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Shaken off

B. S. Raghavan

THE hallowed Cambridge University has provoked a raging controversy throughout the English-speaking world by downsizing someone who, hitherto, was regarded as unsurpassable in creative perfection. The immortal bard, William Shakespeare, had till now a question paper all to himself in the examinations of that University in English Literature. All of a sudden, the Board of Studies has decided to abolish that unique status accorded to the poet. He will now be bundled up with the rest of the English writers and poets in a common question paper. Shakespeare-lovers have condemned this as a sacrilege and been insisting on his being restored to his lofty pedestal as the only world poet.

World poet? How did he get exalted that high? Simple. It is part of a process whereby Britain had been appropriating the privilege of merrily conferring on itself and its products grandiose titles signifying unchallengeable supremacy in most things Briti sh. The long period of domination as a colonial power enabled it to hone its brainwashing techniques. It annexed the word `great' to itself, and everybody round the world, was mindlessly conditioned to call it Great Britain. The Bank of England was extol led as the holiest of holies in financial rectitude (although it is no better or no worse than central banks anywhere else, and never mind its colossal ineptitude in letting the Barings Bank, sink without trace.)

The Lloyds insurance firm, likewise, was made into a legend with all manner of stories spun about its insuring vocal chords of singers, toes of dancers, fingers and brains of famous authors and other such hocus-pocus. It was hailed as a monument to propr iety and efficiency. A spate of exposes published recently in reputed journals worldwide, points to many incredible instances of fraud and deceit on its part.

Britain's subjugation of other countries was not only physical (by use of military might) but also intellectual (by assiduously forcing the gullible in conquered countries, to accept its own often unjustified glorification of its institutions and public figures). None who has a comparative knowledge of literature in different languages and can think independently and critically will ever rate Shakespeare as being superior to the great literary geniuses in other languages, let alone being a world poet to wering over them. May be, it has dawned on the Cambridge dons, albeit belatedly, that the fuss being made over Shakespeare was mostly puffery.

True, there are occasional flashes of imagination and perhaps elegance in some of his plays, notably the tragedies, but he comes nowhere near, say, Kamban, Ilango, Tiruvalluvar or Sekkizhar in Tamil, or Valmiki, Vyasa, Kalidasa and Bhartrihari in Sanskri t, (to take only two languages) in scintillating brilliance and unparallelled excellence in all their works.

Alas, countries such as India had neither the aggressive spirit nor the material and financial resources nor the vast colonial possessions, where they could make millions of subjects swallow their own valuation of persons and happenings without question. The result is to confirm the English-speaking nations in their belief, that they represent the quintessence of culture and civilisation.