The Clash of Cultures in Colonial and Post-colonial India as Reflected in Selected Works by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Abstract

A postcolonial reading of four of Jhabvala's novels focusing on the East-West encounter involves theories of Edward Said's Orientalism, Homi Bhabha's concept of ambivalence, mimicry and hybridity, the importance of forging national consciousness in anti-colonial resistance analysed by Frantz Fanon and subaltern subordination illustrated by Gayatri Spivak. The study reveals the complicity of colonial discourse in the clash between both cultures. The British Raj is juxtaposed to modern India in Heat and Dust (1975) while Esmond in India (1958), A Backward Place (1965) and A New Dominion (1972) all take place after India achieves its political independence. Jhabvala's description of the clash of cultures that faces most Europeans living in India as a wheel that goes through three different phases reveals her own ambivalent attitude. The three phases are reflected in her fiction. The choice of the four novels is based on the second phase of her writing career during which her main focus of interest is the portrayal of Westerners in India. The study reveals a drastic change in the nature of the East-West encounter before and after India's independence where a clear shift of power from the Western party is depicted. The coloniser-colonised relationship characteristic of the Raj period is gradually replaced by a decline in expatriates' position in independent India. Their minority status at this stage and their inability to adapt to their altered condition and to deal with Indians on an equal footing expose them to Indian resistance and confinement, feeling trapped and threatened. Though newcomers on spiritual and cultural quests are not treated with the same hostility that their predecessors had to face in the early period of independence, they are not made welcome.