Stephen Gill’s Fiction….
CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION
Professor Dr. R.K. Singh
*Appeared in Language Forum, New Delhi, India,
Vol XX1V, No. 1-2,
Jan-Dec. 1998. Also in Psychic Knot : Search for
Tolerance in Indian
English Fiction. Ed. R.K. Singh. Bahari Publications,
Stephen Gill,
an Indian settled in
As a poet and novelist, Stephen
Gill, who strongly believes in promoting world peace, universal brotherhood and
global understanding, thinks that through literature "we enrich our own
culture by borrowing certain elements from other cultures. This makes society more rational, and more
friendly, and it helps to promote brotherhood".4
He is ever in search for a literary
space for himself, organizing his discourse of tolerance, inter-cultural
communication, understanding, and respect for other people's ways of life. He raises issues of cultural identity and
acculturation, discussing dichotomies such as modernism versus traditionalism,
foreign or global cultural values versus indiginism,
cross-cultural interaction versus marginalization of cultures. He points to several cases of oppression,
exploitation, abuses, violence, and bestiality and yet echoes the possibilities
of living together, reconstructing a Canadian reality to make people see and
understand.
As a social researcher he applies
his creative intuition to the condition of man to discover, what Niels Bohr calls, "the relations between the manifold
aspects of our experience". From
his own interior, Gill debates, evaluates and comments on immigrant condition:
the novel is the analysis of man in his own environment, revealing aspects of
reality one must ponder over for integration in a genuine human culture without
straying into scepticism, cynicism or despair.
As a novelist, keenly aware of Asian
life and experiences, and cultural differences between Canada and India, he
faithfully portrays Reghu Nath,
an Indian student's difficulties in adapting to a foreign socio-political
scene: He highlights the plights of the Indian settler-- culture shock, ethnic
and racial prejudices, inequality, discriminations and biases in a culturally
pluralistic society (which Canada appears to be from a distance), not
necessarily to criticize, but to seek a
change a la a culturally tolerant society, accommodating diverse people and practices. He affirms the need for reculturation
of both the individual immigrants
and the host society with a sense of mutual `give and take', fulfilment and
enrichment, justice, equality, access, and participation.
Gill's Immigrant is an
exploration in immigrant's aspirations for economic livelihood, social
well-being and intercultural understanding vis-a vis the dimensions of the centrality of communication and
politics in the affairs of the people.
The novel voices the need for openness, for dialogue, for expression of
differences and cultural pluralism to minimize misunderstandings, conflicts,
exclusiveness, and manipulations. The
novelist seeks to preserve our common humanity alongside the differences and
diversities to promote mutual understanding, maybe, through trial and error, and
a perception of goodwill.
Gill creates a text and context to cope with
the politics of sharing and survival, the communication problems5 and socioeconomic and political
contradictions, ambiguities and racist and ethnic prejudices that cause
disillusionment and distrust in an immigrant in everyday life. We see a tolerant and humane critical reason
in action, presenting the predicament of Reghu Nath, who is young and seeking a better future in a new
land: In the opening pages, we meet him flying over the Atlantic in the VC 10,
worried about "the problems which normally harass a foreigner".6 The flight is seven hours late and he lands
in Montreal at the height of Canada s centennial
celebration, Expo '67. There is no
accommodation possible there and he must reach Ottawa "at least three days
before" to be able to register himself for admission to the
university. Without sleep and rest, he
is already disturbed, and there is no one to help him.
Gill traces Reghu's
trials and tribulation as he suffers culture shock, manipulations for dole,
demanding professors, difficult women, Canadian bureaucracy and haunting
memories of his native India.
“It was an awesome feeling to know
he had been in so many different countries within such a short span of
time. Life stretched before him now like
the never-ending street on which he was travelling,
and the world emerged as an enormous village of people with diverse tastes, yet
basically very much alike”.7
The novelist examines Reghu's mental aberrations and sufferings caused by
displacement (to the so-called "land of opportunities"). He is at war with himself vis-a-vis
the reaction of the native Canadians as also the established immigrants:
"He mustered all his courage to
say politely `I love you'. The girl glanced to one side, then the other,
before finishing her whisky in a gulp."8
and
"While shopping,
when he held
the hand of a compatriot whom he had met within a few days of his
arrival in
and
"Reghu went
up to the
apartment when the musician invited him. Unexpectedly, Reghu met with an unusual welcome. The man pulled out an empty
beer bottle from under the bed and asked Reghu to
return it and buy a beer for him."10
and
"For
me, friendship is one thing, but marriage is another. Marriage
is more than a mere friendship
between two souls."
"Don't
you think a common background, outlook and
tastes are important for a successful marriage?"
"At
this point Reghu became emotional. Looking into her
eyes he said, 'Not at all ...'".11
Reghu discovers
there is no
taker for his "eastern wisdom" in
He
finds the situation in the university, too,
intolerable: he suffers hostile professors who force him
to take extra
courses that affect
his regular studies and w ho harm
his interests, academically and
financially. The "mockery of
education" forces him to "quit university without obtaining his
degree."13
He is harassed for payment of loan
by Mrs. Butler; he is denied help for getting a job by the Canada Manpower
Office; he would not be accepted even for a job no Canadian will agree to
accept; he felt humiliated by the way the Welfare Office worked; and even after
obtaining Canadian citizenship the situation does not improve for him.14
Reghu, who
has a sense of dislocation, alienation and loneliness vis-a-vis
his effort to negotiate a space for himself between two worlds, two cultures
and more than two languages-- he appears nearly pragmatic trying to learn to
adjust against the "French and English cultures mingled with African and
Asian ways of life"15 -- suffers anxieties about homelessness,
and near impossibility of returning to his own country, India : "Why don't you go back to your
country?"
"Where? The whole world is my country. I am a world citizen."16
In fact, there are others like him,
for example, the Queen of Sheba from
The novelist structures the complex
view of the double vision of the immigrant-- both a looking forward and a
yearning backward, the conflicting tendencies of regression and progression,
the desire to settle down in a new country and the external pressures to return
to the motherland. His protagonist at
times evinces symptoms of psychoneurosis: Like characters
in Anita
Desai's Bye Blackbird, Kamala Markandeya's The Nowhere Man, Ruth Prawar Jhabwala's
He depicts the frustration of
unemployed youths from the Indian sub-continent at Asian Brotherhood Centre and
worries about loss of communal values and conviviality and rise of selfish,
self-centred neurotics23 in the so-called
democratic set up, where MPs unaware of the anxieties of their electorates,
waste "time and money on futile, long and weary debates.24
. But the "idealist" Reghu's views are
dismissed as a poet's just as his expectation to involve white Canadians at the
Centre is rejected by his apparently friendly white colleagues. Reghu himself
perseveres in his efforts to find "a suitable job of any sort, to be free
from the financial clutches of welfare"
but is continually a victim of racial/color discrimination
(cf.ch.12). The novelist seems convinced
that existence of ethnic or racial barriers in a population is potentially
dangerous to democratic state.
"He felt that the country did
not need scholars, or people who specialized in one branch or field. Canada had a handful of openings, usually
filled by the persons born here or by British and American immigrants, who
encountered no prejudice because they were not a visible minority like the
Africans and Asians, who spoke differently and looked differently. The situation grew worse with the increasing
number of American professors at various university departments, who loved to
hire their compatriots."25
Their discriminatory policy is so
horrible that Prabha, an M.A. in Library Science,
"tolerated as a cancer in their main body"26, is forced to
do a cataloguer's job, and driven to commit suicide. Dr. Hafeez cannot
get a position in the area of his specialization despite his established
reputation in the U.K.27
He can derive consolation from
people like Dr. Menard and his assistant professor in Ottawa, who hoped the
situation would improve one day (though they eventually leave the university in
protest)28 and Mrs. Clifford,
who wails about industrial and economic prosperity and material comforts of
scientific progress that have rendered us, the westerners, lonelier, without
love, and "robbed us of our peace of mind".29 Reghu Nath, with the stigma of a foreigner (or from a different
region of Canada), himself discovers: "No matter whatever company he was
in, he felt alone, at a distance. The
more he tried to come close, the wider grew the gap".30
He is, however, aware of the
political and economic climate, contributing to white Canadians' dislike for
Asian immigrants31, particularly from the Indian sub-continent, who
become the scapegoat for
all kinds of
slander, harassment and
violence, possibly because
they (Indians) are not united, or are jealous of each other? He is equally convinced that it is not the
average Canadian but the privileged class, "the people with power",
who carry the venom of racist discrimination: "Obviously, it was a tactic
of the ruling power to divert the citizens' attention from the country's growing
economic unrest".32
Possibly, Aggarwal,
too, is part of the same complexes of the elite
class when he
generalizes prejudices of the
white Canadians against immigrants because they are Christians. But Reghu is not
ready to yield to any misconceived notion, irrational belief, malicious reaction, vindictive attitude,
or egoistic superiority.
Gill does not seek to condemn
Canadian culture: Reghu Nath
understands human beings are basically alike everywhere. "Every nation has its own problems. No country was a paradise"33 and "I don't see any difference. Men and women all over the world are the same
basically. These so-called cultures are
man-made and cause confusion and anarchy".34
Gill's message, therefore, is
clear: The problems that we face are
best resolved through mutual knowledge; we should wipe out ignorance,35 the root of all prejudices, for better
understanding of humankind.
REFERENCES
1. Gill,
Stephen. 1982. Immigrant.
2. MacLennan, Hugh. 1991. Two Solitudes.
3. Hughes,
David and Kallen, Evelyn. 1996. The Anatomy of Racism
: Canadian Dimensions.
4. Gamble,
Rick. "Stephen Gill Builds Bridges with Books," The Expositor,
5. Gill, Stephen.
Immigrant. pp. 70-73
6.---------------.
Ibid. p.5
7.---------------.
Ibid. p.8
8.---------------.
Ibid. p.11
9.---------------.
Ibid. p.20
10.--------------
.Ibid. p.40
11.---------------.Ibid.
p.24
12.---------------.Ibid.
p.30
13.---------------.Ibid.
p.31
14.---------------.Ibid.
p.36
15.---------------.Ibid.
p.38
16.---------------.Ibid.
p.42
17.---------------.Ibid.
pp.51-53
18.---------------.Ibid.
p.44
19.---------------.Ibid.
p.62
20.---------------.Ibid.
p.43
21.---------------.Ibid.
p.63
22.---------------.Ibid.
p.69 & 91
23.---------------.Ibid.
p.71
24.---------------.Ibid.
p.72
25.---------------.Ibid.
p.91
26.---------------.Ibid.
p.105
27.---------------.Ibid.
pp.108-112
28.---------------.Ibid.
p.91
29.---------------.Ibid.
pp.100-103
30.---------------.Ibid.
p.113
31.---------------.Ibid.
p.133
32.---------------.Ibid.
p.134
33.---------------.Ibid.
p.63 & p. 126
34.---------------.Ibid.
p.66
35.---------------.Ibid.
pp.132-134
Dr. R.K. Singh, head of the department
of English at a university in India, is
a prominent poet and critic. He has authored several books.