A Journey from Colonial Frying Pan to Neocolial Fire

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Anindya Sundar Polley, Ph.D. Research Scholar, GGV, Bilaspur 1|Page A Journey from Colonial ‘frying pan’ to Neo-colonial ‘fire’: an analysis of the post-colonial identity crisis; with special reference to Paul Scott’s The Day of the Scorpion(1968) and Arvind Adiga’s The White Tiger(2008). Edward Said first uses the term „colonial discourse‟ in his Orientalism, which greatly implicates the ideas of centrality of Europe; an idea which is operated as the instrument of power. It enables the colonizers to believe that only their own Anglo European cultures are civilized and sophisticated, which gives rise to „othering‟. However, the ruling class, by hook (by exercising military force) or by crook (by hegemonic power, where without any active persuasion, by a more subtle and inclusive power over education media etc. [e.g. - Thomas Babington Macaulay‟s infamous Minute on Education system in India]) convinces the ruled class that they are doing nothing but carrying „White Man‟s Burden‟ i.e. to educate the primitive, and whatever happening in this process are for their good. As a consequence, as Homi K Bhaba observes, the colonial subject tries to „mimic‟ the colonizer, by adopting the colonizer‟s cultural habit, assumptions etc. However, the exact mimicry never takes place and ambivalent subjects are produced: a blurred copy of the colonizers. Thus a new transcultural „hybrid‟ form is produced which not only affects the identity of the colonized but also to the colonizers, as it appears as a threat to their existence. The most fascinating side of the colonialism is perhaps the capacity of the colonizers to tame the thought process of the colonized, irrespective of the situations that the formers are largely outnumbered than the laters. The Day of the Scorpion beautifully elucidates that scenario and the readers get the opportunity to experience the „classical
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