Cha

pter II

A Backward place: A CrossCultural Encounter

Ruth Jhabvalas novel A Backward Place, published in 1965 is significant for it anticipates the
change in the sensibility of the novelist as admitted by the author herself in the essay Myself in
India. In the essay published a year later after the publication of the novel, she says:
I must admit that I am no longer interested in India. What I am interested in now is
myself in India, whichI tend to think of as my survival in India.
As mentioned by Jhabvala, the novel marks her shift from the Intra-Indian context to the EastWest encounter as experienced by her characters in India. Her growing awareness of herself as
an exile finds a perfect expression in the depiction of cross-cultural clashes in this novel. The
same issue has been dealt with at length in the two novels that follow- A New Dominion (1972)
and Heat and Dust (1975). The subject of this study is to show how in these novels Jhabvala
explores the consciousness of the Western expatriate in India and his/her struggle to effect or
resist assimilation.
In the novel, Jhabvalas efforts are primarily directed at transmuting her own complex
response to India into the varied responses of her European characters. Her statement that her
interest is now centered on herself in India doesnt indicate a simplistic identification with her
European characters. The novel portrays Jhabvalas conflicting and intellectual responses to
India by means of her characters during this phase of her life. The responses are sometimes

affirming, sometimes negative and at others ambivalent. But each response is recorded and
assessed without bias.
The novel shows how the three western women, Etta, Clarissa and Judy react to life in
India. Etta has come to India in account of her sudden impulsive marriage. It is followed by her
numerous marriages and illicit sexual relationships with others. Later she finds it harder and
harder to catch young and wealthy admirers to keep her going due to her growing age. In the
mean time she finds herself performing mischievous things. Although she tries to expose herself
to be charming and sprightly at all times yet is able to please only old men like Guppy. Thus, Etta
who declares to be submerged in a lower culture, flatters and wheedles money out of men from
Indias least cultured section- the baniya or business class. Clarissa has come to India in her socalled quest for spirituality. She professes her devotion to Indian spiritualism when she doesnt
even vaguely feel the same. One sympathizes with her when one recalls, how valiantly she tries
to keep up her quest, or at least the pretence of it, though she was getting older year by year, and
lonelier and more ridiculous, and soul and God perhaps no nearer. (ABP 117) Judy, according to
Clarissa is not to be pitied at all: She is doing very nicely. She had the good sense to realize that
the only way to live here was to turn herself into a real Indian wife. (ABP 25) Thus, Jhabvala
unmasks her European characters as pitilessly as she unmasks their Indian counterparts in her
earlier novels. Although her European characters share some of her attributes, enthusiasms,
desperations and intellectualizing tendencies yet she is impartial in dealing with them at length.
As already mentioned in this second phase of her life, Jhabvala develops an enormous
guilt complex towards the poverty and misery of India. How this poverty and misery affects even
the wealthy and privileged few in India also becomes perceptible in the novel. To the handful of
foreigners living an artificial life in Delhi, India is not urbane but poor and backward in every

sense. Poverty and backwardness are so predominant that it is impossible to pretend that they
dont exist. Clarissa, the Hochstadts, Juddy and Etta feel the agony when confronted with the
miseries of life in India, though not in the same way as Mrs. Jhabvala seems to have felt:
The most salient fact about India is that it is very poor and backward. There are so many
other things to be said about it but this must remain the basis of all of them. We may
praise Indian democracy, go into raptures over Indian music, admire Indian intellectuals but whatever we say, not for one moment should we lose sight of the fact that very great
number of Indians never get enough to eat.Can one lose sight of that? God knows, I
have tried.1
Life in India for her and the Europeans in her novel becomes a distressing and unforgettable
chore. Transients like Hochstadts have an avenue of escape. As the assignment at the university
gets over, they are happy to go back to England. They justify their presence in India by
pretending to advance the cause of East-West synthesis. Jhabvala states scornfully: But what a
store house of memories they would be taking with them. How greatly they felt themselves
enriched by their contact with this fabled land. It is really marvelous to have the Hochstadts
talking about the all embracing love that India teaches to the Europeans. From the point of
view of the novelist, they can afford to do so because they are looking through the amused eyes
of a visitor on a short stay. The novelty of the situation pleasantly excites them. Etta seems to be
summing up the novelists view:
Etta hated to hear Mrs. Hochstadt talk like that. It was the way people who were for only
a short time and had all their comforts and conveniences laid on, so often talked. As if India ever

gave anyone anything (except of course germs and diseases). What had it given Etta, after all
these years, taking her youth, her looks, her buoyancy and charm?
Like E.M. Forsters India, the India of A Backward Place is a place where the alien spirit
is put to test. Indi trap, rejects or embraces her aliens as they deserve- assimilating the worthy
and expelling or destroying the unworthy. The ideal of worth as it is presented in this novel and
in Heat and Dust is derived from Forsterian ideology. Forster describes the worthy as possessing
four leading characteristics- curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste and belief in the human
race.2 Curiosity obviously denotes a perceptive eye for the distinctive features of an alien
ethos. A free mind indicates an ability to rise above convention and put new ideas and ideals to
test. Belief in good taste implies a faith in the value of discrimination; meaning that the true
humanist recognizes the varying needs of diverse individuals and groups. Belief in the human
race implies a rejection of racism and a respect for human beings under all circumstances.
Adding honesty and intelligence to this list of qualities completes Ruth Jhabvalas criterion of
worth. Although Jhabvala herself realizes that she doesnt possess all the qualities required for
being worthy of assimilation in India yet she respects them in others. In this novel, Judy who is
least like her creator in character and spirit affirms all experience. In fact, her voice is Jhabvalas
voice in A Backward Place. Vasant Shahanes comments on this aspect of A Backward Place are
noteworthy:
The most significant aspect of A Backward Place, which strikes me as a major element of
Jhabvalas thought process, is the dominant voice of affirmation which rings true and clear
in the various chambers of its structure. Judy seems to me the central character in the novel
that says aye to all the challenges that her life and experience present to her. More than

Etta, more than Clarissa, Judy represents the authentic voice, the dominant note of this
international orchestration in A Backward Place.
The most deadly attack on Indias backwardness and the most determined resistance to
assimilation come from the neurotic aging beauty Etta. She fights a losing battle against
alienation and old age. Her buoyancy and youth have left her by the time we get to know of her
in the novel. She had once been young, vivacious and pretty enough to have a number of
admirers around her:
Starting with her first husband, who had brought her out to conquer and charm this virgin
territory, where lively blondes such as she were few and far between enough to be at the
highest premium. There had been a succession, which in the folly of her youth she had
thought inexhaustible, of young Indians: all with this in common that they were, on the one
hand fascinated with and completely uncritical of the ways of blondes and on the other, were
all well-born, well-bred, charming, slender, athletic with black eyes and black hair and strong
white teeth forever at the ready to flash at all her witty sayings. At that time all had been as
wonderful as she had a right to expect; and yes- when India; had appreciated her and she had
been able, with a fully and generous heart, to return the compliment. (ABP 167)
This is Ettas past history. She is now conscious not only of the ravages of time but also of
the effects caused by a cruel harsh climate. She is ageing fast. She is also aware that her admirers
are getting fewer and fewer and she cant afford to pick and choose her company. She feels
trapped in India. She would love to go back, at least for a brief spell but lacks the resources to do
so. Although she is not as poor as Clarissa yet she appeals to the generosity of crude, newly rich
hotelier Guppy, who ironically regards her with a sort of easy, good- natured contempt. When he

tells her that he is going to Cannes for a hoteliers conference, she pockets her pride and begs
him to take her along on the trip:
As soon as she had spoken, she heard the much too naked appeal in her own voice, so she
quickly tried to cover it up. Ill make my hair in a bun and buy a shorthand note book and
Ill be a super secretary for you- enables him, if he so chooses, to take it as a joke. And that
was how he did choose to take it. (ABP 123)
Etta is weary of India, its heat and dust, its germs and diseases. Like Jhabavala, she longs to
free herself, to escape from the awful squalor all around her. The reader never really sympathizes
with her plight because she overstays her hospitality in India. At the end, we have a clear view
into her psyche when she ponders on her fate: She lays on her bed and smoked and thought
about Europe. It was infinitely distant and infinitely desirable. But she was afraid of it too. Here
at least she had her personality; she was Etta, whom people knew and admired for being blonde
and vivacious and smart. In Europe there were many blondes She knows that she is no longer
young and may not be as acceptable there. Now she realizes that she is woefully out of date:
She no longer knew the way they dressed there, or the way they talked, or the fashionable
food they ate and the drinks they drank, the books they had read, the conversations they had
held with one another while she was out here. (ABP 213)
Etta has, in fact, become the no where person of the expatriate fiction who rejects the East to
be rejected by the West. In fact, Ettas life in India is, with some differences, a conscious
mirroring of the novelists vision of her own destiny. Though Jhabvala presents Etta as a
character of little worth and one who comes out to India for all the wrong reasons, an element of
genuine sympathy has gone into her making for she closely represents the novelists own impulse

towards exclusion at this point of her life in India. In Myself in India, Ruth Jhabvala describes
her life style in terms that bear an uncanny resemblance to that of Ettas:
I have a nice house, I do my best to live in an agreeable way. I shut all my windows, I let
down the blinds, I turn on the air-conditioner.All the time I know myself to be on the
back of this great animal of poverty and backwardness. It is not possible to pretend
otherwise Even if one never rolls up the blinds and never turns off the air-conditioner,
something is bound to go wrong. People are not meant to shut themselves in rooms and
pretend there is nothing outside.
Isolating oneself, whether in India or Europe, leads to alienation and psychic disturbance
in terms of the novels theme. Ettas mental break down in India has a parallel in that of another
womans in England. Judys mothers suicide, like Ettas abortive attempt, is the climatic point of
a lifetime of exclusion of self from surrounding life. Etta believes that constricted urban settings
where the sky does not bear down on one and where the landscape doesnt interrupt on ones
conscious are necessary for the civilized Europeans mental health. Yet Judys mother grows
lonelier everyday in her spotlessly clean, tidy little house with the doors and windows locked
securely against the weather and strangers, till one day she can bear it no more and is driven to
suicide. The facts that she hangs herself and that Etta is careful not to take too many pills and to
ring up the Hochstadts immediately on doing so, suggest that Ettas life in India holds out more
hope for her than that of Judys mother in England. Ettas isolation is self-imposed while Judys
mother is a way of life that is fast becoming a stereotype in the west.

That Etta plans to go and reorient herself with the money power of Guppy is evident in
the novel. There she would be rich, well protected and would have the knowledge of the latest
trends in dress and living. Although Guppy is crude yet she needs him:
She couldnt face it alone: to break through such a barrier of indifference would take more
strength and youth than she had for a good number of years. She longed for Europe, it was
true and would do anything to get there, but she could no longer tackle it on her own. (ABP
213)
Unlike Esmond who plans a way out, Etta is totally trapped in a country whose spirit is alien to
her, whose masses induce revulsion in her.
Thus Etta, the Hungarian fading beauty, is the symbol of the European disgust at
everything that is Indian. She tears everything into shreds that is Indian. She scoffs at Judys sari,
calls her respectable home a slum, and even blames the Indian sun for being specially put in the
sky for ruining every Europeans complexion. Although she hates to be called colonial, she
remains devoted to the idea. There is absolutely no reason, she said, when in Rome to do as
Rome does. Or rather, there may be every reason in Rome, but certainly none in Delhi. Its no use
sinking down to anyones level, Juddy, we must try to raise them up to ours. She continually
scolds Judy for surrendering herself to India and advises her to behave like a civilized Europeanto divorce her husband for being an Indian in the first place and secondly for being poor.
Thus, in spite of Ruth Jhabvalas sensitive portrayal of Ettas suffering, the reader
contrasts her approach to India with Judys and discovers that she falls disastrously short of the
novelists criterion of human worth. In fact, Ettas dismissive view of India represents a facet of
Ruth prawer Jhabvalas complex response to India.

If Etta, as shown above, chooses to drown herself with the Indian society offered to her, her
counterpart, Judy chooses to merge with it. Like Etta, Judy gets married to an Indian student in
London where he goes as an Indian delegate to an International Youth conference. She
instinctively falls in love with his handsome face and his warm and gay manner. She follows Bal
to India and accepts his middle class and somewhat dreary surroundings. Judy, with her long hair
in a bun, clad in a cotton sari tries her best to make her marriage worthwhile. In this perhaps, she
is more Indian than most of her Indian counterparts like Mrs. Kaul in the same novel. Her
husband Bal is an effeminate and good-for-nothing sort of hero. The interaction between the east
and the west centres round Judy and Bal. The two are central to the thematic structure of the
novel. Judy is a down-to- earth realist and her life in India seems to revolve around her husband,
the two children, her middle class surroundings and the five hundred odd rupees that she has
saved over the years during her stay in India. Her husband is an unsuccessful and compulsive
dreamer. She loves him terribly and often transcends the barriers of the rational in her acceptance
of her husbands immaturity and irresponsibility. He engages himself in spouting philosophy in
the coffee houses. He does nothing and remains dependent on his relatives. He is an out of work
actor, waiting for his big chance, a dreamer who makes use of his wifes earnings. Judy seems to
love his fantasies. These fantasies seem particularly cheerful and bubbly to Juddy who has been
brought up in a cheerless, damp and mirthless environment that her staid parents built around her
in London.
Judy is firmly anchored to her married life in India having two children and in-laws. Any
discussion of the unsuitability of her married life is, in fact, theoretical to Juddy. Although Juddy
is urged by her European friends, again and again, to face boldly the mistake of her marriage to

an out-of-work Indian actor and that she should get out of it before it is too late, she doesnt pay
attention to their warnings. Etta sums up the western womens attitude to married life in India:
Marriages, my dear, are made to be broken, that is one of the rules of modern civilization.
Just because we happen to have landed ourselves in this primitive society, thats no reason
why we should submit to their primitive morality. (ABP 5)
Yet Judy, with ten years of married life and two children continues to show her interest in
her Indian married life. Perhaps she is the only character in the whole novel, who has grasped the
truth behind one of Dr. Hotchstadts sayings: It is fatal to come to India and expect to be able to
live to a western rhythm. (ABP 32)
Judy has a family to support. She is busy in earning a loving as a typist-cum-receptionist
at the cultural organization run by Mrs. Kaul. The novel is also a bitter satire on the academies
and the organizers of culture who believe that the state can do everything. Fashionable Mrs. Kaul
is interested more in conversation and flower arrangement than in plays or lectures. She has
plenty of money, time and energy. Judy goes out to work to meet the necessities of her family
and not out of her own choice. It keeps her busy and leaves no time for brooding and developing
neuroses. She is fully aware where alienation and excessive brooding would lead her to. Her
mother had ended her bored life by hanging herself in the flat where she was living alone and
Judy doesnt intend doing the same.
The process of merging or of adaptation is by no means easy for Judy. Yet it is to her
credit that she attempts bravely. She has come gradually to accept life as it is instead of seizing it
or challenging it like Etta. The memory of her mothers suicide weighs heavily within Judy. It is
this lurking presence that makes her so sensitive to Ettas damaged psyche on the one hand and

so determined, on the other, to make a different sort of life for herself. Judys flight from England
and her determination to make a permanent home in India indicate Jhabvalas concern at the way
life is being lived in the West. It is strange to note that Judy doesnt seem to have accepted the
Indian way of by any faith or conviction in Hinduism or Indian beliefs but because English way
of life. That had not brought happiness to her parents:
Perhaps this was a reaction against her parents who, in their middle age, had spent much
time and worry over the problem of how they would manage on the old age pension. And
in the end the problem had not arisen. (ABP 79)
Thats why Judy is driven firmly into the fold of her Indian family by her English associates and
her own recollections of her parents lives. She takes on her responsibilities seriously and tries to
accommodate a husband who is childish, whimsical and difficult to live with. Once at the picnic
site, Etta irritates Bal by taunting him as the husband who comes home only to eat and sleep and
make more babies. Etta mocks at him for living on his wife. She says, Naturally, someone in the
family has to go out to work and earn some money to feed those darling little mouths. And if she
doesnt, then who willnot you surely? Bal is angry and upset. She appears to him extremely
old and ugly. She has insulted me, he shouts and raises a foot to kick her. While Bal is furious
at being insulted, Judy carries on as usual. He shouts at her and orders her not to go out for work
and let him be disgraced. The dreamer in Bal now wants to go to Bombay and try his luck in the
film world. It is the pragmatic Judy who is frightened of the prospects of arriving jobless with
her meager savings in a strange city with two children and an impulsive, immature husband. As a
European, Judy is sensible and responsible enough not to give up everything at the impulse of
the moment and go wandering off looking for something on one knows what. Bal suffers from
too much confidence. Not in himself perhaps so much as in his fate. He trusted. Whereas Judy

only wanted to be safe where she was. And suddenly the transformation begins in Judy as well.
The dreamer in her is able to overpower the realist. Why should she be afraid to go out into the
world? Bal wasnt. He had nothing waiting for him in Bombay any more than she had, but still
he was ready to go, full of hope. Judy receives intimation from the vast Indian sky which
resolves her tensions and fills her with a desire to let life take her on its wings, like the birds
floating on the sky-drifting without thought or effort or fear, aerial and at ease. (ABP 161)
She couldnt ever remember having looked up at the sky in England. She must have done,
but she couldnt remember. There had been nothing memorable: nothing had spoken. So
one locked oneself up at home, all warm and cozy, and looked at the television and grew
lonelier and lonelier till it was unbearable and then one found a hook in the lavatory. Judy
could not imagine ever being that lonely here. In the end, there was always the sky. (ABP
179)
The same sky that goes unnoticed by Clarissa and the Hochstadts, and that threatens Etta with
annihilation, blesses and strengthens Judy.
Judys sister-in-law and her aunt-in-law also point out to her the advantages of accepting
lifes challenges even if they come unexpectedly. Gradually she comes to see her home, her job
and her makeshift arrangements in Delhi as transient and too trivial a cause to say no to the
challenges in life. She comes to terms with her life, accepting it as a paradox and yet rejoicing in
it. At the end, she sets out with her family towards the unknown and distant Bombay. In a way
throughout the novel, Judys western pragmatism is seen in conflict with Bals dreams, which
continue to carry him on their wings despite the severe pressure of reality.

Thus, Judy is the only European woman who has managed to survive in India and exist as
a woman, as a human person in Jhabvalas fictive world. Judy has learnt from her wise wellwishers like Jayakar: People are not born to sit safe and quiet in their own homes. What sort of
life is that? And what can ever be achieved when our people behave like mice in holes? (ABP
188) Life in Bombay, she knows, is not going to be rosy either but she has ceased to be one
among the mice in holes.
Between the two extreme approaches to India represented by Etta and Judy, there are two
other westerner approaches, which externalized the aspects of Jhabvalas relationship with India.
The Hochstadt couples approach is, on the surface, the reverse of Ettas. India for them is no
backward place but aesthetic and charming. As short-term visitors, they feel neither the need nor
the desire to assimilate with India. They have, however, come with many pre-conceived views on
the subject that seem to represent a trend in the West for appreciating everything Indian.
During their stay in India, the Hochstadts propound the view that the Indian spirit has in
many fields soared far above the European and that a serious comparative study of Indian and
Western spiritual achievements will widen the horizons of both (ABP 84). Familiar with A
Passage to India and quoting from it freely, the Hochstadts believe with Fielding that the world
is a globe of men who are trying to reach one another and can best do so by the help of culture
plus intelligence. They are convinced that they are receiving a great deal from India and that
they too are, in their own small way, contributing something to this old, yet newly born,
country. Armed with theorizes and quotations picked at random from European texts, the
Hochstadts are continually intellectualizing about India.

Franz and Frieda Hochstadts have all the right theories about expatriate approaches to
India. Dr. Hochstadt advises to Etta: Life plays itself out to a different rhythm hereit is fatal to
come to India and expect to be able to live to a Western rhythm (ABP 26). But practically they
themselves neednt follow it. Though in India for a very short time they have managed to carve
out a life style, which is not very different from what they had in their flat in St. Johns wood:
The place had a very comfortable European atmospheresomehow the Hochstadts
had managed to put their own touch on everything. There were lace table-clothes, some
abstruse objects dart many heavily bound books on economics, philosophy, art and
religion; over all this hang the smell of Dr Hochstadts cigars and of the coffee which
Mrs. Hochtadts brewed on a little electric ring specially bought for the purpose (she had
nothing but contempt for the coffee sent up by the caterer from the kitchens below).
(ABP 26-27).
Out of all the characters in the novel, it is Etta who sees through the pseudo-idealism of
the Hochstadts and exposes it to the reader. In fact Ettas voice often represents the authorial
voice. When Dr. Hochstadt regrets that as mere visitors to India they can never have that
understanding of Indiawhich comes to those who are in touch with the humbler people of this
land ( ABP 27), Etta is quick to point out that Clarissa holds similar views but takes good care
to get in with people who dont live in villages and who arent in the least bit humble. That
Ettas comment is actually meant for the Hochstadts is amply supported by textual evidence. The
Hochstadts, for all their advice to the other expatriates, restrict their socializing to westerners and
westernized Indians and live a life, which excludes the average Indian as much as Etta does.
Again, Friedas characteristic exclamation India gives us so much.what joy to be asked to
give a little in return makes Etta think resentfully that it was the way people who were here for

only a short time, and had all their comforts and conveniences laid on, so often talked. Judy,
too, has her reservations about the Hochstadts. She resents their theorizing about Etta-It was
easy for themAs far as they were concerned, everything here was only an awfully pleasant
interlude. It was different for Etta. (ABP 29).
Jhabvala directs a good part of her criticism at Hochstadts lack of discrimination,
understanding and true sympathy. The reader is well aware that only the certainty of the
transitory nature of their encounter with India has enabled them to put successfully to the test
certain approaches to India that they had formulated prior to coming out. Enjoying Indias
hospitality and theorizing about her glories, the Hochstadts will never know her intimately for
they will have left the country long before reaching a point of genuine contact with her.
The cultural synthesis that the Hochstadts believe they have helped to initiate in India is
revealed in its concrete form to be nothing more than a ridiculous yoking together of
incompatible elements a performance in Hindi of Ibsens A Dolls House sponsored by the
Cultural Dais. Though it had been more of a social occasion than an artistic success, even in the
opinion of the Hochstadts, they take pride in it as a true attemptto weld this ancient heritage
to what had since been achieved in countries of the West and so bring about a synthesis not only
of the old and new but also-and what could be culturally more fertile? Of East and West (ABP
189). In this way the novel puts into brilliant perspective the pseudo-enthusiasm and shallow
intellectualism of Hochstadts.
If Etta is disdainfully resisting assimilation and the Hochstadts are only theorizing about
it, Clarissa the self-proclaimed lover of India is desperately trying to belong, but for all the
wrong reasons and in the wrong spirit. Clarissa confesses that she comes from a family that has

had/has connections with India for a long time- one of my great uncle was a Supreme Court
Judge in Calcutta and another was a Chief Commissioner somewhere. (ABP 93). However,
Clarissa assures Sudhir that, this was not her illustrious lineage, which brought her in India but
her first reading of Romain Rolands Life of Vivekananda which made something in her snap
and say That is where I belong. Im going. (ABP 93).
Clarissa, another somewhat comical character, is a direct antithesis to Etta. She, too, is
hypersensitive, parasite and conveys her emotions with a fair degree of excess. At the same time
she is humble and modest. Her humility leaves her totally exposed as a somewhat stupid and a
probable lunatic character. She sanctifies the plainness of Judys house and glorifies the dirty
slum in the dirty surroundings of Delhi. She is tolerated by the Indians she meets probably
because of her white skin. We are told that she is old and ugly. She has neither grace nor
coquettish charm of Etta. She flirts outrageously and clumsily than Etta and looks a pathetic
figure trying to use her charms to stay in the limelight. Guppy ignores her and is somewhat rude
with her. Even the amiable Bal ignores her outrageous flirting and seduction.
As compared to Etta, Clarissa is downright disgusting and pathetic in her relationship
with Guppy. Clarissa, in fact, cant make any impression on any male company whatsoever. She
even tries to seduce Bal when he is going to narrate his exciting plan to her. Bal doesnt notice
her caresses on his thighs. It is not that he ignores her act. He simply doesnt seem to even notice
such a blatant attempt at deduction in such a private environment as her home only conveys
Clarissas lack of womanly charm. A conversation between Clarissa and Etta establishes the fact
that Clarissa is staying on in India because with her limited sources any sort of independent
living is impossible in England.

In the process of adaptation we find Clarissa moving further from reality, of fulfillment.
In a way she is also a misfit. Although she tries her hand at being a secretary, a portrait painter, a
jack-of-all- trades yet she reaches nowhere. Living on a small legacy left by a great aunt, Clarissa
finds it some of worth even in poor and backward country like India. She doesnt go back for she
knows what the family expects of her: I suppose they want a free baby-sitter and nurse-maid
and general drudge about the place thats why they want me back for. No thank you. (ABP 192).
With such an understanding of her own situation, Clarissa longs desperately to belong to
India. Ironically Jhabvala indicts India for being backward enough to reject such an appeal is
doubtful, indeed. What Clarissa feels about India and the Indians is clearly expressed in the
following lines:
I really think I must have been Indian in my previous birth- in my entire previous birthswell, lots of people have told me so and it is true. I know it isThats why I cant stand
the English, but I do get on so awfully well with Indians. They feel I am one of them, you
see. (ABP 192-93)
Although Clarissa boosts of a special vibration between herself and the Indians, she is
rejected both by the Indians as well as the English. Dressed in a Rajasthani peasant skirt and a
handspun blouse, Clarissa projects an image of herself as a free and easy mixture of sadhu and
artist- a humane, simple soul slightly damaged by the Indian sun but untouched by the western
materialism and in love with the Indian way of life. That the image is false and that she, like Etta,
shares the spirit of her memsahib forebears who demanded and received their living from India
with no contribution from their side, is established by the novelist in several ways. Her parasitic
tendencies are revealed in the following authorial comments:

Clarissa was not a good artist, but she got a lot of places through what art she had. When
she wanted to establish relations with someone rich or important or useful, she always
commented enthusiastically on their fascinating faces and asked to be allowed to sketch
them. She had got access in this way to some very prominent people. (ABP 38).
and:
Clarissa only kept her room to have somewhere to retreat to when none of her friends
wanted her. For the rest of the time, she stayed in various comfortable houses, either in
town or up in the hills ate at other peoples tables, took an interest in other peoples
affairs and made herself a part of other peoples families. (ABP 62).
In fact, in almost all the scenes in which Clarissa appears, her veiled snobbery and opportunistic
tendencies are subtly but surely exposed.
Thus, the picture of Clarissa is a pathetic; it is a sight of one who compromises constantly
for the sake of nothing higher than an ordinary decent living. Her dilemma in India is more
complex than that of Etta. Her collapse is complete when all her familiar platitudes desert her
and she has nothing to fall back upon but hysterical wailing: dont know what came over
meIm not that sort of person.Etta is that sort of person, not me! (ABP 75-76)
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala declared in 1966 that she was no longer interested in India except
as it affected her and her kind. Yet the social, cultural and political climate of Delhi comes in for
a good measure of criticism and scorn in this novel. That the condition of India adversely affects
not only the foreigners but her own people as well is depicted through the personalities of Sudhir
and Jaykar in the novel. The novelists observation of the socio-political scene is conveyed
through the character of Jaykar who finds himself at odds with the India he has helped to create.

His attempts to reform it through his paper Seconds Thoughts are ineffective but his exhortations
to a few chosen ones are taken seriously and prove valuable to them. His advice to Judy and
Sudhir is effective People are not born only to sit safe and quietlike mice in holes.
Jaykars spiritual son Sudhir deplores Indias backwardness- not out of hate, like Etta, but
out of love. He believes that Indias poverty and squalor ensue from the corruption and hypocrisy
of people in high places, such as the ones with whom he is continually in contact, as the General
Secretary of the Cultural Dais. This association, run by a fashionable and wealthy lady called
Mrs. Kaul, is supposed to dispense culture to a small minority of Delhi society where people
were well dressed, spoke good English and had been abroad: (ABP 14). In reality, the Dais
functions only as Mrs. Kauls compensations for a husband who is too busy to give her any
attention and pattern of life in which her role has become indistinct. In the public eye the
Cultural Dais stands, in Sudhirs opinion, for social advancement- a place where you can meet
nice and interesting people and be in touch and be important, also an opportunity perhaps to
wangle a trip abroad (ABP 70). The activities of Cultural Dais are in fact totally out of context
with the countrys real needs. In this way, Judy and Sudhir represent Ruth Prawer Jhabvalas
conscience with regard to India.
Thus Jhabvalas A Backward Place is a study of how these western women react to the
life in India. Except Judy, India has no place for any of her expatriates who are either expelled or
left to stagnate and even decay. The Hochstadts leave India and are soon forgotten. Clarissas
mental confusion and self-delusion remind her of the meaningless of her life in India. Etta has
come close to destruction. This is the final impression registered in the pages of Backward
Place. In all these reactions we get a glimpse facet of Jhabvalas own experience of India.

Notes
1. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Myself in India, An Experience of India, p.8
2. E.M. Forster, Gide and George, Two Cheers for Democracy, p. 231.
3. Vasant A. Shahane, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (New Delhi: Arnold Heinemann, 1976), p.72.
4. Shantha Krishnaswami Glimpses of Women in India (Delhi: Ashish Publishing House,
1983), p. 316.