LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 16:3 March 2016
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Renuga Devi, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Colonial Law and Caste Mobility in the Novel
Saraswathivijayam

M. Dattatreya, M.A.


Abstract

The paper attempts to problematise the tendency of the postcolonial elite to homogenise their experiences as victim subjects, negating and subsuming the perspectives of the unrepresented/underrepresented cultures and communities. In this endeavour the paper presents the case of Saraswathivijayam, one of the earliest Malayalam novels, which portrays the introduction of colonial rule and dissemination of colonial modernity as ushering in an era of multiple possibilities hitherto denied by the Indian traditional order to its marginalised communities. The seminal aspect of contradiction and confrontation in the novel Saraswathivijayam is the portrayal of native law as opposed to colonial law. Thus, it throws up many challenges to the politics of the postcolonial elite by showing that colonial consciousness in fact opened up numerous possibilities for everyone involved rather than being an alienating experience, as the elitist perception of colonial encounter dominantly perceives.

Keywords: Caste, colonial encounters, colonial law, postcolonial elite.

Introduction

The whole corpus of postcolonial theory - though rightfully articulates the anguishes, dilemmas, choices, ambiguities and possibilities - at times becomes a theoretical apparatus for the postcolonial elite to homogenise their experiences as victim subjects, negating and subsuming the perspectives of the unrepresented/underrepresented cultures and communities. Privileging the elitist positions as victimhood not only amounts to uncritical assumptions of structures of experiences but such standpoints also gloss and even blink over hard realities of native dominance and repression which are essential realities in the Indian context.

The dominant expression in postcolonial theory universally has been attributing binary power positions as oppressor and oppressed in the context of European and non-European relationships. Such definitions and understanding probably could be more suitably employed to understand African and certain non-Indian colonial experiences on certain specific conditions. Any effort to essentialize and homogenise the Indian colonial experience could be strongly contested by the non-elite Indian approach to the study of colonial historiography of India. Particularly, any analysis of the influence of colonial modernity in the context of gender and caste identities and their dynamics is an area of much interesting study.

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

M. Dattatreya, M.A.
Department of Studies and Research in English
Kuvempu University
Jnanasahyadri, Shankaraghatta
Shivamogga District
Karnataka 577451
India
dattamku@gmail.com
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