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Rage, rage against the Empire's wordsI absolutely agree with Saeed Naqvi who in his provocative article, A verse from Ghalib' December 2...

Rage, rage against the Empire8217;s words
I absolutely agree with Saeed Naqvi who in his provocative article, A verse from Ghalib8217; December 24 argues for the opening up of the canon. His argument is an inflammatory red flag for the 8220;superficial, westward inclined elite too easily swept off its feet by the allurement of globalisation8221;. The established literary tradition stands precluded before the pluralists for whom all canonical literature is the endorsement of the dominant class.

Naqvi8217;s apocalyptic despair is understandable in the face of the overwhelming assertion of the traditionally oppressed and disenfranchised Urdu writer for identity and a voice. It is important to deconstruct the cult of Shakespeare which seems to convey that the greats were not born great but their fame was a result of a cross-century propaganda. Fame may be as much a product of construction by society as of innate genius.

Shakespeare8217;s fame was a deliberate and politically motivated construct that evolved out ofan attempt to bestow cultural supremacy on the British empire.It must be kept in mind that attempts to uphold the canon or to destabalise it are always, in some sense, political as well as cultural. Neocolonialism, racism and sexism underlying all canon formation can be understood through discourse analysis which helps to reveal how power structures operate, and knowledge and action embodies beliefs, cultural values and ideology. At a juncture when questions of nation and national identity have become very significant, departments of English in India, for instance, are still the victims of this western discourse, visible in the inordinate emphasis on western texts.

The Oedipal compulsions of the mother culture compel many to view native English lineages more as a heritage to be protected than as an object to be problemmatised. They behave, in the words of Terry Eagleton, 8220;with all the studied self-consciousness of the parvenu who anxiously seek paternal approval, flamboyantly becoming self-parodically,more English than the English8221;. Let them pay heed to James Joyce8217;s assertion of his nationalism when he told a friend: It is my revolt against the English conventions, literary and otherwise, that is the main source of my talent8217;. Whenever a theory is to be devised or an education policy framed we have to bear in mind the view that national identity can always be deliberately influenced through the national curriculum. Let the intellectual leadership in the country emphasise the role of literature in various parts and languages as vital for helping the coming generations towards a critical understanding of the world and the cultural environment in which they live.

This must not be construed as a descent into xenophobia, as is the case when cultures are aggressively associated with the nation or the state, but as an opposition to the implied hegemony of the Western cannon with a perspective of intellectual freedom. We must not fail to grasp the odd situation in which we are deeply sympathetic to otherpeople8217;s cultural traditions and literature, but disdainful towards our own.

The solution that I can see is a multicultural relativism and an extensively inclusionary curriculum with a sense of civic identity at its core which has the potential of creating a sense of dignity and self-esteem.

You can never reduce culture to a politically denuded thesaurus where ontologically and epistemologically you can fix the relationship between citizenship, the arts and language, thereby extorting differences into reconciliation.

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