a TV journalist attempts to be a medium for the summons by carrying it with him at a press conference held at the ashram, he is chased out before he can even finish reading it.

This absurdity reaches a crescendo when we learn about how the godman allegedly absconded, leaving the police, the courts and international agencies clueless about his location and methods. Saraiya points to the slow-moving nature of State institutions and processes — for example, the sheer amount of time it took for the rape trial to commence — to explain how the godman may have escaped the authorities. After all, for any godman to succeed in India, they need to make friends in powerful places; it goes without saying that this friendship is reciprocated in turbulent times.

The very nature of the truth is twisted in the ashram: residents and followers receive a limited amount of information from the outside world. They’re repeatedly told that any allegation against their guru is an attack upon their faith, and a conspiracy against their movement. It’s as though they’re living an entirely different, manufactured version of reality. “Lies told many times over can begin to sound like the truth,” Saraiya explains. Assurances don’t have to be issued to them, because a majority of them perceive accusers as being liars and betrayers.

The unwavering support and devotion that Nithyananda enjoyed would not exist if it weren’t for a carefully constructed self-mythology. 

🌟What role of the English language in this? 

As Nityananda lived in the era of the digitalized world, he knows very well how to use, rather than misuse the technology. He gave certain tasks to his white followers who were masters in technology and he command them to make videos about him, how and where the upcoming event is organized and they were supposed to cheer up him. Nithyananda’s two-faced ways are revealed best by Sarah Landry aka Sudevi, his social media manager, and Jordan Lozada through their recollection of goings-on in the ashram, which include verbal abuse and beating of disciples as well as demands to ramp up the videos propagating his teachings and increase the enrolments for his inner awakening programme. Landry and Lozada do as the boss orders with a video segment called “Keeping up with the Kailashians”, in which they dress up in saffron robes and chronicle their lives in the ashram. That reason Nityananda was most famous in social media and English language was very high way use by This documentry.

🌟Why do people believe him even after the CD incident?

After the victim, Aarthi Rao herself said to the people what Nityananda did with her, people still did not believe that he was a fraud. Probably the lack of awareness that what is right or what is wrong and the lacking knowledge about education also.

Nithyananda is not the only one missing. The series begins with footage of Janardhan Sharma and his wife searching for their two daughters, who they believe are held against their will by the swami at his ashram in Ahmedabad. "I am very happy here. I am not kidnapped,” says Nanditha in a video call with the media, rejecting her parents’ claims. Sharma’s two daughters are yet to be found. While most of his former followers are busy critiquing him, Jansi Rani is one of the few to call out her own follies. Rani’s 24-year-old daughter died of a heart attack in the ashram under mysterious circumstances. “He told us the sun rose because he appeared,” she says. “All of us were crazy.” Many continue to be under his sway watching his videos and supporting him as he hides in Kailaasa, a place few can pinpoint on a map and where the self-proclaimed ‘Paramashivam’ continues to preach.

🌟Connection with The Wretched of the Earth:

Fanon wrote The Wretched of the Earth in the face of the horror of the Algerian civil war and in the broader context of anti-colonial liberation struggles in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Such experiences had showed that violence is necessary both to impose domination and to break free from it. It comes as no surprise, then, that Fanon puts his faith in revolutionary violence. In dissent from some recent interpretations, this article argues that Fanon considered physical violence a useful tool both to free people from the constraints of colonialism and to build a society free from oppression. The conditions in the ashram mirror the laws and policies in 20th-century dystopian novels — from long hours of work and forced sleep deprivation, to more insidious aspects, such as encouraging devotees to be suspicious of each other and forcing children to hit their peers. Family members were separated and made to do tasks in different departments, prompting them to feel dissociated from each other — to the point where they may not feel the need for family anymore. The constant cycle of sleep deprivation — about four hours of rest to be precise — has been cited by more than one ex-devotee as impairing their judgment and ability to function. 

The unwavering support and devotion that Nithyananda enjoyed would not exist if it weren’t for a carefully constructed self-mythology. The godman at the centre of My Daughter Joined a Cult not only commodified faith but also himself. One of the many manifestations of this is his devotees taking selfies with standees of his image. Saraiya remembers another story concerning a devotee who claimed they were healed of an acute health issue because of the godman’s mere touch. The docu-series paints a picture of how Nithyananda changed his appearance over the years; as his hair grew out, he also increasingly presented himself as a pathway to enlightenment, and Shiva himself.

Thank you 

Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity: Selected Poems

Hello friends,

 I am Nidhi Dave Student of the Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University. This blog is a response to my thinking Activity given by professor Yesha Ma'am. Here I discuss the poem An Introduction by Kamala Das.

Ma'am gave us the task, that we were supposed to Pick any one line/word/phrase/thought/idea from that - Write your version of it in form of poetry, excerpt, paragraph (prose), story, or any literary piece then write a blog upon that. Here I pick one word from this poem. 

An introduction by Kamala Das:

Kamala Das’ poem “An Introduction” was first published almost more than half a century ago in 1965 in one of her notable books of poetry, Summer in Calcutta. Being one of her earliest works, it strongly addressed some of Das’ most prominent ideas in the rawest form possible. This purely confessional poem clearly portrays her cry to achieve a sense of freedom in life. The voice that narrates the poem is clear, direct, sharp, and unhesitant. In spite of being highly personal and revolving around the poet’s own experiences, this poem makes an attempt to cover almost all social, political, cultural, as well as, emotional grounds.

Indian poet Kamala Das:

Kamala Das (1934–2009) was a famous Indian poet and novelist who wrote in both English and Malayalam, her mother tongue. While writing in Malayalam, she used the pen name Madhavikutty. She was born in Thrissur, Kerala into a fairly privileged family. Her mother, Nalapat Balamani Amma was a well-known Malayali poet who had published around 20 collections of poems; and her father V.M. Nair was a senior executive in an automobile company and editor of the journal Mathrubhumi.

Kamala Das has written three collections of poems in English; Summer in Calcutta (1965), The Descendants (1967), and The Old Playhouse and Other Poems (1973). In addition, she has written collections of short stories, two novels, and numerous essays as a syndicated columnist. Overall, she has published 25 books and collections of poetry.

However, it is her autobiography My Story (1976) that remains her most well-known work. Kamala Das was honoured with the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award (English) in 1984 and nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature the same year. On 1 February, 2018, Google honored her with a doodle.

Her explosive autobiography, My Story, written in Malayalam (her native tongue), gained her both fame and notoriety. Later, it was translated into English.

My word: 

"Love" by An Introduction by Kamala Das: 

Love is the most important thing in life and here Kamala Das uses this one word. And she discussed his love story in this poem.

Alienation is used to describe a state of detachment, seclusion, abandonment, or even withdrawal. It can be simply referred to as the condition where an individual is “alienated” from either themselves, the society they live in, or the idea of life itself. While reading Das, it is impossible to miss this crucial theme that informed most of her adult life. Since her poetry is widely a reflection of her personal life, the portrayal of this sense of alienation particularly arises from her own experiences with men, her marriage, and the male dominant society in general.

Time and again Das had been the subject of rejection and deprived of love and affection. She, in her quest for true love, had been abandoned by not just her husband but any and “every man” she developed a relationship with. Not only that, due to her radical ideas, rebellious nature, and unconventional perspective, Das had been neglected even by society, which is precisely male-centric and orthodox. 

Thank you 

Thinking Activity: Marxism, Ecocriticism, Feminism and Queer Theory

Hello friends

I am Nidhi Dave Student of Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University. This blog is response of my thinking Activity given by professor Dr. Dilip Barad sir. Here i discuss about this all theory.

Feminism:

Feminist criticism is concerned with "the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women" (Tyson 83). This school of theory looks at how aspects of our culture are inherently patriarchal (male dominated) and aims to expose misogyny in writing about women, which can take explicit and implicit forms. This misogyny, Tyson reminds us, can extend into diverse areas of our culture: "Perhaps the most chilling example...is found in the world of modern medicine, where drugs prescribed for both sexes often have been tested on male subjects only" .

As a distinctive and concerted approach to literature, feminist criticism was not inaugurated until late in the 1960s. Behind it, however, lie two centuries of struggle for the recognition of women’s cultural roles and achievements, and for women’s social and political rights, marked by such books as Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women (1869), and the American Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845). 

Key Concerns of Feminism:

1.The basic view is that Western civilization is pervasively patriarchal

2.It is widely held that while one’s sex as a man or woman is determined by anatomy, the prevailing concepts of gender

3. The further claim is that this patriarchal (or “masculinist,” or “androcentric”) ideology pervades those writings which have been traditionally considered great literature

4.gynocriticism—that is, a criticism which concerns itself with developing a specifically female framework for dealing with works written by women, in all aspects of their production, motivation, analysis, and interpretation, and in all literary forms, including journals and letters.

5.One concern of gynocritics is to identify distinctively feminine subject matters in literature written by women—the world of domesticity, for example, or the special experiences of gestation, giving birth, and nurturing, or mother-daughter and woman-woman relations—in which personal and affectional issues, and not external activism, are the primary interest. 

6.Another concern is to uncover in literary history a female tradition, incorporated in subcommunities of women writers who were aware of, emulated, and found support in earlier women writers, and who in turn provide models and emotional support to their own readers and successors. 

7.A third undertaking is to show that there is a distinctive feminine mode of experience, or “subjectivity,” in thinking, feeling, valuing, and perceiving oneself and the outer world. Related to this is the attempt (thus far, without much agreement about details) to specify the traits of a “woman’s language,” or distinctively feminine style of speech and writing, in sentence structure, types of relations between the elements of a discourse, and characteristic figures of speech and imagery. 

What feminist critics do ?

1. Rethink the canon, aiming at the rediscovery of texts written by women. 

2. Revalue women's experience. 

3. Examine representations of women in literature by men and women. 

4. Challenge representations of women as 'Other', as 'lack', as part of 'nature'. 

5. Examine power relations which are obtained in texts and in life, with a view to breaking them down, seeing reading as a political act, and showing the extent of patriarchy. 

6. Recognise the role of language in making what is social and constructed seem transparent and 'natural'. 

7. Raise the question of whether men and women are 'essentially' different because of biology, or are socially constructed as different. 

8. Explore the question of whether there is a female language, an ecriture feminine, and whether this is also available to men. 

9. 'Re-read' psychoanalysis to further explore the issue of female and male identity. 

10. Question the popular notion of the death of the author, asking whether there are only 'subject positions ... constructed in discourse', or whether, on the contrary, the experience (e.g. of a black or lesbian writer) is central. 

11. Make clear the ideological base of supposedly 'neutral' or 'mainstream' literary interpretations. 

Examples: 

The Color Purple:

Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel materialized on screen in 1985 and became an iconic feminist film that withstands the tests of time. Whoopi Goldberg plays Celie, a Black southern women who has suffered (and survived) years of abuse and finds strength within herself and female friends.

Thappad:

A very interesting movie. The protagonist is Amrita, by profession she was also a housewife by choice. Her husband totally depends on her. Amrita worked like anything for her, She might have thought that her husband respected and cared for her. After months she was slapped by Vikram in front of so many guest and relatives. This one slap broke Amrita. She realizes her own identity. She said, `` Ek Thappad bas itni si baat ? no, women are not about to bear such things. Amrita decided to give divorce to her husband. She started a new life. Women are not suppressed by men. 

It's a very fascinating movie. Generally people might think that women are only for pleasure. If she goes against you, you can beat her, because her slave. So this movie is the best example of that kind of mentality. 

So, this one Thappad changed the whole image of Amrita’s life. That thappad was not on her cheeks but that slap was on her existence, her identity, her own thoughts.

Queer Theory:

Queer theory’s origin is hard to clearly define, since it came from multiple critical and cultural contexts, including feminism, post-structuralist theory, radical movements of people of color, the gay and lesbian movements, AIDS activism, many sexual subcultural practices such as sadomasochism, and postcolonialism.

The term “queer theory” itself came from Teresa de Lauretis’ 1991 work in the feminist cultural studies journal differences titled “Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities.” She explains her term to signify that there are at least three interrelated projects at play within this theory: refusing heterosexuality as the benchmark for sexual formations, a challenge to the belief that lesbian and gay studies is one single entity, and a strong focus on the multiple ways that race shapes sexual bias. De Lauretis proposes that queer theory could represent all of these critiques together and make it possible to rethink everything about sexuality.

Some of the important writers and writtings about queer studies:

1.See Teresa de Lauretis, Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities, 1991

2.Annamarie Jagose, Queer Theory: An Introduction, 1996. 

3. Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity 

What lesbian/gay critics do? 

1. Identify and establish a canon of 'classic' lesbian/gay writers whose work constitutes a distinct tradition. These are, in the main, twentieth-century writers, such as (for lesbian writers in Britain) Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, Dorothy Richardson, Rosamund Lehmann, and Radclyffe Hall. 

2. Identify lesbian/gay episodes in mainstream work and discuss them as such (for example, the relationship between Jane and Helen in Jane Eyre), rather than reading same-sex pairings in non-specific ways, for instance, as symbolising two aspects of the same character (Zimmerman). 

3. Set up an extended, metaphorical sense of 'lesbian/gay' so that it connotes a moment of crossing a boundary, or blurring a set of categories. All such 'liminal' moments mirror the moment of selfidentification as lesbian or gay, which is necessarily an act of conscious resistance to established norms and boundaries. 

4. Expose the 'homophobia' of mainstream literature and criticism, as seen in ignoring or denigrating the homosexual aspects of the work of major canonical figures, for example, by omitting overtly homosexual love lyrics from selections or discussions of the poetry of W. H. Auden (Mark Lilly). 

5. Foreground homosexual aspects of mainstream literature which have previously been glossed over, for example the strongly homo-erotic tenderness seen in a good deal of First World War poetry. 

6. Foreground literary genres, previously neglected, which significantly influenced ideals of masculinity or femininity, such as the nineteenth-century adventure stories with a British 'Empire' setting (for example those by Rudyard Kipling and Rider Haggard) discussed by Joseph Bristow in Empire Boys (Routledge, 1991). 

Example of Queer Theory: 

1, Judith Butler's Gender Trouble:

The theorist most commonly identified with studying the prevailing understandings of gender and sex is Judith Butler, who draws much from Foucault’s ideas but with a focus on gender. She argues in her book Gender Trouble that gender, like sexuality, is not an essential truth obtained from one’s body but something that is acted out and portrayed as “reality”. She argues that the strict belief that the there is a “truth” of sex makes heterosexuality as the only proper outcome because of the coherent binary created of “feminine” and “masculine” and thus creating the only logical outcome of either being a “male” or “female.” Butler makes the case that genderperformativity could be a strategy of resistance with examples such as drag, cross-dressing, and the sexual nonrealistic depiction of butch and femme identities that poke fun at the laid out gender norms in society. In her later book, Undoing Gender, Butler makes it clear that performativity is not the same as performance. She explains that gender performativity is a repeated process that ultimately creates the subject as a subject. Butler’s work brings to light the creation of gender contesting the rigidity of the hierarchical binaries that exist and is what makes her work invaluable in queer theory.

2, Eve Kosofsky Sedwick

Rubin laying the groundwork to start discussion about making a distinction between gender and sexuality led the way for Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s pioneering book Epistemology of the Closet. In this book, she argues that the homo-hetero difference in the modern sexual definition is vitally disjointed for two reasons: that homosexuality is thought to be part of a minority group, and how homosexuality is gendered to be either masculine or feminine. She points out that the definitions of sexuality depend a lot on the gender of the romantic partner one makes, making the assumption that the gender one has and the gender of the person one is attracted to make up the most important element of sexuality. Sedgwick’s examples of sexual variations that cannot be put into the discrete locations created by the binary set between heterosexuality and homosexuality give room to further analyze the way sex-gender identities are shaped and thought about.

Future of Queer Theory:

As a whole, queer theorists disagree about many things, but the one thing they do not disagree on is that if queer theory is to be understood as a way to test the established and stable categories of identity, then it should not be defined too early (or at all) because of the possibility of it becoming too limited. 

Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity: Marxism, Ecocriticism, Feminism and Queer Theory.

Hello friends

I am Nidhi Dave Student of Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University. This blog is response of my thinking Activity given by professor Dr. Dilip Barad sir. Here i discuss about this all theory.

  Marxism: 

The definition of Marxism is the theory of Karl Marx which says that society's classes are the cause of struggle and that society should have no classes.

Marxism is derived from the great philosopher Karl Marx. Marxist criticism, in its diverse forms, grounds its theory and practice on the economic and cultural theory of Karl Marx (1818–83) and his fellow-thinker Friedrich Engels (1820–95), and especially on the following claims: 

1. In the Marxist literary analysis, the evolving history of humankind, of its social groupings and interrelations, of its institutions, and of its ways of thinking are largely determined by the changing mode of its “material production”— that is, of its overall economic organization for producing and distributing material goods. 

2. Changes in the fundamental mode of material production effect changes in the class structure of a society, establishing in each era dominant and subordinate classes that engage in a struggle for economic, political, and social advantage. 

3. Human consciousness is constituted by an ideology—that is, the beliefs, values, and ways of thinking and feeling through which human beings perceive, and by recourse to which they explain, what they take to be reality. An ideology is, in complex ways, the product of the position and interests of a particular class. In any historical era, the dominant ideology embodies, and serves to legitimize and perpetuate, the interests of the dominant economic and social class. 

Here some key points :

- Marxism is a social, political, and economic theory originated by Karl Marx, which focuses on the struggle between capitalists and the working class.

- Marx wrote that the power relationships between capitalists and workers were inherently exploitative and would inevitably create class conflict.

- He believed that this conflict would ultimately lead to a revolution in which the working class would overthrow the capitalist class and seize control of the economy.

What Marxist critics do:

1. They make a division between the 'overt' (manifest or surface) and 'covert' (latent or hidden) content of a literary work (much as psychoanalytic critics do) and then relate the covert subject matter of the literary work to basic Marxist themes, such as class struggle, or the progression of society through various historical stages, such as, the transition from feudalism to industrial capitalism. Thus, the conflicts in King Lear might be read as being 'really' about the conflict of class interest between the rising class (the bourgeoisie) and the falling class (the feudal overlords). 

2. Another method used by Marxist critics is to relate the context of a work to the social-class status of the author. In such cases an assumption is made (which again is similar to those made by psychoanalytic critics) that the author is unaware of precisely what he or she is saying or revealing in the text. 

3. A third Marxist method is to explain the nature of a whole literary genre in terms of the social period which 'produced' it. For instance, The Rise of the Novel, by Ian Watt, relates the growth of the novel in the eighteenth century to the expansion of the middle classes during that period. The novel 'speaks' for this social class, just as, for instance, Tragedy 'speaks for' the monarchy and the nobility, and the Ballad 'speaks for' for the rural and semi-urban 'working class'. 

4. A fourth Marxist practice is to relate the literary work to the social assumptions of the time in which it is 'consumed', a strategy which is used particularly in the later variant of Marxist criticism known as cultural materialism (see Chapter 9, pp. 182-9). 

5. A fifth Marxist practice is the 'politicisation of literary form', that is, the claim that literary forms are themselves determined by political circumstance. For instance, in the view of some critics, literary realism carries with it an implicit validation of conservative social structures: for others, the formal and metrical intricacies of the sonnet and the iambic pentameter are a counterpart of social stability, decorum, and order.

 

Examples: 

House of Pleasures (Bertrand Bonello, 2015) 

House of Tolerance 2015. House of Pleasures (also known as “House of Tolerance” and “L’Apollonide: Souvenirs de la maison close”) chronicles the final days of a Parisian brothel at the turn of the century. The women of the brothel have no other options in life and must continue working to pay off their debts. Meanwhile, the madame struggles to keep the brothel afloat as the landlord increases the rent. The film does not put particular attention on any one character. Instead, it tells the collective story of women forced to give in to the whims of their bourgeois clients.

Money Heist 

Money Heist Season 5: The Release Date Possibilities Of The Show And Other Details We Should Know!! - The Scuttle Paper. 

 

Money Heist (Spanish: La casa de papel, "The House of Paper") is a Spanish heist crime drama television series created by Álex Pina. The series traces two long-prepared heists led by the Professor (Álvaro Morte), one on the Royal Mint of Spain, and one on the Bank of Spain, told from the perspective of one of the robbers, Tokyo (Úrsula Corberó). The narrative is told in a real-time-like fashion and relies on flashbacks, time-jumps, hidden character motivations, and an unreliable narrator for complexity. 

 Marxist reading:

 Red color: Money Heist, a very popular web series. It has five sessions. The motives of the story are also very Marxist. They do heist not because of personal use but because of social equality. 

The dressing code is also significant to read this entire web series from the Marxist perception. It has red color which is very fundamental idea of Marxism. 

Ecocriticism: 

Ecocriticism is a term used for the observation and study of the relationship between the literature and the earth’s environment. It takes an interdisciplinary point of view by analysing the works of authors, researchers, and poets in the context of environmental issues and nature. Since the purpose, scope, and methodology of this theory are a bit confusing, it is difficult to have all ecocritics agreed to this.

Ecocriticism was first defined by Cheryll Glotfelty in simple words making it clear for the other critics and writers. Considering the definition, it can be called an “increasingly heterogeneous movement” that takes an entirely earth-centered approach. It is mainly about the literature on the environment. So, it is mostly seen in association with the “Association for the Study of Literature and Environment” this is also referred to as ASLE and it holds biennial meetings for the scholars writing about the environmental issues in their literature.

Ecocriticism was a term coined in the late 1970s by combining “criticism” with a shortened form of “ecology”—the science that investigates the interrelations of all forms of plant and animal life with each other and with their physical habitats. 

“Ecocriticism” (or by alternative names, environmental criticism and green studies) designates the critical writings which explore the relations between literature and the biological and physical environment, conducted with an acute awareness of the damage being wrought on that environment by human activities.

DEFINITION:

Cheryl Glot-felty :

"Ecocriticism WA is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment"

Key Concerns of Eco criticism:

• Reigning religions and philosophies of Western civilization are deeply anthropocentric.

• Prominent in ecocriticism is a critique of binaries such as man/nature or culture/nature, viewed as mutually exclusive oppositions. 

•  Many ecocritics recommend, and themselves exemplify, the extension of “green reading” (that is, analysis of the implications of a text for environmental concerns and toward political action) to all literary genres, including prose fiction and poetry, and also to writings in the natural and social sciences. 

• There is a growing interest in the animistic religions of so-called “primitive” cultures, as well as in Hindu, Buddhist, and other religions and civilizations that lack the Western opposition between humanity and nature, and do not assign to human beings dominion over the nonhuman world.

Example: 

I wandered Lonely as Cloud 

A great example of an ecocritical reading of Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is Scott Hess’s article “John Clare, William Wordsworth, and the (Un)Framing of Nature.”

Hess argues that Wordsworth treats the daffodils like a photo on a postcard. Wordsworth doesn’t involve himself in nature. Instead, he looks at nature from afar (like a cloud), and leaves as soon as he has had his fill. In other words, Wordsworth acts like the tourist who comes by once and snaps a quick picture before moving on. In the end, Wordsworth seems more concerned about his own feelings than about nature:

The narrator composes the landscape into aesthetic form from a single point, located outside that landscape, exactly in the manner of a picturesque viewer, and in the process constructs a purely visual and seemingly disembodied subjectivity. Even as he claims to connect to nature, he views that nature through a kind of invisible frame and turns it into a resource for the construction of his own seemingly autonomous self. (Hess 33)

Just like some early readers complained that Wordsworth seemed a bit egotistic in his desire to experience the sublime, so Hess finds Wordsworth guilty of using nature to construct his own identity.

Hess concludes that by framing the scene as a moment of nature at its best–beautiful, restorative, sublime–Wordsworth is being too selective in his representation of the environment. In fact, Hess compares Wordsworth’s attitude to the way Americans treasure their National Parks as perfect and pristine natural places, while caring less about the degradation of nature everywhere else.

With any theoretical approach there is always the danger that we misrepresent the text in order to further our own agenda. In this case it might be pointed out that Wordsworth is at pains to describe the communion he has with nature. He is not simply a solitary observer, watching from a distance. The personification of the flowers suggests a kind of kinship between people and nature. As Ralph Pite points out, “In Wordsworth’s work, ‘the natural world’ is always social, both in itself and in its relation to man. Consequently, nature does not offer an escape from other people so much as express an alternative mode of relating to them”.

From this perspective, Wordsworth sees nature as a teacher, a friend, and a mirror of what it means to be human–and yet he also respects nature’s independence, the distance and difference between humans and their environment.

It is not easy to tell which view is correct. Is Wordsworth selfish or not? Even if we can’t offer a definitive answer, the ecocritical perspectives sampled here demonstrate that Wordsworth’s poem is more relevant than ever.

Read here to my another blog about the Feminist Theory and Queer Theory