Creative Flight Journal: A New Historicist Re-reading of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land: Is “Shantih shantih shantih” a Way to Colonial Subjugation?

A New Historicist Re-reading of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land: Is “Shantih shantih shantih” a Way to Colonial Subjugation?

Dr. Elham Hossain

Faculty of the Department of English

Green University of Bangladesh

Dhaka, Bangladesh

Abstract: Literature is never apolitical as it emerges out of its time in negotiation with the existing socio-political and economic realities, and then tends to embrace timelessness and thus, both diachronically and synchronically works upon the readers’ minds. T. S. Eliot, politically royalist and theologically Catholic, aptly intertextualizes aesthetics with history, and hence, the historicity of The Waste Land invites critical investigations of the fact how, after the First World War, British colonialism which received a tremendous trauma and resistance from the natives of different European colonies around the world, was desperately trying to weaponize Christianity with a view to fortifying and sustaining its colonizing mission and in this context textuality of The Waste Land can be traced subtly aligned with the historicity of the period of its production. Eliot’s diagnosis of the spiritual barrenness of modern people and the probable solution to this crisis, which is, as he suggests, Christianity, evokes a re-reading of the poem, especially while was setting himself in the pivot of the British colonial and capitalist power-structure and hegemony. This paper will address the research question- Is Eliot’s invocation for ‘shantih’ a deliberate politics of weaponizing Christianity for the fortification of the colonial enterprises? This paper will borrow theoretical framework from Louis Althusser’s concept of ideological state apparatuses.

Keywords: New historicism, Hegemony, State apparatus, Intertextuality, Conservatism

Literature is not usually apolitical, and it is used in many ways by the power-structure as an apparatus of sustaining its dominance and hegemony. This Marxist approach to literature gears up this paper to investigate political, to be specific, colonial disposition in The Waste Land. T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land illustrates a wide variety of interpretations, from metaphysical to material because of its kaleidoscopic structure and polyphonic and polysemic implications, but this paper intends to focus on mostly its political interpretation. From the beginning to the end the poem seems to be a journey through a barren land towards regeneration which is conspicuously a perilous process. From the “Burial of the Dead” to “The Fire Sermon” is a philosophic quest for healing, but sickness needs, at first, to be diagnosed and then the healing may be possible. For guidance Eliot has borrowed ideological indictments from St. Augustine, Lord Buddha and Upanishad and ultimately, as an optimist, he enunciates the Upanishadic shantih mantras- Datta, Dayadvam, Damiyata and indicates that the practice of these mantras may lead the modern world to ‘Shantih’, that is, peace. Eliot faithfully focuses on the first two decades of the twentieth century, even the nineteenth century of diverse developments challenging the paradigm of traditional beliefs and ideologies, though superficially encompassing spiritual aspects, truly holding all possible aspects irrespective of spiritual and material ingredients of the whole world with especial concentration on Europe. In 1789 Edmund Burke proclaimed that the glory of Europe was extinguished forever. This indictment might have sounded like a hyperbole in terms of contemporaneity but in Eliot’s time it was true in every possible way. In this connection, Russel Kirk asserts, “Eliot has described in The Waste Land not merely his ephemeral state of mind; much more important, he has penetrated to causes of a common disorder in the soul of the twentieth century” (Kirk 61). Even the church was falling into disrepute as many eminent men were competing to take up the running of the church for money. Charlatans and cheats were celebrating their success in manipulating church for their interest. In terms of colonial perspective, church became a more political than a spiritual institution as it was used in the colonies as a tool of so-called civilizing mission. So, Nietzsche anxiously declares:

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? (121)

Due to the rise of industrialization, spread of rationalism, Darwin’s theory of evolution, Popularity of Marxism as a materialist approach to the aspects of life and enlightenment, Christianity fell into tremendous suspicion and a widespread skepticism developed towards the authority of the church, and England, of course, was a beneficiary of the church as it ensured both control and exploitation during the colonial period. Eurocentric power-structure was fueled by the church to a great extent. Even it was used as a colonial apparatus by England. Hence, Nietzsche’s statement that God is dead is a conspicuous indictment of the decadence of Eurocentrism and historically and economically it indicates the impending fall of England’s colonial hegemony. During the first quarter of the twentieth century that very fall was accelerated by the First World War. So, Eliot’s anxiety about the gradual loss of Eurocentric hegemony is closely felt throughout The Waste Land, though mostly metaphorically.

Though superficially the poem seems to be a critique on the spiritual barrenness of the modern urban people and a journey towards salvation, Eliot depicts using myths as a framework and with a view to universalizing the subject-matter of spiritual decay, incoherence and irregularities there runs a powerful political undercurrent encompassing variegated issues, though metaphorically through symbols, such as spiritual decay, fall of social harmony among the people, loss of sanity and the worldwide instability caused by the First World War, Russian Revolution and the liberation movements in various British colonies including India. India was a country which could maintain the belief ‘Unity in Diversity”. But the political turmoil that led India to Partition too was mostly geared up by religious, division, manipulated by the English colonizers. With myths and allusions Eliot brings about a bridge between primeval and temporality and glorifies the idyllic beauty and serenity of the past. But his depiction does not escape the tension and anxiety of the contemporary colonial enterprises all over the world. In nineteenth century, England as an imperialist nation occupied most of the surface of the world. But by the early twentieth century Great Britain was experiencing anxieties and an ebbing of its political, cultural and economic domination: In this connection, Alghanem asserts:

During the nineteenth century, Great Britain, as it was then called, became the chief imperialist power that covered most of the land's surface. But, by the early twentieth century, England's political and ideological power of dominating the world began to dissolve, a fact that the Western could not accept. This fact led to the birth of new approach which provided an alternative ideology to reconsider the concepts of power and control. This control has extended to involve not only the direct political domination of geographical territories but rather dominating the "Others" minds intellectually. (22)

In such a precarious situation, Eliot, who was at that time wrestling to be naturalized as a British citizen, though he became so in 1927, took resort to spirituality as a means of retaining peace in the world, and peace is equivalent to absolute subjugation to the British imperialist enterprises. Unquestionable support to the British imperial practices reveals Eliot’s stance, which upholds British imperial status, in terms of his portrayal of the modern urban people. To Eliot the modern world is a waste land and it needs to depend on spirituality for peace, and thus, his waste land conspicuously appears to be his Neo-Empire. On the one hand, Eliot’s portrayal of the modern waste land unmasks the ugliness of western so-called modernity, and on the other, it tempts the readers to interpret him as a chauvinist as he finds no other alternative of the West. His interest in the Eastern mythology is purposeful and it is because he needs its spiritual aspects for changing the people’s direction of attention from the political exploitation of the British imperial power. His stance may be interpreted as a kind of Fascist disposition because Fascism very often correlates modernism which “is both archaic and avant-garde, sifting pre-modern mythologies for precious seeds of the post-modern future. Politically speaking, however, fascism, like all nationalism, is a thoroughly modern invention. Its aim is to crush beneath its boot the traditions of high civility that Eliot revered ...” (Surette 143).

Leon Surette, in his book Dreams of a Totalitarian Utopia: Literary Modernism and Politics refers to Russel Kirk who in his book Eliot and His Age declares:

From the first, he was a consistent and intelligent opponent of both Fascist and Communist ideologies: and somewhat to his own surprise, perhaps, on occasions he found himself defending the constitutional democracies of Britain and the United States. (110)

Also, Michael North in his 1991 book titled The Political Aesthetics of Yeats, Eliot, and Pound, claims, “Eliot and Yeats were in some ways too conservative to become fascists.” Whatever these writers say about Eliot’s political stance, it is undeniable, if his silence towards the contemporary politics of India during and just after the First World War is examined critically, then it may be claimed that he favored colonial power and did not raise any voice for the political liberty of India, though he demonstrated intensive interest in Indian myths and, basically, Upanishads in his “The Waste Land”. But remarkably enough, around the period he wrote the poem “multiple and competing narratives informed by religious and linguistic cultural identities seeking to contribute to the emerging discourse on the Indian nation” were fermenting and India was heading towards liberty (Bose and Jalal 108). Due to the colonial initiatives in various levels India was heading towards social and political reforms and responding to the challenges of European modernity. Again, “Religious sensibility could in the late nineteenth century be perfectly compatible with a rational frame of mind, just as rational reform almost invariably sought divine sanction of some kind” (Bose and Ayesha Jalal 110). The process of redefining swept over India and a quest for social mobility embraced the local classes of people. Many groups of people started rewriting their caste histories. In Tamil Nadu the Pallis, a Dravidian community or jati claimed themselves to be Vanniyas. The Kaibartas of West Bengal claimed themselves to Mahishyas. The Chandals in East Bengal claimed themselves to be Nomosudra. Koches of North Bengal claimed themselves to be Rajbanshi. Even Muslims claimed a foreign descent and Muslim butchers started calling themselves Quraishi. Muslim weavers started calling themselves Mumin. Various significant reforms were brought about in the social life of the Indians. Remarriage of widows was vehemently supported and established by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. Sati was banned and the legal marriage age of girls was raised from ten to twelve in 1891. Muslim Ashraf classes of Northern India responded to colonial modernity. Saiyid Ahmed Khan, with a view to altering British conceptions about inherent Muslim disloyalty, invited his co-religiotionists to accept Western education, but not all its ideals.

Nationalism, rationalism and humanism in variant forms germinated in the literary works of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Rabindranath Tagore, and embraced far or less people, especially the middle class people. Establishment of Indian Congress Party was another epoch-making incident which gradually led India to freedom from the British colonial rule. During the first quarter of the twentieth century Colonial government realized that the consciousness which started working among the natives might gradually bring about the end of colonial dominance. Consequently, Lord Curzon decided to partition the Province of Bengal in 1905. Curzon’s home secretary put it “Bengal united is a power; Bengal divided would pull in different ways ... one of our main objects is to split up and thereby weaken a solid body of opponents to our rule” (Bose and Ayesha Jalal 117). But what was more insidious was that the British rulers pit Muslim against Hindu by claiming that the creation of a separate “Muslim-majority province in eastern Bengal with Dhaka as its capital would resurrect the lost glories of the Mughal empire” (Bose and Ayesha Jalal 117-118). In resistance to the Partition Swadeshi Movement started. In fear of losing India British government passed the Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act of 1919, popularly known as the Rowlatt Act and when in protest of this act people gathered in Jallianwala Bagh of Amritsar, Punjab, it massacred a huge number of Protestants on 13 April 1919, a triggering incident leading to Non-Cooperation Movement. But Eliot who was a devout supporter of the British government, in his 1922 poem “The Waste Land” has not reflected any of these historical incidents; he rather alluded to the Upanishads, religious books of the Hindus.

If investigated the reasons behind Eliot’s skipping of these incidents, it is found that his subjugation to the British conservatism frames his mind-set which supports the binaries and places the West over the East. While spending his school year of 1910-1911 in Paris, he came under the influence of his teacher Charles Maurras and declared that he was a classicist in literature, a royalist in politics, and an Anglo-Catholics in religion. When he was a student of Harvard University he was influenced by Irving Babbit, Paul Elmer More, and George Santayana, three leading conservative thinkers of his time. Russel Kirk in his book Eliot and His Age identifies Babbit and More as New Humanists. Humanitarian approach ignores spiritual dimension while the humanist approach, as opposite cherishes it. True, Eliot was more a humanist than a humanitarian as exemplified in his writings including The Waste Land.

Besides, the influence of Christopher Dawson significantly brought about changes in his world view. Dawson was a contemporary Catholic historian and reviews of two of his twenty books were published in T. S. Eliot’s journal The Criterion in 1929. Christopher Dawson also contributed an essay “The End of an Age” in which he expressed his concerns about the secularization of European culture since the Renaissance. Like Dawson, Eliot believed that enlightenment detached Europe from its past, and he always held views that there was an intense connection between culture and faith, though the philosopher Emmanuel Kant argued that “Enlightenment offers mankind a way out of, or exit from, immaturity into the improved condition of maturity” (Gandhi 30). In his book titled The Idea of a Christian Society (1939), Eliot promulgated the concept of a society based on conservative belief-system, specifically Christianity. In his words:

I conceive then of the Christian state as of the Christian society under the aspect of legislation, public administration, legal tradition, and form. Observe that at this point I am not approaching the problem of Church and State except with the question: with what kind of State can the Church have a relation? By this I mean a relation of the kind which has hitherto obtained in England; which is neither merely reciprocal tolerance, nor a concordat. (The Idea of a Christian Society 24)

In his 1948 book Notes towards the Definition of Culture, Eliot spoke in favor of a society based on conservatism and Christianity as like Dawson he believed that increasingly secularized culture of Europe was a tendency to cut itself off from the past. In this book Eliot proclaims that culture and religion are inseparable. In his words, religion, “... while it lasts, and on its own level, gives an apparent meaning to life, provides the framework for a culture and protects the mass of humanity from boredom and despair” (Notes Towards the Definition of Culture 34). Mario Vargas Llosa while criticizing Eliot’s conception of connection between culture and religion declares, “When he speaks of religion, T. S. Eliot is referring fundamentally to Christianity, which, he says, has made Europe what it is” ( Llosa 24). In Eliot’s eyes, history and Christianity go together and the distortion of history is to him a distortion of religion and that is why he criticizes H. G. Wells saying:

Mr. Wells has not an historical mind; he has a prodigious gift of historical imagination, which is comparable to Carlyle’s, but this is quite a different gift from the understanding of history. That requires a degree of culture, civilization and maturity which Mr. Wells does not possess. (Notes 111).

It is true that religion emerges out of man’s self-consciousness and “God being a projection of human needs and wishes…” (Stromberg 209). Again, it becomes “the sigh of the oppressed creature or a fantasy wrung from inadequate consciousness” (Stromberg 209). Religion assumes its shape out of the total ideological structure and then it controls man absolutely. Here lies the scope for the oppressors who work at this space with a deliberate intention to exploit its followers. In many parts of the European colonies Christianity was used as a potent tool to colonize the natives under the subterfuge of the civilizing mission. Desmond Tutu, South African Bishop once said that the colonizers came to Africa with the Bible in one hand and a sword in the other. He further asserts that the colonizers with the Bible in the one hand ask us to shut our eyes. The natives believed them and shut their eyes. But when they opened their eyes, they found their land at the colonizers’ hand and the Bible at their hand. Thus, Christianity turns into a tool of colonization to the local people. This is the reason for which Karl Marx calls Christianity opium which steals away man’s consciousness. As opium numbs man’s consciousness and makes him forgetful about the realities in the midst of which he lives, belief system and unquestionable surrender to emotion, rather than reason or rationality also makes man forgetful about his material wellbeing. Metaphysical disposition or transcendent state of mind makes man distracted about his material interest which the colonial hegemony which is utterly capitalistic in nature targets to attain. When religion turns into an ideology, not practice, it turns into an oppressive weapon. It also serves the purpose of the aristocrats who exploit the proletariat. In this connection, Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto brand Christianity as a tool of exploitation at the hands of the haves of the society. Both these philosophers claim:

Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a socialist tinge. Has not Christianity declaimed against private property, against marriages, against the state? Has it not preached in the place of these charity and poverty, celibacy, and mortification of the flesh monastic life and Mother Church? (76)

Church was also used to alienate and dehumanize the laborers who directly contribute to the manufacturing of goods. If the religious ideology turns into an apparatus it convinces the people that the more they will suffer in the world the earlier they would be rewarded with heaven. But the irony is that no church criticizes the haves of the society; it rather alienates the proletariat from the goods they manufacture.

So, alienation on the one hand, and attachment, on the other, contribute to the fortification of the colonizing mission. The First World War was an unexpected blow on the pride and overconfidence of the colonial power. Also, it challenged the ego and overconfidence of the colonial hegemony. Resistance on the part of the natives from different parts of the world was a great apprehension to the colonial force. Then they took resort to religion. In Africa, it was used very violently. It detached them from their parental history and heritage. In the subcontinent, a huge number of people were proselytized for better facilities. Even the Muslim saints who came to the Indian subcontinent from the Middle East converted the local lower-class people into Muslims and started spreading the political hegemony gradually, and ultimately came to the cusp of the power-structure.

The Waste Land was produced in 1922, after the First World War which rocked the foundation of the European colonial power. T.S. Eliot, as a Royalist advocates in favor of the interest of the colonizers. He refers to myths, religion, and history and ultimately suggests that only the assumption of religion, a colonizing tool, can bring forth peace and stability in the world. Eliot believes that communism is a rival faith to Christianity. Even Bertrand Russel proclaims that with “a sacred history, a messiah, and priesthood, communism has all that is needed “to qualify as a religion” (Stromberg 210). The vital job that communism has done is to delete the alienation mark between man and the mode of production. Man’s ownership in the wealth of the society is tended to be ensured by communism.

The way Eliot defines tradition in his Tradition and Individual Talent is mostly framed by his imperialist disposition. Junichi Saito, in this connection, claims that “Eliot describes the Orient through a system of representations framed by a whole set of forces that bring the Orient into Western consciousness” (166). Eliot borrows the word ‘Shanti’ from Upanishad, a Hindu scripture. This word occurs in the Shanti mantras or Pancha shanti mantras. Shanti mantras occur at the outset of some topics of Upanishad. T. S. Eliot has uttered this term three times at the end of his The Waste Land and it reminds the readers of the Hindu prayer ritual.

In his Notes towards Culture T. S. Eliot, while defining culture, shows his lenience to Eurocentrism which ensures the primacy of Britain, being considered by him then as a home of the spirituality of civilization. He also suggests in his Notes that he came in contact with Oriental literature, basically poetry, through translation. But those Oriental pieces of literature cannot demonstrate that Oriental culture and tradition are superior in terms of hierarchy. He rather maintains conviction that Westerners should look at the Orient with a disposition of superiority. Personally, he was born in America and subsequently he came to England and in every possible way he became an English man. He did it perhaps because he wanted to live in contact with the British culture and heritage as the Americans are in true sense, migrated British people locally hybridized with the natives, distinguished by a distinct consciousness, that is, Americanism which he through migration to Britain replaced with Eurocentrism. He, in his Notes, assumes that culture develops through negotiation and dialogues. But he does not mean that this negotiation will take p[lace between the Occident and the Orient. This intensive consciousness about the superiority of European culture and history diverts his attention from the political role of Christianity to its spiritual role.

In The Waste Land, he critiques the Waste Landers’ spiritual barrenness and blames it for all kinds of anomalies of the modern people. But he does not criticize how the Christian missionaries were going on with the proselytizing and otherizing project in Asia, Africa and Australia. In the Orient Hindus from which he has borrowed theological materials is a way of life but on the contrary in the West, especially at the hands of the colonizers Christianity is a tool or apparatus of transforming the natives into others.

Eliot’s disseminated use of India in The Waste Land draws curiosity among the critical readers. It appears that Eliot presents a collage of India, especially ancient India. In his words;

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves

Waited for rain, while the black clouds

Gathered far distant, over Himavant,

The jungle crouched, humped in silence

Then spoke the thunder

DA. (66)

The poem also ends with a Sanskrit word ‘Shantih’ and the overall picture of ancient India in The Waste Land makes India look like an entity devoid of materialist development, only standing for spirituality. This portrayal is mostly deliberate because in 1920s British colonization received shock and trauma in India. Quit India movement, Swadeshi Movement were at that time at the climax. British colony faced an unprecedented situation. If India could be depicted as backward in terms of its being stuck to its ancient past then it would have been easy to invite India like Rudyard Kipling to take up Whiteman’s burden. It is a Macaulayian project of transforming the natives into Other. In this connection, Eliot appeared to be one of the first archetypal modernists “who was also the first cause of modernity in others” (Trivedi 69).

Even while industrial development was rampant and consequently compartmentalization of the society was going on, Eliot finds healing of human civilization in the Holy Grail, a legendary vessel or cup in Arthurian literature, famed for its healing capacity. It is also said that the cup which was used by Jesus at his last supper for drinking water or the cup used by Joseph of Arimathea for collecting blood from Jesus’ body during his being crucified.

The journey of the Fisher King to the Holy Grail for curing his barrenness metaphorically interprets how Eliot turns the world’s attention from contemporary politics to Christianity. England was, at that time, experiencing anti-colonial nationalism and the shaping of decolonization was gradually dominating the politics of British imperialism. Anti-colonial national movements started getting strength in various colonies. In India nationalist movements began to challenge the validity of British colonial rule. Under the heated circumstances, “British officials took anti-colonial nationalism very seriously, and responses to it were often vigorous and punitive” (Levine 168). In nineteenth century, British colonial authority did not care much about resistance and disregarded it as local and tribal insurgency. But with the onset of twentieth century the resistance took up new strategies and political dimensions and the British colonial authority could not deny it. But T. S. Eliot who came to Britain in 1915, at the age of twenty five and subsequently assumed British citizenship, did not demonstrate conspicuous reaction to this new growth of anti-colonial resistance or the rise of nationalism in the colonies.

While British Empire was experiencing hard resistance from the natives of India; while he knew Rabindranath Tagore very well after his winning of the Nobel Prize in literature, and his political stance, how could he remain quite unaffected by all those heated circumstances? Showing back to politics, he borrows spirituality of India. He juxtaposes Christian spirituality with Indian mysticism and proclaims that it is the way to recovery of the barrenness of the modern generation of people. Actually, “The motifs in “The Waste Land”, such as the Fisher King and the use of water imagery, echo the Upanishadic themes of spiritual barrenness, renewal, and the pursuit of transcendent truth” (Nanda 932). Eliot reflects on the moral corruption of the generation. Even ecocritcal issues have occupied his poem’s canvas. Evil of capitalism produces morally corrupted merchant like Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant. Bisexual prophet Tiresias depicts loveless relationship between the female typist and her carbuncular fiancé looking like Bradford merchant, though in reality he works as a clerk in a buying house, representing modern loveless relationship. Army officer Albert and his wife’s carnal relationship is segmented and diagnosed with lovelessness. Phoenician sailor Phlebas dies sinking in water which ironically should have been a life-saver. It seems, according to Eliot, all these are an outcome of spiritual barrenness. Besides, all the people in the canvas belonged to bourgeois class and they are the beneficiary of socio-economic enterprises. No voice of the proletariat is heard though it is a common Marxist belief that “the proletariat will one day spontaneously develop the class consciousness needed to rise up in violent revolution against their oppressors and create a classless society” (Tyson 44). True, after Curzon’s attempt of dividing Bengal killing attempts, such as suicide attack upon the British officers increased and it was found that most of the persons attempted to attack the colonial officers were from the proletariat, for example, Khudiram Bose, Prafulla Chaki and many others.

If viewed from Marxist perspective, in general “literature does not exist in some timeless, aesthetic reality as an object to be passively contemplated” and in this connection, Eliot’s The Waste Land is a potent manifestation of contemporary socioeconomic and ideological conditions (Tyson 55). But while alluding to the Upanishads, Eliot turns attention from the socioeconomic realities to the spiritual decadence of the modern urban generation, and thus, it works as a shift of paradigm of the political and economic realities of the first two decades of the twentieth century. Besides, his exhortation about the Upanishadic teachings, that is, Datta, dayadhvam and Damyata focuses on the religious practices, a kind of way to salvation from the spiritual barrenness. Eliot’s exhortative stance mostly emanates from his location in the Christianity which was used as a colonial apparatus, a a weapon deliberately handled by the colonizers to control the oppressed people’s disposition and lead them from material interest to the divinity, and in this way, The Waste Land deserves a New historicist re-reading to understand how it helped the colonizers to produce a discourse with which the colonial power-structure could continue its hegemony by diverting the natives’ attention from the material affairs to the divinity. If religion is equivalent to discipline, then it is congenial for the humanity, but if it turns bigger than humanity, then it becomes an apparatus of persecution and exploitation. Hence, this issue may invite some more successive researchers to delve deeper into the area dealt with in this essay.

Works Cited

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