The Jewel in the Crown: As a Social History

[Last Island]

“The Jewel in the Crown” on the ‘Raj Quartet’ has been called a historical document, social history and treatise of time. The book definitely has a well-knit and complacent plot but at the same time, Paul Scott has focused of social, political and economical milieu of India. The novel covers the crucial phase of Indian Historybetween 1942 and 1947.

Paul Scott has followed the super annihilated sociological technique, Mass Observation. This technique was inverted by English poet Charles Madge and the film maker Humphrey Jennings. It is a method of social investigation highly characteristic of 30s. It attempts to blend art, science and anthropology by assembling vast quantities of information which would be so compelling as to make its case unaided by formal analysis. There are long passages in the ‘Raj Quartet’, which might have been extracted from ‘Mass Observation Technique’. There are also enough story lines, as many types of characters, sufficient material from different points of view to fill the four-packed volume.

The ‘Raj Quartet’ is concerned with the final phase of the Indian struggle of independenceand with Indian politics and parties and with a significant phase of the world war. According to Scott it is:

“… the story of a rape, of events that led up to it and followed it and of the place in which it happened. There are the action, the people and
the place, all of which are interrelated. But in their totality incommunicable and in-isolation from the moral sequence of human affair”.

In this essayist prose offered by Scott, he shows himself aware of the difficulties in his mass observation technique – difficulty of saying anything concretely or effectively. Both Scott’s diction and his method push him towards description and dramatization. But there is none theme or association pervasively present in the ‘Raj Quartet’ and all those vast historical events and socio-logical pressures with which it is engaged always lends a sharper bite and a more edged and effective strength to the narratives.

Paul Scott’s narrates it is color, which is the ultimate cause of alienation and in a society composed of rulers of one color and subjects of another, color is bound to be highly influential in creating division. This may be Scott’s theoretical or sociological or political view but he himself had grown up in an English society where the atmosphere was thick with class feeling and class division. He believes that it is class, which finally separates. What shattered Hari Kumar on the death of his father was not color and race but being middle class relegated from a confident upper class life of the most meager life of lower middle class.

Paul Scott is an exponent of social realities and he has achieved his objectives by exploiting M.O.T. He has taken up the Anglo-Indian relations, their prejudices and thier conflict. His book appears to be a historical and social survey of Indian Society. Scott pointed out the pitfalls and irregularities of Indian culture. He observes with dismay and anguish that the Indian Society is plagued by sectarianism and ethnicity. He has categorized the Indian into three classes; the first represented Lady Chatterjee is the class of sycophants (flatterers) who are submissive slaves and they merely like British Raj. The second class represented through Hari Kumar is the class of Westernized and Anglicized Indians. The third class represented through Mahatma Gandhi, is the one that wished to break the shackles of slavery. Scott has observed that his class preaches non-violence but resorts to violence whenever they get a chance.

Scott has criticized some of the Indian social customs. Pre-mature marriages are a day-to-day phenomenon. Daleep Kumar’s father compelled his son to marry uneducated Kumla who was barely 15 years old. There was no proper understanding between them. She gave birth to still born children and lost her life while giving birth to Hari Kumar. He has castigated the Hindu’s custom of “Suttee” in which the widow is asked to burn herself alive on the funeral pyre of her husband.

He has further noted that the Indian people give no value to time. They would simply idle or gossip away their time. They are involved in crippling lawsuits. The Indian Society does not give importance to cleanliness and rules of hygiene. The streets are polluted with garbage. He also sympathizes with women folk who are obliged to lead a life of misery and anxiety. Some of them are obliged to work in the brothel houses. The Indian marriages are often mismatched. There is no compatibility between the spouses. Shalini and her husband Parakh Gupta Sen is a typical example of mismatched marriage. Moreover he has criticized the large number of healthy beggars who would pester every passer by to extract aims from him.

“The Jewel in the Crown” by every definition of the word can be called a social history sociological document. Paul Scott has surveyed the condition of the whole society by employing mass observation technique. There is hardly any aspect of political, social, moral and economic life untouched by him. He has also criticized English Imperialism; he has exposed the follies and inefficiencies of their administration. LIVE EM FORSTER he also preaches that barrier of class, race and creed must be razed to the ground and all must embrace the religion of “humanitarianism”.