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Old Wednesday, June 06, 2007
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Default The Jewel in the Crown: Objective Reporting

Paul Scott is famous for his impartial presentation in his writings. He leaves aside all prejudices and passes on objective remarks about his character irrespective of their races. His whole character delineation is pure of subjective tinge. In “The Jewel in the Crown” he presents all the English characters with complete objectivity and shows a perfect picture of the cruelties and atrocities which are done to the natives by the British Raj. He exposes the follies of the English and condemns severely their inhumane behaviour with the Indians in the novel. Not only he himself gives the description of the British imperialism but also makes him characters expose their own inner-self.

Miss Crane was attacked cruelly by the rioters on the Tanpoor Road and was given medical treatment in the British General hospital where the entry of Indians was prohibited. This Paul Scott tells us in the words of Lady Lili Chatterjee:

“It was difficult seeing her in the British General Hospital … I had never been at the main reception
before. The girl was Anglo-Indian, but as white as a European – said I could not see Miss Crane, and when
I insisted she kept me waiting in the hall and only pretended to have sent a message to the word sister.
What she had done was send a warning against me (not being an English woman) up to her.”

As a matter of fact, Miss Crane did not favour this continuation of India as a British colony. She hoped fervently that a day would come when the English role in India would end, not bloodily, not in peace. She fully realized that for not less than 200 years the English had been promising and finding means of putting the fulfillment of the promise off until the promise stopped looking like a promise and consequently started looking like a sinister prevarication. Scott’s objective approach is visible from what she says to herself:

“And the tragedy is that between us there is this little matter of the colour of the skin, which gets in the way
of our seeing through each other’s failing and seeing into each other’s heart. Because if we saw through them,
into them, then we should know. And what we should know is that the promise is a promise and will be fulfilled.”

From the very beginning Ronald Merrick, the S.P. of the Mayapore District is against Hari Kumar because of the association between Daphne Manners and Hari Kumar. That’s why on the one hand, he is prejudiced against him due to the affair and on the other hand, he suspects Hari of hatching conspiracies against the English, and so he leaves no stone unturned to implicit him in legal punishment. Sister Ludmila tells the incident when she finds Hari unconscious in the ditch and calls Ronald Merrick.

“Six months before the gang rape affair in the Bibighar Gardens, that is to say, in February 1942.
The policemen came to the sanctuary in the morning. They were looking for a man they wanted. The
British Raj could do anything. The province was back under the roll of British. Governor Viceroy had declared
war. So the congress said, “No”. Anything that offended was offence. A man could be imprisoned without
trial. It was even punishable for shopkeepers to close their shops at an un-appointed time.”

This is how Paul Scott has given on unprejudiced an objective pen-picture of the inhuman policies of the British Empire.

The British are even critical of their own fellows who have some soft corner for the natives. Scott shows the situation in the report of Daphne Manners, which presents the criticism of the English against Robin White, the D.C. As Daphne Manners objectively reports:

“From what Lili tells me a lot of the Empire here are critical of the D.C. They think of him as man who does more than as
absolutely necessary to show friendly to the Indian. They say he will find himself advantage of, eventually. They talk about the
good old days of his predecessor, Mr. Steadi, who kept ‘a firm hand’ and made it quite clear in the district ‘who was boss’.”


Ludmila does not like Merrick’s degradation as the British slaves. She objectively says:

“And after Hari Kumar had gone, his uncle’s lawyer, Romesh Chand, arrived. Merrick probably knew but took no notice. An Indian lawyer was nothing.”

Paul Scott leaves aside bias and passes on objective remark about Hari Kumar that:

“He believed that the Mayapore English, we blanketed in the colonial warmth of their racial indestructibility.”

Alongwith his objective commentary, Scott's character delineation is also impartial. It is on account of his objective report towards characterization that we come to know that Brigadier Reid is true representative of British Imperialism. For example he says:

“We regarded India as a place it would be madness to make an orderly retreat from. Apart from the strategic
necessity of holding India there was of course also a question fully exploiting her wealth and resources.”

Robin White is soft-hearted and criticizes Reid's cruel behaviour with the Indians. He says often:

“Brigadier Reid’s cruel behaviour presents the picture of a tyrannical an imperialistic British power grinding the faces of its colored Indian subjects in the dust.”

His mild nature is further revealed when he says:

“Being human, the longer the Indians were denied freedom the more they wanted to be free on their
own terms, and … we – also being human – insisted that they must initially acquire freedom on ours.


Scott has made an objective reporting of Miss Daphne’s inner self, as for example when she says:

“If I had been assaulted by men of my own race I would have been as object of their pity.
Religiously-minded people would probably have admired me as well for refusing to abort.”

Scott pinpoints quite objectively Miss Daphne’s psychological reaction against the British ideal of justice in India, the idea that still provides then with the illusion of moral superiority and therefore the authority to rule. She compares it with a robot. She says:

“We have created a blundering robot. We can’t create it to prove how fair, how civilized we are. But it is a white robot and it can’t distinguish
between love and rape. It only understands physical connection and only understands if as a crime because it only exist s to punish crime.”

Scott’s objective approach is vividly demonstrated by his satire on the exploitation effects of his country’s policy of imperialism. He categorically admits that the semi-historical as well as semi-allegorical picture entitle “The Jewel in the Crown” succeeded in inspiring self-denial in Miss Crane but took no account of poverty, disease, misery, ignorance and injustice prevailing overwhelmingly all over the Indian subcontinent, the largest colony of Great Britain in the history of the world.

Scott’s truthful reproduces Clancy’s statement:

“Indian must be independent. Where the war is over, we have got to give her up.”

This shows us his preference for impartiality. His objectivity is a clear hint to the fact that even Clancy, one of the youngest soldiers, realized the truth that Britain could no longer keep India in her slavery.

Thus, in the end we can say that Paul Scott has presented quite successfully and completely and impartial picture of the British ruled India. He does not succumb to the partiality and it is the only reason that he has secured a prominent place among the English writers.
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