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CHAPTER IV ANALYSIS
The method of this chapter is contextual analysis. It emphasizes the interconnectedness between character and society. My assumption here to use that
method is that the India society, as a medium according to Langland 1984, has provided certain set of values which conceives Indian identity. In The Glass
Palace 2001, it is in relation to such conceptualization that an Indian named
Arjun defines the core of his being. However, in the novel, I have identified the British-Indian military sytem as embodying another value system which position
Arjun as the subject. Both systems have values that intervene and challenge each other. For India has a presumably older and rigid social prescriptions, a relatively
‘younger’ medium like the British-Indian military system, in fact, yields more effects. The problem is those effects are mostly disturbing and disabling. Arjun
himself suffers from the identity effect which is self-alienation. He is, after all, caught in a tension between his India rootedness and English image he has learnt
to desire. Therefore, the analysis in this chapter aims to provide the evidences of the re-negotiation process participating both systems, that leads to his decision of
what values should prevail within and assume his identity.
A. The Identity of India as a Manifestation of India Value System
In The Glass Palace 2001, Arjun was born and lives in Calcutta, India, therefore, within India society. This fact places India value system as the medium
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in which Arjun conceptualizes his Self. Although later in his life he joins the British Indian Army, and is exalted by his English image, he fails to ignore his
India rootedness. Thus, by also trying to answer the first problem formulation of this study, here I describes the India value system to justify its impact to his re-
negotiation process. I use the phrase ‘Identity of India’ as the title of this subchapter. This is to
refer to the general conception among the Indians that spring from a set of values that regulate the society where they live in. Langland 1984:6 proposes that a set
of values, as an abstract regulator of society, can consist of everything in one’s milieu. It can be the ethics, beliefs, religious system or any institution that operate
a certain area. Since The Glass Palace does not draw equal details on every aspect or value, I also uses the description of values from some co-texts to help us
understand India society. However, the values cannot be arranged in a neat division. We should understand that in the society, systems do not work
separately; so, we will find that those values affect each other and their connections are beyond deliberate organization. That is why, rather than
discussing values in their usual domains like the religious or the ethics systems, I mention particular social phenomena and then discuss what values lay behind
them and why they become significant. I hope this analysis will not be misjudged for essentialising Indian identity.
I do not try to convince my reader that what is provided below assume the exact Indian identity; they are general conceptions that exist within the society. A
character like Arjun can subjectively choose one value and leave the other. And
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from this definition also, his identity invests its chance for power and destruction. This is such sense of Indian identity, or I like to say ‘rootedness’, that participates
in Arjun and constitutes his re-negotiation of Self.
1. The Caste System and Indian’s Social Behaviors
Ghosh in The Glass Palace depicts India as a country with an intense arrangement of religious practices. He narrates that after knowing Arjun is
accepted in the Indian Military Academy, Arjun’s father “immediately organised an expedition of thanksgiving to the temple at Kalighat” Ghosh, 2001:257. Also
another figure, a Hindu widow named Uma Dey, is regarded a legend by her nephew for she chooses to escape a usual lot of her kind in expense for her
political movement. Those are only some details that indicate a strong existence of religious teaching and formalities in the society.
The rigidity of religious custom in India can be scrutinized by consulting India’s history itself. According to Ronald Segal 1965:15, India was a Hindu
society. Hinduism in India was not merely religious practice and principle, rather it was a way of life, the principles were the core of governing and social
organization. In India, Hinduism was not limited to sacred rituals in a hidden temple or private murmurings; it existed everywhere, prescribing the multitudes
of rights and obligations and thus conditioning the Indians in rigid social constraints.
At the heart of Hinduism was the doctrine of dharma or duty. It asked every Indian, as a requirement of the unity with God, an absolute acceptance of
one’s condition and absolute obedience to the rules. From it derives the caste
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system , a hereditary system of social levels that rank the society into many
divisions by different tasks and obligations. The life of Hindu within the caste system was managed by the avoidance of rituals and castes pollution, thus
constituting inflexible rules of every aspect of life. They in fact embodied the rule of living in India, the living principle of social behavior.
Ghosh as an author has put indifference and resignation to be India’s social traits. And one may assume the caste system as the main cause. He narrates
in The Glass Palace how an Indian soldiers are always amazed at seeing the prosperity of other colonies like Singapore or Malaya, and are struck by the
revelation of India’s poverty: …in india, they would have taken such poverty for granted; that the only
reason they happened to notice it now was because of its juxtaposition with Malaya’s prosperous towns… as though the shock of travel had
displaced an indifference that had been inculcated in them since their earliest childhood Ghosh, 2001:346.
When Ghosh narrates that poverty is being ‘taken for granted’, he only says that the Indians have learnt since their childhood to be accustomed with
poverty and hunger. It exhibits that the doctrine of dharma or natural duty of a person also regulates the society in The Glass Palace. A poor man from a low
caste will remain poor until his death, not primarily because an inability to overcome the poverty, but because he thought he should be so. That this drained
willingness to go away from the wretched slums has become an indifference is probably caused, as Ronal Segal explain it see Segal, 1965:19, by the position of
poverty as intercastes throughline. By the formal distribution of the caste rights and obligations, higher and lower castes complemented each other, making a
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social set of submissions and preserving poverty of the poor. This was the reason why poverty in India was said to be inescapable. It is also by such social condition
that, in The Glass Palace, an Indian wants to be a soldier, a nationalist figure aspires for social reform.
While religious fatalism asks an Indian to deny himself, poverty is always burdensome for some others. As a public worker in Singapore, Saya John
witnesses how Indian soldiers come to the hospital after fighting for the British. “Most of them are... mainly peasants [from] small country villages” Ghosh,
2001:29. Saya John remembers that those sepoys are still boys, and he asks them the reasons why they go out fighting when they should be planting on their fields.
The answer is obvious: “Money…” Ghosh, 2001:30. However, it is only a small amount of money. As a Chinese descendant, Saya John cannot imagine how
Indians may allow themselves to be used to fight other peoples wars with so little profit for themselves. Unreasonable choice it might seem. However, soldiering for
the Indians is a breakthrough from the constraints of caste formalities and also poverty. A very little amount of money is perhaps ridiculous for those who have
lived a prosperous living. But, little money and a better provision by the British can be much better than everlasting poverty and deprivation which are the profile
of their India society. So, soldiering is never always a professional aspiration, rather it is a source of hope for the Indians to loosen the tight grip of poverty and
caste formalities. The depriving caste system and formalities at least culminates in a vision
of social reform in The Glass Palace. Uma Dey confesses that in spite of the
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annihilations and oppressions brought about by the colonialists, many terrible religious constraints have long tortured Indian people even before the British
invasion: ‘Look at the way women are treated even today, look at the caste system,
untouchability, widow-burning… all these terrible, terrible things’… Uma retorded sharply: ‘Let me be the first to admit the horrors of our own
society – as a woman I assure you that I am even more aware of them than you are… Mahatma Gandhi has always said that our struggle for
independence cannot be separated from our struggle for reform’ Ghosh, 2001:294.
As a woman, and a widow, Uma Dey is the key witness of the subaltern voice in conforming with the caste system and other religious practices. If then she
proposes, in accordance with Gandian movement, a social reform, her statement should be understood in the light of her position in the society. Uma Dey, a
widow, belongs to a higher caste, probably the Brahmin caste. If she manages to loosen her unity in the society by refusing the usual lot of Hindu widow and then
really reforming the social framework, it will not give much damage for her. But on the other hand, so many people, especially of the lower castes, depend
themselves on the unity in this caste system. Thus, the case of social reform signifies the imbalance demography in the society. The small number, liberal
high-caste Indians like Uma Dey urge a social reform in India, while almost the whole India society believe in an absolute obedience to Hinduism as a social
framework. However, since those liberated high-castes are the ruling Indians, in The Glass Palace
the awareness of India society as social yet personal humiliation becomes a national issue and social reform a vision.
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2. The Centrality of Family and Village
As I have said earlier, most people in India live in a bitter satisfaction, if not hopelessness, with the caste system. It is also an adherence to this system that
organizes Indian villages see Segal, 1965:17. As a manifestation of this organization, in The Glass Palace, as is often strongly agreed upon by Aldama
2005, the family becomes the central axis of the story. It employs a proximity of family opinions and principles as the developer and source of Self image.
Reading The Glass Palace as postcolonial story, one will see the dim light of India national bondage. It is not unlikely if the context is India. The primary
linkage among Indians are their association with their villages. Look at a statement from Hardy, an Indian soldier, about the previous generations of Indian
sepoys who simply neglect their association with the colonizers: “The truth is
yaar, they weren’t interested; they didn’t care; the only place that was real to them was their village” Ghosh, 2001:349. Starting from Hardy’s statement I asks
myself what produces the strength of village identity, why it becomes the only real circumstances to an Indian. My queries found that it is the proximity of order
in a village that constitute the case. A village was all that a conservative Indian belonged to. Villages in India
were not cohesive, they are built with a pattern of internal divisions rather than a unity Segal, 1965:17. Within it, the people lived in segmentation of major caste-
groups. As the system directed the people to preserve caste cleanliness, they did every aspect of life with a conformity to their caste order. After all, a sense of
belonging emanated from this submission to caste order, a context which was no
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larger than a village border. This is also the social system underlying the existence and proximity of family and village in The Glass Palace, though in some extent
the characteristics of villages, especially in a city of Calcutta, are of a rather anomalous one.
Arjun’s family, in fact, characterizes that detachment from usual village system. His family has long been dwelling in Calcutta since the life of his
grandfather, nearly in the beginning of 19
th
century. His family seems to be of the higher caste because they have a house which has a name, Lankasuka, and his
grandfather is “an archeologist and a scholar” Ghosh, 2001:184. In that time, it is impossible if people of lower caste can have a chance for higher education.
Then, to have an academic degree means to be educated in westernized way of thinking, thus building liberal perspective of life in one’s mind. And in this
circumstances, Arjun’s grandfather develops his family’s character. But first, we should also acknowledge that the family lives inside India
society. It is important because the family still retains the patriarchy which reflects the usual role system in the society. In Arjun’s family, the role of his
father is the breadwinner while his mother seems to have the larger role in the domestic part at home. However, Arjun’s mother still have limitation of her role,
especially if it deals with tradition. Once when she knows that the mothers of two prospective grooms for Manju, Arjun’s twin-sister, has humiliated her daughter,
Arjun’s mother only “[has] been apologetic afterwards, but she’d made it clear that it wasn’t in her power to ensure that these incidents would not be repeated:
this was a part of the process” Ghosh, 2001:264. On the other hand, Arjun’s
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father has the major part within the family. He is the leader and decision maker of the family: “How could you do this, Arjun? And without saying anything to
us?’… ‘[His relatives say], You wait till your father gets home” Ghosh, 2001:257. The role distributions between men and women, son and daughter,
husband and wife display the relation between the two gender. The male Indians have more free will, can make their own decision and gain prime position related
to the other gender, while the female Indians live dependently to the men within the family, but they are respected to conduct the domestic life at home. However,
it is also by the role of the father that liberal view is regenerated in the family. The principle of a father must become the principle of the whole family.
Arjun’s grandfather never insists to his family on rigid customary observances to Hindu. The success of developing liberal family then is shown when Uma Dey,
Arjun’s aunt, is proposed for marriage by a middle-class man from Bengali, named The Collector, who has educated himself in Cambridge. His marriage
proposal to Uma Dey indicates the reputation of Arjun’s family as able to follow him to step out into the society and live in modern ways. At another extent,
Arjun’s father is no less liberal; he works as an accountant in a shipping company. It indicates that liberal view has let him to work as a middle-class Indian, and
forget his social code of Brahmin caste which forbids such profession. Moreover, when Arjun gets the announcement that he passes the examination to the British
Indian Academy, an imperial institution, Arjun’s father supports him
wholeheartedly. Though his chief reason mainly lies on economical and social considerations, that working for the British will give his son much money and lift
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the social status of the family, Arjun’s father has shown that his liberalist view is found so decisive within the family.
If we ask ourselves what is so important in this centrality of family, the answer is that family becomes the epicentre of an Indian in making a decision for
life. In this proposition also Arjun develops his consciousness. If I said earlier that village unites the people and makes itself as a source of pride, it does not happen
in Indian cities. A city-life in Calcutta at least differentiate its subjects for it lacks those kind of social strata and orderings. As a headquarter of British government,
Calcutta does not rely its life from conservative Hindu system; as the result, Indians live individually within the family and each of them may compete to each
other. It finally produces progressive thinking and competitive spirit that characterize the city-life. A statement around the dining table in Arjun’s family at
least can illustrate the spirit of progress of that city: “Is the boy going to make anything of himself?” Ghosh, 2001:257. Imagine that this question will not exist
in the slums of Hindu villages, when everyone lives peacefully in an absolute obedience to his dharma. It is probably in responding to that query of ‘making
anything of himself’, that Arjun decides to sit for the examination of British Indian Army. He neglects his Hindu lot and chooses freely to climb up the soldier
ranks. After all, the centrality of family is the point of difference between a village and a liberal city. Thus, I think it is still logical to think of India with an
assumption that one’s origin develops his way of thinking.
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3. National Awareness and the Growth of Westernized Indian Middle-Class
In The Glass Palace, India is portrayed as entering a new phase of nationalism. Historical figure and groups like Mahatma Gandhi and the India
National Army INA are utilized to strengthen Ghosh’s priority on the discovery of national identity. Ghosh himself seems intentionally created the anti-colonialist
activist, Uma Dey, to magnify the importance of her compatriots in conceptualizing Indian identity. It seems essentialistic, but I think there are
reasons in The Glass Palace that move those Indians in visioning such project. The growth of national awareness seems to be the consequence of British
colonialism itself. Perspectives are many, but in The Glass Palace the emergence of national awareness is funneled into a unified criticism toward the ruthlessness
of British government. I concluded that in this tension among both powers, the focus is mainly on the military deployment, because it affects other aspect of
India’s government; from economics, “the army was small in number [but] it consumed more than was the case in countries that were castigated as
militaristic”, to politics: “it was the impoverished Indian peasant who paid both for the upkeep of the conquering army and for Britain’s eastern campaigns”
Ghosh, 2001:221. The condemnation may lead to a justification that India was being ruled with military, despotic practice by British authority. However, it was
true that the colonizers have often used the army to control warring emperors, but such agenda was agreed upon by the Indians for it was projected to bear peace
upon the country. What is problematized by some people, if not all, is the way British Empire represents India. After some occurrences of displacement, India
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has come to realize that to be under the Satanic Empire, that is how Mahatma Gandhi refers to the British, will not do any good for the country. Moreover, the
urge is also a sign of culmination on the delayed government transfer which has boiled Indians’ anger and suspicion toward the British: “Many could also be heard
to voice bitter condemnation of Britain’s declaration of war on their behalf, without any binding guarantees of eventual independence “Ghosh: 2001,305.
That is it, the nationalists often problematize ambivalent representation of British Government in India. They, the British, have been described as exhibiting
barbaric actions in the development of the Empire, quite contrary to their ideals of civilization. However, I found that the nationalist activists are no less ambivalent
in their project of national identity. The anti-colonialist activist often neglect that India is a unity of regional
varieties. An activist like Uma Dey may condemn the British to be responsible for the “racialism, rule through aggression and conquest” Ghosh, 2001:294. She
will propose the number of victims to strengthen the evidence that the Empire should come back to their home. However, it is strange that Uma Dey forgets
conquests – from Aryans, Guptas, or Mughal emperors – have happened in India’s past and then produced regional differences around the country, not establishing
national registers. An Indian who is aware of India’s history, must also know that racialism by invaders and religious impurement is not a new monopoly by British
conquest. Moreover, for the totalitarian emperors are only muted and controlled by the British, I suppose Uma Dey is not aware that if the British depart from
India, the country will face the danger of being separated into smaller totalitarian
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conquerors. However, an anti-colonialist like Uma Dey has a ground to anticipate possible confrontation by some loyalists of British government. She is aware of
the extent if British government is still ruling in India: the conditions being created in their homeland were such as to ensure that
their descendants would enter the new epoch as cripples, lacking the most fundamental means of survival
; that they would truly become in the future what they had never been in the past
, a burden upon the world… that a time was at hand, when even the fall of the Empire and the departure of
their rulers would make little difference Ghosh, 2001:222 [my emphasis]
. Such statement is resonant with common perception among the nationalists. She
seems to romanticize a bittersweet moment of India’s poverty and stagnation, which has distracted me to ask what India has been in the past. And the images
that come from the novel appeared to be what Rajkumar, an Indian boy, says to himself: the image of the “ties [that] had been sundered by a century of conquest...
no longer existed even as a memory” Ghosh, 2001:47. On its praxis, regional proximity often counters the vision of national
identity. It concerns with Uma’s political movement in 1930, a time when the public interest is pointed toward regional issues rather than a scene that their
fellow Indians are being posted in Burma and ordered by the Empire to kill Burmese rebels: “The Indian public was consumed with the preoccupations of
local politics and had little time to spare for Burma” Ghosh, 2001:253. It is a clue that people in Calcutta, of Bengal province, are not attentive to the way
imperialism molds Indian identity into a colonizer in Burma. Despite the Empire has power to control knowledge and information and that Bengali people seldom
contribute to military career – “for generations the recruitment to Indian Army has
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been ruled by racial policy that eliminates almost every man from Bengali” Ghosh, 2001:257 – what appears in public mind strengthens my proposition that
the majority of Indians still believe in a fragmentary, regional identity, rather than the India national identity. This fact finally reveals the characteristics of this
project of national identity. It also gives a sign of the position in the society that is established by the Indian nationalists to bear power and social function.
Indian nationalists are constituted of Westernized Indians who gradually establish the middle-class of India, a class which does not exist in a traditional
Hindu caste system. In The Glass Palace, it is told that these people are centralized in Bengal, for it is the epicentre of cultural and literal growth in India.
As the people who dwell in the headquarter of British government in India – Calcutta is the headquarter until 1911 – there are many people from this province
who bestow a chance for western education. Thus, the growth of westernized Indians increases simultaneously with liberalism. Those westernized Indians at the
outset are projected by the British to fill the positions in public civil service, however, I found that the plan is contraproductive for the authority. Liberal
Indians have been no more indifferent when they are educated in Europe – Uma Dey herself has a chance to visit European countries and the U.S. – and they have
realized the problem with the government. From its history, as Ronald Segal explains it Segal, 1965:92-96, when in 1911 the partition of Bengal was
revoked, it produced a suspicion that the British tried to meet the demands of political advance by distractions of communalism. What is lacking in The Glass
Place, if I may point out, is that India’s discontentment to British authority was a
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religious matter. After the Mutiny of 1857, most Indians reacted that religion in its existing state could not withstand English encroachment, thus, managed to purify
the religion to secure the heritage. If in the novel Ghosh focuses on the military utilization to strengthen the Empire, it is just a subsequent subject growing from
this religious intention. If we come back to Arjun and realize that within him there is only a weak
sense of national identity, probably it is because the national identity has very little functionality. Thus, if an Indian questions his identity, it is not really
surprising if it will only produce bewilderment, especially to those who live in higher castes or those who betray that Hinduism is the real means of unity in
India. We may suppose that this national awareness will grow hand in hand with the progress of the nationalist movement and its Congress, but I can say that in
The Glass Palace this project cannot tackle down the imbalance within the
society; a vision of national movement still belongs to those small numbered, westernized middle class Indians, while the rest of the country remain loyal to the
British.
B. Colonial Discourse in the British-India Military System