New Postcolonial Dialectics: An Intercultural Comparison of Indian and Nigerian English Plays |
Literary Criticism | Sarbani Sen Vengadasalam |
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019 | ISBN (10): 1-5275-2184-2 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-2184-1 |
pp 253 | 9,426 | $ 117.72

Sarbani Vengadasalam’s New Postcolonial Dialectics: An Intercultural Comparison of Indian and Nigerian English Plays published in 2019, an extension of her PhD thesis, is a plethora of insights that involve critical comments on the conditions of pre-Independent and post-Independent India along with Nigeria, as depicted in the selected literary texts. The book offers a comprehensive account of flux experienced amidst the transitions from being to becoming and back to nothing. The book highlights on the emerging need of a comparative dialectic through the lens of interculturalism.

The four texts selected for the purpose of analyzing the interwovenness of post-colonial cultures are Red Oleanders by Rabindranath Tagore, The Lion and The Jewel by Wole Soyinka, Procession by Badal Sircar and The Road by Wole Soyinka; the analyses of which form the crux of the individual chapters. The thesis elucidates phases of ‘Indian Interculturalism’ vis-a-vis ‘Nigerian Interculturalism’ and validate the ‘Intercultural Dialectic’.

Most authors have tried to examine how the cultural differences have been repressed. Some plot descriptions have a narrow focus as far as the dramaturgy is concerned while some others have been narrated elaborately. The plays are neither considered in isolation nor in a compartmentalized fashion. There is a constant comparison and, the interconnections come to limelight while reading a dedicated section on ‘Intercultural Analysis’ in chapters three, four and five.

The Chapter on ‘Colonial Encounter and the Intercultural Dialectic’ broadly discusses how culture is an individual as well as a collective phenomenon. The author mentions notable critics while giving her remarks on the paradoxical nature of liberation movements in India and Nigeria which ‘deglamorized and demystified foreign culture’ on one hand and demanded ‘foreign goods, science and industry’ on the other (10). It revolves around the inevitability the post-Independence condition where the ‘Other’ along with the ‘Self’ gets metamorphosed in the process of decolonization. In an attempt to create a scaffold for ‘Interculturalism as a dialectic’ Sarbani, discusses different schools of thought along with few Black theoreticians and urges the Commonwealth writers to be the champions of ‘intellectual illumination’.

Sarbani tries to glorify this in-betweenness in Tagore’s Red Oleanders by undoing the alternative facts projected by the British, which attempted to establish false claims about the ‘Orient’ as legitimate in the pre-Independence period. Similarly, in chapter three, the author sheds some light on the ‘Negritude’ movement in Africa which unnecessarily intellectualized problems by doing ivory-tower thinking and ignoring ground realities. The West perceived Africa ‘either as a paradise of innocence or as a jungle’ (140). Disregarding this erroneous belief in Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel, Sarbani Vengadasalam aptly comments that Nigeria seriously needed to find ‘means to feed the hungry and build roads, not an ideology that would take her to a dead end’ (105).

All dramatists (Tagore, Soyinka and Sircar) believed that theatre could usher social change. One point that strings the whole thesis of ‘colonial encounter and intercultural dialectic’ together is the mode of the theatrical. This book tries to depict how theatre quenches the thirst for creativity combined with an evolving sense of revolution. The playwrights tried to cater to the spatial-temporal, global and local needs of classes as well as masses. One such effective and experimental idea of ‘third theatre’ is efficiently discussed in chapter four. The text in consideration is Sircar’s Procession which becomes successful in breaking conventions by allowing audience participation while the play is staged. Every line of section 4.2 is loaded with analytical remarks. The reader cannot afford to skip a single line while reading the juxtapositions made with Tagore’s play in particular and absurd drama in general. The final text coming in the scheme of plays has a cutting edge in the intercultural discourse devised by the author. Soyinka’s The Road is compared to the earlier three texts and this helps in getting a 360^o analysis in addition to a macro view about the New Postcolonial Dialectics. However, even before discussing The Road as a text per se, the comparative analysis of The Lion and the Jewel and The Road in section 5.1 appears to be a misfit because the reader has to struggle to establish a substantial link with the latter.

The point of view of the author is envisaged through the thematic arrangement of the plays. The theme of diluting the East-West dichotomy is imposed through the settings; for instance, the allegorical ‘Yakshapuri’ in Tagore’s Red Oleanders depicts men as robots. In Sircar’s Procession, man is neither fully active nor fully aware; the condition worsens in Soyinka’s The Road as the title turns out to be a symbol for a deeper rot within Nigeria. There is a climax of emotions towards the end as the reader feels pity, degeneration and finally affinity to death because metaphorically, the road leads to physical, mental and moral decline. Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel falling second in the schema, gives a sense of asymmetry because the village of ‘Ilunjuinle’ represents clash of cultures to the hilt. The waging war between old and new could have been the starting point of the schema. Nevertheless, with the present arrangement of Indian and Nigerian plays, there is an affirmation of hopelessness seeped in the first play that percolates in the subsequent plays and later reaches an epitome of despair and stagnancy in the last play.

The idea of unfinalizability is a constant which gets heightened in The Road. The characters are faithful representations of the colonial era and the mouthpieces of society in the post-colonial era. The last chapter successfully draws attention to the similarities and differences in the dramaturgy of playwrights. The author has done justice in giving a fair glimpse of the hybridity involved in Procession, an extension of Sircar’s unconventional ‘third space’ as opposed to Jatra, Tamasha and Yoruban folk opera or the conventional proscenium theatre. What binds the whole text together is the combination of rural and city spaces of the natives trying to mediate colonialism interspersed with their own geographical locales. It is also interesting to note how the author gives sufficient space to discuss plays and texts that inspired authors like Tagore, Sircar and Soyinka who themselves have been the sources of inspiration to many a dramatists. This kind of intersection of texts generates meaning through a grid of literary pieces of art that indeed circulate social energy. The patterning of two authors and different texts or same author and different texts serves the purpose of developing a thesis of the New Postcolonial Dialectics. The Intercultural Dialectic finally stands valid after investigating four plays from the Indian and Nigerian context.

The book seems to be overpriced even after availing a discounted offer. However, the author’s extensive contribution in the field of postcolonial and comparative literature makes the book a valuable read.