Not at Home in Empire Author(s): Ranajit Guha Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 23, No.

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Not at Home in Empire

Ranajit Guha

There is somethinguncannyaboutempire.The entityknownby that by That is, a place constituted the name is, in essence,mere territory. of the violenceof conquest, jurisdictions lawand ownership, instituthe consuls, tionsof publicorderand use. And whenall the conquistadors, and clerksare takenout, there is little left to it other than a vacancy to waitingfor armiesand bureaucracies fit it up once morewith strucit turesof powerand designate againas empire.As such,it requires no the fromwhichit derives homes,if onlybecause authority, imperium, the is by its form,function, purpose, easilysustained fortsand barracks and empireis not reconciled longto this for andoffices.Yetas history shows, seek the shade of the camps,markets abstracted condition.Caravans theirflockamongwar-weary theircustom the garrisons, religions in even as souls.Towns settlements and grow, empiretoo is seizedby the urgeto makea homeof its territory. However, is not an urgethe moderncolonialempirecan easily this of satisfy. it rulesby a statewhichdoesnot ariseout of the society the For on subject population is imposed it byan alienforce.Thisirreducible but so was and historically necessary otherness whatmadeimperialism unof cannyfor its protagonists SouthAsia,as witnessthe experience a in who Britishofficer,Francis Yeats-Brown, could,with good reason,deand scribethe firstyearof his careerin the Indianarmyas "ajollylife";

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lateron in his memhe and "yetamongtheseservants salaams," recalled oir,TheLives of a Bengal Lancer, of a I had sometimes senseof isolation, beinga cagedwhitemonkey beigerace. numerous werethisincredibly in a Zoowhosepatrons City,. . . of Ridingthroughthe denselypackedbazaars Bareilly passingvillage temples,canteringacrossthe magicalplains that and at I awayto the Himalayas, shivered the millions imstretched of and mensities secrecies India.I likedto finishmy dayat the club, my in a worldwhoselimitswereknownandwherepeopleanswered grass lampcoughedits light over shrivelled beck.An incandescent exiled headswere in and dustyshrubbery; its circleof illumination but theirthoughtsfar away, closeto bent over Englishnewspapers, and mine.Outside,peopleprayed plottedand matedand died on a We and scale unimaginable uncomfortable. Englishwere a caste. or Whiteoverlords whitemonkeys it wasall the same.The Brahminsmadea circlewithinwhichtheycookedtheirfood. So did we. in to Wewerea caste:pariahs them,princes our ownestimation.l in sense termsof thisEnglishman's of isolation thispasThe defining to contrasted one thatis white. sageare not onlyethnic a "beigerace" which codingby coloris mediatedhere by a sentiment The customary couldeasilyhavepassedas fearwereit not for the factthathe identifies Whatcomesthroughis ratheran acobjectas frightening. no particular by of knowledgement being overwhelmed the scale of things."I shivof and and he ered," writes,"atthe millions immensities secrecies India." of a and dimension, depthareall apparently measure the coloNumber, calledempire.He feels in difficulty copingwiththe responsibility nizer's he metropolis, nowreused to the freedomof the Western diminished: he as gardshimself cagedin India;bornto an open society, hashis status into The structure. empirehasshrunk an uncanny frozenintoa castelike for trapfor him, and he seeksrefugein the club.Forthatis a surrogate home. Nearlyas smallas cage or caste,it is stilla circleof illumination wherehe can recognizefellowexiles by their headsbent over English like and newspapers theirthoughts, his, turnedto a placefarawayfrom
(New York, 1930), pp. 4-5. Lancer of 1. Francis Yeats-Brown, TheLives a Bengal

editorof SubalternStudies. HispublicaGuhais the founding Ranajit of ElementaryAspects A tionsinclude Rule of PropertyforBengal(1963,1996), andDominancewithoutHegemony: in PeasantInsurgency ColonialIndia ( 1983), Historyand Powerin ColonialIndia (forthcoming).

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this outpostof empire a place calledhome, "a world," he put it, as "whose limitswereknown." Limit, Aristotle, "theterminus eachthing,i.e. the firstthing says is of outsidewhichthereis nothingto be found."2 is in the natureof limit, It therefore, definethe limitedby an operation excludes muchas to that as it includes, of all possible and worlds knownlimitsthereis none more of inclusive, course,thanhome.A spaceof absolute of familiarity, makes it the members a family secureby the completeness theirmutual of feel of understanding. club,the Englishman's away The home fromhomeunder the raj,replicated such familiarity someextent.Forthose who gathto ered thereat the end of the dayunderstood eachotherby the signsof a sharedcultureand a commonlanguage.Eachof themcould sayof the others,"[they] answered beck." my Conversely, India,standing it did beyondthe limit,wasan empty, as henceinaccessible, outside.Empty becauseit had "nothing be found" to in it for content,and inaccessible becausea voidis a non-entity can one hardly to knowandrelateto. Fora limit,to citeAristotle get again,is also "thesubstance eachthing" as such"thelimitof knowledge; if of and and of knowledge, the objectalso."3 of Beyondlimit,hencebeyondknowing, Indiawasthusthe unhomely opposite the worldof knownlimits. of Its unknowability the youngsoldierwasevidently functionof for a its immeasurability, indexedby his referenceto its "immensities" as as well as to "a scale"he found "unimaginable 1lncomfortable.'' and The comfort a worldof known of limitsderives precisely fromthe known measureof things.It does so becausemeasure, despitethe apparent rigidity of its imagein the numerical tablesof schoolarithmeiic, a fluidand is indeednecessary process which, according fIegel,enables to quantity and quality "pass eachother."4 such,it standsforthe essential to into As dynamismof thingsand theirrelationships. is only by understanding It the latterthatone comports oneselfwithina givenenvironment feelsat and home in it. Whichindeedwaswhythe empirehad turnedout to be so uncannyfor Yeats-Brown. could not find his bearingsin a colonial He environment wherethe "unimaginable' scaleof thingswasbeyondhis comprehension. Whatmadehim feel so isolatedwasnot therefore fear predicated any given objectbut simplyan indefiniteand pervasive on anxiety aboutbeinglostin empire. The isolationof rulersfromthe ruled was integralto the colonial
2. Aristotle,Metuphysics: Booksr, , and E, trans.ChristopherKirwan(Oxford, 1971), p. 54, D17. 3. Aristotle,Metaphysics,vol. 8 of The Works Aristotle,trans. W.D. Ross, 2d ed. (Oxof ford, 1928), D17. 4. G. W.F.Hegel, Logic, trans.William Wallace (Oxford,1975),p. 161;see pp. 156-61.

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that considering in experience SouthAsia.It couldhardlybe otherwise that ruled an autocracy withouthegemony the raj was a dominance What necessity. withoutconsent. Isolationwas thereforea structural claim of absurdity Britain's to madeit worseand difficult forgetwasthe of to the squareness of to havefittedthe roundness colonialautocracy to heal,it wenton festering A liberalism. sorethatrefused metropolitan bad of touched.Symptom an unredeemably conby beingcompulsively of allmanner coloitself the it science,, developed habitof insinuating into fromthe novelto the to fromhomiletics politics, ranging nialdiscourse, joke. lyricto the common concernprememoirwe have this pervasive Yet in Yeats-Brown's histories in concealed the standard sentedto us in an aspectthatremains of by of the empire.Thisis not a lacunawhichis explained anyshortage lies The for material, thereis no suchshortage. responsibility ratherwith the itself with its tendencyto misconstrue evidenceof historiography influenced itselfto be uncritically anxietysimplyas fear.In thisit allows whichhas littleuse for the indefiniteof by the discourse lawand order, it of ness so characteristic anxietyand assimilates readilyto fear,if only causality it becausethe latteroffersit the assurance needsof a definitive suit with tojustifyitself.Historiography, its statistbias,follows and reads fearfor anxiety. extractfromthattrulybrilliant for Consider instancethe following Mutiny. of History theIndzan John historiography, Kaye's workof imperial it of in Written the mannerof grandnarratives warand revolution, has whichfollowsclose on the heel of events,as in Clarendon's a storyline historyof the other greatrebellionof two centuriesbefore,and stops to like occasionally, the latter,to allowmetonymy congealin reflection. he at on Commenting the Mutiny one suchstop,, speaksof it as an event by of thatcaughtthe government the dayentirely surprise. [he and - In all countries, underall formsof government writes], make in the whichthreaten State,starting the darkness, the dangers by discerned the rulbeforetheyareclearly success towards headway Empire of ers of the land.... The peculiarities our Anglo-Indian of DiXerences race, diXerinto a converted probability a certainty. all of differences customs, of differences religion, encesof language, and of indeed that could makea greatantagonism sympathies of the severed rulersand the ruledas witha veilof ignorance interests, We and obscurity. could not see or hearwith our own senseswhat wasgoingon, andtherewasseldomanyone to tellus. Whenby some ... the accident truthat lasttranspired, muchtimewaslost.... The of of greatsafeguard seditionwasto be foundin the slowprocesses correspondence.... Whenpromptand effectualacdepartmental

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tionwasdemanded, Routine calledfor pensand paper. letterwas A written wherea blowoughtto havebeen struck.5 The differences race,religion, of language, customwhichsepaand ratedthe colonizerand the colonizedare perceivedin this passageas clearlyas theyare promptly assimilated a concernfor the security to of the state.Of no significance themselves, in they are regarded simplyas "aveil of ignorance obscurity" and preventing rulersfromseeingor the hearing"what goingon"and combating was sedition.An instance, par excellence, the proseof counterinsurgency, givesthe phenomenon of this of isolationan unmistakably disciplinary slantin colonialist historiographyandreduces intoone of fear.Forthe lackof information made it that the regimefeel so isolated supposed havebeen all about"dangers was to whichthreaten[ed] State." the Isolationwasidentifiedthus with fearthefearof sedition rebellion. suchit belongedto a rather and As different category fromwhathad drivenYeats-Brown despair. to Therewasnothing in the latterso specificas a nameable "cause" fearand none that of couldbe dealtwithby something positive policeintelligence so as about "what goingon." was Thisis a distinction someimportance one whichwe wouldsugof gest,following Kierkegaard, thatbetween andanxiety. former, is fear The he says,refersto "something definite."6 does so as a stateof mindreIt latedto a threat likethatto whichallstates, including colonial the state, are subjected, according Kaye. threatis detrimental its verynato A by ture it harms and the fear it inspireshas its definitiveness rootedas muchin the character the regionfromwhichthe threatcomesas in of thatof the entitymarked forharming.7 fearthathauntsthe Britout The ish rulersof Indiain textslikethe one citedaboveis something definite in this Heideggerian sense. It originates a clearlyspecifiedregion in namely, civilsociety the subject the of population the equally and specific objectto whichthe harmis addressed, is, the raj.However, that directednessalone is not enough to makea threatinto an agent of fear.It requiresthe furtherconditionof drawing close withoutbeing actually withinstriking distance, thatthe affectit hasis heightened a degree so by of uncertainty the partof the frightened BT pp. 179-80).The on (see alarmsand panicsof La GrandePeurof 1789and the Mutiny 1857 of
5. John Kaye, Historyof the Indsan Mutiny of 1857-8, ed. G. B. Malleson, 6 vols. (London, 1898), 1:374. 6. S0ren Kierkegaard, The Conceptof Anxiety:A SimplePsychologically OrientingDeliberation on theDogmaticIssueof Hereditary Sin, trans. and ed. Reidar Thomte and Albert B. Andersen (Princeton, NJ., 1980), p. 42; hereafter abbreviated CA. 7. See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (London, 1962), p. 179; hereafter abbreviated BT. I rely generally on section 30 of that work for this and related aspects of my argument here.

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were all fearsome preciselybecause they were charged with such impendency. anguish that could be said to be There was little in Yeats-Brown's either directed or impending. We have no idea where it came from, nor indeed what in particularit sought for its focus. Far from being definite, it was a phenomenon characterizedby a total indefiniteness one which the two great thinkers mentioned above have helped us to diagnose as anxiety. "That in the face of which one is anxious is completely indefinite," writes Heidegger.This is so in two ways,as he goes on to explain. Not only does this indefiniteness leave factically undecided which is entity within-the-world threateningus, but it also tells us that entiat ties within the world are not "relevant" all.... The world has the characterof completely lacking in significance.In anxiety one does not encounter this thing or that thing which, as something threatening, must have an involvement.[Bl; p. 231] This is how we read the young officer'sstate of mind in the passage from his memoir cited above. It spoke of no particularentity as the cause of his isolation. For his sense of isolation carried no threat at all; it had neither the regionality nor the directionalitycharacteristicof the latter. It was not that the world around him had ceased to exist. Only the things that constitutedit appearedto signifya nowhereand a nothing an emptiness heyond limit, a nullity rendered incomprehensibleby a scale of things beyond measure. Such nothing and nowhere indicate, according one face as to Heidegger,"thattheworld suchasthatin the of which hasanxiety" p. 231). To be in such a world is not to be at home in one's environ(Bl; (Bl; ment. "In anxiety one feels 'uncanny"' p. 233). Can we afford to leave anxiety out of the story of the empire? For nearly two hundred years the answerof colonialisthistoriographyto this question has been one in favorof exclusion. It is not anxiety but enthusiasm that has been allowedto dominateits narratives.The latter is a mood which is consonant with all the triumphalistand progressivistmoments of imperialism-its wars of conquest, annexation, and pacificationin the subcontinent;its interventionsin our environment and our economy by industrialization,monetization,and communication;its project of social engineering by administrativemeasures and its mission of civilizing by education. Its politics of expansion and improvement,its ethics of courage, discipline, and sacrifice, its aesthetics of orientalism have all been assimilatedto this mood by a whole range of rhetorical,analytical,and devices, so that enthusiasmhas come to be regardedas the narratological very mentality of imperialismitself. The result has been to promote an

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image of the empire as a sort of machine operated by a crew who know only how to decide but not to doubt, who knowonly actionbut no circumspection, and, in the event of a breakdown, only fear and no anxiety. However,the picture does not look nearly so neat when we step outside official discourse and meet individual members of that crew agonizing like Yeats-Brown over the immensityof things in a worldwhose limits are not known to them. During the dying daysof the empire the complexitiesof this predicament came to be widely known in the words of another Englishman, George Orwell, who too had gone out to serve the raj. The importance of his essay"Shootingan Elephant" our discussioncan hardlybe overfor stated.8It speaks from a situation which is not quite so aloof as YeatsBrowis when he writes of his Indian environment as an "outside"of panoramic proportions viewed by a rider on horsebackor a passenger out of the window of his railwaycarriage. In either case, the scene, described so well in The Lives of a Bengal Lancer,is as broad as it is one that is swiftlypassingby, so that the observations,for all their anguish, maintain a distance from what is observed. It is an alienating rather than an invitingdistancewitnessto the fact that things have lost their significance in this world which the observer,in his anxiety,can apprehendonly as an unparticularizedwhole. By contrast, there is nothing that separates Orwell from his scene. Indeed the idea of separationwould seem to be altogether out of place in the drama of that morning'sevents some seventy years ago in an obscure corner of Britain'sSouth Asian empire, a small town of Burma called Moulmein.An elephant in a state of musthad gone berserk, killed its mahout, destroyedpartsof a slum, and was on a rampagethreatening more lives and properties (see "SE,"p. 5). The police officer, called to help, felt beleaguered as he found some thousands of the local population closing in to watch him shoot the beast. Packed with crowds and action, this is not just an outline sketched hurriedly from afar. To the contrary,the details of an involvementin a fast-approaching danger clutter the text. Yetas the crisisticksaway,a terriblesense of isolationgathers in the midst of that tumult, lifts off, and extends beyond the town to all of the empire to all that goes by that name territoriallyas well as conceptually.It is preciselythis unforeseen and somewhatabrupt development that deflects what might have shaped up as fear from its object and turns it into an anxiety addressed to nothing in particular no elephant, no yellow face which Orwell so intensely dislikes, not even the dilemma of having to destroy the animalhe would ratherleave alone. Indeed Orwellhimself refers to his own state of mind at this crisisas no ordinaryfear."I was not afraidin the ordinarysense,"he writes ("SE,"
8. See George Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant," in "Shooting Elephant" an and OtherEssays (New York, 1950), pp. 3-12; hereafter abbreviated "SE."

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p. 9). How then is one to understandthis being not afraidin the ordinary sense? Not, we suggest, as an instanceof the moraland politicalrevulsion so conspicuously displayed in the opening paragraphsof that essay.He had gone to the East, says the author,without knowing much about it or what to expect there and was shocked to see how tyrannicalBritish rule was in South Asia, how cruelly it oppressedits subjects,and how strongly the latter resented the raj.All of which he found "perplexingand upsetting" to the point of being haunted by "an intolerable sense of guilt," hating "the dirty work of Empire"he was appointed to do as a subdivisional police officer in the imperial service, and about to make up his mind "thatimperialismwas an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up pp. my job and got out of it the better" ("SE," 3, 4, 3). Above all he was as bitter about what seemed to him "an aimless, petty kind of . . . antiEuropean feeling" among the natives as he was about "the utter silence . . . imposed on every Englishmanin the East"when it came to criticizing pp. the regime ("SE," 3, 4). A terrible quandary,which he defines as one of being "stuckbetween my hatred of the empire I served and my rage againstthe evil-spiritedlittle beasts who tried to make myjob impossible" 44SE,p. 4). Yearslater,when the time came for Orwellto be canonized as a great advocate of liberty, sentiments like these would be bracketed with the ideological stance of his novel Nineteen Eighty-Fourand regarded as evidence of his consistent opposition to all tyrannies Russian as well as British and of his unfailing commitment to the ideals of liberalism. However, a close reading will show that the earlier text, published in 1936, doesn't quite measure up to such claims. For one thing, it has no room in it even for the standard liberal value of racial tolerance. It is peppered with phrasesthat speak explicitlyof his disapprovalof the Burmese not only for the color of their skin but for what he obviously perceived as their cultural and moral inferiority. He describes them as gutless, venal, lying.9The youth of the town, with whom he was apparently not so popular, are referred to as "the sneering yellow faces"that met him everywhere,and a crowd of the local poor who had turned out to see the shooting as a "sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes" pp. ("SE," 3, 7). And this racial loathing is laced with a violence which loses none of its ugliness even in the confessional rhetoric as he writes how "with one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakabletyranny. . . [while]with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest's p. guts" ("SE," 4). Furthermore,what is crucialfor our understandingof his predicament is that his urge for freedom is obviously not strong enough to inspire him to grasp it when he has a choice to do so. Indeed, the importance of this essay for me lies in its candid documentation of
pp. 9. See "SE," 3, 5, and 7-8 for assertionsand innuendoes to such effect.

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liberalism'sfailure to act up to its profession of freedom when the crunch comes. The misreadingof Orwell'sanguishas the simplecry of a liberalconscience to no small extent owes to a confusion between its two registers. Unclear about the nature of his own despair, he shifts erraticallyfrom one to the other,confusingboth himselfand the readerin the process.Yet it is preciselysuch confusion that dignifies this otherwise unremarkable belletristic exercise with the authenticityof a moral dilemma. The two registers have rather different, though mutuallyoverdetermined,interpretations for their content. Both speak of the author-official's understandingof his own worldbut do so from perspectiveswhich are not quite the same. One of these, briefly noticed above, concerns the uneasy, doubtridden, yet dutiful Britishbureaucratoverwhelmedby his sense of isolation from the people he rules in empire'sname and hates as a racially and culturallyinferior species who prevent him from properly doing his job. Yet that job, he knows, stands for "the dirty work of Empire" an empire that is oppressive,exploitative,and evil. But the evil victimizesits own instrumentsas well. The latter must not demur, but carry on with their assignments in silence. They have lost their freedom no less than their subjects.Caught between two hatreds that of the raj and of the natives Orwellspeaksfor his colleaguesas well. "Feelingslike these,"he says, "are the normal by-productsof imperialism;ask any Anglo-Indian official,if you can catch him off duty"("SE," 4; emphasisadded). p. In other words, we have an interpretationhere of colonial rule in one of its aspects, which may appropriately called normal. For all that be is odious about it, it seems to have been absorbedinto the ideology and practice of everyday administrationwhere colonizer and colonized are locked in routine transactions.The moral and politicaldoubts the subdivisional police chief has about such transactionsare all integral to and indeed consistentwith the normalcyof this world. It is a world where the Anglo-Indianofficialis quite at home in his secondarysociety the society of courts,clubs, and bungalows,of tax collection and pig-stickingand crowdcontrol,of servantsand salaams,as Yeats-Brown characterized had it a secondary society kept scrupulously apart from the wider and larger indigenous one. No cry of conscience, Orwell'sobservationsare simply the record of a common, if grumbling,complianceof the worker ant which carriesthe grain and the honey of empire industriously, incessantly,and ever so obediently to its queen. Whathoweverlifts Orwell's sentimentsabovethe ordinarinessof routine is the other register,where his interpretationof the place he has in that unhappy but duty-bound world of colonial dominance acquires a somewhat different spin. Concerned no longer with the feelings of the

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generic white officialout in the East, it is about a dilemma whose universality derives from its being all his own. The terms of this dilemma are knownwell enough to requireno more than a brief recapitulation.Called upon to deal with the rampagingelephant, he had armed himself with a gun but realized on closer approachthat it had calmed down and there would be no point in shooting it. However,a large crowd of onlookers, nearly two thousand strong, had alreadygathered there. "Andsuddenly I realized,"he writes, "thatI should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their p. ("SE," 8). two thousand wills pressingme forward,irresistibly" The suddenness of this realization,emphasized further by temporal is and "moment," what alerts us first to its characmarkerslike "glimpse" says pp. ter as a phenomenon of anxiety ("SE," 4, 8). For"anxiety," Lacan, 10 "isalwaysdefined as appearing suddenly,as arising." As such it is a signal of the shortest possible duration, as short as "a blink of the eye," which, according to Kierkegaard,is how a moment is expressed figuratively in his own language, Danish (CA,p. 87).1lThis is an ancient usage nimzshva) in which coincides with its rendering as nimeshva (alternatively, Sanskritand goes back to the Vedas within the Indian tradition. What it signals is an abrupt break with continuity,with any preexisting series just whatsoever, as the blink cuts oSthe steadinessof a gaze. It is precisely in this least of intervals,which relates to time as succinctlyand economicallyas the point does to Euclidianspace, that Orwellsituatesthe suddenness of his realization. And it was at this moment [he writes],. . . that I first grasped the hollowness,the futilityof the white man'sdominion in the East.Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed nativecrowd seeminglythe leading actorof the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellowfaces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrantit is his own freedom that he destroys.He becomes a sort of hollow,posing dummy, the conventionalizedfigure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in and trying to impressthe "natives," so in every crisishe has got to do what the "natives"expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face p. grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. ["SE," 8] witness to an interpretationthat had so "This moment,"the nimesha, abruptlytranslatedthe sahib'scontest with the elephant into a contest of
1953-1954, vol. 1 of TheSeminarofJacques Paperson Technique 10.JacquesLacan,Freud's Miller(New York,1988), p. 68. ed. Lacan, trans.John Forrester, Jacques-Alain 11. See the editorialnote on this point: "The Danish word 0iblikket (the moment)is figurativein the sense that it is derived from 0iets Blik (a blink of the eye). Cf. the German (CA, p. 245 n. 21). word Augenblick"

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willbetweencolonizer colonized, the signalof an entirelynew and was realization. such,it stoodfor a qualitative As leap a "negation contiof nuity," Kierkegaard it (CA,p. 129).Therewas nothingin it that as put couldbe regarded continuous as withthe hatredhe had distributed so evenlybetweenimperialism its victims the firstregister. would and in It not be possibleto transitdirectlyfromthat to this other register the register anxiety. whatdistinguished latterwasthe suddenness of For the of a leap thatruptured tediuum the mobile an imperial of administration whereconscientious objection securely was yokedto the routineperformanceof officialchores,however or ignominious evil these mighthave been. The momentof realization, have noticed,is also described we by Orwellas a "glimpse" thatis, as an altogether unexpecteddisclosure. Curiously enough,thatglimpse whathe calls"therealnatureof impeof rialism" turnsout, on close inspection, be ratherdifferentfrom his to initialunderstanding empireas a tyrannyimposedon the natives of ("SE," 4). In the register anxiety, contrast, emphasis p. of by the shiftsto the colonizer's loss of freedom.He has no willof his ownanymore own and is controlled the willof thoseyellowfacesbehind." "by Trapped in the imageof the sahibfabricated sahibs by themselves orderto impress in the natives, is nowforcedto liveup to it by doingwhatnatives he expect a sahibto do. Theyexpecthimto shootthe elephant. doesn't He wantto shootit. He mustshootit. Whatis clearly issuein thisdilemma freedom its possibility, at is and whichstaresour protagonist, policeofficial, the face.The suddenthe in nessof thisconfrontation unsettles him;its urgency fraught is witha terrorhe findshardto bear.Seizedby anxiety, has to decidewhetherto he throwoff his maskor continueto wearit, to asserthis own will or be guidedby thatof others,to playor not to playsahibbeforethe nativesin sum,to shootor not to shootthe elephant. In the event,as we know, decidedto actas a whitemanmustand he shot the animal.In doing so, he overcame anxietyof freedomby the comingdownfirmlyon the side of unfreedom an unfreedom articulateddoubly the native's as subjection colonial andthecolonialist's to rule to nativeexpectation aboutwhathe mustdo in ordernot to lose face. This wasindeedthe unfreedom wherehe wasat homeas a functionary of the raj actingout the officialroles assignedto him and dutifully, if grudgingly, performing chores.In sucha context,the incident that his of morningwas nothingother than a signalof the uncanny callingout to him to step out of the grooveand walkawayto freedom.He had heard thatcall,buta moment's glimpse the abyss possibility enoughto of of was makehimrecoilfromthe brink.He choseto staywherehe was,clinging firmlyto the homeliness the routineand the familiar. uncanny of The of empirehadfrightened Yeats-Brown its incomprehensible by dimensions,

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by excessesbeyondmeasure.Some twentyyearson, it was to frighten on of by Orwell the urgency its insistence freedom.l2 of no is an The essay"Shooting Elephant" therefore parable liberal how it To revoltagainstcolonialism. the contrary, demonstrates a liberal Yet imperatives. in theveryactof doing to succumbed colonial conscience so, it was singedby anxietyand broughtback,howevermomentarily, worldof the sahib.Fromthatmoment in fromits absorption the familiar the raj would no longerbe the same to it again. For it had caughta and passing, had known,if only in glimpseof freedom the flashof time's of of forthe duration a blink,the possibility notbeingat homein empire.

Eve mentioned New Year's of 1905 as the date of his first encounter 12. Yeats-Brown The with the uncannyof empire;see Yeats-Brown, Lives of a Bengal Lancer,pp. 3-13. Orwell joined the imperialservicein Burmaabout twentyyearslater in 1926.