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    "The Two Lady Rams" As A Critique of British Colonial Regime

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    The story "The Two Lady Rams" is a critique of British colonialism in India. It depicts the hollowness and mockery of the colonial regime, which relied on distributing titles and taking bribes from wealthy Indians in exchange for supporting the regime. While Jhinda Ram was knighted, the title was merely decorative and did not provide real privileges. The story uses satire and irony to represent the colonial system as lacking real knowledge about conditions in India and only functioning as a corrupt machine that enriched some Indians.

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    "The Two Lady Rams" As A Critique of British Colonial Regime

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    234 views2 pages
    The story "The Two Lady Rams" is a critique of British colonialism in India. It depicts the hollowness and mockery of the colonial regime, which relied on distributing titles and taking bribes from wealthy Indians in exchange for supporting the regime. While Jhinda Ram was knighted, the title was merely decorative and did not provide real privileges. The story uses satire and irony to represent the colonial system as lacking real knowledge about conditions in India and only functioning as a corrupt machine that enriched some Indians.

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    Two lady rams

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    The story "The Two Lady Rams" is a critique of British colonialism in India. It depicts the hollowness and mockery of the colonial regime, which relied on distributing titles and taking bribes from wealthy Indians in exchange for supporting the regime. While Jhinda Ram was knighted, the title was merely decorative and did not provide real privileges. The story uses satire and irony to represent the colonial system as lacking real knowledge about conditions in India and only functioning as a corrupt machine that enriched some Indians.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    234 views2 pages

    "The Two Lady Rams" As A Critique of British Colonial Regime

    Uploaded by

    আমার আমি
    The story "The Two Lady Rams" is a critique of British colonialism in India. It depicts the hollowness and mockery of the colonial regime, which relied on distributing titles and taking bribes from wealthy Indians in exchange for supporting the regime. While Jhinda Ram was knighted, the title was merely decorative and did not provide real privileges. The story uses satire and irony to represent the colonial system as lacking real knowledge about conditions in India and only functioning as a corrupt machine that enriched some Indians.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    “The Two Lady Rams” as a Critique of British Colonial Regime

    Mulk Raj Anand’s story “The Two Lady Rams” is a scathing critic of British
    colonialism in India. A striking feature of the story is its sharp representation of the
    writer’s view. Anand has a wholesome hatred for the colonial masters who, as he
    thinks, are singularly inept and formal about the human details of lives.

    The beginning of the story indicates an interesting aspect of the mechanism


    of British rule in pre-independence India. The colonial masters considered the
    support from the wealthy and privileged class important for the stability of their
    regime. The author considers such an attitude cynical as the provisions of the
    colonial rule go against the larger interests of the poor and dispossessed of the
    country.

    The colonial regime has conferred knighthood on Jhinda Ram raising his
    level to the elites of the system. In reality knighthood is nothing more than a
    decoration—it does not even allow Jhinda Ram easy access to the governor. With
    knighthood, the regime has bought his services for supporting and sustaining it.
    This clarity of perspective enables the author to depict the mundane as mundane,
    divesting it of the glory associated with the protocol the regime observes. It is
    notable that Jhinda Ram does not come from the landed rich in the country. His
    father was an ordinary shopkeeper and he has been able to amass wealth either as a
    corrupt contractor or because of the enormous amount of money that came with the
    first wife as dowry.

    There is a conscious purpose in the story behind representing the specific


    episode of the husband resolving the domestic conflict. The purpose is to give the
    impression that the British rule in India is a mockery of governance, drawing
    sustenance from distributing titles, bribe-taking, and letting state functionaries
    manage support from India’s traders, contractors, shopkeepers, middlemen, brokers
    etc. On the other hand, the governor is called a “holly of the holies’. It seems that the
    governor does not know enough about the doings of his team of subordinates
    through whom he operates in the colony. More significantly, the king and colonial
    master, His Majesty the Emperor, does not seem to be informed about the acts of his
    governor. From top to bottom, the state structure in the colony works like a well-
    oiled machine at one level, and lacking in informed knowledge of ground realities at
    another.
    The author depicts the hollowness of the colonial regime in the story in a
    satirical way. The story is an example of grandiloquence, irony and mock-heroic. The
    use of language in a complicated and bombastic way to draw attention and make
    something seem important is called grandiloquence. Calling the governor of the
    province 'the king's representative', 'shadow of monarch' and calling the governor
    and his wife 'His Excellency and Her Excellency' are such examples. Lalla Jhinda
    Ram has been conferred with the title of knighthood, but he is a corrupt contractor
    involved in bribe taking and forgery. During the 1930s, when many leaders
    including Rabindranath Tagore returned the 'knighthood' title, he accepted it
    merrily. But the title is merely a decoration on his name because he does not even
    have direct access to the governor. He pretends to be a cutlery seller to meet the
    ADC. Besides, unlike the conventional heroes, his father was an ordinary
    shopkeeper and he was able to amass wealth either by committing crimes or because
    of the enormous dowry brought by his elder wife, Sukhi. Jhinda Ram’s evolution as
    a member of the moneyed class in the colony is a target of satire in the story.

    Thus the story “The Two Lady Rams” has a strong nationalist perspective and
    it is a sharp critic of the British colonial regime.

    Source:
    Prakash, Anand, editor. Interventions: Indian Writing in English. Worldview, 2016.

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