Tradition, Modernity and Decolonizing the mind In Ngugi and Achebe
Tradition is how we interpret the past; Modernity is how we understand the present and future. Language is a social discourse. In this paper I am attempting to relate How Ngugi wa Thiongo and Chinua Achebe are attempting to bring their post colonial concerns within the social and political discourse of African languages in relation to English. In the process I am attempting to situate tradition and modernity as two forces that can be reconciled through the decolonization of the mind.
The British Philosopher H.B Acton defines tradition as “a belief of practice transmitted from one generation to another and accepted as Authoritative, or differed to, without argument.” Samuel Fleischaker defines tradition as “a set of customs passed down over the generations, and set of beliefs and values endorsing those customs”.
Africans are basically rural, village-conscious and traditional oriented people caught in a state of transition between tradition and modernity. When they are exposed to modern urban culture, one can notice certain ambivalence in their attitude towards alien culture and behavior patterns. We can see these kinds of conflicts in Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiyango’ and women writers like Flora N Wapa and Buchi Emechita. In their novels they go back to the pre-colonial and post colonial situations and record the cultural conflicts with the impact of the west on the native society.
Chinua Achebe expressed his views with respect to the feelings of many African novelists when he said.” We must seek the freedom to express our thoughts and our feelings; even against ourselves without the anxiety that what we say might be taken as evidence against our race. We have stood in the dock for too long pleading and protesting before ruffians and frauds masquerading as disinterested judges “(Achebe “The Black writers Burden” 139.).
African literature as a major segment of commonwealth writing in English, with its phenomenal, growth has attracted the English speaking world outside Africa thus leading to the arrival of Modern African literature in English. The new voice of Africa is countering the western thesis of cultural denigration of the African peoples and their histories. Most of the major African writers like Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ngugi Wa thiyango, Floran n Wapa, Buch Emechita, and others are deeply concerned with the task of restoring character and cultural identity to African society through the discovery of the past in the light of the present.
Writers like Ngugi wa thiyango took a leading role decolonizing the school and University curriculum in Kenya. When he first became a lecturer at Makere University in Uganda, no African books were included in the literature curriculum; not even any in the secondary school syllabus. Here writers like Achebe argued against the assumption that literature is universal but instead saw the value of literature in its detailed and concrete depiction of a community in a particular place and a particular historical moment seeking to understand and create itself. Ngugi also introduced the study of local oral literature into the curriculum and said that these should be central rather than peripheral for students of literature.
In his essay “Return to the roots” he says: “To choose a language is to choose a world, once said a West Indian thinker and although I do not share the assumed primacy of language over the world, the choice of a language already predetermines the answer to the most important question for producers of imaginative literature, for whom do I write? Who is my audience? I f a Kenyan writer writes in English no matter how radical the context of that literature he cannot possibly directly talk to the peasants and workers of Kenya. If a Kenyan acts in a play in English, he cannot possibly be assuming a truly Kenyan audience “
He believes that the African writer’s duty to his people is to nourish the language and culture that exist there. He goes on to say that Kenyan national literature should mostly be produced in the language of various nationalities that make up modern Kenya. Kenyan nation liberation can only get its stamina and blood by utilizing the rich national traditions of culture and history carried by the languages of all the Kenyan nationalities. In Kenya Ngugi led his lives in terrible conditions, contradictions and his experiences have changed his attitude toward his writings. Ngugi has said about his early life:
“My parents were not Christians. But at the same time they did not practice much of the Gikuyu forms of worship. My father was skeptical of religious and magical practices that went with rites of passages and rhythms of the seasons. He believed in land and hard work “(C Brian Cox African writers 1997 p 537). From 1955 to 1959 he attended Alliance High School; that is the country’s most prestigious secondary school. He is the first student from his area of the country to be admitted and he excelled in his studies, during that time he read widely texts of Shakespeare, Shaw, Tennyson, Wordsworth and his own selections from the school library Tolstoy, Dickens, R L Stevenson and Alan Paton. He also gained familiarity with the Bible. The strongest influence in his period was the struggle for independence in the shape of armed resistance of the Mau mau uprising (1952-1956). The Kenyan government declared a state emergency (1952-60) and Ngugi family and village suffered in a number of ways. His brothers joined in the guerrilla movement and another brother was shot dead by the police. This is the main cause we see in his writings. He mentions his brother who fighting in the forest against the colonial powers still found time to send him message to “cling to education” that was provided by the colonialists even though it was an education meant to bolster the image and culture of the empire, thereby creating colonized subjects. Finally he is arguing that Western culture, education has done more harm than good.
Describing this incident Ngugi says “Although I was in the school, I remember quite vividly standing up and trembling with anger saying that Western education could not be equated with the land taken from the peasants by the British. And I remember holding up the fountain pen and giving the example of someone whom comes and takes away food from your mouth and then gives you a fountain pen. I asked the audience: Can you eat a fountain pen? Can you clothe yourself with a fountain pen or shelter yourself with it? ” (C Brian Cox, African writers .1997 p). During this period Ngugi threw himself into various activities as writer, editor and organizer.
In 1967, Ngugi return to Kenya as a special lecturer in English at the University of Nairobi and become the first black African Member of the Department, He soon issued his famous proposal along with two other colleagues to abolish the department of African literature and language, because he felt that African Universities needed to emphasize their own national culture.
Ngugi’s attempt at change was only partly successful. Even he resigned from his position to protest against increasing restrictions in academic freedom. He says language as communication and culture are products of each other; communication creates culture: Culture is a means of communication. Language carries culture and culture carries particularly orature and literature the entire body of values by which we come to perceive ourselves and our place in the world. He is looking into language in colonial aspects; the aim of colonialism was to control the people’s wealth. It imposed its control of the social production of wealth through military conquest and subsequent political dictatorship. Ngugi is arguing that colonialism by destroying and deliberately undervaluing of peoples culture, art, dances, history, geography, education, orature, and literature and the conscious elevation of the language of the colonizer.
Ngugi wa Thiongo demanded to abolish English departments in African countries. In his view language, any language has dual character; it is both a means of communication and a carrier of a culture. He says English is spoken in Britain and Denmark. But for Swedish and Danish people English is only a means of communication with non-Scandinavians. It is not a carrier of their culture. For the British, and particularly the English, it is additionally and inseparably from its use as a tool of communication, a carrier of their culture and history.
He argues that the use of the language in Africa must be understood within the context of the European domination, marginalization and exploitation. The politics of revenge is deeply intertwined within the cultural imperialism represented by Eurocentric domination of Africans and other third world peoples in the past four centuries He says “For colonialism this involved two aspects of the same process. The destruction and the deliberate undervaluing of peoples culture, their art, dances, religions, history, geography, education, orature and literature and the conscious elevation of the language of the colonizer. The domination of a people’s language by the language of the colonizing nations was crucial to the domination of the mental universe of the colonized” (Decolonizing the mind). His main argument is that English, French, German, and Portuguese are not supposed to be seen as natural languages. They were used as tools of subordination during the colonial era and English language and literature, philosophy, culture and values were carried and elevated to the skies.
African languages and the literature and philosophy they carried were brutally suppressed.” It is very important to cultivate African language is the only one solution to overcome colonial suppression. That’s why Ngugi wa Thiong’o declared in 1986 while Writing his famous book “Decolonizing the mind as “his farewell to English as a vehicle for any of his writings.” He chooses to write Gikuyu and Kiswahili all the way. This was undoubtedly a difficult decision, coming as it did after seventeen years of writing in English. He justified his decision thus:
“I believe that my writing in Gikuyu language, a Kenyan language, and an African language is part and parcel of the anti-human relation between the nations and peoples of Africa and those of other continents. For these reasons I for one would like to propose Kiswahili as the language for the world.”
One can understand no language can sustain in front of colonial languages because it suppressed other languages .This languages cannot be cultivated under these conditions. Ngugi calls for widespread usage of African languages as a way to counter their previous suppression. He says Black English developed in the black community as a crucial element in the formation of the cultural identity of Afro-Americans.
Chinua Achebe another major literary figure and African Ideologue from Nigeria defend Ngugi’s argument. These renowned exile writers continue to share a deep love for their continent. Each has suffered by the colonial power; they were being exiled because of their commitments. Achebe wrote a paper entitled “The African writer and the English Language. “He declared “Is it right that a man should abandon his mother tongue for someone else’s? It looks like a dreadful betrayal and produces a guilty feeling. But for me there is no other choice. I have been given the language and I intend to use it.” “What does he mean when he says that there is no other choice? Achebe means that for practical purposes, European languages have become the languages of the world. This is the painful reality contemporary Africans must face. We, third world countries adopting the tongues of colonizers have no other choice or option.
Ngara has commented, “By 1967 Ngugi felt that the African writer had failed. The failure referred to here was in fact not that of the African writer alone. It resulted from the Failure of the African Bourgeoisie to give meaningful freedom and independence to the broad masses of the people. In less than a decade of their rule, many African leaders proved that they were incapable of shaking off shackles of neo colonialism. The essence of Ngugi’s complaint, therefore was that by failing to challenge this new state of affairs, the African writer was guilty of neglecting his duty to society in general and to the African masses in particular. It was now incumbent upon (the writer) to throw in his lot with the masses once more by confronting the ideology of the new ruling elite. A new rift had surfaced in independent Africa, not between Blacks and whites, But between the haves and have-nots, what Ngugi has called a “horizontal rift dividing the elite from the mass of the people” (35 -35).
Ngugi was imprisoned without charge for almost a year in 1978, and stripped of his position as chair of the department of literature at the University of Nairobi, and has subsequently been obliged to seek exile in the west.
“When I myself used to write plays and novels that were only critical of the racism in the colonial system, I was praised. I was awarded prizes, and my novels were in the syllabus. But when toward the seventies I started writing in a language understood by peasants, and in an idiom understood by them and started questioning the very foundations of imperialism and of foreign domination of Kenyan economy and culture, I was sent to Kamiritu Maximum Security Prison” (Barrel of gun, 65). Since the 1960’s Ngugi has moved to redefine the situation of the writers along the axis of class solidarity rather than Romanticism and mysteries of imagination. He insists that the African writers cannot be assessed separately from those of the other categories of intellectuals and cannot be assessed without addressing the larger and more embracing questions of national culture and political justice.
In other words while both Ngugi and Achebe agree on the basic argument against colonialism their strategies are different. Ngugi embraces the use of African languages and Achebe insists that we’ve no choice but to use western languages. But both are definitely for the decolonizing of the mind. The African has to reconcile both tradition and modernity. He has to bring the past and the present together in order that he may have a bright future.
Bibliography:
Ngugi wa thiongo: Decolonizing the Mind: The politics of language in African literature: Heinemann, 1986.
Ngugi wa thiongo: Moving the Center: The struggle for cultural freedom: .Heinemann, 1993.
Chinua Achebe: Morning yet on creation day: London, Heinemann, 1975.
Killam,G D : An introduction to writings of Ngugi, London, Henimann,1980.
Ngui wa Thiong’o : The River Between: London, Heinemann, 1964.
Ngui wa Thiong’o: Home coming London Heinemann 1972.
