A Study of Division and Communal Conflict in Africa and South Asia

Sheikh Zobaer

North South University, Bangladesh

Abstract

British colonizers adopted a policy of “divide and rule” to secure colonial dominance in Africa and South Asia, and exploiting the existing communal divisions aided the colonizers in doing so. Mistrust and communal conflicts among people in both Africa and South Asia destabilized social harmony, affording colonial rulers rich opportunities to enhance their dominance. Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God, Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s The River Between, and Manohar Malgonkar’s A Bend in the Ganges reveal the multifarious internal communal conflicts among people in former British colonies in East Africa, West Africa, and South Asia, respectively, and capture how such conflicts paved the way for British colonial dominance. This paper seeks to explore how these three novels are in dialog with one another in their portrayal of the internal conflicts and lack of unity among the peoples of Africa and South Asia during the colonial era that the British colonizers manipulated to tighten their colonial stranglehold.

Keywords:

divide and rule, communal division, Africa, South Asia, colonialism

References

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Biographical Note

Sheikh Zobaer is a Lecturer in the Department of English and Modern Languages (DEML) at North South University in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He has completed his MA in English Literature from the University of Surrey, UK, before joining as a Lecturer at North South University. He is also the current Teaching Assistant Coordinator of DEML and the Editorial Assistant of Panini: NSU Studies in Language and Literature, which is a peer-reviewed academic journal of DEML. His research areas include postcolonial literature, comparative literature, and trauma theory. Currently, he is working on a project funded by NSU which documents the oral narratives of the survivors of the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971.