[Reader-list] (fwd) article on Edward Said

[sanjay ghosh]

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Extract from an article on Edward Said:

...His major work, Orientalism, was published in 1978, and made him world famous. It was translated into 36 languages, and continues to prompt debate and inform argument against certain ideological and racist attitudes that still shape ideology in the United States and Britain ...

... Here, we return to the subject of silence, and in Orientalism he explores how a liberal, progressive confidence in civilisation sought to denigrate the achievements of other civilisations. This confidence is enshrined in a famous minute on Indian education, written by Macaulay for the East India Company in 1832, which Said discusses early in Orientalism.

Macaulay admitted he had "no knowledge of either Sanskrit or Arabic", but went on to assert: "The intrinsic superiority of the western literature is indeed fully admitted by those members of the committee who support the oriental plan of education ... It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the paltry abridgements used at preparatory schools in England."

As Said remarks, this is no "mere expression" of an opinion, because Macaulay has an ethnocentric opinion with ascertainable results: speaking from a position of power he was able to make an entire subcontinent submit to studying in a language not its own. It was reading Said on Macaulay and then reading the complete minute that made me realise that the beautiful standard English RK Narayan employs in his subtle novels is pitched at such a perfect level - a level with no vernacular resonance - that it reads, with a deliberate irony, as though it is translated from Narayan's native Tamil. Narayan, I remember, was attacked by VS Naipaul, and from time to time Said criticises Naipaul as a writer who tells western power what it wants to hear about its former colonies.


Full article:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1311404,00.html