Brown Man’s Burden

Boarding schools play were originally set up in the mountains by the English around the 1860's. The mountain weather was more bearable for the English especially during the summer months when the temperatures in the planes maintained a steady 40 degrees centigrade. These schools were mainly centered around hill stations such as Kodiakanal, Masoorie, Naini Tal and Shimla. Here the heat and dust was kept to a minimum and so were the multitudes of Indians.

Boarding schools played an important role for the English children growing up in India. They were safe havens where an atmosphere of the English education system could be recreated and the influence of India could minimised. A number of English families who lived in India at the time were involved with the army or the civil services. These jobs involved traveling. Boarding schools provided an isle of stability where the administrators of tomorrow could be educated. They could be educated by a system that had further use for them in the future. The education instilled values of discipline, team work and loyalty to ones school and section. The recognition of authority, systems of heirachy, following of orders and conformity were instilled from an early stage. This might could explain the success students from boarding schools still have in the armed forces today.

Today they play an important part in the educating the Indian elite. The boarding school I went to was called Sherwood College. It is situated in the hill station of Naini Tal which is 7000 ft above sea level in the Indian Himalaya. The school was set up in 1869. The education had a strong emphasis on tradition, school spirit, discipline, the English language and the maintenance of its elitist position in the Indian education system. The motto was 'Merit qui que pal mal'; let each one merit the prize he deserves. I didn't win too many of those prises so maybe that could explain my dissatisfaction with the system I was forced through. I won three certificates in 11 years of school. The school was divided into four houses: Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, Allen-A-Dale and Friar Tuck, all charecters out of the English folk tale. Each student was assigned to a house and was expected to pledge his loyalty to his group.

The medium of instruction was English, though Hindi, the so-called national language was compulsory till year 10. The three main subjects were English, Hindi and Maths. If you failed in Hindi or Maths you could sometimes scrape through, but, if you failed in English you had to repeat the year.

English was taught in two segments English and English literature. It was only in year 11 that a teacher pointed out to us that the subject should be called Literature in English rather than English literature. Officially the subject name remained which seemed reasonable as the bulk of what we studied was English literature anyway.

In junior school, i.e. year 2 to 5, we had a text that was called The Radiant Reader. This was a collection of stories that had different volumes for each year. I don't remember exactly what the stories were from the earlier ones but one comes to mind is a story called Ricky Ticky Tarvy by Rudyard Kipling. It was about a snake that invaded the sanctuary of an English family in India and how a little mongoose killed it. The story outlined a little isle of colonialism, bungalow, garden and the happy English family, surrounded by the outside of India with all its exotic dangers such as the cobra. The house, garden and family was presented as the 'normal' situation and the snake was the 'abnormal' element. In order to restore the balance the åbnormal' element had to be eradicated.

This story was written by Rudyard Kipling an English writer. It was an English perspective on India. We were taught to identify with the English family rather than with the snake. In actual fact, the cobra is the 'normal' element in India and the English family was the 'abnormal' element. Therefore we were being taught to identify with the outsider. We were being educated to see our country through imperial eyes, to see Indianness as the other.

This perspective was very common. In later years we were to study books such as Man Eaters of Kumaon. They were written by an English hunter, Jim Corbett who hunted man eating tigers and leopards in the 1930's. The stories were beautifully written and I own everyone of his books. This again was a view of India through English eyes. The ferocious carnivores preyed on cowering fearful natives and the brave English hunter blew them out of existence with his big guns.

The stories all had common elements. The Englishman was always in control and the natives always viewed his presence as a kind of reward. The villagers were always presented as weaker than; weaker than the tiger, the Englishman, the elements, disease, superstition. Their houses and weapons were far too inferior to keep the threat at bay. The villagers always treated him with respect and called him 'sahib', which means sir. He, on the other hand never called an Indian 'sahib'. When there was trouble the villagers always came to the Englishman to seek help, and the he always obliged. The Englishman with his superior courage, weaponry and system of belief was their only chance. He always got his target.

We studied another beautifully written collection of stories from a book called Jungle Picture by Norah Burke, another English writer. These were stories about the villages on the edge of the jungle; they involved every cliche you could imagine man eating tigers, wild elephants, crocodiles the hungrily devoured unfortunate Indians and ofcourse the brave English hunter. These stories had a profound effect on my imagination. When I think about those stories I remember crystal clear images of rivers, fish, jungle and the like. I still know most of the stories with names such as The Big Green River, Ginger and The Blue Bead. But these were all stories about India written from an English perspective.

They contained the same ideals that reflected colonialism. The natives were either the servants, the villagers, the tracker, the victims or the beautiful village girl. They rarely had a voice, opinion or problem with English occupation of their territory. The English were always in a dominant role the hunter, the owner of the house, the narrator, teacher or the one telling the frightened natives not to worry. Never was there a conflict of interest between the two. The power structure was always accepted, the native was subservient to the English authority figure. It was presented as normal and nott one of the students or teachers seemed to have a problem with it.

Edward Said writes in reference to English politition Balfour writing about Egypt, "It does not occur to Balfour to let the Egyptian speak for himself, since presumably any Egyptian who would speak out is more likely to be "the agitator who wishes to raise difficulties than the good native who overlooks the "difficulties of foreign domination (Pg 33, Orientalism). He goes on to say that the imperial attitude was: "that they (the Egyptians) are a subject race, dominated by a race that knows them and what is good for them better than they could possibly know themselves" (pg 34, Orientialism), therefore why make them speak for themselves.

None of the books I remember reading from the library were written by Indian authors. The names of books in the library I remember are Secret Seven, Hardy Boys, The Three Investigators, Coral Island, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe and piles of National Geographic. In later years there were the pulp fiction novels of Wilbur Smith, Sydney Sheldon, Eric Van some thing or the other. I can't remember seeing one Indian name amongst the books in the library. Indians were often the subject. If at all, our stories were mentioned, they were being told to us through the means and voice of the other. This reflects the imperial notion of, "They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented" (pg 1, Orientialism).

Great Indian authors were often mentioned in history lessons. The works of Indian reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy and poets like Tagore were often praised but we never got to see them. We might have studied the odd poem but I really don't remember. For some reason the English poets seem to have had a much greater impact.

The plays put on by the school were always based somewhere other than in India. The actors always had English names. Some of the plays were Ten Little Nigger Boys by Ayn Rand, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Best Days of My Life on the experience of studying in England and musicals such as the Mikado. There were plays on the Second World War, the Germans were obviously the bad guys. The only plays that were set in India were the Hindi plays which were scrapped after a few years for some reason or the other. They weren't taken as seriously as the plays in English anyway so I don't think their presence was missed much.

The poetry we studied was more balanced though English poets such as Wordsworth, Byron, Tennyson and Blake were considered to be of higher quality than as Indian poets such as Nizem Ezikel. I can still remember poems on the charge of the Light Brigade and the beauty of the Lake District. Tiger, Tiger was another example of seen another aspect of India through the eyes of the other. Lines such as, 'Did he who make the lamb make thee?' shows Blake wondering if his Christian god made this terrible beast. I wonder why he didn't pick one out of the 350, 000 Hindu gods? Didn't he consider any of them capable of creation?

Our school system is based on the English 10 + 2 system. In year 10 and 12 we have big examinations called Indian Certificate School Examination and the Indian Secondary Certificate Examination. These are board examinations that are marked by external examiners. In the pre independence days the papers were sent to England to be marked. For these examinations we studied 'serious' literature.

In year 10 we studied two books Julius Caesar by Shakespeare and The Village by the Sea by Anita Desai. The latter is a well known Indian writer. We studied both books in great detail. Ofcourse we allocated more time for Shakespeare than we did for Anita Desai. We studied Shakespeare for a little over a year. We did line by line break downs of the Shakespeare play and were made to memorise these huge answers on all the possible implications and references. We were grilled with the who said these words, to who, why and when. Till date I would have remember if someone in the mob had burped or passed wind. The Anita Desai book we stripped down but the emphasis was more on the narrative as opposed to the language, implications and references. If all of us had to place one over the other in order of importance there would be no doubt as to which one would outweigh the other.

In year 12 we studied Macbeth by you know who and Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw. Here again were two texts that are reflective of imperialism. We had to labor under the oppression of our English teacher who I remember saying, "The queens English is the perfect example of how English should be spoken". The implications of this comment are not too subtle. Even though I could read write and speak well I would never be that good. I could never hope to attain perfection. The general consensus among the other teachers was the BBC was to be used as a reference if we had any doubts about the pronunciation of any word.

At the time we studied Pygmalion I didn't identify with Miss Doolittle but looking back I see myself in exactly the same position as she was in. Here were we, the natives, being educated by this figure who not unlike Henry Higgins, looked up to the English upper-class as being the desirable standard if one wants to be considered cultured. I remember my English teacher sneering at students for not understanding what they were teaching, attributing our faults to 'lack of breeding'. One would say 'CPBS' when we didn't understand something. I took me years to realise CPBS stood for, "Casting Pearls Before Swine".

We devoted over a year to studying Shakespeare. Again it was the same line by line breakdown that was followed by examination after examination. We had to watch versions of the play on video. The BBC productions were once again given preference over any other. Shakespeare was undoubtedly on the highest level of literature. His writing was considered to be the benchmark of all writing. 'You are no Shakespeare' was an insult used to put down anyone who thought they were smarter than they were supposed to be.

What I want to point out here is that, through the years of our education the emphasis was on English Literature. Even thought he subject was meant to be Literature in English the name and content remained heavily biased towards English Literature. Indian authors were marginalised. Their work was largely invisible. The plays, poetry, novels, song, tradition, ritual and religion was all English. There was very little recognition of the presence of an Indian opinion and even if there was it was given less weight than the dominant English perspective.

The boarding school is still so isolated, insulated and resistant to change that the authorities still perpetrate the old values. In the name of tradition certain books, values and ideals have remained as a hangover from the days of the Raj. The implicit nature of the message they are perpetuating is still very colonial. 'Indian' is still considered inferior in a number of ways and this is all too obvious in the way literature is being taught.