Presaging Neo-colonialism: An interview
by Rita Nath Keshari & Hrusikesh Panda on 17 Jul 2011 2 Comments

Rita Nath Keshari: The Golden Island is the first Indian novel on the subject of neocolonialism. Most of your observations in the book are happening even today, though your original Odia book was published in 1994, and you must have started writing much before. How could you presage the realities?


Hrusikesh Panda [author]: You may have noticed that I was writing about a small island and not a huge country. Neo-colonialism is not necessarily sponsored by outsiders. The colonial Land Acquisition Act of the 19th century was not intended to acquire the land of poor people for industries and mines with private ownership, and often in one family. That is one reason why the Railways in colonial rule went through a flip of government and private ownership.


But independent India was a truly sovereign state; it could reinvent this law to transfer thousands of acres of land from the poor to the rich while at the same time masquerading as a protector of landless people by taking away ceiling-surplus land of a person who owned 50 acres, or a farmer who owned 10 acres and had to lease it on share-crop basis on tenancy laws.


The other side of the neo-colonialism is that I had been lucky to visit a few countries where the prescription of International Monetary Fund-World Bank-sponsored ‘reforms’ had resulted in daily devaluation of the currency, like Argentina. This is reflected in the destructive inflation in this novel.


When these great advocacies in favour of globalization were functioning to the full throttle, I was a small functionary in the cogs of government, but often I was called to meetings including those taken by the then PM, on the subject. I take no pride in these participations because very few people understood my reservations about globalization then. I recall one scene when the then PM listened to my little voice and my minister insisted that I was invited to the meetings of the PM. These were my little contestations against the blindly accepted concepts of globalizations just because our country had a balance of payment problem. It was not entirely a matter of despair, because I was able to convince the people in position to give space to the people working in the sector.


Rita Nath Keshari: Your novel begins cheerfully and continues to be comical till in the middle, even when the external situations are grim (like a bomb explosion or a political murder), but before the reader realises this, the narration moves into ineluctable tragedy. Is this a deliberate literary structure?


Hrusikesh Panda: I do not recall if this was a deliberate literary style; but last time when I read the English translation at manuscript stage, the tragedy shook me and I forgot that I had written this. During the launch of the book at Bhubaneswar on 2 April 2011, Dr. Lipipuspa Nayak said she had often cried when she was translating the book. Now the text of the novel has become independent of me. I can answer only as a reader and not a writer.


The novel begins cheerfully as if it was a sojourn to a new world, or a new world order, a journey of acquiescent sheep in green meadows to their slaughter. The personal tragedy of the protagonist, in some small ways, is the corollary of the tragedy of this country which has become alien to him. In some ways it is the tragedy of a man who leaves his village to find a career and becomes a victim in a changing world. He is not the completely silent and acquiescent sheep of a neo-colonized world and his voice is feeble. If he had been absolutely silent, the tragedy would not be so insufferable.


Rita Nath Keshari: In that case do you believe that neo-colonialism, including the garb of liberalization and globalization is irrevocably destructive?


Hrusikesh Panda: India has insulated herself from the egregious aspects of neo-colonialism to a great extent because of its democratic polity. The despair in the novel is for people whom democracy has not been able to give a fair deal, as in case of land acquisition. Another despair was to hear top civil servants, politicians, economists and intellectuals who were dogmatic about the great benefits of globalization. I was working in the handloom sector and many people said handloom is dead, all clothes will be made in power looms and mills. I asked: ‘What happens to the ten crore families whose main income is from handloom?’ The brutal reply was: ‘You are dealing with handlooms, when these people move out of the sector; you are no more concerned with them.’


Another excited statement was: ‘Look, in the malls rice is selling at hundred rupees a kg, neatly packed. The farmer gets ten rupees instead of nine. What value addition!’ The imbecilic exuberance was such a shock that I could not respond. Or maybe, I was the imbecile who did not foresee the ‘great days’ that were coming.


It was far more despondent in countries where democracy did not exist or was not functional. The countries were denuded of commodities including minerals, the earnings were not invested inside the country, the rulers stayed in power with the help of countries who bought the commodities cheap. The insidiously exacerbating poverty led to racial and religious violence, substance abuse, and pandemics.


We have a tradition in Odia, where a story-teller ends his narration with the disclaimer: ‘I went there and returned, I narrated what I saw.’ I have not harnessed my novel to any political or economic philosophy. I think that you will find bits of each of the above experiences in The Golden Island.     


Rita Nath Keshari: Do you think your novel, written way back in 1994, relates to the recent uprisings in African countries and other strife-torn areas?


Hrusikesh Panda: It may relate to the citizen’s disconnect with and disaffection against the rulers in countries without functional democracy and under neo-colonialism. But almost everyday, I come across an article from Western media that the sponsors of these uprisings are the same or some other neo-colonialists. That is not to say that there is no good in what is happening. The novel is about the arrival of neo-colonialism; the happenings in Africa could be at the late end.


Rita Nath Keshari: The novel portrays the political and economic realities of a fictional country. But the plot has a sub-text in the form of the personal story of the protagonist, which again is utterly tragic. What purpose does this structural aspect serve in the novel’s thematic context?


Hrusikesh Panda: I presume that a novel has to have individual characters that have to be built up. At least, that is how I write. There are characters who have thrived and are happy. I think that an authorial self will empathize with the main protagonist which is the country and the human character which is a subsidiary of the main protagonist. There could have been an antithetic protagonist, a proponent of neo-colonialism. I guess I am too sensitive for such literary hypocrisy. 


Rita Nath Keshari: Village is a recurrent motif in your literature, including in The Golden Island, which is set in the capital city of a country. Do we see a shade of the autobiographical in this particular literary sub-theme?


Hrusikesh Panda: It could be; but as I said before, I can respond, after this span of time, only as a reader. From a village to town to cities to megalopolis, the journey of Abhisek is like the journey of a country from the pastoral and agricultural community to the globalised and neo-colonised world. It could be a simultaneously moving metaphor. But I am not sure.    



[Rita Nath Keshari is an academic, writer, translator and freelancer based in Puducherry; Hrusikesh Panda is a senior civil servant, based in Delhi] 

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