His Name is Kirpal Singh
I read the news a few days ago that Indian Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi paid homage to Indian soldiers who died in Belgium during the First World War:
In a gesture that will go well with millions of Indian soldiers back home, United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi laid a wreath at the famous Indian memorial at Menin Gate in Ieper, Belgium, saying it felt a shame to be alive when men so brave are dead.
Over 50,000 Indian soldiers laid down their lives in the Fields of Flanders during the 14 months of war during 1914-1915, fighting on behalf of the Allied armies of Belgium, France and Great Britain in the First World War against the Imperial German Army.
This week I taught Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and, although set during WWII, so many things about Kirpal Singh’s condition–”His name is Kirpal Singh and he does not know what he is doing here”–resonated with the earlier history. You’ll remember that Singh is the sapper in that crumbling Italian villa in Ondaatje’s novel; he strips his tent and his body of all military insignia and arms after he hears the news from Hiroshima. He asks “the English patient”:
You and then the Americans converted us. With your missionary rules. And Indian soldiers wasted their lives as heroes so that they could be pukkah. You had wars like cricket. How did you fool us into this?
Photo: Indian Cavalry Transport, September 1916, on the Albert-Amiens Road, France. Via the Wilfred-Owen Digital Archive and the Imperial War Museum. Via.
The Lost Child: A New Approach
(A Literary, Geographical & physical synthesis from West to East)
Prabhakar Kumar Awasthi*, H.N.Singh**
Mahesh Chandra Tiwari ***
Department of Geography*, Department of Physics**
Rajya Sabha Secretariate ***
R.S.S. (P.G.) College, Pilakhuwa, Ghaziabad (U.P.), India.
Parliament House, New Delhi ***
(E-mail- awasthi_pra@yahoo.com)
pawasthi@solar.Stanford.EDU
Abstract
A true Son of Bharat (India), Mulk Raj Anand wrote this prose poem in 1934 when India was under the British rule. Son of this motherland, HE was crying because every child has lost their Mother in the Fair of British rule. Everything was there in front of the child’s eye except Mother. That was really the crucial time where Literature has to play its role silently but effectively. So, Mulk Raj Anand took this challenge and he successfully established the deep relationship between Child and Mother (The Son and The Motherland) in his poetic story ‘The Lost Child’ for a great noble cause. Dr. Anand has not merely taken Social, Geographical and Political approaches in this short story but he very well used the phenomenon of physical science and has taken the full liberty in the field of Literature and used it as a strongest tool against the Colonialism. In this paper an attempt has been made to open a new avenue in the field of English literature with a view of natural philosophy as Physics and Geography for Research purposes. Here we have carved a deep relationship of Mother Earth and its progenies as birth right of every individual, covering west and east from a Global point of view to maintain the harmony of love and peace on the canvass of Humanity.
Comment by Prabhakar Awasthi — November 27, 2006 @ 7:29 am