“There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man; there is only one world to the spirit of our race.”  

Only one. As I read Death and the Kings Horseman, I can’t help but focus on these words. The Praise Singer’s speech has a stilted, almost other-worldly quality— a world which Soyinka purposely shrouds in a certain mystery. It is a world to which the reader (or audience, if you are lucky enough to be watching this on stage) cannot gain access, however much they may want to. It is a private world, made public only through necessity. And it is the Praise Singer who presents us with the wisdoms of this world. 

Why do we tell stories the way we do? Whether consciously or not, as story tellers we continuously make choices to represent things the way we see them, or rather, the way we believe them to be. Representation is a loaded word. And Soyinka himself, in his decision to portray his characters the way he does, commits a certain violence against them. Although each character has been written with care and detail, none of them can claim for themselves the status of being complete— they are representations of Soyinka’s view of the world, and in turn they too, bring their own stories of representation to the table.  

The Praise Singer is the thread connecting the dead king to Elesin. Through him the community is prevented from going astray. The human equivalent of an alarm clock, the Praise Singer’s words hearken back to pre-colonial times when matters of life and death were in the control of Elesin and his contemporaries. He is the voice of history— of what Soyinka portrays as a timeless past which cannot wholly be erased. The words of the Praise Singer are heavy— they bear the weight of representation of a world. I have used the word ‘a’ deliberately here, for this is not the world you and I know. It is one of seeming contradictions, where death is the pathway to life, and the “soul of man” is a fact and not a philosophic debate. 

But what makes this world important enough for me to neglect all other aspects of the play and focus merely on this one line? After all, the Praise Singer is not the character driving the plot forward. He is a mere spotlight through whose light Elesin is made visible. The answer to the question above does not lie in the nature of the world itself, but in the words “only one”. The Praise Singer speaks of a world saturated with “the spirit of our race”. It exists in singularity and is not just specific to his people but has remained despite the “white slavers” attempts to wrench it of its “heart”, “mind”, and “muscle”. The world that the Praise Singer represents is alive— death is merely a method of affirming the vitality of this life. This representation of the world does not only conflict with that of the colonizers but in a way confirms it as well. There is a clear agreement that there exists “only one world”. The struggle arises over what that world should look like.  

However, if we analyze the words of the Praise Singer a little further, it soon becomes clear that perhaps he is arguing something else entirely. To him, the struggle may not be one of claiming the world through ousting the other. It almost seems as if his words hold the potential of the presence of multiple worlds coexisting side by side. If one is to focus on the spatial layout of the play this theory holds. Pilkings house is near enough to the market place for him to hear the beating of the drums, yet to the space he occupies may as well be another world for all its similarity to the one outside. What makes Pilkings’ world different from the Praise Singer’s is the fact that he does acknowledge the presence of the latter in it. This presence exists in his shadow, and Pilkings’ purpose in this world is to fashion men like the Praise Singer in his own image— a white image. The Praise Singer’s world on the other hand does not preclude the existence of the other. His words are simple— there is “only one” world in which the “soul of man” can be free, in which the “spirit” of his people can be. And this world, if nothing else, is safe from Pilkings through his sheer inability to understand it.  

 

I have been slaving over these lines for weeks. Have made failed attempts, day in and day out, to figure out why I feel such a block. The dialogues make sense, my delivery is sound, my movement precise yet it seems that my years of experience in the conservatory have failed me. 

Only today I realized how truly unaware I was. It took Soyinka’s overwhelming, physical presence and his piercing words reeked in disappointed to open me up to this truth. 

“You are just as ignorant of African culture, African politics, African rhythms as everyone else,” he said. I was shocked, how could he have said this? If anything I’ve been trained in one of the most selective conservatories in NewYork, I have performed countless times on the very stage the play is to be performed on, and even worked under the tutelage and instruction of a choreographer well versed in Yoruba dance and culture.

Yet, his words pierce because they are true. Of course, I cannot recreate the essence of the dance he harkens to from Yoruba’s colonial past. My attempts of pretending to be connected to ancestors I don’t know, to a language I don’t speak, to a world I don’t inhabit are in vain. 

I understand the play well enough to perform it. To my surprise, however, the problem lay not in the script but in the author’s note. Soyinka emphatically cautioned against reducing his work down to the theme of a “Clash of Cultures”. To my mind, this obviously meant that the Yoruba cosmology was far more important in the action of the play than anything that Pilkings and his colonial administration could do to intervene. The ritual, that is deemed barbaric, illegal and the denial of which warrants admiration in Pilking’s mind still reaches fruition. If it isn’t Elisin, the King’s horseman, sacrificing his life to make sure the Yoruba world does not collapse and that the King’s soul safely reaches to the beyond, it is his son that tragically sacrifices his own life for the future of his people. 

The play is not to be read as a “Clash of Cultures” because it implies that the two cultures in question have an equal chance at the outcome of the play. Close reading revealed that this was not the case. The colonial administration is but a mere bystander in the action of the play, they ultimately can’t do much because they simply don’t understand how their subjects feel, why they do the things they do and why this event for Yoruba is so important and thus they have no bearing on what ensues. Or so I thought. 

The framework within which my interpretation of the play operated was sound but I had missed the point entirely. The “clash” was unequal, yes, but it was not how I had imagined. My interpretation suggested the complete opposite of the truth. It is their position that is stronger than my ancestors, not because the ritual gains fruition and the world is saved, but because I can’t, for the life of me, get to the essence of the dance the way Soyinka wants me to.“Clash of Cultures” implies that we have a chance, we do not. 

He recalled a story today of how he was at Churchill College, Cambridge, while he was exiled from his country, and how every day he’d see a statue of Churchill’s face as he descended down his college staircase and how he’d want to see it fall and crash. I didn’t have it in me to ask him why he didn’t do it, just as Maxwelle had done for Rhode’s statue on his university campus in South Africa, but I think I know what he would have said. 

The impact and legacy of our colonial past are too pervasive. I too don’t understand the symbolic importance of the clothes I wear and the way I live. I am just as oblivious as Pilkings and his wife are to the traditional dress they shamelessly clad on their bodies.

In the introduction of his award winning play Death and the King’s Horseman, Wole Soyinka warns the reader of misinterpreting his play as an exploration of a clash between two cultures because the word “clash” would imply an equal and fair fight which as we all are aware of was not the case in colonial Nigeria.

Soyinka, instead, steers away from this conflict entirely and devotes his skills towards providing an honest and accurate portrayal of Yoruba culture and the threats it is exposed to with the arrival of the British. It is through this honest portrayal that we truly get to realize the perils of misrepresentation and how it contributed to the epistemic violence colonialism unfurled upon the colonized minds and their identities.

Soyinka based his play on a real life event which took place in 1946 when a district official attempted to stop the horseman of a Yoruba king from committing ritualized suicide. If this event is viewed as an isolated one and is bogged down with the biases and stereotypes perpetuated through the colonial gaze, it is not difficult to imagine how this event might have been reported and presented to the masses. Words like “savages”, “primitive” and “backwards” might have been thrown around and received with gasps of horror and disgust. To counter these reactions, Soyinka offers a closers view of how this event unfolded but from the perspective of the Yoruban people.

He gives Elesin Oba, the tragic hero of the play, the center stage who is armed with his powerful language that is littered with Yoruban proverbs. Burdened with the heroic task of sacrificing himself in order to keep the “world adrift”, Elesin exhibits hesitation towards his suicide. Throughout this looming threat, the European presence in this play is quite muted and serves as mere background noise at some points. Jane and Simon are seen preparing for a ball, dressing up in costumes as the entire world’s fate hangs in the balance. Their concerns are revealed to be almost childish and insignificant when placed with the knowledge that the world is under threat. By shedding light on these complexities, Soyinka inverts the narrative of the white savior employed by colonizers throughout history. For example in India the practice of sati was abolished framed within that narrative. However, in this case the natives are the ones that are attempting to rescue the colonizers from their own ignorance. Soyinka goes further in depth to reveal the turmoil and hesitance behind such a decision. Elesin does not mindlessly march towards his death, his doubts are constantly holding him back. Soyinka also embeds a mock-conversation between the Girls in the play to show how one’s individuality can be misconstrued and limited when it is presented in a reductive way. The conversation attempts to reduce a British individual to a babbling fool who goes on and on about the weather thus illustrating the consequences the misrepresentation of an unfamiliar subject can have.

Although our world is still adrift in the vast cosmic arena, Soyinka has managed to keep this particular moment in history from falling prey to misrepresentation.

Upon reading Gandhi’s views relating to civilisation and Englishmen for the first time; it is hard not to be confused and uneasy in the face of his somewhat radical interpretations relating to the English being in India. However, putting these views into the broader discourse regarding colonialism, it can be argued that Gandhi is struggling to reconcile his own spirituality with the commerce driven British rule. The underlying motivation to his opposition to all things British is the simple reason that those things lack the representation of the Indian culture and spirituality and he would much rather prefer the flawed aspects of the Indian way of life than live with the convenient lifestyle the British have introduced. His opinions that include him pitying the English as being slaves to consumerism and capitalism, allows him to create a discourse in which he aims to reverse the roles of ‘the savage’ and ‘the other.’

His beliefs are created in the face of the epistemic violence propagated by the British which has permitted them to take India, this is evident when he states that Britain did not take India by the sword and nor does she keep it by the sword. The coloniser created a domain of knowledge which is limited to how they represent the natives and themselves. It is Gandhi’s way to reject this form of knowledge and opinions and to create a representation of what he believes is truly ‘Indian’ which in his view is untainted by the evil and sinful ways that the British and the West live.

Hence, even though Gandhi’s views seem drastically anti-Western, but in order to understand where he is coming from, it is essential to deconstruct his argument and understand his want to see India being represented in its own terms rather than those of the West, thus, his argument to let go of machinery and his belief in how doctors and railways contaminate the soul. He believes that India is its own entity without the need to be ‘reformed’ and ‘civilised’ and has its own sense of self which can only be realised by self-rule or ‘Hind Swaraj.’

It should be noted that he does not see India as being perfect or Utopian, what he stands for instead is that although India has defects such as religious superstition and the ground level differences between different nations and religions, but a coloniser who is essentially an outsider is not the solution. What he stands for is proper representation of India which is only possible by self-rule.

What lies at the heart of Gandhi’s conversation in Hind Swaraj is the individual experience and struggle of an ordinary Indian in a territory colonized by the British- the bearers of the plague of modern civilization. It is in this very territory that the Indians are told that they must watch and learn, and that they must emulate and transform to rise above their stubborn, stagnant state of being uncivilized. Yet, they are also shown that they will never truly be at par with the white man and his nation simply because they were never gifted with his virtues of whiteness, intelligence and ambition. An entire nation is told that it is not good enough, that it might never be, and that it has no choice but to still keep trying. One can imagine some Indians aimlessly moving around their own land, working harder and harder to prove themselves to the white man. Some would become privileged slaves to him, and some would profess anger and emotion, dreaming about ousting the English or gaining the power to represent themselves. However, true Swaraj, as Gandhi explains, goes beyond just the presence of Indians in the place of the English as rulers and representatives of power- it is the journey of every Indian man, woman and child to recognize their true selves and cure themselves of the disease of delusion. In essence, the tyranny of representation, constantly afflicting the Indians, lies in the continuous inability to recognize the true Indian experience because of the deeply ingrained disregard of feelings and respect, and simply, infliction of pain. The only thing that the Indians must learn is to rule their own minds and souls, to realize that their perceived backwardness is their very asset. Representation, therefore, must not be only be gained or won- it must be felt and experienced by the Indian mind and soul, in order for its body to free itself from the tyranny.

Therefore, the crisis of representation exists because Indians look for replacement or recognition from the colonizers, rather than from themselves, and embody it in protests rather than understand it as a process. The Indian population’s “own navy” or “army” will not come to represent its “own splendor” as the conversation suggests. The physical English symbols of power and progress- of parliaments and courts, of navies and armies- in purely Indian hands seem to promise freedom but will only cloud the Indian identity even more. The crisis of representation will continue because despite power in darker hands, Indians will now be represented by the legacy of the colonized instead of the colonizers. It is these very symbols and adoptions that would ensure that the English disease spreads in such a way that the Indian mind accepts it and thus the body never heals. It is because “happiness is largely a mental condition” that true home rule will always be dependent on the strength of the Indian mind, a strength that must lie “in the absence of fear”. A strength that would become indestructible by the mere symbols of English power, by railways and telegraphs, and by doctors and lawyers. It is the Indian experience itself that would render “Manchester cloth” as irrelevant to the Indian way of life, despite the continuation of their trade, the production of their factories, and their physical presence on Indian soil. In effect, the conversation shows that because the injury of the Indian self-worth was a process that began from the mind, its healing shall also be one. The tyranny of the phenomenon of representation lies in the delusion that one nation is and will remain enslaved to another nation. This delusion impairs not only the mind, but the eyes as well, which see peace in endeavors of becoming a part of the diseased modern civilization. The tyranny is further rooted in the Indians’ refusal to look within themselves and face their hurt, degraded and battered, individual souls.  It lies in a fear of discovering what injuries they will find within or whether they will find anything left at all.  It lies in the suffering of an amnesia, to be wronged and told to forget all about it, to be perpetually lost and delude oneself to be on the path to freedom- a way perhaps, of never really healing.

In essence, symbols and representation, though only suggestive in nature themselves, yield immense power due to the meanings that they suggest. While Gandhi sees “machinery” as a “chief symbol of modern civilization” and representative of “a great sin”, he does not deny that the Indian village and community has its own sins. Therefore, the entire meaning of the journey of Swaraj and freedom from the tyranny of representation is to rule one’s own mind first and recognize all that is Indian- the virtues and the sins, the strong and the weak, and the diversity of people and religions. It does not do to simply go back in time, to remember where it all began from, but to come back to the present time, recognize what has been done to them, and who they truly are.

The notion of the ‘Other’ has always subjected the conquered to unprecedented challenges. It is not just marked with subjugation but also a repression of their culture. Hence, the natives are left with little choice but to cling onto preserving their culture

Rigoberta, in her testimony, highlights her struggles; a struggle towards life. Becoming a voice for the voiceless, Rigoberta narrates how native Indians in Gautemala are subjugated, exploited and discriminated. This reality is instilled in them from the very beginning of their lives when at several instances they are exposed to the truth of ‘white men’ dishonoring their ancestors. These white men are the reason why children die of hunger and why they must not reveal their secrets because in a world dominated by White men, Indians will always be misunderstood.

A classic example of this is when they organize themselves to retrieve their lands back. They are labeled as guerrillas, working as communist agents. Rigoberta’s father is burnt alive along with other protestors who only wished to protest peacefully with orphans by their side outside the Embassy. Any form of representation is misunderstood by these White men. It goes unrecognized primarily because the conquerors wish to understand and evaluate them using their own tools, painting them all with the same brush. Hence if anything exists then it is a dichotomy between us vs them.   

This dichotomy forces native Indians to be seen as filthy and dirty. Worked as a maid, Rigoberta narrates how she is treated worse than a dog during her work in the capital.  Their culture is automatically considered inferior and hence anything coming out of them is subjected to scrutiny. They are bound to become passive recipients of the injustices that are imposed on them by the conquerors. These conquerors inevitable know better than them. These injustices, as recounted by Rigoberta, range from their people dying from malnutrition to their houses being forcefully taken away. The biggest injustice remains a rejection of their identity and their culture.

The Native Indians are then left with no choice but to use the very tools of colonialism to get their message across. Bible serves as a tool to help unite their people. Weapons are employed for their own protection. And Lastly Spanish, the language of white men, is used to get their voice heard. However the dilemma remains that the mere sight of these Indians dressed in their unique clothes which is a testament to their simple way of life and hard work are viewed as a creature, incapable of thinking and working for their future. These natives, thus, remain an alien being for the white men and for the world that is run by these people.

The question of representation in a colonial/imperial context is a crucial one, one that must be asked, addressed and reminded of, over and over again. Guaranteed new revelations and consequent anger every time it is readdressed, not merely as a purpose of revisiting the past, but more so as a protest in recognition of what the deprivation of representation meant, and still means. How it has evolved with time, yet manifests itself until today in various ways, each new to the last but inevitably tied to the one common past. The echo must reach one ear and the next, because it matters. It mattered, and it will matter. History is never without consequence, and the kind of history in discussion here is one of immense pain, deprivation, force. A robbery of representation. Of the many victims of colonization, representation is one; making one’s voice non-existent, unimportant, deprived of the need to hear, to speak and to demand. What was the cost then? The cost was the identity of the ruled, the voice and words of the systematically oppressed, the alienation of the ‘subjects’ in deciding, rather living, their own lives. The lives of their people, land, crop, values, labor and knowledge.

The very simplistic, derogatory view of the colonized or the ‘other’ as savage, uncivilized, non-progressive is a question of representation too. How they were, and are still recognized, is also a concern of representation. What comes to mind here is, when were the ‘savages’ ever allowed to represent themselves, their cultures, and contexts. When were they even asked. Was there ever a dialogue, or was their part of the story heard while they were being ‘civilized’. The answer(s) is in the negative, for they were robbed of the very right to represent themselves from the day the colonizers set foot on their land. Or rather, the moment they ‘decided’ to. This tragedy becomes even more manifest when the very people sometimes did not understand what they were being deprived of, and some who did, were silenced. Others wrote, some spoke, some sang, hence the reason we discuss it today.

How representation was denied becomes clear in many a speech, plays, testimonies and texts. All coming from different contexts, but one reality. The reality of being colonized, not free, not important. Not represented. Why else would Nehru feel the need to say “India discovers herself again” in his famous speech on the 15^th of August, in 1947. What did his words promise, except the voice and agency to the Indians, something so fundamental, and yet so deprived, inaccessible, robbed. The “ill fortune” that he mentions could have been avoided, or moderately speaking, reduced, had the people been given representation. In other words, had they not been made to suffer from representational oppression, one that not only was rigid, but also penetrated into the time that is today and the minds that live in today, tangled in the tyrannies, forced complexes and anxieties of the past.

The tyranny of (non)representation is evident in the play called ‘Death and the King’s Horseman’ by Wole Soyinka, based on real life events in Nigeria during British Colonial rule. The year was 1946, Nigeria was not free, neither were her people. In the world of today, certain practices are considered unfair, barbaric, unjust and inhumane. However, who gets to decide what is what. Why has it always been the colonizer to simply announce the verdict. The King’s horseman, Elesin, is stopped from performing a ritual of death, in the honor of accompanying the King in the afterlife, by the Englishmen. The question here is not about right or wrong. It is about why the people were deprived of their right to represent themselves and their culture, why the decision(s) was not at their disposal and why was their say not important. Elesin could not complete the ritual and was imprisoned, but was the problem solved there? Could the Colonial District Officer, Simon Pilkings, and his comrades pride themselves in stopping a ‘barbaric’ act, when in fact, that intervention led to catastrophe; the death of Elesin’s son, Olunde, and Elesin himself, the shame, sacrifice, disorder for the Nigerian people, the realization of their fears. For them, it was not a mere intervention in saving a life, but one that intervened with the cosmic order, their world view and their values. How would a people react to such an intervention ending everything for which they were expecting celebrations, pride and honor. Olunde sacrifices himself to redeem the ‘failure’ of his father. One should ask, what led to the failure, except the Englishmen’s decision. Can we blame Elesin’s ‘weak will’ alone, or was it that he was denied to go beyond the will in the first place. How would the debate of what is morally right or wrong make sense to them, if they are deprived of their side of the contribution to the debate.

Soyinka addresses the lack of representation in his work through subtly stressing on the need of interaction and appreciation between the cultures of the ‘ruler’ and the forcefully, tactfully (and wrongfully) ruled. He demonstrates the result of the forceful intervention as utterly catastrophic in the eyes of the people, a destruction of the universal order, because it mattered. It mattered to the Nigerians that their values and culture be taken into consideration. It mattered to let them decide and distinguish. It mattered for them to be responsible for themselves, and their customs. Most importantly, it mattered that they received the ‘representation’ they rightfully deserved, but which came under the weight of tyranny, force and indifference. It is, therefore, understandable why the Praise-Singer said, “Evil strangers tilted the world from its course and crushed it.”

The question as to whether the Nigerians in specific, or the colonized in general, have completely defeated the representational tyranny, or is the legacy of the “ghostly ones” still far from leaving the fate of today, remains unanswered sufficient to the magnitude of the concern.

‘Death and the King’s Horseman’ is Wole Soyinka’s extraordinary piece which deals with keeping alive a deep and complex culture in the backdrop of colonial rule. In the play’s preface, Soyinka urges the reader to focus of the play’s spiritual aspects than to reduce it to a mere ‘clash of cultures’, though there is much attention paid to both aspects. This antagonism echoes Gandhi’s understanding of the conflict between religion and modernity in ‘Hind Swaraj’. Using Gandhi’s understanding of spiritualty, one can reconcile the friction between Spirituality and Colonization using Soyinka’s efforts to represent both the indigenous and colonizers. This can be done through the understanding of spirituality within the play, the variation of characters and the question of representation without understanding.

In ‘Hind Swaraj’, Gandhi laments the encroachment of modernity (not English culture) on what he sees as an inherent religiousness in South Asia (pg. 15). But, the conversations between the native characters show that in their world spirituality remains undeterred by colonialism. In scene One, the Praise-Singer articulates that the tribe’s devotion to spirituality protects it by giving the people within an identity (pg. 309). This is not just in contrast to the white man, but their own superficial desires that could distract them from the ultimate goal of connecting with their ancestors. Elesin himself falls victim to this when he delays his death in order to marry a beautiful woman. The inevitability of Elesin’s death is reiterated in Scene three as something a white man cannot prevent (pg. 337), and that prophecy is fulfilled when Elesin kills himself in the final scene.

However, Soyinka takes pains to give his characters different identities in an effort to express different relationships with colonialism and spirituality. Elesin rejects the colonizer but indulges in worldly affairs, the officer Amusa works for the colonizer but has not let go of his beliefs, Joseph the convert does not believe in “black man juju” (pg. 329) altogether and Elesin’s son Olunde serves as a bridge between modernity and his culture/beliefs. In contrast, the white characters have more or less the same views on the natives. This is meant to illustrate the unifying violence of the colonizer who in Olunde’s words, “have no respect for what [they] do not understand” (pg. 353).

This begs the question of representing the Other without necessarily understanding them. At various times, Pilkings and his wife depict an inability and insensitivity while interacting with native customs, such as using the masks of dead egungun ancestors as costume pieces. Pilkings intervenes in Elesin’s death not because Pilkings likes Elesin but as a way to show The Prince that this colony is “safe” from conflict (pg. 350). They also genuinely want to support Olunde’s dreams and wish to show him the best of their culture (pg. 358). But as Olunde points out (in ways which mirror those of Gandhi), the colonizer is unable to reconcile with their own culture. They lament their countrymen who are dying in WWII but also throw a party to forget that a war is occurring in the first place. Over emphasizing the Pilkings’ intervention as a culture clash would risk committing the same kind of violence as they do by failing to understand the spiritual importance of Elesin’s journey in the play. Soyinka frees himself from the epistemic violence of colonialism by creating vivid and succinct representations natives who exist in and interact with a colonial environment. But, just like Gandhi evokes, the true struggle for freedom hinges on a more internal and meaningful struggle for one’s beliefs and one’s identity within their own selves.

Cited:

Death and the King’s Horseman, Wole Soyinka, Contemporary African Plays, edited by Martin Bahman and Jane Plastow, 1999

Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule, M.K. Gandhi, Printed & Published by:
Jitendra T Desai, Navajivan Publishing House.