A Grain of Wheat as a Post-Colonial Novel
Colonialism is the policy or practice of acquiring
full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with
settlers, and exploiting it economically. It was a response to the economic
needs of industrial capitalist Europe's desire for colonies in order to have
access to raw materials of the colonies, to have markets for the sale of
manufactured goods and ambit for the investment of surplus capital. Colonialism
ravaged Africa like wildfire with disastrous consequences. Colonialism can be
seen as a product of imperialism and has caused diverse effects worldwide. It destroys the lives of innocent people and denies the whole community
freedom. Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth observes:
“Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all forms and content. By making use of a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures and destroys it.” (Fanon 1967:169)
In Decolonising the Mind Ngugi observes:
“The real aim of colonialism was to control people’s wealth and this was imposed through military conquest and subsequent political dictatorship. But its most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonized, the control through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world. Economic and political control can never be complete or effective without mental control. To control people’s culture is to control their tools of self definition in relation to others”.
Ngugi’s essays in Homecoming reflect his concern with the
dangers of exposure to European ‘knowledge. “The colonial system”, writes
Ngugi, “produced the kind of education which nurtured subservience,
self-hatred, and mutual suspicion.” The result was that it produced “a people
uprooted from the masses.”
You can read the following:
Significance of the Title A Grain of Wheat Helen Tiffin in Post-Colonialism, Post-modernism and the Rehabilitation of Post-colonial History (1988) suggests that the term ‘Postcolonial’ “can be used to describe writing that was both a consequence of and reaction to the European imperial process.”
The thematic preoccupation of text in postcolonial literature varies; it could be the theme of place and displacement, the struggle for freedom and resistance to imperial domination, nepotism, corruption, capitalism and exploitation, alienation and uprootment etc. Thus, postcolonial writers develop a perspective whereby states of marginality, plurality and perceived “Otherness are seen as sources of energy and potential change.
Published in 1967, A Grain of Wheat, which is Ngugi’s third novel, is essentially about the story of Thabai, a Gikuyu village, at the moment of Kenyan decolonization. It focuses more on the sociopolitical domain, depicting the long-standing struggle of the peasants against British rule. The main characters-Kihika, Mugo, Gikonyo, Mumbi and Karanja–both as individual subjects and community members are profoundly affected by colonialism in different ways. Kihika, a Mau-Mau leader, struggles to free the Kenyan masses from the exploitation of the Britishers.
“What’s this thing called Mau Mau?” (AGOW:54). This is the
question John Thompson, the white colonial administrative officer, asks in his
diary. His answer to the question follows a few sentences later in the diary
notes. It reads as, “Mau Mau is evil: a movement which if not checked will mean
complete destruction of the values on which our civilization has thriven.” The
Mau Mau movement is regarded and recorded by the British as primitive,
irrational, apolitical and a fanatic movement which resisted Western modernity
and civilization. The movement is not seen as a national movement but a tribal
one that is limited to the Gikuyu.
As a District Officer fully embracing British Imperialism,
Thompson sees himself as a man with a clear mission who sees Africa as a “dark”
continent and the Africans as always-dependent children. As Thompson notes in
his diary, which later would be published as Prospero in Africa: “Was it not
possible to reorientate people into this way of life by altering their social
and cultural environment?” (AGOW, 53); it also included thoughts like The
peasant in Asia and Africa must be included in this moral scheme for
rehabilitation.” (AGOW, 53); “The Negro is a child and with children, nothing
can be done without the use of authority” (AGOW, 54):
“Remember the African is a born actor, that’s why he finds it so easy to lie.” (AGOW 53)
Ngugi in the novel tries to contest the history of the Mau Mau as an anti-colonial movement -as written by the British. Ngugi, however, argues that what gave birth to the Mau Mau Movement, during the years of the State of Emergency (19521960), is essentially the land problem arising from the fact that the Europeans took over the most agriculturally developed area known as the “White Highlands.”At the same time, the native Africans were compelled to work as hired labor for the white man for cheap wages. Harry Thuku in his letters to the white man clearly states of “people’s discontent with taxation, forced labour on white settler’s land, and with the soldier settlement scheme which after the first big war, left many black people without homes or land around Tigoni and other places. Harry asked them to join the Movement and find strength in unity.” (AGOW 12).
This indicates that the movement is a politically motivated
one which transcends tribal boundaries in Kenya.
Ngugi describes an incident- the death of D.O Robson-to show
the difference in perception. For the natives’ image of Robson is that of the
savage:
In the novel Ngugi uses kihika to defend the violent
activities of the Mau Mau, Persuading Mugo to join the Movement, Kihika reasons
why they have to kill:
“We are not murderers. We are not hang men-like
Robsonkilling men and women without cause or purpose.” (AGOW: 54).
As Kihika further explains to Mugo:
“We only hit back. You are struck on the left cheek. You
turn the right cheek. One, two, three-sixty years. Then suddenly, it is always
sudden, you say: I am not turning the other cheek any more. Your back to the
wall, you strike back… We must kill. Put to sleep the enemies of black man’s
freedom… They say we are weak. They say we cannot win against the bomb….
Because a people united in faith are stronger than the bomb…. Strike terror in
their midst…Strike terror in the heart of the oppressor.” (AGOW: 54)
As Ngugi has noted in Homecoming: (1972)
“Mau Mau violence was anti-injustice; white violence was to
thwart the cause of justice. Should we equate the two forms?”
Ngugi would like to clarify that it was colonial suppression
that caused political violence in Kenya in the first place. The violence of the
British authority and that of the Mau Mau are not comparable; the rulers used
authority to take advantage of the native’s weakness and ignorance whereas the
natives were compelled to use violence to protect their own rights and
liberties.
Thus, Karanja’s place In the novel sees a complete inversion from an oath-taking member of the Mau Mau movement, to a colonial officer and ‘traitor.’ He recalls “the many men, terrorists, he and other home guards led by their white officers, (have) shot dead”, recollecting that “when he shot them, they seemed less like human beings and more like animals” (AGOW: 225). However, his mother warns him “Don’t go against the people. A man who ignores the voice of his own people comes to no good end.” (AGOW: 222). He is unable to reconcile that Kenya had gained her freedom and the power would be transferred to the blacks “He was scared of black power: he feared those me who had ousted the Thompsons and had threatened him.” (AGOW: 225) Karanja feels betrayed when John Thompson confirms his departure from Githima; he is seized by ‘panic’ and “would have loved to suddenly vanish from the earth”. (AGOW: 156).
Through certain incidents, Ngugi shows how corruption had
become a norm in post-independent Kenya. Gikonyo, after his return from
detention, quickly worked himself to be a successful businessman; he knew
it was possible “if you oiled smooth with money your relationship with the
traffic and market police” (AGOW:58). In another incident, the bus called A
DIGILENT CHILD’ plying to Nairobi from Thabai is stopped by the police for
carrying more number of passengers. The cashier of the bus bribes the police
and when he comments, “They just wanted a few shillings for tea” the “people in
the bus laughed.” (AGOW:59).
“Ngugi uses Gikonyo’s growing consciousness of political
betrayal as a severe indictment of the party for the path it was taking even
before the official flag declaration of independence.” (Mala: 34) Gikonyo and
five other members decide to jointly buy a farm land from Mr. Burton and he
makes frequent visits to the M.P’s office in Nairobi to request for a
government loan. The MP deceitfully appreciates their cooperative venture and
betrays their trust by buying the farmland. Moreover, the scene
outside the M.P’s office clearly indicates that “people were used to broken
appointments and broken promises. Sometimes they would keep on coming day after
day, without seeing their representative.”
Mala Panduranga in her Post Colonial African Fiction
(1997:19) says: “The novel ominously portends that in independent Kenya it will
be the ‘betrayers’ of the movement who will assume the mantle of power.”
In Chapter 14, the Uhuru celebrations of Thabai district is
chaired by the secretary of the Party, Nyamu, who calls upon the Reverend
Morris Kingori to open the meeting, with a prayer. Ironically, both don’t
deserve a place on the dais. Nyamu had been arrested for carrying bullets in
his pockets during Emergency but had escaped a death sentence as his rich
uncles had bribed the police; the Reverend Morris Kingoro, a renowned preacher,
had himself worked “as an instructor in the agricultural department during land
consolidation” which resulted in the displacement of thousands of peasants from
their ancestral lands. Further, Ngugi foreshadows the indifference of appointed
MPs, few having their offices in their constituency when Nyamu reads an
apology from the MP of Thabai who is absent since he is attending the national
celebrations at Nairobi. Followed by a few speeches comes Mugo’s confession.
“Like those who had come from afar to see Mugo do miracles or even speak to
God, we all vaguely expected that something extraordinary would happen. It was
not exactly a happy feeling; it was more a disturbing sense of an inevitable
doom.” Mugo had betrayed just not Kihika but their faith in him.
Independence, however, does not grant them a new life; on
the contrary, it is a period of disillusionment in which the characters learn
that the past they long for is unattainable and the fruits of Uhuru they fight
for are eaten by the elite and bourgeois, the new ruling classes in
post-independence Kenya. The working-class people and the peasants do not eat
the fruits of Uhuru, the two classes which Ngugi thinks form the majority of
the freedom fighters. Ngugi evokes the personal impact of colonial conquest. He
writes of his own experience as a boy and of what it meant to live in a
colonial situation.
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