Representing the Raj: Kim, A Passage to India, The Siege of Krishnapur, and The Jewel in the Crown

Aims

This course aims to:

• give you knowledge of the historical events represented and refracted in the 
  set texts
• enable you to read the set texts against history and one another
• promote critical reading of imperial fictions as moral critiques as well as celebrations of empire

Course content

Britain’s formal rule of India, the Raj, lasted for 90 years, from 1858–1947. It began in a welter of blood, with the assumption of responsibility by Her Majesty’s Government during the ‘Great Mutiny’ of 1857-9, and it ended in the utter bloodbath preceding and accompanying Partition of the subcontinent in 1947. Gaudily and often unthinkingly celebrated during its imperial heyday as the ‘jewel in the crown’ of empire, the Raj was at least as ramshackle, racist, and repressive as it was glorious and hard-working, and it is no surprise that fictional as well as historical representations of it are extremely varied.

This course takes a hard look at the four greatest British fictions set in and analysing the Raj. The Siege of Krishnapur (1973, Booker Prize) by J G Farrell (1935–79) is set during the ‘Great Mutiny’, and its invented, archetypal setting (a common trope in Raj representations) and plot draw on events surrounding the historical sieges at Lucknow and Cawnpore (Kanpur). Kim (1901) by Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) is set in the late 19th-century height of empire, a tremendous adventure story of international espionage and the ‘great game’ that is now often dismissed as romantic falsehood but contains more truth than its detractors acknowledge. Conversely, A Passage to India (1924, James Tait Black Memorial Prize) by E. M. Forster (1879–1970), set in the early 20th century, has for decades been celebrated as the British novel of India, but is so grossly historically inaccurate that early Anglo-Indian readers, returning to Bombay via Suez, are reported as throwing their copies into the Red Sea in rage. And The Jewel in the Crown (1966) by Paul Scott (1920–78) compellingly ‘revisions’ Forster in the context of the Quit India riots of 1942, the last significant civil disturbances before Independence.

What, exactly, is and is not historically accurate in these representations? What themes and motifs seem diagnostic in their recurrence in otherwise distinct works? How did the culture that Farrell researched give rise to the one that Kipling reported? And why did the trope of rape, fearfully imagined or horribly real, become so grotesquely central in Forster and Scott? Tracing the political and historical consequences of 1857 through all four fictions, and investigating them against the history they narrate, is to discover a much more complex and darker picture than either flag-waving or empire-bashing allow, and to see the outlines of a tragedy that still haunts the subcontinent.

What to expect on this course

Each session will begin with a mini-lecture and PowerPoint presentation, lasting 30–45 mins, and subsequently open to question and answer, and contributions by all. Questions and responses will be welcome throughout and need not concern only the novels in hand.

Course sessions

1. History and geography: the events and legacies of 1857-9
2. J. G. Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur and ideas of innocence
3. Rudyard Kipling’s Kim and lessons of experience
4. E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India and problems of symbolism
5. Paul Scott’s The Jewel in the Crown and virtues of tragedy

Learning outcomes

As a result of the course, you will gain a greater understanding of the subject and you should be able to:

• assess the historical events represented and refracted in the set texts
• read the set texts against history and against one another
• process critical reading of imperial fictions as moral critiques as well as celebrations of empire

Required reading

Farrell, J G, The Siege of Krishnapur (1973) (London: Phoenix 1993) 
ISBN 1857994914 [digital ed. also available]

Forster, E M, A Passage to India (1924; ed. Stallybrass) (Harmondsworth: Penguin 2005) ISBN 01414411160 [digital ed. also available]

Hibbert, Christopher, The Great Mutiny: India 1857 (1978) (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1980) ISBN 0140047522

Kipling, Rudyard, Kim (1901; ed. Sandison) (Oxford: World’s Classics 2008) 
ISBN 0199536467 [digital ed. also available]

Scott, Paul, The Jewel in the Crown (1966) (London: Arrow 2005) 
ISBN 0099439967 [digital ed. also available]