Traces of Collective Memory in A. K. Ramanujan's Poetry

Abstract

This thesis employs the intersection of collective memory studies and postcolonial studies in examining selected poems from A. K. Ramanujan’s The Striders (1966) and Second Sight (1986). As such, it centres around two claims: memory is a narrative, to remember is to fictionalise; and memory is collective, since individuals complete their own worldviews depending on the groups they are part of like religion, nationality, family, and culture overall. Minding these claims, it explains how works of autobiography can reveal the climates of thought they were written around. Since these are also based in memory – which is collective, and a narrativization of the past – poetry as a genre can also be looked at as revealing the collective threads that aided in its creation. The Striders and Second Sight are analysed accordingly. Ramanujan was born in 1929 in India, living as an English colonial subject for eighteen years. This colonial structure is a noteworthy point regarding identity-shaping. England, with its imperial policies, expanded greatly through the world. Seeing itself as dominant over ‘lesser’ nations, it studied, oppressed, and stereotyped its colonies; India was one of them until 1947. The colonisation process impacted the identities of Indians, creating hybrid entities. After being part of that collective experience, Ramanujan immigrated outside of India to the West. His poems reveal his shaping worldview as autobiographical compositions, since he keeps thorough diaries and writes his poems accordingly. After explaining the mentioned theories, the colonial history of India, and the postcoloniality of Ramanujan’s poetry in the Introduction, this thesis analyses selected poems from the mentioned collections in their dedicated chapters. Both works reveal colonial practices and the ripples of their influence that present themselves as problems for Indian society and environment. The Striders lays the foundations for the shift in his perspective. The ‘Indian’ label still works to describe him at this point, and its poems reflect the collective experience of India as viewed from the West. This outward perspective is turned inwards after twenty years of living in ‘exile’ with Second Sight. Since Indianness does not describe his way of life anymore, he embarks on a quest to find his lost essence. In the end, after analysing this shift of gaze from The Striders and Second Sight through the lens of collective memory and postcoloniality, this thesis concludes that the poet finds the solution to his identity crisis by accepting his fate as a fragmented being stemming from the globalised world. In the end, he is simply a human being, as part of that macrocosmic collective.