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ASSIGNMENT SOLUTIONS GUIDE (2014-2015)

M.E.G.-10
English Studies in India
Disclaimer/Special Note: These are just the sample of the Answers/Solutions to some of the Questions given in the
Assignments. These Sample Answers/Solutions are prepared by Private Teacher/Tutors/Auhtors for the help and Guidance
of the student to get an idea of how he/she can answer the Questions of the Assignments. We do not claim 100% Accuracy
of these sample Answers as these are based on the knowledge and cabability of Private Teacher/Tutor. Sample answers
may be seen as the Guide/Help Book for the reference to prepare the answers of the Question given in the assignment. As
these solutions and answers are prepared by the private teacher/tutor so the chances of error or mistake cannot be denied.
Any Omission or Error is highly regretted though every care has been taken while preparing these Sample Answers/
Solutions. Please consult your own Teacher/Tutor before you prepare a Particular Answer & for uptodate and exact
information, data and solution. Student should must read and refer the official study material provided by the university.
Q. 1. Do you agree that English is associated with the value system of imperialism in the twentieth century?
Support your answer with examples.
Ans. No doubt that English is associated fully with the value system of imperialism in the twentieth century. Wherever
you go, you will find it there. Lets start with the writing part. In the present day scenario, if one compares other language
writings with those of English, one will find that English has replaced almost all of them. The maximum numbers of best
sellers are in English. People not only want to speak English but also they want to learn it by heart, read and even want to
think in it. Once was the time when Hindi and other languages had their superiority over English. It was an alien language
and people used to make fun of English speaker. But gone are those days. In the twentieth century, English has got its roots
so deep that it has taken the place of other languages. Not only this, now the condition is totally reverse. English speakers feel
superiority complex and others feel inferior. Even the parents try to teach their child from the day he is born or we can say
English is feeded to them with milk. Now take the case of schools and colleges, there also is the same condition. Where
beforehand everyonewhether teacher or studentwas comfortable with his own language or Hindi, now they all feel comfortable in English whether in the matter of teaching or learning. People are now forgetting their mother tongue. They are
more fluent in English than in their own mother-tongue. It is rightly said that Englishmen have gone, but have left their
language and culture behind. Now even after the fifty-seven years of independence, we have not left the culture or language
of the Britishers, instead we have adopted or we can say we have transplanted their culture with that of ours. Macaulay
wanted to make Indians, Indian by blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect. And see
how much true he was. Macualays scheme of Anglicisation was not politically unpragmatic but was specifically structured
to meet the needs of British imperialism. Its results are visible in the present day situation. It succeeded in creating a class of
Indians who are well versed in the art of speaking and writing English. If on one side we see that due to English, people are
forgetting their own mother tongue and some manners but on the other hand English has many positive points also. It has
widened the thinking of the learned people. It also has become a vehicle of expression and as the medium of communication
used with advantage by any community and society irrespective of the place where it was active initially. English in India
opened a window to western learning and provide them with many opportunities for their betterment. With wider thinking
some of the evils were also removed from the society. With some more examples we can say that English is directly associated or is the part of the value system of imperialism in twentieth century.
After registering her presence as a vibrant economy, England had gained the status of a super power around the
period she became active in India as administrator, reformer and benefactor. British were engaged in pulling themselves
out of medievalism and transforming their thinking along modernist lines. Such was the zeal of dreamers in England.
Away from home in the territory of a colony, the intellectually equipped functionaries of the English had a different role
to play. Under the increasing British control, an attempt was made by the policy framers to perform social-engineering.
Under this, a whole group of natives spread through the length and breadth of India would read, write and think English.
There gradually a group was formed in the country to recognise the social-engineering, linked umbilically to the British.
These were the natives who largely fought in India the battles of British, telling the rest of the Indians about orthodoxy

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and obsolescence existing within them as well as the desirability of adopting a superior culture and value system. The
sense of servility the British intended to cultivate among Indians became a fact as a consequence of the influencewielding conduct of this middle class. A demoralised society as India was at that time, it watched objectly the spectacle of
western superiority presented through the behaviour of enlightened English-speaking individuals. India had yet a long
way to go towards modernity and that it was indeed stuck in orthodoxy. Through English our elites and middle class
individuals came face to face with a perspective radically different from their own. The reformist acts undertaken by the
regime earlier had unleashed trends in India that drew inspiration from the spirit to critique orthodoxy. With pioneers such
as Raja Ram Mohan Roy active in the realm of reform and change earlier in the century, various communities in India,
forged ahead of others and threw up visionaries who would work with all their might to transform the environment at a
later day. Some of these communities took keen interest in education and aimed at ushering in the era of modernist. With
increase in the knowledge of English a large number of creative minds began to look at their counterparts in England as
their role models and sought to emulate their example. It helped the Indian mind to wrestle free from the highly stylised
and moralistic renderings of myths in the Indian society. The literary trend in English taking shape in the Indian hands of
the new active reformers resulted in the occurrence of a meaningful interaction. In the context of a new educational
pattern crystallised in the field of education a number of visionaries in the second half of the nineteenth century took the
courageous step of combining English with the Indian languages in colleges and universities. Two institutions were
brought into being (named Anglo-Arabic and Anglo-Vedic) and flourished remarkably. With a strong orientation in the
Muslim or Hindu thought, these institutions rightly sought to adopt the rational approach of receiving knowledge that was
not confined to the place where it initially emerged and that it was a part of universal human heritage. English in India
passed a number of hurdles and finally has made its position strong by the closing years of twentieth century.
Q. 2. To what extent may Toru Dutt be designated as the earliest Indian English woman writer? Discuss.
Ans. When we read the writings of Toru Dutt at first sight, it does not appear that her writings have anything like the
glimmerings of a feminist consciousness. So mainstream assessments of her life and work negate any possibility of
interpreting her as the earliest Indian English writer whom readers might identify as articulating a womans point of view.
So Padmini Sen Gupta, Toru Dutts biographer, has remarked, Toru was interested, but not a very great extent in the
position and status of Indian women. It is natural that her short life, so absorbed in writing and scholarship, could spare
little time for social reform and work. Ananda Mohan Bose, a brilliant Bengali of the times, whom she had met often at
Cambridge, went to see her at Calcutta, when the Dutts still had hopes of revisiting Europe. Toru Dutt writes:
He (Mr. Bose) wanted me to visit his school for adult girls. The girls arent generally of orthodox Hindu parents, but
rather of Brahmos or followers of Keshab Chunder Sens religion. He was very sorry to hear that probably we should be
going to Europe, for he thought I would be of great help and use in the education of my country women.
Toru Dutt herself was protected from the orthodox worlds rules in the freedom which her community enjoyed and it
is possible she gave little thought to the problems which beset women, except to complain that in Europe she could be
much freer. She couldnt mix much with Bengali society because of the existing discrimination between men and women,
Sabhas were only for men, and women in general were kept in the seclusion of their homes. However, Malashri Lal has
advanced another perspective proffering an alternative Toru Dutt in her book, The Law of the ThresholdWomen Writers
in Indian English Focusing exclusively upon the fragmentary fiction, Bianca or the Young Spanish Maiden. Lal argues
that this novel was perhaps wilfully suppressed by the otherwise enlightened father of Toru because he probably detected
an uncomfortable parallel between the story of Bianca and the real womanwriter, his daughter. Lals argument hinges
upon a split that she perceived between the feminine subjectivity of Bianca, the young Spanish protagonist of Toru Dutts
novel and the patriarchal constraints imposed upon her by her father, Alonzo Garcia. The fathers hindrance of Biancas
choices in life and of her way of life in general, which results in her suffering from a nervous breakdown, is read by Lal
as Dutts refraction of her own negotiations with her father, Govin Chunder, who was at once caring for his daughters yet
careful to dictate the course that their life should take. Lal reads Dutts ill health and subsequent premature death as being
symptomatic of the sense of claustrophobia that must have gripped her, as she existed within the confines of her Calcutta
residence unable to live the lives of the women about whom she read.
Although Toru Dutt was mainly concerned with the French Romantic poets, but she didnt confine herself to them.
The subjects dearest to her were pathetic onesthose that spoke of separation and loneliness, exile and captivity, illusion
and dejection, loss and bereavement, declining seasons and untimely death. Her own life was an odd mixture of sushine
and sorrow, laughter and pathos, beauty and tragedy, success and regret. Besides being inspired by the French Romantics,
she was also guided by Elizabeth Barette Browning, John Keats, Charlotte Bronte and not least by Jane Austen. The
famous work, which gave Toru unbeatable reputation was the Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan. One of these

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ballads are about goddess Uma, two about Sita and Savitri, four describe the experiences of youngsters, Dhruv, Butto,
Sindhu and Prahlad, and the remainder are about the male heroes Lakshman and Bharat. These ballads and legends show
that Toru Dutt was the first Indian English writer to make extensive use of Indian, at least Hindu mythology, though there
are scattered references to these in the work of her predecessors. Her treatment of Hindu mythology reveals an instinctive
empathy with the situations and conditions of life which they represent, despite the fact that she herself was a secondgeneration Christian brought up in a semi-westernised domestic environment.
At the end we can say that the writings of Toru Dutt are charged with the lyrial effusions of joy and sorrow, anger and
pathos, dejection and hope. Apart from ballads and legends, she is known for her autobiographical poems in which Our
Casuarina Tree is associated with her childhood.
Born as a Hindu, Toru Dutt was a tripartite influence of French education, lectures at Cambridge and the study of
Sanskrit Literature. The assimilation between the accident and the orient nourished her poetic skills. Toru Dutt was a
Hindu by birth and tradition but an English woman by education, French at heart, a poet in English, a prose writer in
French, who at the age of eighteen made India acquainted with the poets of French in the rhyme of England, who blended
in herself three souls and three traditions and who died at the age of twentyone, in the full bloom of her talent and on the
eve of awakening of her genius. Undoutedly she was the earliest Indian English writer. The Saturday Review was to write
about Toru Dutt, in August 1879.
There is every reason to believe that in intellectual power Toru Dutt was one of the most remarkable women that
ever lived. Had George Eliot died at the age of 21, she would certainly not have left behind her any proof of application
or originally superior to those bequeathed to us by Toru Dutt.
Q. 3. How do you understand the concept of transgression in Bankim? From a reading of Rajmohans wife, do
you think of Bankims morality as strengthened by or based upon the orthodox? Give a reasoned answer.
Ans. Bankim was not amongst the reformers and he tried to keep himself away from the reformists in his writing.
Perhaps it is this aspect of his real life that comes in his novels as well. His own life also had different colours so naturally
the impact of his life can be seen in his writings as well. One thing is clear that transgressions in Bankims novels are not
alone in the case of widows but also with others. Let us see the case of Durgesh Nandini. Hero Jagat Sinha who is the
lover of Tilotama, also faces the problem with Ayeshas growing intense sexual love for him. The barrier between Jagat
Sinha and Ayesha arises out of the deep prohibitions between the two religious communities. According to Kaviraj
Bankims concern is chiefly for liminalityby which he means relationships that are made at the threshold. He elaborates
his point by discussing conflict between the demands of desire and those of duty. Kaviraj through these lines is pointing
out the same problem which Bankim wrote in some of other novels as well and it is the basic difference between the two
the thinking of a person, i.e. what he himself likes to do and what he has been taught by society. We can see both these
concepts in almost every of his novel, whether it is Rajmohans Wife or Bishabbriksha, Indira or Krsnkater Vil. In all
these at last the social bondage and restriction of society forces them to stop to do as they (characters) wish to do.
Matangini loves Madhav, but she has to leave him. She confesses it, but one can very well understand the pain in her
words when she says, Yes, if the human mind can be taught to forget, I will forget you i.e. part now and for ever. Same
in the case of tragedy for which only the circumstances arent responsible, the inability of a person to raise his inner
voices is also responsible to some extent. Although wishes are ones own feelings and are independent, but if we compare
them to social practices or social norms, we will find similarity in them to an extent that they also come out from the social
man as the voice of conscience. So to some extent a person himself is responsible for tragedy as he does not hear the voice
of society. Even in Indira also, a young girl, the heroine of the novel, although married but not met her husband is looking
forward to being united with him. This results in a series of incidents rather improbable and unconvincing. Her troop rests
in an alone and dangerous area and she is robbed. Due to her beauty, a younger bandit advises to take her along with them
but is stopped by a senior bandit from doing so. She finds herself in an unfamiliar village almost nude. She requests many
people and as a result of kindness of a lady she gets the job of a cook in a house where she comes very close to the lady
and tells her about her husband and the couple living in the house decides to reunite them. Here number of things are to
be thought of. The position of the heroine is such that she cant go back to her own parents and even she cant understandably arrive robbed and disheveled at her husbands home. The difficulties are worldly as well as not so worldly. Now
Indira is helpless. She is unable to express her feelings. She cant tell the truth of incidence as no one will believe her
words that robbers had not robbed her virginity. She is invited to her husbands house but not as a wife. Helped by the
couple she decides to seduce her husband into falling in love with her. So at last she overcomes the modesty natural to a
virtuous woman in order to seduce the husband thereby demonstrating the constructed nature of female virtue. The fact
that her lively mistress enacts the ways of a temptress with such ease and experience shows that Indira is not an exception.

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The text also involves the sense of transgression that is the subject of this chapter. The text describes the wish and the
demands arising due to these wishes as well as due to duty. There is happy ending possible as a result of the legal
foundation of marriage. Still, they must go through the trial by fire. The husband is the sufferer because of thinking that
he is involved with someone out of wedlock. On the other hand, the woman is also a sufferer as she knows that her
husband thinks that she is also transgressing. It is only when he realizes that she in reality never transgressed any social
boundaries and that he wont have to feel shame that a resolution can be brought out. This betrays an extreme sense of
insecurity in the nineteenth century Indian woman. Bankim overlooks this aspect and shows or we can say brings about
things divested of immediate relevance.
To finish with are the words of Sudipto Kavirajs extremely thoughtful study on Bankim
Stories of his novels often turn around a conflict between the two inevitabilities, two things that are equally necessary
truths of human life. A social world requires definitions, a kind of basic social map which defines permissions and
prohibitions. At the same time, there are the elemental drives of human nature which these social constructs are meant to
discipline into reasonably safe forms, but hardly can. The social and moral worlds in which men actually live are made up
of these two dissimilar and contradictory elements the desires that control men and controls that make society. Much of
Bankims fictional movement arises from this central conflict between the inevitability of moral orders and the inevitability
of their transgression.
Q. 4. What are the issues and problems in the construction of a feminist canon of Indian English writing?
Ans. In the formation of a feminist canon there comes many problems in the way and many issues are to be analysed.
Let us discuss them one by one.
The first issue for discussion is the existence of feminist English Indian writers. Most of the writers claim to write
sensitively and that the gender does not matter. They also claim that the subjects or the forms chosen by them are not
dictated by their being female or male. Some areas are still there which are confined to females. It may be said that some
areas are there which are neglected by males or discussed by them in male-oriented terms. Women writers, found these
experiences and feelings fit for exploration. Apart from it, the emergence of the female thinking has been taking place due
to the way females live and deal with the world. Sometimes the female perspective gets problematic as the male domination
is rooted in the females to such extent that even in the protests or revolts also the male voice can be easily felt. Both men
and women Indian writers have the same patriodchical background and their writings are dictated by this similar background.
In Indian English writings we can very well see the successful women writers having the qualities similar to men. We
rarely find any new narrative technique or mode which marks it as feminist, expressing the unique female experience
from a female perspective. In their works, women writers have maintained customs and beliefs of social realism.
A very big problem which the Indian feminism is facing is that Indian English women authors are not showing their
talent openly or we can say that in their writings craft is missing somewhere, and moreover little interest is shown for
being a part of the movement which helps to bring up in them art and beauty. It all brings us to the assumption that
although to these authors, women innovations are significant but in the political way they have significance. Their presence
is to show the way the women become aware of the world in which they live. The author keeps herself at the position of
discussing or describing the condition of women instead of putting herself in the position of an agent or a messenger who
brings about the changes in which one thinks women should be or they should be treated. To bring about changes one has
to make efforts, mere thinking is not a solution. If we look at the feminism in English writing, to some extent it will be
based on personal opinions. Until now we dont have any specific canon or tools to judge or justify these writings, so we
can make efforts for the evolution of a canon. Those women who are able to express themselves and have succeeded in
conveying their view based on their own innovations, are considered to be women writers. It may happen that the feeling
they discuss and justify may be widely varied and individual but in any case is basically related to a womens life and not
on men based principles and values. Now it is the time to work out and find the new, interesting and exciting work of the
next generation of women, to give something more which not only gives excitement but also knowledge, one with the
new prospects, opportunities as well as the new trends.
Q. 5. What are the sights against which cultural domination is organised?
Ans. Sites cross which cultural domination is organised are mainly language and literature.
We see that in case of the literature of India and other British colonies, writings abound in the formation of cultural
simplifications which support racial superiority of the whites to blacks and Indians and religions superiority of
missionary to all other religins as well as religious practices. Through the description of characters the superiority of the
language is established. The east is ruled over by the west, in the same way the black is ruled over by the white and it is
seen as the victory of good ovr evil. In India there are a number of snake charmers, Maharajas and elephants which are

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very common examples of cultural simplicity. The complication of the whole area is turned into simplest groups. These
constructions both literary and cultural are not only common in the west but they come back to the colonies to undermine
the self-esteem of people under colonial ruler and make them feel absurd themselves. It is very easy to understand the
feeling of the people who are ruled over by others. The scholars of the postcolonial era examined the colonial literatures
and gave exposure to the cultural domination at the site of literary production. Some queries came in our mind regarding
the viewer, the targeted audience, publisher and the place of publishing, political beliefs of author and the time of the
production of text. The answers to these queries take us to the method by which the literary production maintains status
quo of power structures. In other words we can say that literature is a system of ideas forming the basis of an economic or
political theory. In 1978, Edwards Said through Orientalism ladi bare both the methods of cultural domination of the
Occident (colonizer) over the Orient (native) and gave the strategies for realising and opposing these methods in reading
of our texts. According to him, the world is divided into two unequal halves in which there exist superior and inferior
groups and hence a hidden suppression takes place. With the increasing knowledge, all Orient becomes a construct. We
can say in other words, that the Orient is a creation with the new ideas and is glorified and demonized. Said defines
Orientalism as the project of the creators of the Orient under the field of culture and the aim of the Orientalism is to
highlight the Orient as Europes otherall which is not visible. He also comments upon and shows how its a wrong
formation, limited at the best of times, driven by the urge of cultural supremacy which is very significant in order to rule
with the agreement of the oppressed one. He supports the necessity of exposure of power figures from the view of cultural
formation.
Another much important site of cultural domination is language. Aijaz Ahmad, the eminent postcolonial critic, describes
the way in which any practice to construct a group or third world literature is affected by the fact that these authors write
in the language of their own and works by them are normally unavailable to multipurpose canon formed without access to
those languages. All the colonies dont use the same language. In India, English was introduced for the benefit of colonizers
which is evident from Macaulays statement
form a class of persons Indian in blood and colour but English in taste, in opinion, in morals and in intellect.
In this phase language had the highest power and it became tool to get superiority.
Colonizations most significant region of domination was to control our mind through culture to affect how the
colonized thought of themselves in relation to others. As per Ngugi to control a peoples culture is to control their tools
of self-definition in relationship to others.
The most important use for this domination was the domination of languagethe systematic undervaluing of the
colonized culture and language and the elevation of the language and culture of the colonizers.

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