British Clubs in India and Reinforcement of British National/Imperial Identity: Tom Stoppard's Indian Ink

Year 2021, Issue: 10, 1 - 21, 10.09.2021

İmren Yelmiş

https://doi.org/10.46250/kulturder.931061

Abstract

Throughout the British Raj, British colonisers built many clubs in India. These clubs functioned as socialising areas for the British where they met, danced, listened to music, played polo/cricket, read newspapers and magazines, and held conversa-tions. They were also race-selective; they accepted particularly the British (and some of them accepted Europeans, as well) as members or guests, and excluded indigenous Indians. Moreover, they had been instruments for the British to enforce their national and imperial identities in India. In this sense, the British club in India was a microcosm of Britain, the representation of the British Empire’s ideologies and a symbol of racism. British colonisation in India, power relations and hegemonic struggles between the coloniser and the colonised in this colony had been significant issues that have attracted the attentions of many literary and historical figures, and have been topics for many literary works. Within the light of these points, and in relation to Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink, this article aims to discuss the function of the British club in India as an imperial institution that reflects the Eurocentric worldview, East-West dichotomy, and British national and imperial ideologies during the British Raj.

Keywords

British clubs in India, the British Raj, British national and imperial identity, Tom Stoppard, Indian Ink

Hindistan’daki İngiliz Kulüpleri ve Millî/Emperyalist Kimliğin Pekiştirilmesi: Tom Stoppard’ın Indian Ink Adlı Oyunu

Abstract

Britanya Hindistan’ında, İngiliz emperyalistler, sömürgecilik dönemindeki İngiliz hâkimiyeti boyunca pek çok kulüp kurmuşlardır. Bu binalar, İngilizlerin buluştuğu, dans ettiği, müzik dinlediği, polo/kriket oynadığı, gazete/dergi okuduğu ve sohbet ettiği alanlardı. Bu kulüpler, ayrıca, ırk ayrımı yapıyorlardı ve sadece İngiliz (bazıları da Avrupalı) üye ve misafirleri kabul edip yerli Hindistanlıları dışlıyorlardı. Bunun yanı sıra, bu mekânlar, İngilizlerin kendi millî ve emperyalist kimliğini güçlendirmek amacıyla kullandıkları bir araç özelliği göstermekteydi. Bu bağlamda, İngiliz kulübü, Britanya’nın küçük bir yansıması, Britanya İmparatorluğu’nun ideolojilerinin temsili ve ırkçılık sembolüydü. Hindistan'daki İngiliz sömürgeciliği, sömürgeci ile sömürgeci arasındaki güç ilişkileri ve bu sömürgedeki hegemonik mücadeleler, birçok edebi ve tarihi şahsiyetin dikkatini çeken önemli konular olmuş ve birçok edebi esere konu olmuştur. Bu makale, tüm bu noktalar ışığında ve Tom Stopard’ın Indian Ink adlı oyunu çerçevesinde, Hindistan’daki İngiliz kulüplerinin, İngiliz hâkimiyeti boyunca sahip olduğu Avrupa-merkezcilik görüşünü, Doğu-Batı ikilemini ve İngiliz millî ve emperyalist kimliğini yansıtan bir işlevi olduğunu tartışmayı amaçlamaktadır.

Keywords

Hindistan’daki İngiliz kulüpleri, Hindistan’da İngiliz hâkimiyeti, İngiliz millî ve emperyalist kimliği, Tom Stoppard, Indian Ink

References

• Behdad, Ali (2006). Kolonyal Çözülme Çağında Oryantalizm. Trans. Sibel Erduman and Berkay Ersöz. İstanbul: Chiviyazıları.
• Bhabha, Homi K. (2002). The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge.
• Bhatia, Nandi (2009). “Reinventing India through ‘A Quite Witty Pastiche’: Reading Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink”. Modern Drama, 52(2): 220-237.
• Blaut, J. Morris (1993). The Colonizer’s Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History. New York and London: The Guilford P.
• Boehmer, Elleke (1995). Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors. Oxford: Oxford UP.
• Cohen, Benjamin B. (2009). “Networks of Sociability: Women’s Clubs in Colonial and Postcolonial India”. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 30(3): 169-195.
• Crane, Ralph (2011). “Reading the Club as Colonial Island in E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India and George Orwell’s Burmese Days”. Island Studies Journal, 6(1): 17-28. Cutts, Elmer H. (1953). “The Background of Macaulay’s Minute”. The American Historical Review, 58(4): 824-853.
• Dickens, Charles (Jr) (1882). Dickens’s Dictionary of London. London: Macmillan & Co.
• Hart, Catherine Elizabeth (2012). English or Anglo-Indian?: Kipling and the Shift in the Representation of the Coloniser in the Discourse of the British Raj. Doctoral Dissertation. Ohio: The Ohio State University.
• James, Lawrence (1997). Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India. London: Little, Brown and Company.
• Lee, Josephine (2002). “In the Native State and Indian Ink”. Ed. Katherine E. Kelly. The Cambridge Companion to Tom Stoppard. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 38-52.
• Loomba, Ania (2000). Colonialism/ Postcolonialism. London and New York: Routledge.
• McLeod, John (2012). Beginning Postcolonialism. Manchester and New York: Manchester UP.
• Orwell, George (1934). Burmese Days. London: Penguin.
• Pafford, Mark (1989). Kipling’s Indian Fiction. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Patterson, Steven (2009). The Cult of Imperial Honour in British India. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Prakash, Gyan (1994). “After Colonialism”. Ed. Gyan Prakash. After colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements. Princeton: Princeton UP, 3-17.
• Russell, Richard Rankin (2004). “‘It will Make Us Friends’: Cultural Reconciliation in Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink”. Journal of Modern Literature, 27(3): 1-18.
• Said, Edward (1979). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.
• Singh, Jyotsna G. (1996). Colonial Narratives/Cultural Dialogues: “Discoveries” of India in the Language of Colonialism. London and New York: Routledge.
• Sinha, Mrinalini (2001). Britishness, Clubbability, and the Colonial Public Sphere: The Genealogy of an Imperial Institution in Colonial India. Journal of British Studies, 40 (4): 489-521.
• Smith, Anthony D. (1991). National Identity. New York: Penguin.
• Stoppard, Tom (1999). Plays five: Arcadia, The Real Thing, Night and Day, Indian Ink, Hapgood. Kent: Faber and Faber.
• Timbs, John (1867). Curiosities of London. London: J. S. Virtue and Co. Ltd.
• URL-1: Dhillon, Amrit (2017). “‘No dogs or Indians’: Colonial Britain Still Rules at India’s Private Clubs”. The Sydney Morning Herald. https://www.smh.com.au/world/no-dogs-or-ndans-colonal-brtan-stll-rules-at-ndas-prvate-clubs-20170630-gx1vtk.html (Access: 05.08.2020).
• URL-2: Macaulay, Thomas Babington (1835). “Minute by the Hon'ble T. B. Macaulay”. http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00general-links/macaulay/txt_minute_education_1835.html (Access: 15. 08.2019).
• URL-3: Milne-Smith, Amy (2013). “Imperial Club Life in London”. http://www.victorianweb.org/history/leisure/imperial.html (Access: 21.08. 2019).
• URL-4: “Oriental Club”. (n.d). https://www.orientalclub.org.uk/ (Access: 12.02.2021).
• URL-5: Srinivasa-Raghavan, TCA. (2015). “Club Culture … A British Legacy”. Rotary News. https://rotarynewsonline.org/club-culture/ (Access: 21.01.2021).