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‘ Imaginary Homeland’ ‘
‘The New Empire within Britain’
‘On Palestinian identity’
‘Hobson Jobson’
‘Attenborough’s Gandhi’ etc.
Name: Rinkal D. Jani
Roll No: 22
Batch: 2016-18
SEM: 3
Enrollment no: 2069108420170012
Email Id: rinkaljani1807@gmail.com
Paper No: 11-PostcolonialStudies
Topic:
Submitted to: Dr Dillip Barad
Department of English,
Smt. S. B. Gardi
Maharaja Krshnkumarsinhji Bhavnagar Universit
renowned personalities in twentieth century. He was born on 1947 in Bombay. The genres in his writing are magic realism, satire and post-colonialism. He has been compared with authors such as Peter Carey, Emma Tennant and Angela Carter.
In 1964 his family was responding to the growing hostilities
between India and Pakistan. These religious and political conflict deeply
affected on Rushdie. In 1981 his ‘Midnight’s children’ was published and got
Nobel Prize for fiction. His latest novel is ‘Luca and the Fire of life’
published in November 2011.
His style is often classified as magical realism mixed with
historical fiction and dominant theme and his work we normally can see the
story of many connection disruptions and migrations between the Eastern and
Western world. His third Novel ‘Shame’ (1983) that represents a political
allegory of Pakistan politics.
• The satanic
verses
• Haroun and
the sea of stories
• JoshepAnton:A
memoir
• The Round
beneath her feet
• The Moor's
last Singh
• The Enchantress
of Horence
• Imaginary
Homelands
‘ Imaginary Homeland’ ‘ ‘The New Empire within Britain’ ‘On Palestinian identity’ ‘Hobson Jobson’ ‘Attenborough’s Gandhi’ etc.
Ø Introduction
about Essay:
“Imaginary
Homelands”
is the essay which this collection takes its title was Salman Rushdie’s
contribution to a seminar about Indian writing in English held in London during
the festival of India in 1982. It is a collection of Rushdie’s essays, seminar
papers, articles, reviews. “Attenborough’s Gandhi” is also a part of his essay
collection. It is also an essay in which he is reviewed about Richard Attenborough’s
Movie “Gandhi” Salman Rushdie has some problem with making this movie and he
highly criticized this movie by giving valid argument and points. He is deconstructing
this movie by giving some rational argument. At some points as he also would
have been appreciated this movie for few scene’s. Let’s have an deep inside in
his essay on “Attenborough’s Gandhi”
Ø Attenborough’s Gandhi:
“Sometimes we feel we
straddle two cultures
at other times that we
fall between two stools”
Salman Rushdie focuses on the view of “Attenborough’s Gandhi “- a film
based on biography of Mahatma Karamchand Gandhi. This is the best film of 1983
in film industry. Salman Rushdie says God help the film industry after making
this type of film. He critically shows his ideas on that film.
The essay starts with the word
‘Deification’, and Rushdie further said that deification is an Indian disease,
as Attenborough might now about it and he has construct Gandhi as a ‘Mahatma’,
as it is Indian disease to say that ‘Avatar’ will come and do something good for
human being and they makes a human as a ‘Avatar’ and console their human self
and depend over avatar and Attenborough has do it in the movie. But he has not
described. ‘Gandhi-a gift human’ and Attenborough knows that what Indian like
and for what Oscar-Nobel committee would be like and for that he has just put
the image of Gandhi as a Mahatma and has avoided Nathuram Godse’s speech,
ploticalthriller also absent in the movie.
He also gives the three broad headings
1. Spiritualism
2. Simplicity
3. Change anything, Submit
yourself
Here we can also say that
Spiritual idea is good in only in idea, thinking not in practical.
At Attenborough’s didn’t
include speech of Nathuram Godse’s because he knows that, no one like to watch
or listen Nathuram Godse as he has killed ‘Mahatma’ in that case Nathuram is a
villain and if he has included this portion into movie than movie might not be
selected as a Oscar winning movie. Here we can say that Richard Attenborough
has chosen the events, in the movie. Which is distorted the history.
The Reason say Salman
Rushdie might be viewing Gandhi as a spiritual mystical person. He view that
when he saw this movie that time he found that Attenborough unfortunately saw
the image of Gandhi as a Christ and comparison with Christ. In Christianity we can
see that how the Jew people killed the Christ and Attenborough also tried to
saw these things in different way. And we can say that Gandhi is a spiritual
person.
Here we can also see that how Attenborough
saw the image and represent the image of Gandhi as a submission,
self-sacrifice, and non-violence image. Gandhi believes in these things and he
follows these things in his whole life. And here Attenborough saw these things
very well and describe beautifully.
We have mindset that ‘Gandhi’ movie made in
western is must be good. A movie gathered applause for this reason that a
western has made the movie on Gandhi and also the character of Gandhi played by
the western man Ben Kingsley. So it for must be selected for the Oscar. People
don’t like to criticize over through the movie has lots of mistake but it is
our mindset that movie must be good as it was made in western, but Rushdie was
in against of it and he has criticize the movie.
Rushdie asks:
“Why American academy wish to help by
offering in a temple eight glittering statuettes to a film?”
‘Why should an Englishman want to deify Gandhi?”
Ø The exotic impulse to see India as the
Fountain to spiritual plastically wisdom.
Ø The Christian longing for
a leader’s dedicated to ideals for poverty and simplicity.
Ø A political desire that
revolutions should be made purely by non-violence alone.
Ø
Area of criticizing by Salman Rushdie
• In the essay “Attenborough's Gandhi' in
which Salman Rushdie talks about the movie 'Gandhi'.
• The film is about a biography, not
apolitical work. Even if one aspects this distinction, one must reply that a biography,
it is not turn into hagiography (see only one side) aspect of the subjects as
well as loveable side.
• Attenborough's Gandhi-essay deals with
the Indian called Mohandas karamchand Gandhi.
Ø Why these character are
absent?:
First of all, why they have chosen Gandhi? Not
any other patriotic figure or spiritual figure like Sardar Patel? Subhash Chandra
Bose? Why not Tagore?
The film's makers answer that it would have
been impossible to include everything and everyone, and of course selection is
central to any work of art. But artistic selection creates meaning, and in
Gandhi these are frequently dubious and in some cases frighteningly naive. In
answer to this Salman Rushdie says that there are two possible reason behind
this the intention of film maker is that…
- Eraser of something from History
·
The
voice of Tagore, Ambedker are eras
- Objection against distortion against history
·
How
do you read history
·
How
do you connected it with happening
Rushdie criticizes the Amritsar massacre
Dyer’s action at Jalianwala Bagh.
We can say that Amritsar massacre is
perhaps the most powerful sequence in the film. Both the massacre and the
subsequent court-martial at which outraged Englishman question the unrepentant
Dyer with basely suppressed horror are staged accurately and with passion. In
this Dyer represents the cruel itself. The crowd sent him for the killing. But Dyer
this two scenes mean is that Dyer’s actions at the Jalianwala Bagh where those
of a cruel over jealous individual and that they were immediately condemned by
Anglo-Indian.
The court martial may have condemns Dyer
but the colonist did not. He had taught the wags a lesson he was a hero. And
when he returned to England he was given a heroic welcome. An appeal fund
launch on his behalf made him a rich man. Tagore discussed by the British
reaction to the massacre return his knighthood.
In the case of Amritsar, artistic selection
has altered the meaning of the event. It is an unforgivable distortion.
The assassination of
Gandhi.
Attenborough considers it important enough to place it at the
as well as the end of his film; but during the intervening three hours, he
tells us nothing about it. Not the assassin’s name. Not the name of the
organization behind the killing. Not the ghost of a motive for the deed. In
political thriller, this would be merely crass; in Gandhi it is something
worse.
We all know that Gandhi was murdered by
Nathuram Godse,
A member of the Hindu-fanatic RSS, who blamed the Mahatma for
Partition of India. But in the film the killer is not differentiated from the
crowd; he simply step out the crowd with a gun. This could mean one of three
things: that he represents the crowd-that the people turned
against Gandhi that the mob threw up a killer who did its work; that Godse was
‘one lone nut’, albeit a lone nut under the influence of a sinister–looking
sadhu in a rickshaw; or that Gandhi is Christ in a loincloth. We know why
Christ died he died that others might live. But Godse was no representative of
the crowd. He did not work alone. And the killing was a political, not a
mystical, act. Attenborough’s distortions mythologize, but they also lie.
Rushdie says that British have been
mingling Indian history for centuries. Much of debate has been done about this
movie that why Subhash Chandra Bose? Why not Tagore? Why not Nehru? The answer
is the center is important for any artistic work because that creates a well-designed
story.
The film is a biography not a political
work. Even if one accepts this distinction one must reply that a biography if
it is not to turn into hagiography must tackle the awkward aspects of the
subjects as well as the lovable side. The “Bramcharya” experiments
during which Gandhi would live with young naked woman all night to taste his
will to abstain are well known not without filmic possibilities and they are of
course ambiguous events. The film omits them. It also omits Gandhi’s fondness
for Indian billionaire industrialist so.
This is a rich area for a biographer to
mine the man of the masses, dedicated to the simple life, self-denial,
asceticism, who was finance all his life by super capitalist patrons, and some
would say hopelessly a compromise by them. a written biography, which failed to
enter such murky water would not be worth reading we should not be less
critical of a film.
In the movie Godse was not representative
of the Mob because he was not alone in his war the awkward aspects are there in
the movie. The movie also omits Gandhi’s fondness for Indian billionaire
industrialists. He died in Birla house in Delhi. Gandhi also represents the
portrayal of most of leader who struggle for the independence. Sardar Patel is
a hardworking man where he is like a clown here, Jinnah is portrayed as a count
Dracula and we can see the most important change in the personality of Nehru.
Nehru was not Gandhi’s disciple. There
debate was central to the freedom movement-Nehru, the urban sophisticate who
wanted to industrialize India, to bring it into modern age versus rural
handicraft loving. And keep India in the modern age to increase industrialism.
Sometime medieval figure of Gandhi: the country lived this debate, and it had to
choose. In this film, Nehru becomes acolyte of Gandhi. Here Bose was evident.
He improved the movie. The message of Gandhi was to fight against oppressors
without weapon, without violence but it was all non-sense. The leader in India
did succeed because they were moral then British. The British were smarter,
craftier, better fighting politicians then their opponents. Gandhi shows as a
saint who vanquished an Empire. This is a fiction.
Rushdie says that it in a satirized manner
that it was better film of 1983, according to hidden agenda Oscar sididh
committee and god help the film industry. It was expensive
movie. Thus Rushdie gives his views about Attenborough’s Gandhi and at
the end he significantly said that,
“What it is an incredibly expensive movie
about a man who was dedicated to the small scale and to asceticism”.
Salman Rushdie says
God help the film industry after making this type of film. He critically shows
his ideas on that film. He says that , why film is about only Gandhi ? why no
Subhas Bose?Why no Tagore ? In the film there are many scenes of violence happened
before 1947.In this essay Salman Rushdie says about the scene of Amritsar
Massacre and the scene of killing Gandhi by Nathuram. He also says another fact
of Gandhi’s “ Brahmacharya “.Nehru was not Gandhi’s disciple. They were equals
and they argued fiercely in a matter of freedom movement. After all the things
the form of the film, opulent, lavish, overpowers and finally crushes the man
at its center.
Conclusion:
Salman Rushdie has written an article about
“Attenborough’s Gandhi” in which he has indicated about Gandhi and also made
criticism on him. He didn’t write only good things about but also wrote and
made mockery on him. He writes also about Nathuram Godse and told that he was
right according to him and Gandhi was also right at his place. Therefore
Rushdie has given his views about Gandhi in this essay. Salman Rushdie questions the 'absence' in the film review.
He read the silences between the lines. With historical sense and understanding
of historical facts, he raises doubts against the narration of the film. It
turns out to be classic example of how history / literature / our own Memory /
our own personal history (Gramsci) is 'KNOWN' to as. It leads us to question
the knowledge as the fault lines in the construction of knowledge about self
and other is clearly visible.
Work cited:
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