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Showing posts with label Nirali Makvana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nirali Makvana. Show all posts
April 29, 2021
Presentation on The African Literature
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March 31, 2021
Thinking Activity: Sunday Reading Task
Bonfire ( Holika Dahan )
♧ Introduction :-
Different festivals are the very important part our society which binds one to each other in different relations. Especially in India we have many festivals like " Rakshabandhan " the festival of brother and sister, " Shivratri " the festival of lord Shiva, " Navratri " the festival of Goddess as the same we also have the festival of " Holika Dahan ( Bonfire ) " the festival of Holika etc. But the very surprising and exciting thing is that all festivals have its own different myth. And all these festivals are celebrated worldwide but in different way and all have their different myth and rituals. It is very intresting to know how people celebrating these festivals according to their rituals. As a Sunday reading task here I am sharing the views and different rituals of Bonfire ( Holika Dahan ). I hope you will enjoy. Let us see.
♧ What is Bonfire ?
A Bonfire is a large and controlled outdoor fire, used either for informal disposal of burnable waste materials or as a part of celebration.
♧ Farm and Garden Bonfire :-
There are many different myths around Bonfire in India and in many othet countries also. But if we think scientifically then there are many benefits and disadvantages of Bonfire also which somehow useful to weather and to nature. These types of bonfires generally seen in farms and in gardens.
Bonfires are used in farms, in large gardens and allotments to dispose of waste plant materials that is not readily composted. This includes woody material, pernicious weeds, diseased material and material treated with persistent pesticides and herbicides. Such Bonfires may be quite small but are often designed to burn slowly for several days so that wet and green material may be reduce to ash by frequently turning the unburnt material into the centre. Such Bonfires can also deal with turf and other earthy materials.
The ash from garden bonfires is a useful source of potash and may be beneficial in improving the soil structure of some soils although such fires must be managed with safety in mind. Garden and farm bonfires are frequently smoky and can cause local nuisance if poorly managed or lit in unsuitable weather condition.
♧ A brief history of Bonfire :-
The Bonfires takes its name from the medieval bon - fire of animals bones. While modern day bonfires ingredients are generally less gruesome, burning waste materials can cause pollution and local nuisance. Fires have been of great use throughout the centuries - to mark occasions, as signals and to dispose of waste. However, we now have alternatives for signalling, for disposing of most materials and burning some things is illegal. Now in modern days apart from these all scientific reasons, different regions and countries have different myths and rituals for bonfires.
♧ Disadvantages of Bonfire :-
There are many disadvantages of bonfires like,
[ 1 ] Air Pollution :-
Burning plastic, rubber or painted materials creates noxious fumes that contain a range of poisonous compounds.
[ 2 ] Health effects :-
Air pollution can have damaging potentially fatal health effects and people with existing health problems are especially vulnerable. The chances of diseases will increase like people with heart condition, children and the elders.
[ 4 ] Annoyance :-
Smoke, Smuts and smell from bonfires have long been a source of a significant number of complaints to local authorities every year. Smoke prevents neighbours from enjoying their gardens, opening windows or hanging washing out.
[ 5 ] Safety :-
Fire can spread to fences or buildings or forests and scorch trees and plants. Piles of garden waste are often used as a refuge by animals, so look out for hibernating wildlife and sleeping pets.
These are all scientific reasons, benefits and disadvantages of bonfire. Now let us come to the main point. How Indian people and many other countries are celebrating the festival of Bonfire as a myth of Holika Dahan and as a tradition or as a ritual. In India also different regions people have myths and rituals around Holika Dahan or Bonfire. Let us discuss in detail.
♧ The myth of Holika Dahan in India :-
The tradition of burning " Holika " is religiously followed in Gujrat and Orissa also. Here, people render their gratitude to Agni, the god of fire by offering gram and stalks from the harvest with all humility. Further on the last day of Holi, people take a little fire from the bonfire to their homes. It is believed that by following this custom their homes will be free from disease. At several places there is also a tradition of cleaning homes, removing all dirty articles from around the house and burning them. Disease breeding bacteria are thereby destroyed and the sanitary condition of the locality is improved.
◇ The Legend of Holika and Prahlad :-
There was once a demon king by the name of Hiranyakashyap who won over the kingdom of earth. He was so egoistic that he commanded everybody in his kingdom to worship only him. But to his great disappointment, his son, Prahlad became an ardent devotee of Lord Naarayana and refused to worship his father. Hiranyakashyap tried several ways to kill his son Prahlad but Lord Vishnu saved him every time. Finally, he asked his sister, Holika to enter a blazing fire with Prahlad in her lap. For, Hiranyakashyap knew that Holika had a boon, whereby, she could enter the fire unscathed. Holika coaxed young Prahlad to sit in her lap and she herself took her seat in a blazing fire.
The legend has it that Holika had to pay the price of her sinister desire by her life. Holika was not aware that the boon worked only when she entered the fire alone. Prahlad, who kept chanting the namw of Lord Naarayana all this while came out unharmed as the Lord blessed him for his extreme devotion. Thus, Holi derives its name from Holika. And is celebrated as a festival of victory of good over evil. Holi is also celebrated as the triumph of a devotee.
In different parts of India many reasons are given for Holika's death. Vishnu intervened and hence Holika was burnt. Brahma had given Holika the power on the understanding that it can never be used to harm anyone. Holika was good and it was her clothes that gave her the power. The night before Holi, pyres are burnt in North India, Nepal and parts of South India in keeping with this tradition. The youth playfully steal all sort of things and put them in Holika pyres.
Apart from India, there are many other countries which are celebrating the festival of bonfires. Let us see in detail.
♧ Guy Fawkes Night ( Bonfire) London :-
Friday, 5th November
Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Guy Fawkes day, Bonfire Night and fireworks night is an annual commemoration observed on 5th November primarily in the United kingdom.
" Remember, remember the fifth of November - gunpowder, treason and plot. "
Goes the nursery rhyme, chanted in the run up to Guy Fawkes night. It goes back to 1605 when Guy Fawkes, one of the member of the gunpowder plot, was arrested while guarding explosives in the house Lord, London. With the plot to blow up the house of Lord and kill King James I - foiled Londoners lit bonfires around the city in celebration. The bonfires tradition continues to this days, and usually there's an effigy of Guy Fawkes placed at the centre of it. One of the biggest celebrations is in the town of Lewes in Sussex.
♧ Daizenji Tamataregu Shrine's " Oniyo " Fukuoka, Japan :-
Daizenji Tamataregu Shrine's " Oniyo " ( Fire festival ) is a ceremony to drive away evil spirits that has been practiced for 16,000 years. It's held in early January each year. A Devil fire that has been guarded at the temple is transferred around 9.00 pm on the 7th January to six massive torches measuring one meter in diameter and 15 meter long. The torches are transported around the grounds of the shrine by a group of men in loincloths. It sounds like a potential health and safety issue, but it's considered to be good luck if embers or ash from the torches fall on them.
♧ Jeongawol Dacboreum Deulbul Festival - Korea :-
It is a fairly new festival, younger than 20 years old, its origin go back to the time when families kept cows. In early February, the Jeongawol Daeboreum Deulbul festival takes place on the Island of Jeju off the coast of South Korea. To keep the grass grazeable, farmers set fire to the field in the mountains to destroy old grass and kill harmful insects. Today, a hilltop is set a light to pray for health and good harvest in the coming year. There is torchlight march also.
♧ Quema del Diablo ( Burning of the Devil ) Guatemala :-
In early December Guatemalas ready themselves for the Christmas season by driving the devil from their homes and burning him in the streets. For centuries - at least since the 1700s. The traditional ceremony has been performed to chase bad spirit from homes and neighbourhoods. By watching bonfires, fireworks display and burning Devil figures in the streets, local says they are spiritually cleaning themselves.
♧ Ottery St Mary - Devon, England :-
♧ Bonfire Night - Newfoundland - Canada :-
When English and Irish people in search of a better life, crossed the Atlantic Ocean to Canada, they took their traditions with them. The English took Guys Fawkes Night, the Irish took Samhain and over time the traditions merged into mischief week with a belief that certain types of naughty behaviour is permitted at this time, many Newfoundland and Labrador's close knit communities hold bonfires and celebrations.
♧ Sadeh - Iran :-
Sadeh is an ancient Zoroastrian festival. It honours the discovery of fire that defeated the forces of Darkness and cold. Traditionally, festivities went on for three days and gifts of food were given to the poor. Today, Zoroastrians light bonfires, perform religious rituals around them and thank god for his blessings.
These all are the various traditions, myths and rituals of bonfires in various countries. After the discussion of this tradition in detail we come to know that all the countries haven't same myths and rituals but the Purpose of celebration of the festival of bonfires is same that is,
" The triumph of good over evil. "
♧ References :-
Top 10 Fire Festivals around the World. 2 Nov. 2012, www.reuters.com/article/uk-travel-picks-firefestivals-idUKLNE8A101N20121102.
November 10, 2020
Thinking Activity on " Black Skin White Mask "
Black Skin White Mask
By Frantz Fanon
Learning process is life long process. And learning to various resource person is the tradition of our Department of English. Every year we have different guests lectures on different subjects. Here I would like to include one more point that learning through technology is even more important. Corona crises gave us new chance to enhance our creativity and become more knowledgeable in technological field.
We had five days guest lectures on
" Post Colonial Literature " by Dr. Balaji Ranganathan sir from central university of Gujrat.
✒31st October 2020 : Discussion on " Black Skin white mask.
✒1st November 2020 : Discussion on " Black Skin White Mask. "
✒2nd November 2020 : Discussion on " Orientalism " by Edward Said.
✒3rd November 2020 : Discussion on " A Tempest " by Aime Ceasar.
✒4th November 2020 : Discussion on some from " Imaginary Homeland " by Sulman Rushdie.
We are fortunate that it was totally a new experience. We learnt a lot from Dr. Balaji Ranganathan sir. On first day 31st October he started with Frantz Fanon's " Black Skin White Mask. "
Before starting the main text he throws some lights on difference between " Colonialism " and " Post Colonialism. "
"A settlement in a new country a body of people who set up in a new locality forming a community subject to 200 connected with their parent state the community is so formed consisting of the original settlers and their descendants and successors, as long as connection with the parent state it kept up"
-Ania loomba colonial and postcolonialism
Then making his point more clear he gave an example of such authors like : Homi K. Bhabha, Gayatri Chakrabarti Spivak and Ranjit Guava Edward Said etc.
The most attractive which I liked most in all of his lectures is that his style of teaching with not only perticular text but with other books also. For making this text, " Black Skin White Masks " he gave other two most important texts:
♧ " The Empire Writes Back."
♧ " Hind Swaraj ":-
Frantz Fanon’s “Black Skin, White Masks” (1952): “The Black Man and Language”:
Fanon grew up in Martinque, an island in the Caribbean ruled by France. The capital of France, Paris, was the metropole, the centre of the empire. Martinique was the bush, the outback, the hinterland, a nowhere kind of place. All the top peoplein Martinique either came from France or received their university education there. They all spoke in perfect French.
But most black people in Martinique did not: they spoke Creole, a dialect of French noted for its swallowed r’s. Its closest counterpart in America is Ebonics. Everyone is taught to look down on it at school. The middle-class tries not to speak it at all – except to servants – and shame their children out of using it.
People in Martinique found Creole wanting and saw French as better. That comes not from scholarly opinion but from being colonized, from being under French rule.
Fanon noticed that when people came back from France after receiving their university education they would speak in painfully perfect French and act as if they no longer knew Creole. Why was that?
Fanon found out first-hand: in France white people talk down to you if you are black. Either they speak in fake pidgin French – “Why you left big savanna?” – or they would act too familiar, calling you old fellow and so on. French doctors, for example, would talk to their white patients with impersonal respect but to blacks and Arabs like they were their old friend or something.
The whites say that they are just trying to make blacks feel comfortable. Fanon says no, they are scumbags trying to keep blacks in their place – as perpetual children, as beings of a lesser mind. He noticed they talked to blacks the same way he talked to retarded patients.
So under such circumstances students from Martinique make it a point to speak perfect French, complete with all the r’s. Not because they want to be white or because they think white people are better or something – but to prove they are the equal of any white Frenchman, to deny whites the satisfaction of looking down on them because of their French.Chapter 2
Frantz Fanon’s “Black Skin, White Masks” (1952): “The Woman of Colour and the White Man” (men of colour and white women will be next week):
When women of colour go after white men and put down men of their own colour Fanon says the cause is just what many of us suspect: internalized racism.
Nor do these women truly love these white men: they just love their colour. They go with them not out of love but to deal with their own hang-ups about race.
Fanon:
It is because the black woman feels inferior that she aspires to gain admittance to the white world.
Secretly she wants to be white. Marrying white is her way of doing this. She looks up to white people and looks down on black people. Whites represent wealth, beauty, intelligence and virtue; blacks, on the other hand, are “niggers”, something to escape, to be saved from, something not to be. So they want to marry a white man even though they know full well that very few will marry them.
Their racism is so profound that it blinds them to good black men. They will say black men lack refinement – and turn away black men more refined than themselves. They will say black men are ugly – and grow impatient with you if you point out good-looking black men.
Fanon takes as his examples three women: Mayotte of Martinique and Niniand Dedee of Senegal. Mayotte is Mayotte Capecia who wrote a book about her life; Nini and Dedee are characters from “Nini” (1954), a story by Abdoulaye Sadji. All three are part white which makes them determined not to “slip back among the ‘nigger’ rabble”. (There was no the One Drop Rule.)
Nini is a silly typist. A man who is an accountant with the waterways company proposes marriage. She cannot believe it. What nerve this man has! There is talk of getting him fired. In the end they have the police tell him to stop his “morbid insanities”. Why? Because he is black and she is half white. He has offended her “white girl’s” honour.
Meanwhile another man with a good government job proposes to Dedee but this time it is a dream come true. Why? Because he is white:
Gone was the psychological depreciation, the feeling of debasement, and its corollary of never being able to reach the light. Overnight the mulatto girl had gone from the rank of slave to that of master. … She was entering the white world.
Chapter 3
Frantz Fanon’s “Black Skin, White Masks” (1952): “The Man of Colour and the White Woman”:
Fanon, a black psychiatrist from Martinique, starts by saying of himself:
I want to be recognized not asBlack but as White. … who better than the white woman to bring this about? By loving me she proves to me that I am worthy of a white love. I am loved like a white man. I am a white man.
Yes, it gets worse:
Between these white breasts that my wandering hands fondle, white civilization and worthiness become mine.
Having lost half his readership, Fanon then turns to the case of Jean Veneuse, the hero of an autobiographical novel by Rene Maran, “Un homme pareil aux autres” (1947).
Jean Veneuse came to France from the Caribbean when he was three or four. He lost his parents and was brought up by boarding schools in France, the only black student in a sea of white. He has a lonely childhood. When the other students go home for the holidays he is left alone at school. He withdraws into himself and into books: Aurelius, Tagore, Pascal and other writers become his only friends.
He grows up French and falls in love with a white woman. He wonders about his motives.
Maybe it is simply because he was brought up European and so desires European women just like any other man in Europe. Or, contrariwise, maybe it is because he is black:
the common mulatto and black man have only one thought on their mind as soon as they set foot in Europe: to gratify their appetite for white women.
Most of them, including those with lighter skin who often go so far as denying both their country and their mother, marry less for love than for the satisfaction of dominating a European woman, spiced with a certain taste for arrogance.
And so I wonder whether … I am unconsciously endeavoring to take my revenge on the European female for everything her ancestors have inflicted on my people throughout the centuries.
Yet when he works in Africa as a civil servant he proves to be just as bad as the whites, complete with the native girl in his hut. So maybe it is not revenge that he wants but to separate himself from his race or even somehow to become raceless.
Chapter 4
Frantz Fanon’s book “Black Skin, White Masks” (1952): “The So-Called Dependency Complex of the Colonized”:
Mannoni, a French psychoanalyst, wanted to understand the mind of the native and the white colonial based on his experience and study of Madagascar under French rule in the 1930s and 1940s. Himself a white colonial, he wrote a book about it, “The Psychology of Colonization” (1950). Frantz Fanon, himself a native (not of Madagascar but of Martinique) spends this chapter tearing it to pieces.
French rule of Madagascar was cruel.They used Senegalese soldiers to strike fear into the hearts of natives. In 1947 the French put down an uprising, killing 80,000 natives. As if that were not enough, in the footnotes Fanon tells of the French practice of torture in Madagascar.
Fanon calls the use of black soldiers to force French rule on people of colour“the racial allocation of guilt”. He quotes Francis Jeanson:
And if, apparently, you manage not to soil your hands, it’s because others are doing the dirty work in your place. You have your henchmen, and all things considered, you are the real guilty party; for without you, without your blind indifference, such men could not undertake acts that condemn you as much as they dishonor them.
Chapter 5
Frantz Fanon’s book “Black Skin, White Masks” (1952): “The Lived Experience of the Black Man”:
Frantz Fanon wants to be a man. But in the white world in which he lives his skin colour becomes everything, more important than even his education and achievements. While his neighbour or his cousin might hate him for good reason, white people hate him without even getting to know him. They are irrational.
He is seen not as Dr Fanon but as a black man who is a doctor. Everyone is watching and waiting for him to make a mistake.
I was walled in: neither my refined manners nor my literary knowledge nor my understanding of the quantum theory could find favor.
White people do not see him, they see his body:
My body was returned to me spread-eagled, disjointed, redone, draped in mourning on this white winter’s day. The Negro is an animal, the Negro is bad, the Negro is wicked, the Negro is ugly.
Instead of being a person, a man, an individual, he is a black man, a Negro, an object, a thing that has value only in relation to whites. Always a Negro, never a man.
Look how handsome that Negro is.
The handsome Negro says, “Fuck you”, madame.
Even though the Catholic Church and science admit that black people are every bit as human as white people – their hearts are on the same side! – and even though white people themselves admit that racism goes against allreason, they still do not want you to marry their daughter.
Seeing that reason does not work with white people, some make up their mind to shout their blackness, to secrete race. Cesaire and Senghor took this road with their philosophy of negritude: on the other side of the white world there lies a magical black culture. Blacks have rhythm, their sex is magical, “Emotion is Negro as reason is Greek” and so on. But this only feeds white stereotypes about blacks.
Chapter 6
Frantz Fanon’s “Black Skin, White Masks” (1952): “The Black Man and Psychopathology”:
Why white people are so afraid of black men:
Black men are seen as being way less moral.
White men fear they will take white women from them.
Take the last one first:
White men think that black men have bigger penises. They think that once a white woman sleeps with a black man she will never want a white man again: if it is not for their size then it is because black men are so much better in bed.
None of this is based on fact. According to science the African penis and the European penis are the same size on average. There is no proof whatsoever that “Once you go black you never come back”. And prostitutes will tell you that black men and white men are pretty much the same in bed.
Fanon finds it a bit odd that any man should be thinking that much about other men’s penises and sex appeal, that they should be saying stuff like black men have an “aura of sensuality”, etc. He says it comes from repressed homosexuality.
But white women too are afraid of black men. Fanon saw it for himself when he fought in Europe in the Second World War: he was in three or four countries and every time white women would shrink back in fear if he asked them for a dance – even though he was hardly in a position to do them harm.
Black men are seen as little better than animals. Therefore they are feared for what their bodies can do, which means they are feared for their penises, which accordingly become large in the white imagination. Thus: “whoever says rape says black man”.
Chapter 7
Frantz Fanon’s “Black Skin, White Masks” (1952): “The Black Man and Recognition”:
Frantz Fanon was not a big believer ofAdler and Hegel, but nonetheless he used their ideas as a jumping off point to understand the blacks from his home island of Martinique.
Adler says that you understand someonenot through his words and actions butthrough the end he aims to achieve. Know that and all his thoughts and actions fall into place – even if he is a madman.
In Martinique black people put each other down to feel good about themselves. So mistakes in your French or at your work are remembered and repeated – not because they are so terrible in themselves but because it allows others to put you down so they can feel better about themselves.
I am Narcissus, and I want to see reflected in the eyes of the other an image of myself that satisfies me.
If you find something unpleasant in those eyes, then the person must be “a real idiot”, someone who has to be put in his place by having his mistake recounted. Something you do not do to those who like you, your “courtiers”.
The Martinicans are hungry for reassurance. They want their wishful thinking to be recognized…. Each and every one of them constitutes an isolated, arid, assertive atom… Each of them wants to be, wants to flaunt himself.
Chapter 8
Frantz Fanon’s “Black Skin, White Masks” (1952): “By Way of Conclusion”:
Frantz Fanon does not want to be a black man, he wants to be a man, plain and simple.
The trouble with blacks and whites is that both have become prisoners of their pasts:
Both have to move away from the inhuman voices of their respective ancestors so that a genuine communication can be born…
Superiority? Inferiority?
Why not simply try to touch the other, feel the other, discover each other?
So Fanon is not much interested in black history, reparations, making whites feel guilty or shouting his hatred at them. All those things are a reaction against racism, which means you are still a prisoner of racism, still a prisoner of your past and your colour.
I will not make myself the man of any past. I do not want to sing the past to the detriment of my present and my future.
Let the dead bury the dead.
♧ Reference:
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Tr. Richard Philcox, Grove Press, 2008.
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