National and Global Identity in The Inheritance of Loss - Essay Example

? National and Global Identity in The Inheritance of Loss due] Introduction The rise of the global capitalism andthe development of inter-cultural connections frequently raise the question of the contradictions between older identities and cultural homogenization brought about by the developments in global economy and culture. That is why the purpose of the present essay is to examine the respective issues as represented in The Inheritance of Loss, one of the literary works that deals with the problems of perception of Westernized global society by the non-Western people that are both integrated and estranged from it. The key argument to be propounded within the course of the essay is that from the impressions of The Inheritance of Loss one has to conclude that the development of ‘global’ identity in non-Western societies is generally restricted to wealthier, more affluent and cosmopolitan classes of those societies, while the vast majority of population remains wedded to national identities, making a cultural bridge between these two social layers rather significant one. The nature and causes of existence of such cultural drift are fundamentally conditioned by the discrepancies generated in the course of twin processes of globalization and decolonization. Even though the decolonization and the growth in importance of the ‘Third World’ nations such as India have led to progressive shifts in the balance of forces within the global arena, it is still evident that the modern globalized world is still based on cultural patterns and assumptions that are directly inherited from the times of undisputed Western hegemony. The global identity, as expressed in the dominant models of consumption, education, etc., remains inherently Western, despite all attempts at making it more diverse and inclusive. Even though the very concept of “culture” has always been historically conditioned1, it is still evident that the vast majority of modern cultural identities are less prone to uprooting and homogenization than it is often assumed in various transnationalist concepts of world politics and culture. The globalization and the formation of the numerous layers of transnational migrants, voluntary and forced, permanent and temporary, shifted the balance from the maintenance of traditional identities, of national and local dimensions, to the construction and deconstruction of the global, homogeneous identity. However, as may be evidenced from The Inheritance of Loss, the situation may be more nuanced and difficult than can be judged from ‘common-sense’ representations of these processes. The growing trends for cultural integration and economic migration, despite being important for the general process of globalization, do little to mask the remaining chasms between the representatives of upper strata of non-Western societies and their compatriots remaining generally tied to cultural habits and traditions that still reign supreme over the people living in modern time. The Inheritance of Loss testifies to this very situation. The major characters of the novel are in their own way expressions of the aforementioned dichotomy. The two groups of the characters, each representing a respective social class, embody the controversies generated by globalization and de-localization. The Judge Patel and his granddaughter Sai represent the two generations of upper-class cosmopolitanism and geographical and educational mobility. While they may differ among themselves in subtleties of cultural perceptions, both of these characters are distinguished by intense interest and self-identification with the non-Indian cultural environment – an Anglicized, respectable, upper-middle class world that is both connected with the Indian tradition, albeit of British Raj variety, and deeply estranged from it. Sai’s recollections of her upbringing in the Catholic Church and the secular and non-traditional lifestyle of her parents are indicative of that. While the secularism was not inherent in Indian intelligentsia under British rule, it became fashionable under the impact of short-lived Indo-Soviet detente (as represented in the novel2). At the same time, paradoxically enough, Sai was brought up in St. Augustine’s convent school with its strictly Catholic education. This combination of the Soviet-style secularism and Catholic Christian education, despite its seeming incongruity, is blended together with the simple fact that these two forms of socialization were distinctly non-Indian, when viewed from the traditional standpoint. This makes Sai rather estranged from the bulk of the Indian population she lives amongst. She genuinely considers herself a representative of the learned elite that should by right of birth exist apart from the undignified working-class Indians. The scene in Chapter 6 of the novel, where Sai travels by train to her grandfather’s mansion at Cho Oyu, looking derisively at the laborers toiling near the railways, is a vivid testimony to this fact3. The young generation of the Indian upper-middle class, embodied in the character of Sai, is described as alienated from the concerns and lifestyles of the majority of Indian population, which is depicted as predominantly consisting of lower-caste menial laborers. Predictably, this vast and silent majority does not have any kind feelings towards the Western-educated elite castes, and the both social environments treat each other almost as “not even the same species”4, so estranged they are shown in the novel. Sai’s grandfather, Judge Patel, is a character of the same type, but of different standing. He is an example of old-style colonial functionary that is confronted both with the challenges of adapting to the situation of retirement, which he still fails to do completely, and with the necessities of coping with his own discontents and idiosyncrasies. Jemubhai Patel was a Cambridge-educated jurist during the times of his judicial career5. His loyalty to legal profession seemed to be accompanied with a deep sense of unease at being an Indian among the white officials in the later day of the British-dominated Indian Civil Service. Patel experiences conflicting memories of his education years in England: while the privilege of being able to obtain his law degree in English college allowed him to make a relatively lofty career, the embarrassments he experienced as an Indian student within English educational system continue to haunt him throughout the novel. From the memories of his times at Fitzwilliam College, it is understandable that Patel suffered much from the sense of being supposedly inferior to his white English peers. The author describes how the young student “grew stranger to himself than he was to those around him, found his own skin odd-colored, his own accent peculiar”6. This metaphor is used to denote the sense of alienation that was often induced in members of Anglicized Indian elite, which both craved the higher status accorded by the English education and felt inferior to the very English they sought to emulate in their own lifestyle and behavior. While English-style professional training enabled them to become members of their own social elite and acquire a sense of their own ‘whiteness’, at the same time they became estranged from the lower classes of India by their new cultural identity. The latter, in its turn, proved rather ambiguous; while Patel grew to look condescendingly at his forebears’ culture and behavioral patterns, he still subconsciously identifies with his father’s way of life, viewing the English culture he strives to integrate himself in with the eyes of the stranger. Patel, while being a student, both admires and fears his own immersion in the English society, with its cultural norms that are both remote and attractive to him, with his sense of dignity compromised by his inability to catch up with the British educational standards. Eventually he is admitted into the ICS (Indian Civil Service), only when the latter has to ‘Indianize’, which is an ironic twist of fate given the previous commitment of the British policy with respect to Indian elite and intellectuals7. Still, the Indianization of the ICS proved a hoax, as the conversations between Patel and his friend Bose put forth by the author testified. The case of an Indian employee failing to win a right to the pension equal to that of the white one, which is mentioned in the novel8, is a vivid expression of the superficiality of the British policies towards Indian self-rule in the last decades of the British Raj. Even then, it is clear from the novel that the educated members of the Indian elite protested against the discriminatory measures that the English take against them not out of sense of some specific Indian national identity. Patel and his Indian peers in the ICS did not try to achieve the full social equality for all Indians under British rule; indeed, their own adherence to the caste mentality (partly conscious, partly not) would have made such a stance nigh-impossible. They merely tried to make Indian upper classes equal partners to their English and generally European counterparts within a global picture. The situation remained fundamentally the same after the proclamation of Indian independence. The temporary flirting with the Soviet-style state socialism during the Cold War years changed to resentment and open ridicule at the perceived puritanical and consumer’s goods-scarce conditions under which the Soviets lived. Desai frequently cites the upper to middle-class characters of the novel that openly mock the USSR for its relative poverty and asceticism9. Instead, it is the United States that becomes the new focus of cultural and economic attraction for the prosperous strata of Indians. The U.S. is now viewed as the sublime power, with its culture and economy to be emulated in all cases. At the same time, the upper-class characters of the novel feel nothing but contempt or at best, curious amusement towards the various peoples that dwell in India. Such groups as the Nepali, or Punjabi Sikhs, are often viewed as fundamentally irresponsible and threatening the stability of the central government in Delhi. Such a mentality affirms that for Indian upper classes as represented in Desai’s novel, even the national identity itself is viewed through the lens of narrow class interests. Consequently, it is necessary to examine the differing viewpoints of the lower-class characters of the novels, as they are necessarily different from those of their cosmopolitan and supposedly enlightened counterparts from upper strata of Indian society. The growth in economic interaction across the globe led to emergence of the new category of population – the transnational migrants that are both within and outside the particular locus of time and space they currently exist in10. While the reproduction of global capitalism requires the constant uprooting of previously existing loci of production, so as to achieve the ever higher level of profits11, transnational migrants play an important role in maintaining the total system of global production, because they constitute the most reliable part of the workforce that is the easiest to move. The character of Bijou, a young son of Judge Patel’s cook, who happened to find an insecure job in the New York kitchens catering to the rich and confident strata of the city’s population, is an example of the very transnational migrant that is both beneficiary and victim of the new globalized economic reality. Bijou has to frequently change his workplace, adapting to the new dicta of the market. He works in multilingual, multiracial environment, which is often rife with conflicts and controversies, such as one described by Desai on the example of the hostile encounter between Bijou and his one-time Pakistani co-worker12. The cosmopolitan workforce engaged in drudgery in the basements of the New York kitchen is, however, disproportionately drawn from the ranks of the Third World nations’ populations: Desai’s pointed remark that “above, the restaurant was French, but below in the kitchen it was Mexican and Indian”13 is a condensed expression of the global hierarchy of labor that is perpetuated within the conditions of globalization. The internal conflicts within this multitudinous laboring population are received amusingly by the masters frequenting the luxurious restaurants and the overseers that watch over the workers. This metaphor implies the existence of real system of subordination and domination that serves the interests of the globalized master class, which is united in its drive to keep its subordinate divided. The correlation between global and national identity within this context becomes increasingly problematic. The identification of respective nationalities with higher or lower social statuses within the global economy serves to establish stable connections between national and class identities. Just like Moroccans in Paris, so in English-speaking nations do Indians play the role of servants, menial laborers and other lower occupations within the global hierarchy of labor. While in India itself the chance to work abroad is highly appreciated (as the response of Bijou’s father to the news of his son’s life in America shows), in reality the relative standing of lower-class, native identities of various Third World peoples in the core countries of the capitalist world-system (such as the U.S.) remains incredibly low, and the increase in social standing often requires its abandoning. On the other hand, there are views opposed to those presented in the course of this analysis. For instance, Pankaj Mishra, in her review of The Inheritance of Loss, published in The New York Times, views the experiences of Sai and Judge Patel through the lens of tragic encounter between Anglicized cultural elite and the nationally awakened masses of India14. In the course of her analysis, Patel and Sai are described as veritable victims of the cultural anxieties affected by globalization. This point of view, to my mind, ignores the class-based nature of the different identities exhibited by various characters, and is therefore profoundly incomplete. Conclusion The Inheritance of Loss represents an attempt on the side of the author to trace the similarities and differences between the construction of globalized, cosmopolitan identity for the upper classes in the Third World countries, on the one hand, and the marginalization and ridicule experienced by bearers of Third World national identities in the core countries of the West, as well as in their own lands. The class-based identity politics as represented in the novel remains evidence to the simple fact that the globalization, while making the access to the benefits of global development easier to some, is fundamentally differentiated and uneven process that may lead to greater global and regional inequalities. Bibliography Desai, Kiran. The Inheritance of Loss. New York: Atlantic Monthly, 2006. Kearney, Michael. “The Local and the Global: The Anthropology of Globalization and Transnationalism.” Annual Review of Anthropology 24, no. 1 (1995): 547-65. Mishra, Pankaj. “Wounded by the West.” The New York Times. 21 February 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/books/review/12mishra.html Read More