Jamila Gavin presents a wide range of discrimination in ‘ The Wheel of Surya’. She portrays an accurate and realistic use of discrimination during the post and pre partition of India, the time period in which the book is set. This essay explores the different types of discrimination and the ways in which they are presented.
When Marvinder and Jaspal arrive in England they are met with a “ bleak and blasted landscape ”. Not only do they find themselves in an unfamiliar land alone and surrounded by strangers they also encounter unprovoked discrimination.
Racial discrimination becomes a very common and dominant part of Marvinder and Jaspal’s life when they move to England. Racists comments such as “ Why don’t you wash blacky! Or are you so dirty it won’t come off ” and “ It’s all God’s fault. He left them blackies in the oven too long and they got burned ” taunt them during their time in England. Gavin shows in her writing how these more obvious types of discrimination were used in this time to bully the person and to make them feel small and vulnerable. In this case comments such as these made the children feel isolated and even more cut off from their ‘family’. Gavin presents these racist comments mostly through verbal communication but sometimes through actions such as. “ They giggled and pointed and stuck out there tongues ”. This suggests that people in England were so unused to seeing Indian children that they found them funny to look at because they looked different so they made fun out of them. Gavin also shows in her writing that discrimination occurred during this time due to ignorance. Examples of this include “ shouldn’t think they’ve ever sat on chairs at a table before ”. People during this time believed that be...
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...ng into a heathen, no doubt about it, poor child. ” This is a discriminating comment about the native people in India. The word heathen in this context suggests that they are uncultured, uncivilized or even savage.
Gavin has explored discrimination in such detail that makes it seem more realistic than a firsthand account of this time. She explores in ‘The Wheel of Surya’ the idea that many people during this time held. This was that anything different was inferior and not to be trusted. ` She has presented it in a knowledgeable, effective way as by including subtle discrimination, such as the way people treat the children, to the more obvious discrimination, such as unjust words said to Jhoti. Through the way she presents small slights and slurs in the everyday lives of her characters, she builds up a well-rounded picture of inequality, prejudice and bigotry.
Throughout the text, the white colonists are very racist towards the Aboriginals. Even cattle, horses and white women are placed hierarchically higher in society than the black people. In response to this, Astley constructs all narrations to be written through the eyes of the Laffey family, who are respectful towards Aboriginals, hence not racist, and despise societal ideologies. By making the narration of the text show a biased point of view, readers are provoked to think and feel the same way, foregrounding racism shown in the ideologies of early Australian society, and showing that Aboriginals are real people and should receive the same treatment to that given to white people. “They looked human, they had all your features.” (pg 27) There was, however, one section in the text whose narrative point of view was not given by a character in the Laffey family. This instead was given by a voice of an Aboriginal woman, when the Aboriginal children were being taken away from their families. By giving voice to the Aboriginal society, the reader is able to get a glimpse of their point of view on the matter, which once again shows that society was racist, and Aboriginals were treated harshly.
people of different ethnicities. Such harm is observed in the history of North America when the Europeans were establishing settlements on the North American continent. Because of European expansion on the North American continent, the first nations already established on the continent were forced to leave their homes by the Europeans, violating the rights and freedoms of the first nations and targeting them with discrimination; furthermore, in the history of the United States of America, dark skinned individuals were used as slaves for manual labour and were stripped of their rights and freedoms by the Americans because of the racist attitudes that were present in America. Although racist and prejudice attitudes have weakened over the decades, they persist in modern societies. To examine a modern perspective of prejudice and racism, Wayson Choy’s “I’m a Banana and Proud of it” and Drew Hayden Taylor’s “Pretty Like a White Boy: The Adventures of a Blue-Eye Ojibway” both address the issues of prejudice and racism; however, the authors extend each others thoughts about the issues because of their different definitions, perspectives, experiences and realities.
As a small child, Peekay had dealt with inequality first-hand, which gave him the drive to make sure no one else feels the disrespect and pain he had felt. At boarding school, The Judge wanted to “march every rooinek bastard into the sea” (24). Since Peekay is an English boy and often called a rooinek, The Judge’s prejudice comment was
The bus was full of people with only one black person and he was smiling and polite he was still viewed as an outsider “I was embarrassed by him” (Andre Levy 691) she was just like him but felt embarrassed by him because he was like an alien to the others. The author talks about how she came to london from the caribbean “that made my family very odd. We were immigrants. Outsiders.” (Andrea Levy 692) living in london at that time and not being white instantly made you an outsider. “On one occasion my mom did not have enough money to buy food for our dinner. None at all. She worried that she might be forced into the humiliation of asking someone…..” (Andrea Levy 693) in the caribbean there family was middle class but in london they were poor. The effect the british colonization even made her family be ashamed of other caribbeans and isolated themselves from other black caribbeans and wanted nothing to do with them. This brainwashed the author she even says “in my efforts to be as british as i could be, i was completely indifferent to jamaica. None of my friends knew anything about the caribbean. They didn't know where it was, or who lived there, or why. And they had no curiosity about it beyond asking why black people were in this country. It was too foreign and therefore not worth knowing.” (Andrea Levy 694) the author grew up thinking that white people were superior and wanted to fit in which meant abandoning her true self and dropping her cultures and beliefs just to be accepted. The author later gets a wakeup call when she was working part time for a sex-education project for young people “one day the staff had to take part in a racism awareness course. We were asked to split into two groups, black and white. I walked over to the white side the room. It was, ironically where i felt most at
For example, in the local school, stereotypes such as the image of the ‘wild man’ are consolidated by claiming that there was cannibalism among the indigenous people of the northwest coast (Soper-Jones 2009, 20; Robinson 2010, 68f.). Moreover, native people are still considered to be second-class citizens, which is pointed out by Lisamarie’s aunt Trudy, when she has been harassed by some white guys in a car: “[Y]ou’re a mouthy Indian, and everyone thinks we’re born sluts. Those guys would have said you were asking for it and got off scot-free”
In conclusion, the testimony of Maya Rani on the Partition of India provides a good overview of the fateful events leading to that disastrous decision made by the British, and the fatal suffering of innocent civilians that has passively caught between the crossfire of communal hatred. The importance of her oral testimony to history from a gendered, female, child, and caste perspective is severely underrated as the actions of a nation through her eyes (and other oral histories) are paramount to understanding the emotions, reasoning and social human logic behind the events that unfolded on the ground as more than just facts, dates and statistics on a piece of paper.
The author and her friends, Judewin and Thowin, alone with other children got excited about an adventure in to a new land. Their excitement was short because of their painful experiences from the white’s ignorance of the Indian culture. When a white women saw her arrived the school, she tossed her up in the air several times. It was insulting for her because of against the Indian culture. Her stay at the school was other painful experience.
In order to raise awareness of the staggering injustices, oppression and mass poverty that plague many Indian informal settlements (referred to as slum), Katherine Boo’s novel, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, unveils stories of typical life in a Mumbai slum. Discussing topics surrounding gender relations, environmental issues, and corruption, religion and class hierarchies as well as demonstrating India’s level of socioeconomic development. Encompassing this, the following paper will argue that Boo’s novel successfully depicts the mass social inequality within India. With cities amongst the fastest growing economies in South Eastern Asia, it is difficult to see advances in the individual well-being of the vast majority of the nation. With high
“Despite so many reforms, the idea of untouchability is still very much a part of Indian life." (doc A) There are hundreds of millions of people trapped under the poverty line in India, who can’t escape. They are kept in a cycle of poverty with no end. However, instead of getting the help that they need, they are being pushed further down into poverty, leading to generations of families trapped. The cycle of poverty in India is being pushed along by discrimination of the poor. The poor are discriminated against by being denied health care, pushed out of school, and targeted by officials, which leads to more poverty.
In conclusion, this novel revolves around the theme of discrimination and how we are actually similar to the characters created by John Wyndham. People are still being discriminated in our present society due to their races and religion and in a sense we are like Joseph Strorm, if we continue to discriminate people due to their differences as it just means that we can’t accept change and that isn’t any different from Joseph Strorm.
Susan Bayly. (1999). Caste, Society and Politics in India: from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age. Cambridge University Press
Mahasweta Devi, always writes for deprived section of people. She is a loving daughter, a clerk, a lecturer, a journalist, an editor, a novelist, a dramatist and above all an ardent social activist. Her stories bring to the surface not only the misery of the completely ignored tribal people, but also articulate the oppression of w...
Aravind Adiga’s debut novel The White Tiger published in 2008, and a winner of Booker Prize examines the issues of religion, caste, loyalty, corruption, urbanization and poverty in India. The novel besides receiving critical acclaim was also lambasted by some in India for giving in to western prejudices and playing up to their image of a poverty stricken, slum governed country. Some even went to the extent of calling it a western conspiracy to deny the country’s economic progress. It seems ...
The poem “Minority” written by Imtiaz Dharker uses contrasts in imagery and a change in point of view in order to convey the “foreigner” (1) and the message to “you” (44). The opening line of the poem introduces its theme of separation and otherness. The poem begins “I was born a foreigner” (1) using the 1st person point of view to present a personal feeling that is internal. The first line of the poem leads to the fact that the speaker was born in a country different from their origin. After the first line the speaker in the poem seems to belong nowhere – “even in the place/planted with my relatives” (4-5) leading to believe that the speaker is “a foreigner everywhere” (3). The speaker’s choice of words makes us feel that no matter where the speaker goes she always seems to be separated. The speaker returns to the country of her parents and still continues to feel like a foreigner. The speaker in this situation feels displaced and victimized because she find themselves facing prejudice from the country she was born in as well as the country of her relatives and family. This stanza solely serves to single the speaker who can be concluded as the “foreigner” (1) out as a lone individual rather than a representation of an entire group. The speaker’s repetition of “foreigner” (3) throughout the poem emphasizes her isolation from her own family as well as “All kinds of places and groups” (9). The speaker tells us “I don’t fit” (13) where she is comparing herself to “food cooked in milk of coconut/where you expected ghee or cream” (15-16) or an “unexpected aftertaste/ of cardamom or neem” (17-18). The use of taste to describe a feeling of being foreign is evocative because a countries cuisine is a compliment of its culture so it is inte...
...shown through Lenny’s point of view. Prior the partition, Lahore was a place of tolerance that enjoyed a secular state. Tension before the partition suggested the division of India was imminent, and that this would result in a religious. 1947 is a year marked by human convulsion, as 1 million people are reported dead because of the partition. Moreover, the children of Lahore elucidate the silences Butalia seeks in her novel. The silence of survivors is rooted to the nature of the partition itself; there is no clear distinction as to who were the antagonists. The distinction is ambiguous, the victims were Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims, and moreover these groups were the aggressors, the violent. The minority in this communal violence amongst these groups was the one out-numbered. This epiphany of blame is embarked in silence, and roots from the embodiment of violence.