Rebels of Empire: The Human Idiom in Ruskin Bond’s A Flight of Pigeons

Abstract

Central to India’s struggle for independence was the generation of powerful nationalist forces. The contours of this struggle were broadly defined by the confrontation of these forces with the British colonial power. The 1857 uprising, variously called The Mutiny, or the First war of Independence, though unsuccessful in its immediate objective, set off a chain of events, which culminated in the eventual success of the national liberation movement. However, the meta-narratives of history often ignore the smaller, localized incidents which are nonetheless significant in as much as they deal with the individual lives that were impacted by the violence of the conflict. Ruskin Bond’s novella A Flight of Pigeons (1975) set against the backdrop of the catastrophic happenings of 1857, is based on actual historical incidents. While the narrative underlines the relations of dominance in the cross-cultural and political context, it is primarily concerned with the impact of the confrontation on the individual lives removed from a specific demarcation of nationalist identities. The characters are seen to grow beyond racial antipathies, and Bond debunks the racial stereotypes of Orientalism which see Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs as intolerant and bigoted. A new light is thrown on the notions of human associations, as well as on all forms of piety, and possibilities of mutually-enabling acts in the social life of India. At the same time, the narrative does not detract from the fact that for the average Englishman or Englishwoman, the empire was a fundamental article of faith and the extension of Pax Britannica was seen unfailingly as the unavoidable commitment and a hallowed objective. This paper attempts to analyze the interplay of human relations witnessed in a crucial period of India’s colonial history.