Karma

Khushwant Singh s Karma is a complex story, albeit a short one, which works on many levels and identifying the main conflict in it, is not an easy task, as there are several important conflicts here, several poles that work against each other. The easiest and most obvious conflict you find is between India and the British Empire; a cultural conflict where two opposing cultures are facing each other off. But it is possible do delve deeper into this conflict and find another conflict that plays out, hidden just beneath. Mainly that of what I will refer to as the Brutes and the Educated. But this conflict isn t one that can stand on its own feet; it needs to be looked at in conjunction with other facets of the short story.

The uneducated versus the educated have for a long time been a staple of literary works around the world, so this is nothing new, but what Singh does here is to use this conflict as a tool for equalizing India and the British Empire, by showing that the differences are after all not that great. Though, at the same time he uses it to drive a wedge in between the two cultures, showing the fallacy of renouncing one culture in favor of the other. He ridicules sir Mohan Lal for abandoning his culture in favor of that of the British Empire; this plays in under the way he uses the Brutes versus the Educated conflict as a literary tool, but I feel that it also has a normative function as he is trying to suggest a different route for his fellow Indians.

The conflict that I will get into the most here is the destruction of symbols, namely the Iconoclastic issues and tendencies that we find in the short story. Khushwant Singh both destroys old symbols and makes room for new symbols to take their place. Considering the time at which the short story was written, barely a year after India gained its independence from the British Empire, it seems like Singh has taken upon himself the agenda of sweeping the house and getting rid of all the dusty and outdated images

Brute vs. Educated

First of all I will look closer at the conflict between the Brutes and the Educated, and I will also try to explain further what I mean with these terms as to avoid any further confusion. The Brutes are the uneducated masses, exemplified most famously today as America s Joe Schmoe<!--[if

!supportFootnotes]-->[1]<!--[endif]-->. It s a stereotype of the middle and lower classes, those who are not dignified and cultured. Then, on the other hand, you have the Educated, who are dignified and cultured. They are the posh and respected ones; the British gentleman can be considered the stereotypical example of this.

In Khushwant Singh s short story, the Brutes and the Educated are featured prominently, but their positions are reversed as to what one would have expected. The Indian is the Educated; dignified and well dressed, in rich clothes and with the traditional symbols of the Imperial higher class; while the British soldiers are the brutes; drunk and slurring in their speech, violent and aggressive in their behavior.

What I see as the most important aspect of this particular conflict is that while the roles have been reversed, where the power lies has not; even though sir Mohan has adopted all the trappings of the dignified British gentleman, he is still subjected to the whims of the Brutes in the form of the British soldiers who promptly throw him off the train, due to the fact that he is an Indian<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[2]<!--[endif]-->. Had sir Mohan been an Englishman he would almost certainly not have been treated in such a fashion by the brutish soldiers, no matter how drunk they were.

Here it is also interesting to note that the soldiers do not accept or even believe that sir Mohan is a dignified gentleman. The main reason why they can t seem to believe his status seems to be that he is too well educated, too much the British gentleman for them. In their drunken stupor they simply cannot accept sir Mohan for anything else but a nigger as they call him. Sir Mohan s skill in transforming himself into one of the Educated thus proves to be his undoing.

So, what meaning does this conflict between sir Mohan and the two drunken soldiers have? As the most obvious conflict and one of the central elements of the short story, it is important because it shows the unbalanced relationship between India and the British Empire and the aggressive tendencies that are present here. Singh here hints that the British only rule by means of force and not of a higher standing or nobility, which the British themselves have like to believe for a long time.

As I mentioned earlier, the story has a normative element as well and that is to be found in sir Mohan s fate. Having abandoned his own culture, he even speaks perfectly anglicized Hindustani , and adopted the culture and symbols of the Empire he has become stranded in the middle. He is no longer Indian and yet he cannot truly become the British gentleman, the paragon of the Empire that he wishes to

transcend into. I use the phrase transcend here because it is just that which sir Mohan wants to do; he wants to leave behind his old world to journey into a higher world, into a paradise of sorts.

But it all ends in folly; sir Mohan is in described as a tragic clown, who does not know he is a clown. He blusters about and puffs up his chest, like a peacock showing of its feathers, but in the end it is for naught when he is confronted with the harsh reality when he returns to India. In this way Singh shows us the folly of abandoning one s own culture in favor of your other. Also, as I mentioned earlier, this short story was written barely a year after India gained its independence and we can thus see the fate of sir Mohan as a way of reprimanding those Indians who had abandoned India in favor of prestige within the system of the British Empire.

Iconoclasm

Another important aspect of Singh s short story is the iconoclastic elements, which also revolves around the conflict between sir Mohan and the British soldiers. Sir Mohan is dressed very formally in a good suit and wearing his Balliol-tie, while surrounding himself with other trappings of England, all which aid in setting him up as a member of the Educated, making him an analogy of the British gentleman. Sir Mohan himself places much importance upon these things and he hopes that they will help him to commune with his dear old England as he puts it; they are the symbols of England and privilege that he has taken home to India with him, both to remind himself of better times and to secure himself status in India and to gain an place amongst the British people living there.

It is therefore quite ironic then, that the vessel Khushwant Singh has used as an device of iconoclastic destruction are the members of the very same order to whom the symbols belong; namely the British Empire. By refusing to accept the value and importance placed in these symbols they are destroying their own symbols, thus rendering them useless. In this way the British Empire loses some of the power it holds over India, its culture and its people, as it is through these symbols that they show their superiority and nobility, which roughly translates into their right to rule over India and its people.

Though, if we want to look at this situation from a different perspective, we can also claim that the soldiers are defending their symbols from iconoclastic actions by sir Mohan. The trappings and symbols sir Mohan is wearing are in India reserved for the British and thus he is destroying their symbols of

supremacy by, as an Indian, wearing them. The symbols that sir Mohan are adopting are those of power, privilege and respect; something which he desperately wants but cannot have because he is an Indian. Therefore he rejects all he can of his native Indian culture and replaces this with the English culture and all of its trappings.

The most important symbol that thus is destroyed in Karma is the dignified British gentleman; Not only are the symbols that accompany the dignified British gentleman rendered useless by sir Mohan or the soldiers, depending on what perspective you choose- but also by the fact that the only true representatives of the British Empire in this short story, namely the two drunk soldiers, are not the dignified British gentleman. They are ill-mannered louts who do not speak in a manner befitting a gentleman and neither do they behave as such. As representatives of the Empire they are thus destroying the symbol of the dignified gentleman. But it is not only the soldiers that are responsible for this iconoclastic act of destruction; sir Mohan is also a part of it as he shows all the signs of being just this dignified British gentleman, though he is an Indian and not British. Thus both sides of this conflict both aid in bringing down the major symbol of this short story.

This use of symbols, and ultimately the destruction of them, is in my opinion the most interesting and important aspect of Khushwant Singh s short story. The depths of the story can only be found here, as the characters themselves are not really important except for in the capacity that they embody a symbol. We have no need to know what happens to sir Mohan in the end, because sir Mohan is utterly destroyed as a symbol. As a symbol he is both the British gentleman and the native Indian whom tries to adopt the trappings of the Empire to gain respect and standing, and as both he fails. Singh has here masterfully shown us the ugly side of the Empire and that the dignified gentleman is nothing but a paper tiger or a mirage.

While Singh is efficient in destroying the old symbols, he leaves the field open for others to create the new symbols to take their place. He is just sweeping the house, making room for the new to be put up in their respective places.

Symbols and Power

To summarize; the main conflict in Khushwant Singh s short story Karma is between symbols; symbols that he rapidly destroys. As I mentioned earlier, the characters in the story has little to no importance, it is not a story about people; it is a story about symbols. There are of course symbols here that I haven t spoken of yet, sir Mohan s wife Lady Lakshmi Lal for instance, but their function in the story is pretty much the same as the others, to throw down old symbols and make way for new ones.

This way of using Iconoclasm to destroy the symbols of the former regime has been evident in nations that have found their freedom all over the world. One example of Iconoclasm used in this fashion from recent days, albeit in a more direct fashion than that which Singh uses, is the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein during the Iraqi War.

The conflict between what I have labeled the Brutes and the Educated is also central to the story, but also here the symbolism and iconoclastic tendencies are important, if not instrumental, to that conflict. But the reason why I have separated these two conflicts from each other, rather than dealing with them as one single conflict, is because that they operate on two different levels. The direct conflict between sir Mohan and the two drunken soldiers is the actual plot of the short story -the meat and bones of it, if you would like- while the conflict between the symbols operate on a different level, one that lies between the lines of the text and that you have to delve deeper to grasp a hold of, yet which is also the dominant factor of the short story.

The story is seemingly there just to provide a setting and focus point for the iconoclastic destruction that Khushwant Singh performs here, and it is just because of this that it works. By using a short story such as Karma, he is able to focus upon the symbolism and the concentration of them. The story is there to provide a setting for the destruction of the symbols, in this metaphorical sweeping of the house after the guests have left.

Karma" by Khushwant Singh

Karma is one out of many short stories written by the Punjabi writer Khushwant Singh. The copy handed out to our class was published in Singh s The Collected Stories from 1989, but the story was originally written much earlier. Singh is known for using humor, something that is also seen in Karma ( There was still time for a quick one , for instance).

The plot is set in a railway station in the Northern parts of India. It is reasonable to think that the story describes events from the partition of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (East-Pakistan) in 1947, but it may as well describe India or more precisely Jammu and Kashmir during the unrest in these areas (1947- ).

There is a third person narrator, but the point of view switches throughout the story (between the two main characters, Mr. and Mrs. Mohan Lal).

Sir Mohan Lal and Lachmi (also referred to as Lady Lal), his wife, are the two main characters in the short story Karma. Sir Mohan Lal, an arrogant but successful barrister, has spent the last five years in England, working and adopting the English culture. His wife Lady Lal, a short and fat , average Indian, has been living in India, not knowing that her husband has been with several prostitutes while working in England. In other words; they are not having a sweet married life. There are several conflicts in this short story, the unhappy marriage is one, but the cultural differences between the Indian and the English culture also plays an important part.

The unhappily married couple is travelling by train. The first scene is set in a railway station somewhere in northern India. Sir Mohan Lal travels in a first class compartment, while his wife travels in the zenana , a compartment for the ordinary people. Lady Lal does not want to spend time in a compartment where everyone speaks a language she barely understands, English. While Lady Lal finds her seat in the zenana compartment, Sir Mohan Lal is busy finding out how to show his knowledge and status. He brings a copy of The Times to show both knowledge and wealth. He also wants to show that he has become a part of the sophisticated English culture, and is no more a part of the inefficient Indian culture.

Sir Mohan Lal finds himself a seat in an empty compartment, clearly disappointed because there were none to impress with his perfect English accent. While waiting for the train to move, two British soldiers enter Sir Mohan Lal s compartment. They keep talking about some nigger and throws out his luggage. Sir Mohan Lal tries to talk to the men, in a way that only an Englishman would, strict but polite. The soldiers throw the well-educated barrister out of the train. This part of the short story is very much like the episode Gandhi describes in his autobiography, an episode where he is being thrown out of a first class train in South-Africa because he is colored.

The turning point comes in the last paragraph: We are back at Lady Lal s compartment. She is chewing betel and has a lot of red saliva both inside and outside her mouth and she spits out of the window, a jet of red dribble flying across like a dart .

Will the red saliva hit Sir Mohan Lal as he is being thrown out of his compartment? My mind would say Yes . I think that the saliva is a symbol that shows Sir Mohan Lal s karma. He has been treating his wife with lack of respect, and the red saliva (hopefully) hitting him in the face, is presumably what he gets in return. Spitting is a universal sign of disrespect. The color of the saliva (red) epitomizes Sir Mohan Lal s bad Karma; red is the color of blood, danger, pain, guilt and anger. Lady Lal s name, Lachmi, comes from the Hindu God s name; Lakshmi, a God symbolizing prosperity and wealth (Lachmi is married to a rich man), but fortune and destiny as well. I think the author wants us to know that people we think of as weak may seem different when you are down. Roles can switch; the superior part can grow weak, and the weak one can grow strong and superior. He who laughs last, laughs best!