Muslim India in Anglo-Indian fiction

摘要

A significant aspect of Britain's colonial policy in India was to present itself as an improved and consequently desirable alternative to Muslim imperialism. This political strategy was in harmony with the traditional rivalry between Islam and the West, and Anglo-Indian discourse generally perpetuates the image of Muslims as being cruel, avaricious and oppressive. While such cultural prejudice is forthright in most expositional writing, where it is dictated by specific and immediate aims, biased depiction of Muslims in Anglo-Indian fictional writing reveals extremely complex attitudes in the authors, because these draw on sensibilities that are far more diffuse and enduring.;Philip Meadows Taylor, Rudyard Kipling and E. M. Forster have all observed Muslim India closely, but all three writers allow both conscious and unconscious prejudice to influence their work. Although they present duality as an intrinsic personality trait in Muslim characters, the dual characterisation of Muslims in their novels actually marks their own contradictory perception of Indian Muslims. This, in turn, exposes hidden affinities between the Anglo-Indian and Indian Muslim cultures and betrays inherent conflicts in the western self-image. The Anglo-Indian attempt to build polarities becomes particularly susceptible in the characterization of Muslim women, where the combined effects of culture and patriarchism throw into relief hidden contradictions of value.;The diminution of Indian Muslims in Anglo-Indian action is therefore tied to a built-in strategy of denial, dictated specifically by the dynamics of a latent fraternity between the two cultures. This denial of fraternity operates both ways; the disclaim contained in the language of British imperialism is countered by the denial implicit in the desecularised Islamic discourse adopted by Indian Muslims as a step towards political freedom.;One legacy of colonialism survives today as a split in the Indian Muslim community where opposite patterns of disavowal are being adopted, one defensively against the West and the other introspectively against religion. Both forms of disavowal and acknowledgement in Salman Rushdie's writing. In the reverse dynamics of present, post-migratory global cultures, Rushdie's particular insight into Islam bears an amazing resemblance to the inspired role of Muslim intellectuals in colonial India.