Session on Ecocriticism by Devang Nanavati

 

Session on Ecocriticism by Devang Nanavati

Ecocriticism with reference to Postcolonialism :

 Hello Readers!

            Welcome to my blog. So here in this blog you will find the introduction and response to the session on Ecocriticism by Devang Nanavati. This session is organize by Dr. Dilip Barad sir at virtual platform on the date 10 November 2020.

      It was an interesting session by Nanavati sir. In this session first of all  sir has been talking about the environmental issue and globalization. 

       Then Devang sir talks about Sintanshu Yashschndra's poem "Tree once again". That is the translation from the Gujarati.  The translation was done by Devang Nanavati sir. The Gujarati poem was "  'ફરી પાછું વૃક્ષ'. Moving ahead sir had done an Ecocritical reading of a poem "Tree Once Again".

        Here we also recall a poem 'विद्रौह ' by केदारनाथ सिंह that is in Hindi language. This is also an interesting poem. Here we also recall the tree hugging revolution, Gujnan Gandhi's poem, 'After Babel' by Jessica de koninck.

           

Devang sir also discussed about various points like,

🔹️Ecocriticism: Appreciate A shift from Greed centrism to Green centrism 

🔹️Gunjan Gandhi - Jessica de Koninck's Poems

🔹️Ecocriticism: Goal strategies - Tools and criteria 

🔹️Definition

🔹️ Poem of Sitanshu Yashaschandra's " Tree Once Again " translated in English by D.S. Nanavati. 

One of the main goals in ecocriticism is to study how individuals in society behave and react in relation to nature and ecological aspects. This form of criticism has gained a lot of attention during recent years due to higher social emphasis on environmental destruction and increased technology.

              today, environmental study in literature is a crucial topic to be explored. It raises concerns about current issues and their relationships and influences upon each other, which was not the case in the field of literature a century before. Contemporary writers and critics have concentrated their thoughts and studies on humans’ expression, their behavior, and their impact on the environment. Moreover, their major concern is what type of resolution literature offers to current issues.

         When any region is colonized, it means the whole environment is colonized. The environment begins to be manipulated by the dominant power. Besides, land provides an identity to people who belong to the place. Hence, any kind of intrusion in terms of power politics harms integrity of the culture and the environment.

Ecocriticism was officially heralded by the publication of two seminal works, both published in the mid-1990s: The Ecocriticism Reader, edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, and The Environmental Imagination, by Lawrence Buell.

Now days Ecocriticism as well as Ecofeminism also emerging from that. For more understanding visit my blog on Ecocriticism And Ecofeminism. (Click here)

https://ravinaparmaar.blogspot.com/2020/02/ecocriticism-and-ecofeminism.html

Ania Loomba's conclusion :

Very interesting insight we can find in the book of Ania Loomba. The book is ' Colonialism and Postcolonialism ' . In which the conclusion part we get more useful ideas and examples of environment and Postcolonialism.  She started her conclusion with the ecology and in the first para she mentioned Vandana Shiva 's argument. She has exposed the connection between colonialism and the destruction of environmental diversity. Nature is connected with the women. Because  women’s work was so crucially tied to producing food and fodder. Other feminist environmentalists are more sceptical

of such an assessment of pre-colonial cultures, which, they point out, were also stratified and patriarchal; however, they agree that questions of ecology and human culture are intricately linked. Especially in the so-called third world, they state, one cannot talk about saving the environment while ignoring the needs of human lives and communities (Shiva 1988; Agarwal 1999).

There is also Rob Nixon further notes that this wilderness obsession is celebrated in American literature as well as in natural history.Nixon suggests such ‘spatial amnesia’ is one reason why ‘postcolonial criticism’ has been suspicious of earth-first ‘green-criticism’ and therefore has not engaged with questions relating to the environment.

Ania Loomba also points out that the Narmada Bachao Andolan ( NBA,  save the Narmada river movement ) led widespread protests against a project, funded by multinational as well as indigenous capital, to build scores of large dams across central India. There were long term protests going on not only the environmental destruction but also a big problem of displacement of people. We can say that here the ecology or the marginalized people are in the same situation. This way Postcolonialism works for pro power dimensions. 

          Finally, it was the Indian Supreme Court which ruled that construction of the dams should continue. Chittaroopa Palit, one of the leaders of the NBA, says that :

    " though international political factors, such as the character of the governments involved, the existence of able support groups in the North that play an important part, they cannot supplant the role of a mass movement struggling on the ground. Soon after the SPD government in Berlin refused a guarantee to Siemens, the German multinational, for building the dam in Maheshwar, it agreed to underwrite the company’s involvement in the Tehri dam in the Himalayas and the catastrophic Three Gorges Dam in China—both just as destructive as the Narmada project; but in neither instance were there strong mass struggles on the ground. "

(Palit 2003: 91)

Palit also said that its self-conception and practices were also shaped by the methods of the Gandhian anti-colonial struggle. Here we can say that the development should not be constructed at the cost of the environment.  In this movement we can say political power colonized the land.

        Thus, Ecology and Postcolonialism it's an interesting field to work on.  As we see the animation by Steve Cutts. ( Click here to watch video ) . In which find that from the beginning of human history. Humans colonized the environment. And that through various disasters. It is interesting to read literature of the environment through the lens of Postcolonialism.

References :

Agarwal, B. (1999) ‘The Gender and Environment Debate: Lessons from India’, in N. Menon (ed.), Gender and Politics in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 96–142.

Nixon, R. (1994) Homelands, Harlem and Hollywood, New York and London: Routledge.

——(2005) ‘Environmentalism and Postcolonialism’, in A. Loomba, Suvir Kaul,Matti Bunzl, Antoinette Burton and Jed Esty (eds), Postcolonial Studies andBeyond, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 233–51.

Palit, C. (2003) ‘Monsoon Risings’, New Left Review 21 (May-June), pp. 81–100.

Shiva, V. (1988) Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Survival in India, New Delhi: Kali; London: Zed Books.

Thank you….

Postcolonial studies : film review : Midnight's Children and The Reluctant Fundamentalist

 Hello Readers !

      Welcome to my blog. Here in this blog  you will find film reviews in the lense through Postcolonialism.  So this is my academic thinking activity. We had a movie screening  in our online classroom. And then sir had assigned a task. The task is to write about these two movies with the perspectives of postcolonial studies. The movies are 1) Midnight's Children and 2) The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

 Let's discuss one by one.

 🎬 Midnight's Children by Deepa Maheta :-

       The movie is based on the novel "Midnight's Children" ( 1981) by Salman Rushdie . This is Interesting novel. This is the well claimed novel, Midnight's Children won both the Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1981. It was awarded the "Booker of Bookers" Prize and the best all-time prize winners in 1993 and 2008 to celebrate the Booker Prize 25th and 40th anniversary. In 2003, the novel was listed on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's "best-loved novels". It was also added to the list of Great Books of the 20th Century, published by Penguin Books

      The movie Directed by Deepa Mehta collaborated with Salman Rushdie on a new version of the story, the film Midnight's Children. British-Indian actor Satya Bhabha played the role of Saleem Sinai while other roles were played by Indian actors.

   Here we can see that the writer of the novel and the script writer of the movie have different roles. So novelists write a script so that it is not as effective as a novel.

Title of the film :

   Title is the signboard of the text.  The title is "Midnight's Children". Here the title symbolizes the storyline of the novel as well as the movie. Because the story is about two children who were born at midnight of the 14th August 1947.  When the country got freedom so the child was born in 'New India'. Actually that is the birth of India. So the title is an appropriate one.

        Saleem Sinai who was the narrator of the story. He said that ' I tumbled forth into the world '  so in this single sentence we find that writing style of Salman Rushdie. 

          If we look at the perspectives of postcolonial studies, then the study becomes more important. Postcolonial theory has critically contributed to revisiting the representation of the Other, addressing long-standing tropes and stereotypes about cultural difference and racial otherness. This implies new interventions on how visual representations are implicated in the policing of boundaries between East and West, between Europe and the Rest, the self and the other, undoing or rethinking the ways in which the visual field conveys operation of a mastery that needs to be undone and decoded. For example, empire cinema contributed to specific ways of seeing, making films that legitimated the domination of colonies by the colonial powers. 

        In which we find that the world has existed since 1947.  The big story of India told by common and smaller people. What was the situation at that time? And what is the mood of People and  political power, etc. The film can be viewed from the point of view of creating and narrating the story of nation in freedom of a fragmented allegory.

            Saleem's birth  is the symbol of India's new birth. The way Saleem who suffers from various problems the same India also suffers from lots of problems. In movie we find that the character of Ms. Gandhi. The portrayal of ms. Gandhi is kind of a villainous and not an intelligent one, but as a witch of the nation. She decided to kill each and every Midnight's Children, because she doesn't want to give power to anyone. 

              She had declared emergency without any proper reason. So freedom is there but that is in the hand of political power. So for common people nothing has changed. Here Rushdie makes a satire on Ms. Gandhi.

   There is also the Marxist who is Joseph D' Costa.

          

🎬 The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mira Nair :-

(Click here to reach my another blog )

References :

Frank, Katherine. “Mr. Rushdie and Mrs. Gandhi.” Biography, vol. 19, no. 3, 1996, pp. 245–258. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23539764. Accessed 18 Nov. 2020.

"Midnight's Children wins the Best of the Booker". The Man Booker Prizes. Archived from the original on 21 November 2008.

Mullan, John. "Salman Rushdie on the writing of Midnight's Children." Guardian. 26 July 2008.

Thank you....

Film Review : The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mira Nair

 Hello Readers !

🎬 The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mira Nair :-

This movie can be viewed as a new American empire in the rest of the world. It would be interesting to see this film. In which we find various perspectives of both sides. What American think about Pakistan ? Which way Pakistani look at on American? ,  What was the thoughts and feelings of being a Pakistani American identity. 

          There is also a controversy v/s corporate world and Literature. This controversy is going on between the character of Changez khan and his Abu (Om Puri).

         The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a 2012 political thriller drama film based on the 2007 novel of the same name by Mohsin Hamid, directed by Mira Nair, starring Riz Ahmed and Kate Hudson in lead. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a post-9/11 story about the impact of the Al Qaeda attacks on one Pakistani man and his treatment by Americans in reaction to them. 

( To know more about this film click here and visit Wikipedia page )

        In the beginning of the movie we can see Changez Khan who   narrates his story, seen in flashback, while meeting in the Pak Tea House in Lahore with American journalist Bobby Lincoln. The identity of journalists is also questionable.

      How do we read such a looks of people :

When he was first meeting Jim Cross and talking with him. Jim asked where you belong. Then the answer is ' Lahore , Pakistan' . At that moment we find that Jim Cross's facial expressions are very disgusting. It was such a strange look by him. But later on we find that he was not judging Changez from his Pakistani identity but from his talent and intelligence.

     In the same conversation Changez told Jim Cross that his name is 'Changez'. Because Jim is not pronounced in a proper way. In this single sentence of conversation we can see the post colonial aspect.  Here we find that the inferior complex.  The character is conscious about his identity as a third world person. He insisted  that his name should be pronounced in a proper way.

       Changez Khan lived life very happily with his ambition. Before 9/11 he was a huge success. After the 9/11 we can see the situation changed. Now the American imperialism operates on the  Muslim world. Who arrives in the US with great professional ambitions. And he accomplishes much before the planes hit the World Trade Center, a crisis that challenges his materialism. 

       Because of this event the whole concept of Muslim world and the Muslim community changed. So Changez Khan was humiliated in each and every aspect of life. American who built a hatred towards Muslim community in his /her mind. That is deeply constructed. Changez observed everything. And he is a Third World man rising to the heights of an imperialist nation. As an American, he benefits from our foreign interventions exploiting his "own people." Further, he contributes to the problem: In arranging mergers and acquisitions, he himself drives thousands of people into unemployment. And he decided to go back home, to his own Roots.

   The character of Changez Khan is not a static character. He was totally transformed. When he was visiting a publishing house in Istanbul, Changez learned that the firm is financially worthless. He is also surprised to discover  that his father's poems were translated into Turkish. He is given a copy of the published book. He has a change of heart and refuses to close down the company, infuriating his boss and mentor Jim Cross (Kiefer Sutherland). Changez resigned from Underwood Samson.

      Changez Khan (Riz Ahmed) subtle transformations carry the film. The other characters have their own attributes, but their roles are limited.

     In a way the movie was full of entertaining one. Music is also well composed. The thriller goes on at  the end of the movie. So here in this movie we find that the two different controversial debuts are terrorist fundamentalist and corporate Fundamentalist. So here we can say that American imperialism plays a vital role.  So the question raised here is why our minds like an American dream. Living in America is about achieving things. When the American professor was kidnapped, at that time police were searching for him very seriously. It shows how power operates on government and its rule. In this way they are controlled by power.

           It was worth watching the movie by Mira Nair. After watching this film i personally build up a new perspective towards various things.

Thank you....

Thinking activity: Imaginary Homelands by Salman Rushdie

 Hello Readers, 

      Welcome to my blog. This blog is about famous British Indian author writer Salman Rushdie. 

                     Here I am talking about selected essays from the book "Imaginary Homelands".  These essays are the collection of various types of essays and critical reviews or criticism in the time period between 1981 to 1892.  It was an interesting collection of essays. Personally I would like to read Salman Rushdie because of his writing style he was writing in an interesting way. He was writing to the point and explaining facts.

             There are many essays in the book but here are five essays which I would like to discuss with you. The essays are : 

No.	Name of essays :-
1.	Imaginary Homelands
2.	Attenborough's Gandhi
3.	Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist
4.	New Empire Within Britain
5.	On Palestinian Identity : A conversation with Edward Said

 I would like to discuss one by one. So let's begin it. 

   ✍️   Imaginary Homelands :

"An old photograph in a cheap frame hangs on a wall of 

the room was a picture dating from l946 of a house into which, at the time of its taking, I had not yet been born."

       The essay starts with these lines. In a way these lines through we can understand that here Salman Rushdie who was talking about the city Bombay where he was lived at a time. He was recalling his memories. But he was writing that when he was visiting the house and city, that changed totally. Even the new city also changed.  Here we can connect current politics policy to changing and giving names to particular streets ,roads or any city. 

           Bombay is a city built by foreigners upon reclaimed land; I, who had been away so long that I almost qualified for the title, was gripped by the conviction that I, too, had a city and a history to reclaim.

             Here we can say that he was suffering for his true identity. As his father belongs to Pakistan and he lived in India and at present time he was in foreign. So what was the real identity, that is the question of him and this essay through he was trying to say. Like he was constantly asking what is home for us ? The image of Bombay is a constant reminder of his lost city, time and home.

…..so that my India was just that: 

'my' India, a version and no more than one version of all the 

hundreds of millions of possible versions. I tried to make it 

as imaginatively true as I could,.....

         Here he was talking about his novel's perspective. The novel is Midnight's Children. He made a clear statement that this is my way of looking at India. It is not the only way to see India in this way. But he mentioned that there are hundreds of million possible ways. And also we find that in Midnight's Children he was creating a kind of imaginary place. Which he recalls all the time.

'Suppose yourself in a large cinema, sitting at 

first in the back row, and gradually moving up,... until your 

the nose is almost pressed against the screen.'

           In Midnight's Children Saleem who was the narrator and 

         Rushdie realizes that because emigrant writers lose touch with the physical reality of the places in which they grew up, they necessarily create fictionalized versions of them: that is, imaginary homelands. Here we also say that Rushdie, He argues that fragmentary memories are not only inevitable; in fact, they may actually be a virtue in a writer, as “fragmentation made trivial things seem like symbols, and the mundane acquired numinous qualities.” This fragmentary perception is also a reflection of the human condition.

      Let me put here several interesting lines from the essay :

Literature is not in the business of copywriting certain themes for certain groups.

 He also discussed how to be an Indian he has to face many day to day problems. The problem of definition.  What does it mean to be ' Indian' outside India?l

✍️'COMMONWEALTH LITERATURE' 

DOES NOT EXIST' : 

        In this essay he was discussing how commonwealth literature is not a good thing.

 ' I admitted that I had begun to find this strange toe term, 'Commonwealth literature', unhelpful and even a little distasteful. '

           In a way the commonwealth literature is a good platform for writers. It might be thought. But here we are not thinking but Salman Rushdie is there who said a strange term, unhelpful and a little distasteful. How we understand this comment of Rushdie. Here Rushdie makes comments in a significant way, that why all works of English language including at one platform that is English literature ?

   Commonwealth Literature that is called something 'second' one. They aren't considered as English writers but 'commonwealth to'. There is so

I became quite sure that our differences were so much more significant than our similarities, that it was impossible to say what 'Commonweaitrniterature' 

       In which we find that in the group of commonwealth literature they don't have similarities in various aspects. In this essay we find that he was talking about many authors and their views about commonwealth literature.

I recently met the distinguished Gujarati novelist, Suresh Joshi. He told me that he could write in Hindi but felt obliged to write in Gujarati because it was a language under threat. Not from English, or the West: from Hindi.

      Here in these sentences we find that it is Salman Rushdie who argues against the language. Even I cannot think in this way before it was an interesting topic to think about. As we know in India various languages are spoken by people. So one language is under threat of another language. Mostly the Hindi language is dangerous for other languages. So here he makes a point that the English language is not a threat to other languages.

            He also mentioned various authors' perspectives and their thoughts about this group of 'Commonwealth literature'. He also said at the end that ' I  think that if all English literature could be studied together, a shape would emerge which would truly reflect the new shape of the language in the world, and we could see that English literature.

✍️  Attenborough's Gandhi :

              This was another interesting essay by Salman Rushdie. It can be called the best movie review with clear cut expression. The movie is "Gandhi"  by Richard Attenborough.

( Image courtesy: BBC, Wikipedia, IMDB, Frank Connor )

The film Gandhi won lots of awards. It was also a good film. I think no one don't find any argument against the film. No one speaks against film. That way the film builds in such a ground. But how Rushdie looks at film is one of the Interesting ways. He has his logic in his argument. 

' Deification is an Indian disease, and in India, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, great soul, little father, has been raised higher than anyone in the pantheon of latter-day gods. '

The beginning of the essay is the most attractive. The words used here are to come up with lots of things and speak a lot of things. He questioned the father of the nation.

               Here he pointed out how English people create their own Gandhi within Gandhi itself. Here he was also talking about what is left out in his film, which is the most important part of  Gandhi's life. Portrayal of Nehru that is faulty , because Nehari was not a mere follower of Gandhi but he was the opponent of Gandhi. Much of the debate about the film has concerned omissions: why no Subhas Bose? Why no Tagore? The film's makers answer that it would have been impossible to include everything. 

        Here in this essay we can see that Rushdie makes a point that Attenborough's Gandhi is different from real Gandhi. The way he portrayed few situations that conclusion doesn't match with reality. Here I would like to add that even Rushdie also forgot to talk about Bhimrao Ambedkar. But I'm way that is the excellent review by Rushdie. 

✍️New Empire Within Britain :

     Here in this essay we find that Rushdie makes an argument that Imperialism has not vanished but that it exists at some point in Britain. As in the beginning of the essay Rushdie Said that :

 

   ' Britain isn't South Africa. I am reliably informed of this. Nor is it Nazi Germany.'

       It's not Germany, but a kind of racism is there in society. The New Empire Within Britain “ , this essay based on “ Power of British empire” on black people and other immigrants. Here Salman Rushdie shows his different experiences of white and black in Britain. 

Here, Rushdie is making a claim that a people's society and culture can be linked to their language. Language is a vital part of a society because it is the main source of communication between people, however, the problem arises when people speak different languages in the same place. Consequently, this

leads to a barrier in the communication. Rushdie confronts this issue because it plays a big role in the reason why immigrants, as well black britains were discriminated against. With white Britains' dominance over social, economic, and political life.

         What He is trying to explain is that in societies, there are many different cultures that have their own values and beliefs, but just because one does not believe in that certain culture does not necessarily need to impose violence just because of different attitudes towards it. Racial harmony must exist throughout the world, if not, people will suffer.

        So in this essay we can say that imperialism exists in Britain. The English people have the notion of superior as a white people.

References :

Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands, Essays in Criticism 1981-91. Penguine Books. 1992. 

Thank you…..