LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 24:6 June 2024
ISSN 1930-2940

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         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
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         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
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Cultural Hegemony and Hybridity in Khushwant Singh’s Karma

Md. Minhazul Islam

Abstract

Karma is a short story by Indian author Khushwant Singh. In this short story the writer has deftly mastered the skills of criticizing the Indians who hate or demean their own culture, especially the diaspora ones. Diasporas are the people who migrate from their motherland to other countries for various purposes. (Bill Ashcroft et. al. 2013) Exposure to multiple cultures make them ambivalent. They feel themselves lost in diverse cultural encounters. They suffer in inferiority complex. Being in different high cultural atmosphere they tend to hide their own self-felt low cultural identity. This cultural hegemony leads them to dilemma- a state of ambivalence in them. This identity crisis results in seer mimicry of the western culture. Mimicry is the process of reproducing as the almost same but not the quite. (Homi Bhabha, 1994) Through mimicking they alienate themselves from their own culture. The protagonist Mohan Lal is the exemplary instance of all the matters of discussion. This paper will investigate that the central character Sir Mohan Lal is an anglophile and a mimic man who through showing positive attitude towards British culture drives himself far from his own Indian culture. This cultural hybridity and alienation bring untold miseries and troubles to him at the end. Mohan Lal, a hybrid, lost his identity in the long run and was thrown away for despising his own culture.

Keywords: Khushwant Singh, Karma, Mimicry, Hybridity, Anglophile, Cultural Alienation, Ambivalence, Hegemony.

Introduction: The Context of Karma

The term karma derives from Hinduism. Karma refers to the reward one gets either good or bad depending on his actions or deeds. Here, the title karma is about the protagonist Sir Mohan Lal who stayed in England for five years to study at the Oxford University and then returned to his1 motherland India to work as a barrister. He started to live English life even after coming back from Oxford and demonstrated a snobbish outlook to everything in India. He was ashamed of being Indian and spoke in English or Anglicized Hindustani. His attire was also British. Mohan Lal had only complaint and disgust about everything in India whereas he was mimicking every aspect of the British culture. Lady Lal, the traditional Indian woman and the wife of Sir Mohan Lal, falls victim to domination and negligence of her husband but sticks to her Indian identity. The story takes place on a train journey of Sir Mohan Lal and his wife Lachmi. Most of the events take place on the train station. Mohan Lal boarded his wife to a general compartment while he was travelling on a first-class compartment with a view to meeting Englishmen. After seeing two British soldiers on the platform he calls them in oxford accent. But to his utter astonishment Mohan Lal was humiliated and thrown out of the compartment. Lying on the platform he saw his wife in the general compartment passing by.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Md. Minhazul Islam
Asst. Prof. Department of English
Rajshahi Science and Technology University, Natore, Bangladesh
E-mail: newtonjnu@gmail.com
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