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Zachary Schneller
Professor Robinette
Final Paper
ENG: 302
Who is That? Ruminations about the Self and the Other in The Glass Palace
“Without the other, there would be no self, no identity” (Karkaba 93). Identity is a
construct based on an assumption about the presence of another, and yet one knows not how to
identify with that other without adjusting the self. When the other has been identified one adjusts
the self and distinguishes him or herself from the other based on external features. Upon the
development of another in turn the constant development of the self takes place. Within that
construction exists probable stereotypes about the characteristics of the other. These basic
identity formations are the basis for the existence of colonization of India in Amitav Ghosh’s The
Glass Palace. The British in their exploitation of India in the novel have determined the other as
a potential benefit for the mother country and its capitalist and imperialistic machine. This
unfriendliness is based on negative stereotypes towards India and foreigners. Britain exploiting
the Indians threatens the construct between foreigner and native and because of these negative
associations both countries mutually stereotype on another and thus their concept of the other
becomes tainted. In a contrary way, however, the colonized becomes partly the colonizer because
of the heavy influence inflicted by the colonizer. The formation of the other in The Glass Palace
emerges from an ever-shifting self-identity and the possible exploitation of the other is made
possible via negative stereotypes and the shaky promise of great material wealth.
1: Formations of the Self and the Other

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An interesting scenario is created when one leaves one home country. Upon the desertion
of one’s native country, one’s identity is shifted when assessing the foreign land in relation to the
self and the other. The prospect of experiencing new territory challenges the self to change
because of this new association with the other. Because of these new shifts it becomes
impossible to return to the original identity. In the Glass Palace Dolly becomes aware of this
fundamental shift: “If I went to Burma now, I would be a foreigner-they would call me a kalaa
like they do Indians-a trespasser, an outsider from across the sea. I’d find that very hard, I think.
I’d never be able to rid myself of the idea that I would have to leave again one day, just as I had
to before. You would understand if you knew what it was like when we left” (Ghosh 96). Based
on circumstances beyond her control, Dolly is forced to confront the other in an undesirable
fashion. Her identity has shifted in a unique way because if she returns to her home country she
will be regarded as a foreigner by her own people. Her home, status and place as a native have
been erased, so by extension she will be regarded as a foreigner everywhere.
As a result of forced migration it becomes apparent about the impossibility to revert back
to a former semblance of a self: “In its ‘adventuring outside oneself towards the unforeseeably-
other,’ the self has to face ‘the impossibility of return to the same’. The acknowledgement of this
inescapable impossibility of return to the same after encountering the other plays an active role
in approaching postcolonial identities” (Karkaba 94). Dolly’s identity shifts upon migrating thus
she will forever be regarded as another in her own country and it is impossible to revert back to
her former identity. Her self transforms into something that is unique because the adventure
outside herself was unintentional and decided by someone else in the event of being forced to
confront the other outside her comfort zone. She is added to the category of possessing a
postcolonial identity.

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Foreigners are personifications of curiosity: people who look fundamentally different are
visually stimulating in a way. A rare delight exists through the experience of a child
encountering someone profoundly different in appearance for the first time. In turn that
experience reflects the naïveté of the child whose world is freshly unraveling itself before his
very eyes. Rajkumar, an Indian, meets a Chinese man: “His clothes were those of a European
and he seemed to know Hindustani-and yet the cast of his face was that of neither a white man
nor an Indian” (Ghosh 8). Rajkumar has known about foreigners for a period possibly of a
significant length, however, he only has a limited sort of experience with this matter because of
his age. He attempts to understand another world greater than the one he already knows, which
includes very little at this point of his life, and becomes lost in visual translation. Rajkumar
places faces on the man that do not quite match up to his own understanding, and yet he does
understand this person is greatly different than anyone he has previously experienced. He is like
a painter who is asked to paint a self-portrait and then asked to change it to another race. He sorts
the man into the slot of a race unknown.
This act of sorting is significant because Rajkumar recognizes something new via
assimilation through identification and is able to categorize it in to a little thought of slot that will
eventually grow through aging. Identification is the key term here and not identity:
“Identification is a more complex and supple term than identity, which is a matter of social
regulation, the allocation or the assimilation of each individual to a social group, a class, a
gender, a race, a nation” (Laureits 54). Without identity, however, identification cannot exist
because one must know about one’s own self before he or she can identify anyone because the
self is needed for a basis of comparison. This is the act of sorting that Rajkumar undergoes in his

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identification of Saya John. Visual assimilation takes place during the sorting of exactly which
race to file Saya John under.
After the construction of identity, a complicated process based on sameness and
otherness, the self that is created can begin formulating where other people fall in relation to the
self. The younger Rajkumar, just a child, possesses self-identity but is unaware of its about-to-
be-shifting form: “He was, in a way, a feral creature, unaware that in certain places there exist
invisible bonds linking people to one another through personifications of their commonality. In
the Bengal of his birth those ties had been sundered by a century of conquest and no longer
existed even as a memory” (Ghosh 48). Britain functions as an “other” presence in an interesting
way even before birth: that even then the concept of otherness holds sway thus control is
surrendered and is impossible to maintain at this stage. This association with others (even like
others such as racial counterparts) has not occurred to Rajkumar because of his young age. The
concept of “like others” is interesting because it is an oxymoron: how can someone be like
another if they possess different distinguishing external attributes? The answer is that one finds
sameness in race. Commonalities that exist externally are concepts of race, something Rajkumar
does not understand.
He will undergo changes to identity that Homi Bhabha has called the “mirror phase”:
“The Imaginary is the transformation that takes place in the subject at the formative mirror
phase, when it assumes a discrete image which allows it to postulate a series of equivalences,
samenesses, identities, between the objects of the surrounding world” (Bhabha 29). These
equivalences and samenesses are the basis for the like characteristics of Rajkumar’s race as well
as differing facial attributes within that race. Rajkumar can use this as a template for
identification of others like him via skin color as well as provide a root to identify foreigners.

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Something external like skin color unites those of the same race and it is also an object to
be judged from a being that does not have the same skin color. When someone obtains stimuli
indicating one race is different via skin color, a sort of process is set into motion: “The painter is
staring at the pale body, imagining schemes to transform it into a black entity. The model has
become a mirror through which the painter evaluates how the norms of similitude and his own
creativity would impart a human identity and a racial difference to his canvas” (Mundimbe 7).
The painter is superimposing whatever he construes as different based on limited experience
onto a white body. Limited experience is the key here and it is based on numerous assumptions
that arise when assessing an externally different figure. Rajkumar’s limited experience can be
highlighted here because his age limits him from perceiving foreigners in an unfavorable light
based on those external negative assumptions or stereotypes. He can only imagine what is not
there like the painter and allow his identity to grow while perceiving others. Perhaps Rajkumar’s
identity will form negative stereotypes and perhaps not. It is a question of what lies ahead that
will shape his subsequent identity.
These assumptions have the potential to snowball into negative stereotypes. In other
words this is a template for racism: “Frowns appeared on some customers’ faces as they noted
that it was the serving-boy who had spoken and that he was a kalaa from across the sea – an
Indian, with teeth as white as his eyes and skin the color of polished hardwood” (Ghosh 1).
External characteristics viewed as not desirous by the others as well as the unexpected
knowingness displayed by the Indian are some of the fears of the customers personified. The idea
of an intelligent, knowing other exemplifies some of the possible stereotypes (savagery,
lustfulness, and so on) portrayed by the foreign customers. These fears can be explained: “Skin,
as the key signifier of cultural and racial difference in the stereotype, is the most visible of

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fetishes, recognized as ‘common knowledge’ in a range of cultural, political, historical
discourses, and plays a public part in the racial drama that is enacted every day in colonial
societies” (Bhabha 30). Applying a fetish to skin sexualizes the other via a guise of racism,
which is based on the perceived fears formulated by the foreign self. This bestial sexual sanction
is central to Bhabha’s idea of sexuality forming the racial ambivalence experienced by both
sides: the colonizer and the colonized. That is the subject and the perceived other undergo some
of the same processes or negative stereotypes that initiates mutual racism.
Racist stereotypes are applied to the concept of the other in a process of distinguishing
one’s self from the feared other. Racism stems from undesirable disassociation with one self:
“This distinction, disjoining, or disidentification of the subject from himself is indeed a
psychoanalytic one: it presupposes an identification with an image – what Bhabha will call the
stereotype – that is culturally implanted in the black man by racism just as perversion, according
to Focault, is implanted in the subject” (Lauretis 60). The formation of stereotypes exists when
ideas about the perceived other emerge after the process of self-identification. This idea brings
the concept of the self with the concept of the other and merges them under a guise of
characteristic mutual racism.
Propaganda helps garner negative stereotypes towards a race that ordinarily would not be
stereotyped under certain circumstances: “Those barbarian English kalaas, having most harshly
made demands calculated to bring about the impairment and destruction of our region, the
violation of our national traditions and customs and the degradation of our race, are making a
show and preparation as if about to wage war with our state” (Ghosh 13). By means of a racial
epithet English foreigners are disassociated with Indians. The conqueror stereotype emerges
from English colonialism and as a result Indians, or rather the Indian propaganda machine,

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naturally recognize this as adverse to themselves. The English has sowed seeds of destruction
and that destructive image of the English colonial juggernaut is fostered by Indian propaganda.
2: The Relationship between the Colonizer and the Colonized
In the case of Britain versus India the countries themselves are opposing others and the
fetishizing of the latter by the former causes fantasies to occur. These fantasies occur at the
consideration of invasion: how much is to be gained by exploitation of resources and people?
Until these are put into action, they remain just that in the meantime: fantasies. Fictional Britain
revels at the prospect of colonization: “If the British were willing to go to war over a stand of
trees, it could only be because they knew of some hidden wealth secreted within the forest”
(Ghosh 50). This is the appealing “El Dorado” fantasy. That is there exists the imagined values
and riches at the prospects of invading a country. According to legend, a place of concentrated
wealth must exist via a city or in India’s case a forest saturated with valuable teakwood.
There is a fixation on what actually exists and what is imagined. A sort of spectrum can
be formed here that distinguishes how far a country will pursue that which is imagined versus
that which is real. Homi Bhabha explains further: “It is, on the one hand, a topic of learning,
discovery, practice; on the other, it is the site of dreams, images, fantasies, myths, obsessions and
requirements” (Bhabha 24). Here Bhabha recognizes the dichotomy between real and imagined.
The learning, discovery, and practice center on what is real and more importantly what can be
gleaned from the real facets of the country. Learning and discovery are based on gleaning from
tangibles rather than imagined fantasy, which is at the other end of the dichotomy depicted by
Bhabha. Britain’s attraction to India is built on a combination of both ends of the spectrum: the
real and imagined. It is debatable which side Britain leans more. I would say the imagined is

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fixated on more than the real because of the sheer exploitation and rape of resources perpetrated
by Britain.
Economic exploitation by the guise of colonialism is one of the cornerstones of The Glass
Palace and operates as the result of an imagined British fantasy of the other. Existing here,
however, is the case of the imagined becoming reality since the riches are real so in a way the
fantasy of imagined riches becomes justified in the form of a rubber plantation: “It’s no easy
thing to run a plantation, you know. To look at, it’s all very green and beautiful-sort of like a
forest. But actually it’s a vast machine, made of wood and flesh. And at every turn, every little
piece of this machine is resisting you, fighting you, waiting for you to give in” (Ghosh 201). The
plantation functions as a metaphor of control because the machine, that is the colonized area, is
resisting the colonizer like one resisting rape. Beauty is not imagined but rather the product of
Western labor. This labor is uniquely not a product of the native colony but rather that of the
volition of England.
Westernization becomes an aesthetic operating in foreign territory. The westernization of
estate provides profit via exploitation of resources and labor: “At the economic level, for
example, if the relatively low productivity of traditional processes of production (formerly
adapted to the then-existing markets and range of trade and exchanges) has been disrupted by a
new division of labor which depends upon international markets, then transformation has meant
a progressive destruction of traditional realms of agriculture and crafts” (Mundimbe 4). A
distribution is placed in India by the onset of Western labor and earlier stagnant production or
manufacture is increased. Industrialization of areas not previously industrialized can impact a
region whose net level of production was low to begin with. Since the native country did not
posses the means of mass manufacture the colonizer in a way has arguably helped India. A

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disturbing question arises. Is exploitation of a country right if the exploited country is helped
economically? This seems to justify the means of imperialism in a strange way. This is also a
way the other can dominate because who is to say Britain should leave when they have, in fact,
proven to be beneficial in the long run?
Material exploitation exists in The Glass Palace among the presence of human
exploitation and domestication. Conquering a people becomes justified when the ends seem
harmless and even beneficiary: “He said: ‘You don’t understand. We never thought that we were
being used to conquer people. Not at all: we thought the opposite. We were told that we were
freeing those people. That is what they said-that we were going to set those people free from
their bad kings or their evil customs or some such thing. We believed it because they believed it
too. It took us a long time to understand that in their eyes freedom exists wherever they rule’”
(Ghosh 193). The concept of conquering is operating under the guise of freedom. The logic here
is the British are freeing the oppressed Indians from themselves under the implementation of new
order. A binary can be drawn between the conqueror and the conquered. The conqueror or the
external other believes oppression is fundamentally correct rooted in assumptions about the
savagery or customs of the conquered self of India.
A power struggle is evident in the relationship between Britain and India; conqueror and
conquered: “Subjects are disproportionally placed in opposition or domination through the
symbolic decentering of multiple power-relations which play the role of support as well as target
or adversary” (Bhabha 24). Bhabha explains the politics governing the other (this time placing
them as clear opponents). Essentially Britain and India work as the subjects described by
Bhabha: countries instead of people, but the concept remains much the same. The support and
target, which is India, provides supporting wealth to Britain the conqueror as well as playing the

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role of the target for oppression. Britain, the adversary, functions as the dominant oppressive
being exploiting wealth and resources while supporting and injecting new life into the stagnant
Indian economy. The dual roles each country enacts share the same role, the support, which is
interesting. This is a contrary role to that of traditional oppressed versus oppressor relationship. It
adds a new-shared dimension or wrinkle to a relationship steeped in opposition. If this scenario
would be allowed to continue, traits of the oppressor would inevitably rub off on the oppressed.
To an extent in The Glass Palace shades of Britain bleed into Indian commerce and
people as a result of the colonizer/colonized and oppressor/oppressed binary relationships. This
is a process where the native becomes like the other to a fixed extent. Total assimilation into
British culture, of course, does not exist because the addition of Indian customs would not fit the
British model. British wealth is injected into India: “Mandalay, it was confidently predicted,
would soon become the Chicago of Asia” (Ghosh 58). What a perfect example of westernization.
A city far the east of the United States has the potential to grow into not just any city but a
veritable chamber of commerce; a notably westernized city. Mundimbe notes the focused
machine (which is English in the novel) that dominates people and commerce: “Thus, three
complementary hypothesis and actions emerge: the domination of physical space, the
reformation of natives’ minds, and the integration of local economic histories into the Western
perspective” (Mundimbe 2). Mandalay is an example of the addition of native economic histories
voiced through western perspectives. This speaks volumes to the west as an influence on the east
despite the negative colonizer/colonized influence.
The same sort of assimilation can be applied to the minds of the people when the
“reformed” natives adopt western customs. This is the position of one of the protagonists of The
Glass Palace, Arjun: “This is the greatest danger, he thought, this point at which Arjun has

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arrived-where, in resisting the powers that form us, we allow them to gain control of all meaning;
this is their moment of victory; it is in this way that they inflict their final and most terrible
defeat” (Ghosh 447). At first Arjun celebrated adopting British customs. He thought they would
form him into a more perfect Indian, but they eventually lead to his downfall when he allowed
them to control all meaning. This is a terrible consequence of adjusting the native to fit and be
like the other. Full assimilation to the customs of another cannot happen when too much of the
native identity is still intact, and that is clearly the case of Arjun. At this point he has adopted too
much of the other and cannot revert back to his original identity. He is like Dolly: an example of
an identity that is constantly shifting because of great the change or upheaval taking place in
India.
Amitav Ghosh approaches complex questions about the self and the other in The Glass
Palace. Identity in the novel is based on the exclusion of the other like Rajkumar’s shifting self,
which identifies foreigners who are different in appearance. Differing external features make up
a means of comparing and identifying with others as well as oneself. Once this phase has been
established concepts about the other begin to emerge among which is anxiety and fear thus
leading to the negative stereotypes so often associated with racism and even imagined fantasies
of what that other can be. This can be the attitude adopted by a conqueror/colonizer (Britain) in
the exploitation of territory, resources, and people of the conquered/colonized (India). For
Britain, India exists as another that is a comprised well of resources and people meant to be
exploited. The British instigation of India fosters mutual racism and is not productive on both
fronts, however, the British do breath life into a stagnant Indian economy, which can be the
possible justification of their actions. These actions in the novel paint colonization unfavorably
as an inhuman institution that fundamentally disrupts formations of the self and the other.

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Works Cited
Bhabha, Homi K. "The Other Question: Difference, Discrimination, and the Discourse
of Colonialism". pp. 87-106. Baker, Houston A. (ed. & introd.); Diawara, Manthia (ed.);
Lindeborg, Ruth H. (ed. & introd.) and Best, Stephen (introd.) Black British Cultural
Studies: A Reader. Black Literature and Culture . Chicago, IL: U of Chicago P, 1996.
viii, 340 pp. Print.
De Lauretis, Teresa. "Difference Embodied: Reflections on Black Skin, White
Masks". Parallax: 8.2 [23] ( 2002 Apr-June), pp. 54-68. Print.
Ghosh, Amitav. The Glass Palace. Random House: New York, 2002. Print.
Karkaba, Cherki. "Deconstructing Identity in Postcolonial Fiction". ELOPE: English
Language Overseas Perspectives and Enquiries: 7. ( 2010 Autumn), pp. 91-99.
Mundimbe, Valentin Y. The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of
Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988. Print.
Su, John J. "Amitav Ghosh and the Aesthetic Turn in Postcolonial Studies". Journal of
Modern Literature: 34.3 ( 2011 Spring), pp. 65-86. Print.