Nationhood, or the lack thereof, in Postcolonial Fiction

by Ayesha Mirza

Q. In 2015, lobbyists from across the Pakistani diaspora invite you to write a manifesto on their behalf. What does it declare?

A. It declares nations are illusions constructed to perpetuate discrimination. Passports are the new apartheid. Let's open borders and open minds. Subtitle: Humans are Pakistanis.

Thus maintained Mohsin Hamid during an interview with The Daily Dawn. A contemporary Pakistani author, his views are way different from those of the first wave Postcolonial authors. The post World War II era is marked with a conglomeration of heterogeneous groups under a variety of banners throughout the colonized world. Thus Pan-Africanism fought against colonial suppressers in the name of nationhood of the entire Africa. On the other hand, Muslims of the Indian sub-continent coined a term ‘Muslim Nationhood’ which not only gave a new meaning to the word ‘nation’, but also created a new ‘nation state’ that claimed to provide refuge to a Muslim populace from British oppression, and prospective Indian aggression. The word ‘nation’ thus became rampant in the wake of anti-colonial sentiments. The idea of nationhood, thus, is deeply ingrained in the postcolonial writings, be it a vehement assertion of nationhood, a rejection of it, or its overpowering presence in the form of total absence. Hence, while Achebe and Ngugi wrote narratives based on resistance and nationalist movements, the texts of Khashwant Singh, Suleri, and Saadawi question the idea of nationhood, and Mohsin Hamid out rightly denounces it in favour of globalization. This essay seeks to explore the way issues of nationhood have been raised, criticized or evaded by various authors.

One of the strongest representations of nationhood can be located in Ngugi’s A Grain of Wheat. Located in the context of Uhuru celebration, this novel at once depicts the hopes as well as the fears of a newly born nation on the Independence Day. The symbolic character of Kihika represents the dreamer who imagines a nation. The character of Mugo stands for the person who becomes aware of the starkness of colonial project only after Thompson spits in his face. His becoming a cherished hero despite being a traitor symbolizes the myths that lie at the base of a nation. The power relationship between Lt. Koina and General R depicts the fact that despite their fighting free of the British rule, the Kenyan nation will continue to have a subaltern class who is dominated by a colonizer. But this time the colonizer would be the native bourgeoisie. Karanja is a mimic man who is “heavy with the sense of imminent betrayal” as the white man prepares for his departure from Kenya. His assault on the allegorical character of Mumbi and the resultant child signify that the new-born nation will encompass both; the freedom fighters as well as the collaborators in the colonial project. The child is ill at the Day of Independence. The new-born nation too is not free of ill. Yet the prospective reunion of Mumbi and Gikonyo, and Gikonyo conceiving of a woman “big with child” symbolizes hope and potential of Kenya. Ngugi, thus, is critical of the nationalist project. However, he doesn’t reject it. Instead, his narrative accepts the independence with all its goodness and evil. He deploys various techniques to assert this identity. For instance, his narrative is sketched in the setting of both, rural and urban Kenya. The emphasis on location and locality along with a depiction of local ways of life are ways to assert one’s national identity. Thus Ngugi is critical of the tall claims of its leaders while being acutely aware of the far from perfect future of postcolonial Kenya. In short, trauma, hope and pride contribute in the making of A Grain of Wheat.

Similarly, Chinua Achebe in his Things Fall Apart makes excessive use of local locations, traditions, names and nomenclature in an attempt to define his nation through rejection of colonial past by retrieving a pre-colonial past. The protagonist, Okonkwo, is essentially nostalgic of that past which was lost to the colonial masters. The resistance he offers at the colonizer’s efforts to colonize him is symbolic of the African resistance movements. However, the strong differences between the clans represent the idea that as long as people are divided into tribes a nation cannot be born.

Buchi Emecheta, on the other hand, writes from the standpoint of a domestic woman. Nnu Ego’s life is too engulfed in the worries of home and hearth that just like all the women of her class she is oblivious of their nation’s exploitation by its colonial masters. However, she laments the changes that the white man has brought about in the society. She first resents them, and then readily adapts to survive in the colonial setting. Unlike the male writers from Africa, Emecheta presents an Africa that cannot be a nation without its woman playing her part. Woman is at one and the same time the central figure in nation building, and an element that doesn’t allow the making of a nation into a unified whole. Thus, while Nnu Ego meticulously brings her children up with a hope that they live with her; her skirmishes with her neighbor symbolize the differences and fights between various tribes and clans of Africa that keep it from becoming a unified nation.               

While African authors on the whole accept nationhood with all its odds, writers from the subcontinent criticize the idea of nation vehemently. Whether it is the bloodshed at the time of partition of India that makes them critical of national life, or the post-partition corruption; their stance is clear. They find nationhood more of a process of subalternization of minorities by the ruling bourgeoisie, and less af a means to liberate the common man. Khushwant Singh in his Train to Pakistan creates an imaginary border village Manomajra to highlight the rupture and turmoil that the enactment of two-nation theory brought about within the society. In displaying the Hindu, Muslim and Sikh groups living in harmony in a single setting Singh projects the shallowness of the idea of nationhood itself. Just through one cartographical change on the pages of policymakers the communal unity was slaughtered and split in two. The common man is least enthusiastic, and yet the most affected by the dawn of nationhood. Hence, Juggat Singh surrenders his life while saving another refugee train from turning into a ghost train. Iqbal Singh, the social worker, lands in jail because of his suspicious name, and the Muslims of Manomajra risk their lives to seek abode in a new country.

Mohsin Hamid criticizes nationhood from the socialist standpoint. He conveys the wide class division that keeps Pakistan from becoming a nation through a stark incident. A child gets crushed by Aurangzeb’s four-wheeler. But Aurangzeb, a rich man’s son, doesn’t go to jail. Instead, the only witness of the accident, Daru- a middle-class jobless banker- bears the brunt of the situation, faces a trial, and gets capital punishment. Hamid thus highlights the impenetrable segregation of the society that makes the dreams of founding fathers to bind the Pakistanis into one ‘Muslim Nation’ crumble. He goes on to thrash the cartography that had gone awry. Mumtaz Kashmiri, as the name suggests, is not only a reenactment of the queen for whom the celebrated Taj Mahal was erected. It signifies the territory of Kashmir that is yet to decide whether she wants to be called a Pakistani or an Indian. The resultant feud between the two allegorical “brothers” tells us how bloodthirsty and indiscriminate in killing is the quest for nationhood. The quote in the beginning of this essay categorically states his preference for globalization as opposed to passport bearing people divided into various nationalities, discriminating as well as discriminated against.

Sara Suleri in her Meatless Days goes a step further by thrashing her father for his obsession with the ‘Muslim Nationhood’ and at the same time creating a subaltern class right inside his home. Pips; by colonizing a white wife in the effort to maintain his relationship with the white man intact, and later, not allowing his daughters to have their will; symbolizes the two-facedness of the middle-class bourgeoisie that replaced the colonizing masters.  A hybrid Indian and voracious consumer of British culture, he was thoroughly enthralled by the hybrid personality of the Quaid and yet he failed to allow his household to be a nation. Ironically, he was ‘the lone Pakistani correspondent in Britain- “Pakistani” before Pakistan’. Thus befell on him the duty of defending an imagination that became a reality in 1947. Suleri is quick to point out that the Fall of Decca was disheveling for Papa not because of bloodshed and displacements, he mourned the death of Two-Nation Theory. Suleri also maintains that he was an eater of history. Just like the colonizing Brits, he too ate up history of the people of Pakistan in order to bring to life the idea of ‘nation’.  However, Sara Suleri too doesn’t feel the need to retrieve the pre-colonial history in order to establish her national identity since that cannot fit into the post-colonial context. She simply questions the idea of nationhood, and the Independence Movement.

Concisely, the post- World War II era witnessed the birth of a number of big and small nations. The authors hailing from these countries display an assortment of feelings regarding this slicing of the world. Hope and fear, fulfillment and disappointment, acceptance and rejection; all go hand in hand in the post-colonial Discourse. Furthermore, various authors use various techniques in their efforts to assert, question or reject the idea of nationhood. Moreover, ‘Nationhood’ is essentially a human construct which various leaders and authors imagined and represented in accordance with their respective settings. The post-colonial theory unravels the variety of modes used to fit their ulterior purposes.

Citation: MLA: Mirza, Ayesha. "Nationhood, or the Lack Thereof, in Postcolonial Fiction". Literary Theory in Practice, October 21, 2011. Web. Date of Access. <http://ayesha-mirza.blogspot.com/2011/10/nationhood-or-lack-thereof-in.html>.
APA: Mirza, Ayesha. "Nationhood, or the Lack Thereof, in Postcolonial Fiction". http://ayesha-mirza.blogspot.com/. 21 Oct. 2011. Date of Access. <http://ayesha-mirza.blogspot.com/2011/10/nationhood-or-lack-thereof-in.html>

Engendering the Colonized: A Study of African and Asian Postcolonial Fiction

by Ayesha Mirza

Postcolonial theorists often define colonialism as a binary in which colonialist powers signify a male figure which discovers, yearns for, explores, oppresses and abuses the colonized territory. Hence, the occupied territory turns into a female figure, or a bride who depends on her male counterpart, fears his advances and yet, yields passively to them; or in some cases shows revulsion ending in submission, endures his atrocious behavior and yet wants him to continue his hold over her female existence. This dichotomy of weak and strong, master and slave, oppressor and oppressed, active and passive, possessor and possessed, west and east, male and female is implicitly or explicitly expressed in a bulk of postcolonial literatures be it in the form of passive males succumbing to the advances of western invasions, or men trying to reclaim their masculinity through nationalist and resistance movements. This essay is circumscribed to the study of Asian and African postcolonial novels in order to locate the gendered nature of the colonial project.

Achebe’s simple narrative Things Fall Apart explicitly mourns the lost masculinity of the Ibo men. A recurrent binary of dominant male, and female “other” runs parallel to the strong white man, and weak native. The natives at one point realize that just like a man’s passion for a woman, ‘the white man’s fetish had unbelievable power” (106). In front of this fetish, the Ibo men soon start loosing their will to act, to fight. This passivity is seen with contempt and a pang of nostalgia by Okonkwo as he recalls the days when “men were men” (141). When finally “effeminate men clucking like old hen” refuse to own their lives and become the possession of white man; the protagonist breaks free of the humiliating position by taking his own life (146). Thus we see Okonkwo’s character as the foil against which the inactive Ibo men have been placed to show their impotency in the backdrop of colonial project. One noteworthy aspect of this novel is the inherent Igbo binary that manhood is to be celebrated and femininity is inferior. Thus to be respectful one has to be masculine; brave, active, passionate and strong. When a nation loses these masculine traits, it ceases to be respectful. And hence the strongest Igbo tribe known for its fearless men is reduced to the state of femininity when oppressed by a colonizing power.

Ngugi Wa Thiong’o in his novel A Grain of Wheat highlights the same loss when he renders the character of Karanja, the mimic man, in front of Margery, a white woman. Margery acknowledges that she “felt a sensual power at the fear and discomfiture she inflicted on Karanja” (37). Thus the native is not only reduced to the status of a woman, but even worse; he is inferior to a white woman who is herself a subaltern in her society. Karanja accepts the white man’s presence with “resentful alacrity” (36); while Kihika believes; “what we now want is action” (14). Karanja, like a faithful wife or a ‘damsel in distress’, fears Mr Thompson abandoning him. “Thompson had saved him from shame. Thompson. And he was going. He strolled back to his room, heavy with the sense of imminent betrayal” (158). Kihika, on the other hand, makes the policemen at Mahee, a symbol of colonial power, resist weakly at his assault (16). Thus the binary of two men; one docile and the other active; highlights the African lapse into femininity and the struggle to regain the lost masculinity. The nationalist and resistance movements are hence efforts at reclaiming the respectable, masculine status of a nation. Finally, the imagery of a woman “big with child” (247) that Gikonyo intends to carve for Mumbi symbolizes an Africa full of opportunities, prospects and progress after breaking free from colonial oppression.

The women writers of Africa, doubly colonized in their homelands, talk mostly of the male oppression on women. However, their domestic concerns cannot remain detached from their colonial setting. Emecheta is one such instance, who in Joys of Motherhood depicts Nnu Ego lamenting the lost masculinity of her husband. She refers to him as a man with ‘a belly like a pregnant cow’ (42) on one occasion, symbolizing that the African nation was being exploited by the west just as a man uses a cow for his gains. Similarly, her analogizing Nnaife with ‘a woman mourning her husband’ (42) symbolizes the loss of Africa’s maleness. Nnaife’s act of washing white woman’s clothes is also emblematic of African nation’s lost masculinity. What women used to do for men, men are doing for women. Similarly, Dr. Meers’ calling Nnaife a ‘baboon’, and Nnaife’s prospective response; “We work for them and they pay for us. His calling me baboon won’t make me one” brings forth the fact that just like a woman doesn’t know in how many ways a man manipulates her, a colonized native also remains unaware of his exploitation. We can discern here a clear reversal of gender roles as the entire nation becomes the slave of west. Running with this is a paradox that Emecheta along with other woman authors create. They show women in active roles, fighting along with their male counterparts a struggle of sustenance, or as in the case of Nnu Ego, fighting with the ills of life alone. They reject the male allegation of their being passive. Hence the industrious Nnu Ego sacrificing, enduring and earning in the love of her children is a strong rebuttal to the male allegation that a woman is passive. Thus despite all the demeaning allusions to effeminate men, Emecheta asserts that these images are a male construct that women have accepted. The reality is very much the opposite; woman is not passive and weak.

It is not only African literature that foregrounds the gender representations of colonial domination and nationalist resistance. Asian nationalist and postcolonial authors also uncover the “Orientalist images of the subcontinent veiled as an Eastern bride” (Suleri 76).  Ahmed Ali’s Twilight in Delhi in his depiction of mimic man like Asghar, and men like Mir Nihal who take respite in pigeon-flying and courtesans, shows the inability of native to fight the western assaults. The inactive male lamenting his lost pride, "All this, and more, had not been forgotten by Mir Nihal and his wife and the others; they all burned with rage and impotent anger, for they could do nothing” (142); is analogous to the misery of Mumbi of A Grain of Wheat. Asghar’s wonderment and disdain for Budho is symbolic of west’s “prejudice against and curiosity of” the east (Theo d'. Haen, Patricia Krüs 153). Thus in Edward Said’s words, the Orient “had been since antiquity a place of romance” for the west. By and by, Delhi has been referred to as a city “built hundreds of years ago, fought for, died for, coveted and desired, built, destroyed and rebuilt, for five and six and seven times, mourned and sung, raped and conquered, yet whole and alive, lies indifferent in the arms of sleep”. This holds true not only for Delhi, the entire Indian nation has been subject to many destructions and restructurings. It has always been passive in its encounters with multiple civilizations and has moulded herself in accordance with the cultures of her masters.

Mohsin Hamid in his Moth Smoke treats Kashmir as Ahmad Ali treats Delhi. But this time it is not a woman being conquered by a man; it is a woman being pursued and fought for by two men- India and Pakistan. Hamid in his interview with Newsweek explains what the character of Mumtaz Kashmiri symbolizes; her “surname is "Kashmiri" because the feuding "brothers" fight over her just as India and Pakistan do over Kashmir”. Moreover, she absorbs all the influences of western world during her stay in America. When she breaks away from west, the struggle of the two men to own her begins as a simulacrum of Kashmir which remains under the western influence for years and when the western authority leaves begins the conflict between two “brothers”.

While all the writers we have analyzed so far treat the colonial project as the conquest of man over a woman; Sara Suleri is apt to catch the inferior status rendered to women in this enterprise. She appositely denies this binary, and contends that the colonial project was in essence a love of a man for a man. She analyses various Anglo-Indian male and female writers and posits that “The woman seems to be at a better vantage point to assess how much the colonial encounter depends upon a disembodied homoeroticism rather than on the traditional metaphor of ravishment and possession”. She further goes on to say in the light of Forster-Aziz relationship in A Passage to India that “The Anglo-Indian woman writer evinces a powerful understanding of the imperial dynamic as a dialogue between competing male anxieties” (77). If we generalize Suleri’s claim in order to apply her thesis on her own Meatless Days, we see a strong depiction of papa as a person in love with the colonialist. His stay in Britain, and marriage with a white woman as opposed to the white man living in India and mystified by the native woman depicts a far closer proximity between west and east - proximity that is often obliterated by the rendition of native and intruder in heterosexual binarism. However, it is noteworthy that in homoerotism both men lose their masculinity as a consequence of the absence of ‘other’. Furthermore, in the colonial encounter, the native yields in to the western power, fear and charm. In this way the native becomes more ‘feminine’ than the colonizer.

Simplistically put, the colonialist, nationalist and postcolonialist discourse views colonization as a gendered activity. However, these theoreticians and authors cannot go far without the ‘otherness’ of the other. If a woman ceases to be relegated to the periphery and the centrality of man becomes obsolete; as alluded to in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (‘in some tribes a man's children belong to his wife and her family'); the entire parallelism between colonial project and gender will collapse. Although theorists like Suleri have made efforts to challenge this dichotomy, in a patriarchal society the idea of homoerotism is too deeply woven with the view of lost masculinity to evade the question of femininity. In short, as long as woman remains at the periphery she will remain a symbol of slave nations.

Cite this Article: 

APA: Mirza, Ayesha. . "Engendering the Colonized: A Study of African and Asian Postcolonial Fiction". 2011, October 6. Web. Date of Access. <http://ayesha-mirza.blogspot.com/2011/10/engendering-colonized-study-of-african.html>.

MLA: Mirza, Ayesha. "Engendering the Colonized: A Study of African and Asian Postcolonial Fiction." http://ayesha-mirza.blogspot.com/. 6 Oct. 2011. Date of Access. http://ayesha-mirza.blogspot.com/2011/10/engendering-colonized-study-of-african.html