11-25-2008, 11:54 PM
<b>Impressing the Whites: The New International Slavery</b>
08.05.05 | 25 Comments | Filed Under Uncategorized
Is the title of the latest book I read. Two words are sufficient to sum up the bookâs review: powerful and path-breaking. But Iâll prattle along.
The bookâs title almost reveals its theme: that colonialism is not dead. It is thriving inside the minds of both the formerly-colonized as well as the âliberalâ (read: white) people. And its dangers are compounded because it is invisible. Richard Crasta the author, uses the word invisible to denote the neo-colonized who willingly wear the slave badge and proudly strut around with an air of superiority.
The book is a collection of essays which follow a logical sequence in exploring the theme of cultural colonization. A satire, it is written in thrilleresque, racy language, which breezes along holding you in its grip. It took me all of 5 hours to read it. And changed so many (mis)conceptions I had taken for granted so far.
The fact that it is not popular owes precisely to the cause of the hard truths it reveals. An Amazon search revealed that it is âout of print/limited availabilityâ and thereâs not a single review: editorial or otherwise. Crasta, a Mangalorean Catholic by birthânow settled in the USâpithily recounts the hardships he had to face trying to get it published. And notes that the most opposition came from the Indians (settled in the US) themselves. He calls this phenomenon the Brown Manâs Burden.
The essays are as sarcastic as they are witty and insightful. For example, he uses Coconuts to describe the mentally-colonized Indian. Coconut because it is brown on the outside whereas the real stuff inside, is white. This new form of colonialism Crasta demonstrates, has successfully created entire colonies of Brown Sahibs whose disdain for the ânativesâ far exceeds that of the whites.
The author correctly traces the roots of this intellectual slavery to the Macualayite educational system that created intellectual wimps whose inferiority complex regarding their own culture has itself become a leash in the hands of their white masters. In the US as Crasta observes, Indians are the most docile of all âSouth Asianâ immigrants; in sharp contrast to the Chinese immigrants who let their hair down in countrymen-only gatherings, laugh boisterously and generally make merry, their Indian counterparts in similar social settings behave more stiff-upper-lippedly than the white men themselves, but weâve not even been introduced.
Crasta profiles such class of people as hailing typically from middle-to-upper middle class families who have had the typical Maculayite education and their dream of âarriving in lifeâ is to get the coveted Green Card. Unaware of their roots, combined with a superficial knowledge of âIndian culture,â they try throughout their lives to escapeâinstead of understandâfrom their rootlessness by denigrating India and trying to become whiter than the whites.
The book gives us a multitude of methods Indians use to impress the whites. The foremost is to pander to their stereotyped ideas about India and Indians. While a majority of those ideas are downright false or donât exist at all, the Coconuts ensure their perpetuity by:
Reinforcing these biases through fiction and media
Clamping down dissentingâor opposingâvoices
Richard Crasta singles out the literary domain to prove his thesis, his chosen targets: Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, and Arundhati Roy and Pankaj Mishra, to an extent. He traces their literary careers in some detail and shows how they have become the spokesmen for the West to understand India. It is their ideas of India that the West accepts. And perverselyâand it is really sadâ<b>any Indian author who wants to get published here is rejected, nay told outrightly to âgo get published out there first.â</b> The rules of the game are stark clear. Thus, any Indian writer with a different portrayal of India is not allowed entry by these gatekeepers of the white masters: the writers of Rushdieâs ilk.
The Westâs interest in the âThird Worldââif at allâis very limited. As Crasta says in the essay, Monica Lewinskyâs thong underwear, the West is more interested in the political, social, economic and philosophical implications of Pamela Andersonâs breast implants and Monicaâs thong than the suffering lot of several African countries. Their interest in the Third World merely serves as a diversion from the serious issues of thongs and boobs. Which is what the Third World house niggers have shrewdly understood. This explains the phenomenal success of hundreds of Indian âSpiritualâ gurus whoâve never had it better than now. They simplify Indian philosophy and present it in the form of easily digestible sound/newsbytes to the ever-hungry and spiritually-dead West.
Returning to literature, Crasta calls the writers of Rushdieâs breed as âpublic school writers.â This alludes to their educationâin elite schools like the St Stephens where children are taught to denigrate the Indian heritage. That Pankaj Mishra called David Godwin after reading Arundhati Royâs manuscript instead of an Indian publisher is a beacon for how things are skewed.
And then thereâs an insight into the politics of names. This is extremely subtle but powerful. <b>Arundhati Royâs real name is Margaret Roy but the West refuses to publish books authored by an Indian who has a non-Hindu name. From experience, Crasta says he was promised a hefty advance for one of his novels the moment he said he was contemplating a change of his name to Avatar Prabhu</b>. Thereâs also a converse of this theory, which again is aimed to please the whites. Changing Indian names to âAmericanâ names so that they can pronounce/remember them easily. Thus a Sharatchandra Rao becomes Sonny Rao, a Chinmay Patel becomes Chris Patel, and Jaithirth Rao becomes Jerry Rao. Ever heard of a Pringnitz change his (her?) name to Pran, or Vaughn (pronounced âvonâ but how the hell am I supposed to know?) to Vani? As Rajiv Malhotra says
The [Washington] Post should be wary of Indian writers who are in the habit of dishing out the negative stereotypes which are easy to sell in the American market. It should not assume that an ethnic name implies competence in that culture. To become aware of the sepoy syndrome, a good starting point would be Richard Crastaâs courageous book explaining this phenomenon.
Crasta also calls the male Indian writers neutered or in plain language, eunuchs. To figure out why he calls them so, buy the book. Itâll be well worth your time and money .
http://www.sandeepweb.com/2005/08/05/impre...tional-slavery/
08.05.05 | 25 Comments | Filed Under Uncategorized
Is the title of the latest book I read. Two words are sufficient to sum up the bookâs review: powerful and path-breaking. But Iâll prattle along.
The bookâs title almost reveals its theme: that colonialism is not dead. It is thriving inside the minds of both the formerly-colonized as well as the âliberalâ (read: white) people. And its dangers are compounded because it is invisible. Richard Crasta the author, uses the word invisible to denote the neo-colonized who willingly wear the slave badge and proudly strut around with an air of superiority.
The book is a collection of essays which follow a logical sequence in exploring the theme of cultural colonization. A satire, it is written in thrilleresque, racy language, which breezes along holding you in its grip. It took me all of 5 hours to read it. And changed so many (mis)conceptions I had taken for granted so far.
The fact that it is not popular owes precisely to the cause of the hard truths it reveals. An Amazon search revealed that it is âout of print/limited availabilityâ and thereâs not a single review: editorial or otherwise. Crasta, a Mangalorean Catholic by birthânow settled in the USâpithily recounts the hardships he had to face trying to get it published. And notes that the most opposition came from the Indians (settled in the US) themselves. He calls this phenomenon the Brown Manâs Burden.
The essays are as sarcastic as they are witty and insightful. For example, he uses Coconuts to describe the mentally-colonized Indian. Coconut because it is brown on the outside whereas the real stuff inside, is white. This new form of colonialism Crasta demonstrates, has successfully created entire colonies of Brown Sahibs whose disdain for the ânativesâ far exceeds that of the whites.
The author correctly traces the roots of this intellectual slavery to the Macualayite educational system that created intellectual wimps whose inferiority complex regarding their own culture has itself become a leash in the hands of their white masters. In the US as Crasta observes, Indians are the most docile of all âSouth Asianâ immigrants; in sharp contrast to the Chinese immigrants who let their hair down in countrymen-only gatherings, laugh boisterously and generally make merry, their Indian counterparts in similar social settings behave more stiff-upper-lippedly than the white men themselves, but weâve not even been introduced.
Crasta profiles such class of people as hailing typically from middle-to-upper middle class families who have had the typical Maculayite education and their dream of âarriving in lifeâ is to get the coveted Green Card. Unaware of their roots, combined with a superficial knowledge of âIndian culture,â they try throughout their lives to escapeâinstead of understandâfrom their rootlessness by denigrating India and trying to become whiter than the whites.
The book gives us a multitude of methods Indians use to impress the whites. The foremost is to pander to their stereotyped ideas about India and Indians. While a majority of those ideas are downright false or donât exist at all, the Coconuts ensure their perpetuity by:
Reinforcing these biases through fiction and media
Clamping down dissentingâor opposingâvoices
Richard Crasta singles out the literary domain to prove his thesis, his chosen targets: Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, and Arundhati Roy and Pankaj Mishra, to an extent. He traces their literary careers in some detail and shows how they have become the spokesmen for the West to understand India. It is their ideas of India that the West accepts. And perverselyâand it is really sadâ<b>any Indian author who wants to get published here is rejected, nay told outrightly to âgo get published out there first.â</b> The rules of the game are stark clear. Thus, any Indian writer with a different portrayal of India is not allowed entry by these gatekeepers of the white masters: the writers of Rushdieâs ilk.
The Westâs interest in the âThird Worldââif at allâis very limited. As Crasta says in the essay, Monica Lewinskyâs thong underwear, the West is more interested in the political, social, economic and philosophical implications of Pamela Andersonâs breast implants and Monicaâs thong than the suffering lot of several African countries. Their interest in the Third World merely serves as a diversion from the serious issues of thongs and boobs. Which is what the Third World house niggers have shrewdly understood. This explains the phenomenal success of hundreds of Indian âSpiritualâ gurus whoâve never had it better than now. They simplify Indian philosophy and present it in the form of easily digestible sound/newsbytes to the ever-hungry and spiritually-dead West.
Returning to literature, Crasta calls the writers of Rushdieâs breed as âpublic school writers.â This alludes to their educationâin elite schools like the St Stephens where children are taught to denigrate the Indian heritage. That Pankaj Mishra called David Godwin after reading Arundhati Royâs manuscript instead of an Indian publisher is a beacon for how things are skewed.
And then thereâs an insight into the politics of names. This is extremely subtle but powerful. <b>Arundhati Royâs real name is Margaret Roy but the West refuses to publish books authored by an Indian who has a non-Hindu name. From experience, Crasta says he was promised a hefty advance for one of his novels the moment he said he was contemplating a change of his name to Avatar Prabhu</b>. Thereâs also a converse of this theory, which again is aimed to please the whites. Changing Indian names to âAmericanâ names so that they can pronounce/remember them easily. Thus a Sharatchandra Rao becomes Sonny Rao, a Chinmay Patel becomes Chris Patel, and Jaithirth Rao becomes Jerry Rao. Ever heard of a Pringnitz change his (her?) name to Pran, or Vaughn (pronounced âvonâ but how the hell am I supposed to know?) to Vani? As Rajiv Malhotra says
The [Washington] Post should be wary of Indian writers who are in the habit of dishing out the negative stereotypes which are easy to sell in the American market. It should not assume that an ethnic name implies competence in that culture. To become aware of the sepoy syndrome, a good starting point would be Richard Crastaâs courageous book explaining this phenomenon.
Crasta also calls the male Indian writers neutered or in plain language, eunuchs. To figure out why he calls them so, buy the book. Itâll be well worth your time and money .
http://www.sandeepweb.com/2005/08/05/impre...tional-slavery/