2011 క్రిస్మస్ శుభాకాంక్షలు
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2012 నూతన సంవత్సర శుభాకాంక్షలు
Memoirs of fifties Akividu or Akiveedu (ఆకివీడు), and neighbouring villages. Educational, geographical, historical, literary, philosophical, religious and social postings included. Copyright Raju (PD). (bondadaa@gmail.com)
Friday, December 23, 2011
The Dark Side of Dickens
Why Charles Dickens was among the best of writers and the worst of men
But what is to excuse Dickens’s writing to Angela Burdett-Coutts, about the 1857 Indian rebellion, that if he had the power, he would use all “merciful swiftness of execution to exterminate [these people from] the face of the Earth”? Slater allows this an attenuated sentence, while Ackroyd quotes a fuller and even fouler version of the same letter, adding, “It is not often that a great novelist recommends genocide.” Nor will it do to say that such attitudes were common in that period: when Governor Eyre put down a revolt in Jamaica with appalling cruelty in 1865, it was Dickens and Carlyle who warmly applauded his sadism, while John Stuart Mill and Thomas Huxley demanded that Eyre be brought before Parliament. Once again, Ackroyd emphasizes this while Slater speeds rapidly past it.
Finally, is there not something a trifle sinister in Dickens’s letter to Lord Normanby (such a name of lofty entitlement, he himself would have been hard put to invent), written while he was struggling to finish The Old Curiosity Shop, offering to go to Australia on behalf of the British government and there to write a properly cautionary account of the hellish conditions in Her Majesty’s penal colonies? He had worried that the deterrent effect of this horrible system had been diluted, with too many stories in circulation of ex-convicts making fortunes. Old Magwitch, evidently, should not have been let off so easily … (One of Dickens’s ostensible purposes in visiting America was to study its prisons, yet Slater tells us there is no evidence that he ever troubled to read de Tocqueville, who had formed and carried out the same intention in rather superior form. But what we want to understand is whether Dickens engaged in any vicarious gloating, on this and other “attraction-repulsion” forays into the lower depths.)
What is necessary, therefore, is a portrait that supplies for us what Dickens so generously served up to his hungry readers: some real villainy and cruelty to set against the angelic and the innocent. Yet somehow the same tale continues to write itself. We “know” the bewitching figure so well that speculations are possible about his suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder and versions of the bipolar. Claire Tomalin has etched in for us the long-absent figure in the frame, Ellen Ternan, who was plainly the consolation of Dickens’s distraught sexual life. We are aware that the great prose-poet of childhood was acutely conscious of having failed his own offspring. Yet we remain in much the same position as those naive Victorian readers who were so upset when John Forster told them that the respectable old entertainer was a man who had drawn his dramatis personae from wretched life itself. Always saying that he sought rest, and always exhausting himself, he may have been half in love with easeful death. The next biography should take this stark chiaroscuro as its starting point.
But what is to excuse Dickens’s writing to Angela Burdett-Coutts, about the 1857 Indian rebellion, that if he had the power, he would use all “merciful swiftness of execution to exterminate [these people from] the face of the Earth”? Slater allows this an attenuated sentence, while Ackroyd quotes a fuller and even fouler version of the same letter, adding, “It is not often that a great novelist recommends genocide.” Nor will it do to say that such attitudes were common in that period: when Governor Eyre put down a revolt in Jamaica with appalling cruelty in 1865, it was Dickens and Carlyle who warmly applauded his sadism, while John Stuart Mill and Thomas Huxley demanded that Eyre be brought before Parliament. Once again, Ackroyd emphasizes this while Slater speeds rapidly past it.
Finally, is there not something a trifle sinister in Dickens’s letter to Lord Normanby (such a name of lofty entitlement, he himself would have been hard put to invent), written while he was struggling to finish The Old Curiosity Shop, offering to go to Australia on behalf of the British government and there to write a properly cautionary account of the hellish conditions in Her Majesty’s penal colonies? He had worried that the deterrent effect of this horrible system had been diluted, with too many stories in circulation of ex-convicts making fortunes. Old Magwitch, evidently, should not have been let off so easily … (One of Dickens’s ostensible purposes in visiting America was to study its prisons, yet Slater tells us there is no evidence that he ever troubled to read de Tocqueville, who had formed and carried out the same intention in rather superior form. But what we want to understand is whether Dickens engaged in any vicarious gloating, on this and other “attraction-repulsion” forays into the lower depths.)
What is necessary, therefore, is a portrait that supplies for us what Dickens so generously served up to his hungry readers: some real villainy and cruelty to set against the angelic and the innocent. Yet somehow the same tale continues to write itself. We “know” the bewitching figure so well that speculations are possible about his suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder and versions of the bipolar. Claire Tomalin has etched in for us the long-absent figure in the frame, Ellen Ternan, who was plainly the consolation of Dickens’s distraught sexual life. We are aware that the great prose-poet of childhood was acutely conscious of having failed his own offspring. Yet we remain in much the same position as those naive Victorian readers who were so upset when John Forster told them that the respectable old entertainer was a man who had drawn his dramatis personae from wretched life itself. Always saying that he sought rest, and always exhausting himself, he may have been half in love with easeful death. The next biography should take this stark chiaroscuro as its starting point.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Slum Dog Golfer
MUMBAI, India -- Anil Mane dreamed of wide fairways. He dreamed of a golf club in his hand and a white ball at his feet. Worry disappeared. Everything fell quiet, his fears silenced, his shaking hand calmed. He swung the club with tempo. He held the follow-through. The ball arced into the air, landed softly and rolled next to the cup. The gallery applauded, and he tapped it in. He dreamed of a shining trophy and a long sigh of relief. Sometimes, he laughed in his sleep …
Friday, December 09, 2011
Indian maharajah's daring act of anti-colonial dissent
Maharajah Sayyaji Rao III
Excerpts from "Indian maharajah's daring act of anti-colonial dissent" by Alastair Lawson BBC NewsThe 1911 Delhi durbar, or mass assembly - when George V was proclaimed Emperor of India - was the only such assembly to be attended by a British monarch in person.
'Laughing disrespectfully' The durbar was a display of unparalleled grandeur attended by nearly all of the great and the good in British India, who stayed in a tented city near Delhi that accommodated 250,000 visitors, guests and their servants.
Each Indian ruler or "native prince" was expected to perform proper obeisance to the King-Emperor by bowing three times before him, then backing away without turning.
Lilah Wingfield's observations are recorded in a book by her granddaughter, Jessica Douglas-Home, about her travels in India at a time when it is now realised that British colonial rule had reached its zenith. Within 40 years, India would be independent.
Although Mrs Douglas-Home inherited her grandmother's photos of the durbar, the diary detailing Miss Wingfield's views of the event was lost for many years before being discovered in an English secondhand bookshop and sent on to her.
"They reveal that the Gaekwar of Baroda - second in importance only to the Nizam of Hyderabad - broke every rule in [Viceroy of India] Lord Hardinge's book," Mrs Douglas-Home writes in A Glimpse of Empire.
Prof Farooqi says, however, that the maharajah has received recognition for the pioneering reforms he introduced - many ahead of their time - in Baroda.
He was the first Indian ruler to introduce compulsory and free primary education in his state in 1906, placing it far in advance of the rest of British India.
In addition he played a key role in the development of Baroda's textile and banking industries, expanded women's rights, improved access to education, banned child marriages and legislated against discrimination between different castes.
But he is probably most widely remembered in India today for his decision in 1913 to finance three years of postgraduate studies for BR Ambedkar, revered as the principal author of the Indian constitution, at Columbia University.
The maharajah's legacy is one which his grandson, Ranjitsinh Gaekwad, says is a "constant source of pride". "At that time it boosted the morale of all those working towards achieving independence for India," he said. "He wanted to instil in his countrymen a sense of pride and self esteem, which he achieved by this and many other actions. Baroda state was the one of the best administered states of British India."
Sunday, December 04, 2011
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