The Glass Palace

“For a few coins they would allow their masters to use them as they wished, to destroy every trace of resistance to the power of the English […] How do you fight an enemy who fights from neither enmity nor anger, but in submission to orders from superiors, without protest and without conscience?”

In this passage, Ghosh explores the nature of those who side with the colonial power. It is through the words of Saya John that he conveys this message: a recollection, retold as a lesson to Rajkumar. The audience takes the place of Rajkumar, listening to the older man who has more influence in this field. Saya John provides his diagnosis: that the power of money is enough to diminish a natural streak of independence. Early in the novel, Saya John understands the difficulty of the fight ahead. Likewise, he chooses not to fight back, but to profit from the imperial machine that values his teak trade. In doing so, he becomes just as financially motivated as the sepoys he is describing.

“In English they use a word—it comes from the Bible—evil. I used to think of it when I talked to those soldiers. What other word could you use to describe their willingness to kill for their masters, to follow any command, no matter what it entailed? And yet, in the hospital, these sepoys would give me gifts, tokens of their gratitude—a carved flute, an orange. I would look into their eyes and see also a kind of innocence, a simplicity. These men, who would think nothing of setting fire to whole villages if their officers ordered, they too had a certain kind of innocence. An innocent evil. I could think of nothing more dangerous.” 

The “innocent evil” that Saya John describes in this passage informs much of the book. Though it is the British who are the colonial oppressors of the region, the violence inflicted on to the characters often comes from non-white sources, whether Indian, Burmese, or Japanese. This notion of distant-yet-present evil pervades the entire text: the British presence in the region is the motivating factor for the narrative, though there are very few British characters. The Empire is represented by people like the collector or Arjun, locals who have come to embody the institutions of the colonialists.

In The Glass Palace, the kind of evil the characters face is much more localized. The evil of the Empire is banal and bureaucratic, a bland and boring institutionalized malevolence that seems almost impossible to combat. Indeed, it is eventually global forces (World Wars, the Great Depression) or extra-textual characters (Gandhi) that dictate the Empire’s presence in the region. The lingering traces of this “evil” that Saya John describes are found in the ideologies, actions, and psychologies of the characters in the novel.

“Of all the princesses in the palace, Supayalat was by far the fiercest and most willful, the only one who could match her mother in guile and determination. Of such a woman only indifference could have been expected where it concerned a man of scholarly inclination like Thebaw.” 

The King and Queen of Burma have vastly different personalities. As evidenced by the quote above, the queen possesses a level of Machiavellian scheming the king could never hope to match. She is the person who is willing to do what she has to do in order to preserve her power, while the king seems more lackadaisical. Their relationship is painted as a juxtaposition, as though they are two different forces that unite to rule over Burma. When the British take over, they replace the scholarly inclination of King Thebaw with sprawling bureaucracy, while retaining the queen’s viciousness.

“This is how power is eclipsed: in a moment of vivid realism, between the waning of one fantasy of governance and its replacement by the next; in an instant when the world springs free of its mooring of dreams and reveals itself to be girdled in the pathways of survival and self-preservation.”

In this quote, Ghosh condenses the historical travails of Burma and India into a single sentence. The domineering effects of colonialism and the gradual shedding of the past are expressed in a single moment. The transfer of power between the Burmese royal family and the British is swift and painful, and in this moment, the prose lays out the path for the next hundred years of history. Survival and self-preservation will be key traits for the characters and it is only when these needs are satisfied that they can begin to think about their situation in a political sense.

“The whole town lay spread out below, framed by the sweep of the bay and the two steep promontories on either side. The view was magnificent, just as Mr. Cox had said. He went back into the bedroom. He sat in one of the armchairs and watched the ghostly shadows of coconut palms swaying on the room’s white plaster walls. In this room the hours would accumulate like grains of sand until they buried him.”

The exile of the Burmese King is misunderstood by many of those involved. While the royal family still hopes to one day return to Burma, all of the administrative representatives of the Empire know that this will be impossible. In the quote above, King Thebaw is finally understanding the nature of his exile. It is a prison sentence: he is too valuable to be killed and too important to be allowed to return home. The time he spends away from his country will eventually bury him; Burma will move on and become something else while he is trapped in exile, slowly being swallowed whole by the passing of time.

“The British occupation had changed everything: Burma had been quickly integrated into the Empire, forcibly converted into a province of British India. Courtly Mandalay was now a bustling commercial hub; resources were being exploited with an energy and efficiency hitherto un-dreamt of.”

The change between pre- and post-colonial Burma is described as a forceful, sudden integration. Burma is thrown into the ring of global capitalism, the British bringing with them a level of trade, integration, and globalism that was impossible to envision beforehand. Resources are now to be “exploited,” rather than simply used. Burma has gone from being an independent rich country to being an efficient and bustling province. Though this change is mostly exhibited through the characters and their material conditions, this quote is one of the few points at which Ghosh pulls back to examine the changing macro-economics of the region.

“The assassinated trees were left to die where they stood, sometimes for three years or even more. It was only after they had been judged dry enough to float that they were marked for felling. That was when the axemen came, shouldering their weapons, squinting along the blades to judge their victims’ angles of descent.”

The harvesting of teak is the means by which Rajkumar and Saya John make their fortunes, as well as the main motivation for the British invasion of Burma. Because of this, the harvesting of the teak can serve as a metaphor for the colonial project as a whole. The killing of the trees, allowing them to stand until they are ruthlessly cut down, can be read as analogous to the British treatment of their colonial subjects. They kill a nation by invading it, allow it to stand for a short period, and then cut it down and fully integrate it into the empire when it becomes useful. As evidenced by the inclusion of Indian officers in the colonial army later in the novel, this approach will ultimately undermine the empire.

“A hundred years hence you will read the indictment of Europe’s greed in the difference between the kingdom of Siam and the state of our own enslaved realm.”

The deposition of the Burmese royal family is not just a political event, but one that effects individuals on an emotional level. The bitterness and resentment exhibited by the queen are starkly contrasted to her husband’s meeker reaction. While many of the characters see the arrival of the British as an opportunity, the queen is one of the few who understands it as a catastrophe. This is perhaps due to a similarity between herself and the invading force: Ghosh has already explained her ruthlessness to the reader and, in the actions of the British, the queen can now recognize a familiar brutality. At this stage of the novel, she is the only person able to predict the ruin and destitution of the near future.

“‘Really?’ Uma fell silent. It was odd to think that the goatherds were just as aware of her presence as she was of theirs. ‘Well, the view’s wonderful, don’t you think?’”

At first, Uma seems blissfully unaware of her surroundings. She is focused on her duties as a wife, especially to a man in an important position. The regular sojourns she takes to the garden as a figurative escape from this domestic entanglement, allowing her a moment to herself. That her escape should be registered by other people–and that this is a surprise to Uma–helps to illustrate just how cut off she is from the world. She does not exist in a vacuum and, just as she observes the local community, they observe her at the same time.

“I don't remember much, which is a kind of mercy, I suppose. I see it in patterns. Sometimes it's like a scribble on a wall—no matter how many times you paint over it, a bit of it always comes through, but not enough to put together the whole […] I try not to think about it too much.” 

Dolly’s discussions with Uma about her past reveals the difficulty she has in coming to terms with her strange life. Taken to the palace at an early age, she has spent her entire life in servitude. Even the idea of home, to Dolly, is a potential return to the city where she was held captive for many years. Furthermore, it is a home to which she believes she can never return. Memory is a recurring theme throughout the novel and Dolly makes little effort to recollect the painful memories of her past. She shivers as she reveals this to Uma, a physical reaction to the pain of having to come to terms with her past.

“But when the Collector came home, she discovered that she might as well have spared herself the effort.” 

Uma’s domesticity is revealed to be hollow. The dinner party that she is arranging is set to follow a certain set of rules and traditions, and though Uma spends a great deal of time preparing, one glance from her husband is enough to reveal the breadth of her mistakes. The collector is well-versed in the finer points of etiquette, the imported social discourse of the British empire. He has been forced to learn it in order to progress in his position and he has become fluent in this particular language. Uma, at this stage in her life, knows only how to imitate without being able to provide an exact facsimile of her husband’s dinner party planning. Slowly, the importance of social convention and discourse is being revealed to Uma.

“The Collector gave the appearance of being delighted when Uma told him that Rajkumar and Dolly were to be married. ‘Splendid!’ he said. ‘Splendid!’”

Following the dinner party and its (slightly delayed) success in uniting Rajkumar and Dolly, the collector is once again revealed to be a man trapped in the body of bureaucracy and etiquette. The upcoming marriage, he predicts, will not be beneficial to him and will cause issues with the royal family. But he is sure to wear a mask of happiness. For once, Uma is able to look beyond this feigned delight and see the true emotion beyond.

It is also telling that even when viewing scenes from Uma’s perspective, the collector is referred to by his title. His name is almost irrelevant to the text: the position of authority within the empire has essentially re-christened him, providing him with a new–and more British–name.

“The imperial authorities in London had spent a fortune in arranging to have seed stocks stolen from Brazil.” 

Small nuggets of information like this are scattered throughout the text, forming hints of the larger (and more global) story of colonialism and how it spreads across the world. In the quote, a European power pillages seeds from South America and transports them to a colony in South Asia. Tiny seeds, which on the surface might not appear to be much, represent a great investment.

Likewise, the small characters in the text have power far exceeding their seeming capabilities. Men like Kishan Singh might seem inconsequential in the larger apparatus of the Empire but have a huge impact on the lives of many people. Just like the seeds transported across the world, the subjects of the British Empire have a profitability and a value (as well as an importance) far larger than it at first seems.

“There seemed never to be a moment when he was not haunted by the fear of being thought lacking by his British colleagues. And yet it seemed to be universally agreed that he was one of the most successful Indians of his generation, a model for his countrymen. Did this mean that one day all of India would become a shadow of what he had been? Millions of people trying to live their lives in conformity with incomprehensible rules? Better to be what Dolly had been: a woman who had no illusions about the nature of her condition; a prisoner who knew the exact dimensions of her cage and could look for contentment within those confines.”

For the first time, Uma begins to really analyze her deceased husband and the role he played in the British Empire. Not only does she evaluate him in terms of his work and his colleagues, but she examines him as a man for the first time. It’s as though his death has allowed her to see beyond a mask he held in place and to witness her husband’s true self.

She glimpses the constant paradox of the collector’s existence: though he was one of the most successful Indians of his generation, he was constantly haunted by the reality that he was not British and would never be able to rise above his allotted station in life. From this analysis of her departed husband, Uma will be able to extrapolate an entire ideology that strives toward Indian independence.

“It occurred to her that if she’d had children of her own, they would have been of the same age, they would all have been friends—the canvas of a lifetime’s connections would have acquired the patina of another generation.”

Though The Glass Palace focuses so heavily on family as a theme, Uma is one of the few characters who never has children. As a widow, she is subject to certain cultural expectations regarding the ability to remarry, but rarely does she dwell on these issues. Though she wears the traditional white sari, little narrative attention is paid to the fact that she does not have children, while her friends do. In this quote, the reader is shown a moment where Uma experiences a brief twinge of wistfulness. The idea of the “patina of another generation” (197) as a metaphor for raising a child implies, however, that she does play a surrogate role for many of the children. Just as their parents provide the “patina” on the children’s characters, many are influenced by Uma. From Dinu to Arjun to Jaya to Bela, each of the children in the text find themselves listening to (and eventually repeating) Uma’s ideas.

“Arjun was the kind of boy of whom teachers complain that their performance is incorrigibly below their potential. Everybody knew that he had the intelligence and ability to do well in school, but his interests appeared to be directed only towards ogling girls and reading novels.”

At this point in the novel, Arjun is something of a lay-about. As described in the above quote, he has a great deal of potential but no direction to help him achieve it. The importance of this quote only becomes apparent later: it is the military that provides Arjun with the framework he needs in order to unlock his potential. It is this same framework that is eventually his downfall. The difficult complexities of the empire in Ghosh’s text are revealed once more: the Empire provides Arjun with an essential institution in his life, but also eventually kills him.

“There was no place more solitary than a dark room, with its murky light and fetid closeness.”

Dinu’s character is marked by his introverted nature. When watching his cousin’s militaristic congeniality, he is “astonished by the communal nature of their lives” while, to him, there is nothing more comforting than a solitary existence in a darkroom.

This quote foreshadows Dinu’s own emergence as a political figure later in the book. Like a photograph developing in a darkroom, Dinu grows mostly when he is away from the light of the narrative. When he is missing following the Second World War, he develops a political activism and opens a photography studio–actions that seem impossible for the introverted Dinu. The above quote marks a blossoming in his character, from which he will grow into the elderly Dinu we see at the end of the novel.

“Manju and Neel had been married not quite three months when the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, declared war on Germany on behalf of Britain and her Empire.”

Very occasionally In the novel, the wider geopolitical machinations of the world seep into the narrative. This is one of the most telling moments, in that it equates two seismic events. The marriage of Mangu and Neel are placed into the same sentence as a declaration of war; by balancing both of these events on either side of a conjunction, they are given equal importance by the author. The reader is led to believe that the beginning of the Second World War is to be considered of similar narrative importance to two of the characters.

“The station at Sungei Pattani was as pretty as a toy: there was a single platform shaded by a low red-tiled awning. Dinu spotted Alison as the train was drawing in: she was standing in the shade of the tin awning, wearing sunglasses and a long black dress. She looked thin, limp, wilted–a candlewick on whom grief burnt like a flame.”

Dinu’s introverted character means that he finds expressing emotions difficult, but his empathetic skills allow him to diagnose emotions in other people. When he sees Alison again, he quickly dispenses with the aesthetics. Rather, it is grief by which he defines her. Alison’s mourning is so evident that it is likened to a candle, so strong that it is able to illuminate the darkness of the human condition that Dinu finds so hard to comprehend. As a photographer, he understands light and can recognize the vibrant emotions in others.

“It's something you don't see until it's gone–the shapes that things have and the ways in which the people around you mold those shapes.”

Dinu sees the world through the lens of his camera. The viewfinder becomes a metaphor for how he sees the world and his ever-evolving political views run alongside his burgeoning photography skills and rising quality of equipment. He sees the shapes of the world and captures them in his photographs.

When Alison talks about the shapelessness of the world, he is confused. He listens as she explains the impact of the death of her parents and how it has altered the world around her. At the time, he has no response other than to repeat her name in a comforting fashion. But even this small comfort astonishes him. For the first time, Dinu is able to sympathetically listen to another person’s problems and reach out and provide some level of comfort. For an introvert, it’s a moment of genuine development.

Alison’s quote above also provides a counterpoint to Arjun’s own clay metaphor, in which he compares the way in which his situation has shaped his political views compared to Kishan Singh.

“She took his face between her hands and kissed him. ‘I’ll tell you later,’ she said. ‘Let’s not talk about it now. Let’s just be glad we’re together and we’re both all right.’”

Alison and Dinu’s night of reunification is one of obfuscation and convenient absences of truth. Arriving home, Alison omits the reality of her day with Arjun. Likewise, Dinu chooses not to tell her about his anger and feeling of being betrayed. With the Japanese forces advancing, they elect to savor one another’s company, rather than have a difficult conversation about recent events. It’s an insight into both characters, as well as the distressing nature of the situation. The existential threat posed by the Japanese army has forced the two characters to find whatever comforts they can, even if their relationship was broken mere hours before. It’s the easy option, a comfortable choice when both are scared.

“But if it were true that his life had somehow been molded by acts of power of which he was unaware—then it would follow that he had never acted of his own volition; never had a moment of true self-consciousness. Everything he had ever assumed about himself was a lie, an illusion. And if this were so, how was he to find himself now?”

As Arjun hides from the Japanese forces, a bullet wound in his leg, Kishan Singh nurses him back to health. They talk, and for the first time, Arjun gains a new perception on the role of the Indian army from the perspective of his batman. The “delirium of his pain” shapes Arjun’s thoughts; it is both a physical pain and a metaphysical pain, an awkward realization of the forces that have shaped Arjun’s entire life and that he has hitherto been unable to acknowledge. Kishan Singh’s eventual betrayal of Arjun will make the realization all the more difficult. 

“There are no good masters and bad masters, Arjun—in a way the better the master, the worse the condition of the slave, because it makes him forget what he is […].”

Hardy remains a mystery to Arjun throughout the book. During their training, Hardy is one of Arjun’s closest friends but there remains a divide between the two that is difficult to cross. Hardy’s inability to fully leave behind his Indian heritage is something of an embarrassment to Arjun, who becomes awkward whenever Hardy’s love for chapatis is raised.

By the time of the above quote, the two are practically at war. Though Arjun might agree with Hardy’s politics, he differs on Hardy’s methodology and finds himself confronted with an impossible dilemma.

The notion of “no good masters” (382) is incompatible with Arjun’s own assertions that Buckland is a good man who has treated them better than most. Arjun sees the flaws in Hardy’s absolutism, even if he agrees with the underlying sentiment. The internal conflict–which eventually leads Arjun to his death–lies in his inability to find a resolution to this dilemma.