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Presence of Indian culture in Paul Scott’s works

Introduction
The British colonialisation in India lasted for about 350 years. During this historical
period, the cultural transaction between these two states contributed new forms and
styles in lifestyle, art and literature. British were amazed on Indian mystique and the
English response to Indian enigma reflected in their literature of colonial period. Most
erudite writers of Britain were impressed with India enough to be subjected in their
books. ‘Rudyard clips’ - known as the trumpet boy of British raj- subjected India and
Indians for his books like ‘The Jungle Book, Just So Stories etc. Another classical
writer is ‘E M foster’ whose work is ‘A Passage to India’ dealt with both Indians and
British along with their cultural relations. Paul Scott is the most gifted British writer
of colonial period who dared to write the epic of colonial India. His magnum opus
“The Raj Quartet” (Tetrology), the collection of ‘The Jewel in the crown, The Day of
Scorpion, the Towers of Silence and the Divine of Spoils sketched the pitiable and
promising figure of colonial India. He renowned as the first British writer to won the
Bucker Prize for his relevant work named as “staying on”.

Brief Profile of Paul Scott

Paul Scott was born at Palmers Green, Middlesex, as son of a commercial


artist who moved to India in 1920. His primary education was at Winchmore Hill
Collegiate School. When he aged 14 his father’s business met severe financial
difficulties so he couldn’t to complete better school education. He worked as an
accounting clerk for C. T. Payne Company and took evening class in bookkeeping.
Scott started writing poetry in his spare times, in this environment he came to
understand the rigid social divisions of suburban London that is why, when he went
to British India he had an instinctive familiarity with the interactions of caste and
class in imperial colony. In 1940 Scott joined British army, he met his wife penny in
Torquay in 1941-she also became a novelist.

Paul Scott and India

The outbreak of Second World War forced Paul scot to be posted in India as an
officer of cadet. Later he finished his service as captain of Indian army service crops.
Paul scot was annoyed with the haughtiness and aggression of British Indian officers.
He could see agony and poverty of poor Indians streets. Gradually Scott began to love
India and its culture. He felt the turmoil of two different cultures in the buzzled and
filthy slums. This was the land for Poul Scott’s literature. The long day military
activities also influenced and booted the writings of Scott.
Writing career of Paul Scott
Scott published a collection of three religious poems. Titled “I, Geronrius” in 1941.
But his writing career really began in earnest with his first novel “Johnny sahib”. He
worked as a literary agent to support his family. The Alien Sky appeared in 1953, and
was followed by A Male Child (1956), The Mark of the Warrior (1958), and The
Chinese Love Pavilion were respectfully received. In 1960s Scott decided to make a
living as full time author.

The Alien Sky (1953)

Paul Scott’s novels persistently draw on his experiences of India and service in
the armed forces with strong subtexts of uneasy relationships between male friends or
brothers; both the social privilege and the oppressive class and racial stratifications of
empire are represented, The Alien Sky remains as the principal fictional exploration of
a very light-skinned Anglo Indian woman who has married a white man by pretending
to be white; the prolific Malayalam writer ‘Pamman’ wrote a novel on this behalf,
named chattakari. In British reign, Anglo Indians were appointed in police, railway
and civil services. After independence they migrated to Australia recognizing the
Britain’s disagrees with them.

Another novel Male child of 1956 is set principally in London and deals with the
domestic effects of losing a family member to imperial service; and The Chinese Love
Pavilion, after an Indian opening, is largely concerned with events in Malaya under
Japanese occupation. But these novels can be seen as studies towards the Raj Quartet.
The lack of commercial success forced Scott to broaden his range. His next two
novels, The Bender (1963), a satirical comedy, and The Corrida at San Feliu (1964),
are the clear attempt to experiment with new forms and locales.

The Raj Quartet

Paul Scott was lost in thought about a volumes work. He thought about new styles and
patterns in writings, finally Scott decided to start in 1964. He flew to India to see his
old friends, both Indians and Anglo Indians; He made new acquaintances in
independent India. Scott recharged his batteries by confronting again the place that
obsessed him. In June 1964 Scott began to write “The Jewel in the Crown”, the first
novel of what was to become ‘The Raj Quartet’. It was published in 1966 to minor
and muted enthusiasm. The remaining novels of this sequence ‘The Day of the
Scorpion’ The Towers of Silence’ and The Division of the Spoils’ were published over
the next nine years. Scott wrote in isolation on the top store of the London house.

The jewel in the crown engages with the classic work of E M Foster “the passage
to India”, and so is necessarily set in a small, Hindu-majority rural town with an army
garrison, but the wider province is implicit, and the later novels spread out to the cold-
weather capital on the plains, the hot-weather capital in the hills, a neighboring
Muslim-ruled princely state, and the railway lines that bind them together – as well
as Calcutta, Bombay. The cast also expands to include at least 24 principals, more
than 300 named fictional characters, and a number of historical figures
including Churchill, Gandhi, Jinnah, Wavell, and Slim. The book deals with the
turbulent history of a pluralistic country which claims a critical and cultural legacy.
The book has 14 characters and 4 important themes. It also charts events from
the Quit India riots of August 1942 to the violence accompanying the Partition of
India and creation of Pakistan in 1946-47, and so represents the collapse of imperial
dominance.

Exposing India in the Raj Quartet

The eventful story of “The Jewel in the Crown” necessarily set in a small, Hindu-
majority rural town with an army garrison named Mayapur - a north Indian city of old
British India. Here English men stayed in the cantonment areas while the local Indians
haven’t any permission to enter here. Pride Hindus lived like nobles and lords. The
book says the tragic love story of two characters ‘Daphne manners and Hari Kumar.
The love story, serves to clarify the social and racial historical significance of the time
in which it is set in 1942. Their love is the agony for the relationship between Britain
and India, the Whiteman and blacks, the English culture and Indian culture.

Daphne manners reach India to live with her relative ‘lady manners’. Her parents
were died. Lady manners send her to Chatterji’s house - one of her closest friend.
From here she met Hari Kumar - an educated Indian noble man. Daphne falls in love
with Hari. In the story villain is a British police officer named Ronald Merrick. He
was looking for Daphne manners. On a black day Hari Kumar and Daphne were
attacked from a park by smugglers and Daphne was brutally raped. But the case was
taken to Ronald’s office he arrested Hari Kumar and tortured him.

Meanwhile Daphne becomes pregnant then another problem rose ‘whose is the
son. Daphne died in delivery, but the son resembled to Hari Kumar so he gained the
boy. Indian culture has clearly exposed in the novel. The post colonial novel about the
realism of interactive love between Daphne and Hair Kumar has sketched the British
Indian relations and bonds. At a time when British and Indian affairs were strained,
the rape of Miss Manners is significantly metaphoric of the British rape of Indian land
and culture.

The Jewel in the Crown has at its heart the confrontation between Hair Kumar,
the young, English public-school educated Indian liberal, and the grammar-school
scholarship boy turned police superintendent Ronald Merrick, who both hates and is
attracted to Kumar and seeks to destroy him, after Daphne Manners, the English girl
who is in love with Kumar and has been courted by Merrick, is raped. Critics have
seen this conflict as one fundamentally influenced by Scott’s own bisexual nature,
with Kumar representing everything young, bright, and forward-looking that had been
brutally crushed in Scott’s own youth. Raj quartet examines the political and social
conditions of British presence in south Asia. The plot of raj stories is the interaction
between duty and desire. Novelist truly tries to mark the influence of Whiteman in
Indian legacy. The beautiful title comes from a picture in which Victoria princess sits
on a thrown and she is gifted a precious diamond from them. This diamond denoted as
the symbol of India.

The lasting relevance of the Quartet, other than for sheer entertainment value, is in
what it has to tell us about race and "diversity," matters that are going to occupy us
mightily in the decades to come. With recent discoveries in human genetics, we are
beginning to get a clear understanding of the history of our species, and of the ancient
inbred populations that now comprise it. Those populations, each with its distinctive
characteristics, formed in isolation from each other during the long decamillennia of
the Paleolithic.

The Day of the Scorpion (1968), The Towers of Silence (1971), which won the
Yorkshire Post Fiction Award and A Division of the Spoils (1974) followed the jewel
in the crown. This is seemed as magnum opus Paul Scott. Staying On achieved
success with the award Booker Prize in 1977. The book says the story of some
Englishmen who likes to live in India after independence. Scott was too ill to attend
the Booker presentation in November 1977.

Conclusion

Paul Scott was such an important writer who made his works from his real life
experience both in London and India. He loved India and he was an outsider of
Britain

From his earliest experiences in north London, he felt himself an outsider in his own
country as Scott says himself “For me, the British Raj is an extended metaphor I don’t
think a writer chooses his metaphors. They choose him”. He died at the Middlesex
Hospital, London, on 1 March 1978.

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