Post Colonialism and Under the Banyan Tree

¶ … Banyan Tree Under the Banyan Tree is a collection of stories by Indian writer R. K. Narayan. Narayan focuses on cultural India -- India from the Indian's perspective, which is different from the Westerner's perspective looking inward from outside. That perspective -- belonging to writers like Rudyard Kipling and E. M. Forster -- is too colonialist to actually understand what India in its true nature is actually like.

Thus this book, as a collection of stories, acts as a remedy to misconceptions about India perpetuated from voices abroad who have attempted to identify the culture and its people through a Western lens that filters out too much of the actual reality of the nation, its history, its beliefs, its customs and its spirit. This paper will show how Narayan represents the real India from the insider's perspective that only an insider and native like Narayan could know and show.

As Tadie emphasizes in his book review of Under the Banyan Tree, Narayan is engaged in an action that is meant to cleanse the world of its mistaken perceptions of India: "All pictures of India, Narayan explains, are by essence fragmented, piecemeal; and whoever attempts to encapsulate India, or generalize about India, is doomed to failure" (Tadie 231). Tadie receives Narayan like a welcome breath of fresh air and finds his whole and integrated depiction of India to be revitalizing and on target.

The weak points of Narayan's work are few and microscopic and consist mainly in terms of appeal -- a Western audience likes to see through Western eyes, but Narayan is offering this audience a sense of India through Eastern eyes. This is also the strong suit of Narayan and what gives him strength as a writer: he has an eye for authenticity as well as for nuance and wisdom.

Tadie helps to raise the question of how we should view literature about India and why Narayan is the best source for examining the real India rather than the colonialist India that stems from colonialist myths perpetuated by Western writers. Two theoretical lenses used here in approaching Narayan's Under the Banyan Tree are the archetypal approach and the post-colonialist approach. Through the archetypal lens, the reader can see how Narayan constructs the book from the perspective of Indian cultural beliefs, attitudes and traditions.

Its central character is Nambi who serves as an almost mythical guide for the reader, telling the tales with absolute authority and acting as a wise sage in many ways. Nambi, and Narayan too, show a great respect and love for the traditions and customs of Indian, their native home, and they see the wisdom and treasure that is in the oral tradition of telling stories.

One question this lens raises is how Nambi views life in India as a source of grace and intelligence? The idea that stories can convey meaning and guidance is why Nambi tells the stories, but there is also a dramatic effect that Nambi wishes to convey, which is why he takes a vow of silence at the end of the book.

He has finished his tales and now knows that the time to stop talking is here and so the audience is left to recollect and reflect and meditate on the meanings that Nambi has given him in the tales. This shows how the culture of India is an important source of education for the listener to grow in his own life, and how endless entertainment is not the aim of Nambi or Narayan but truth and education are.

The second theoretical approach, that of post-colonialism, shows how Narayan uses actual Indian identities to counter the Western colonialist notion of Indians being the "other" instead of themselves. It shows how the people have their own spirituality and customs, for example in Nitya where "Father discovered the record of their promise to God" (Narayan 1) and how customs like shaving one's head are important and meaningful in this culture as opposed to something that needs to be made more British and Anglo-cized as in a Western perspective novel.

It also shows the effect of Western colonialism on India and how the attempt to reshape India according to Western standards and bureaucratic controls only serves to crush the Indian soul and add to the Indian's degeneration: "After all, what does the Government want?" asks Narayan (177). The answer is that the government controlled by the Western colonialists wants "to have things in nice shape on paper" (177) but in reality it does not care how it is.

This is essentially what writers like Kipling and Forster have done: given a "nice" colonialist perspective of India, but in doing so they have missed India completely. This is why Narayan.