1
“Each of Us Has A Name”: Renaming As an Expression of Appropriation or Rejection in Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies
By Mark Elliott Shapiro
Each of Us Has a Name By Zelda
Each of us has a name given by God and given by our parents Each of us has a name given by our stature and our smile and given by what we wear Each of us has a name given by the mountains and given by our walls Each of us has a name given by the stars and given by our neighbors Each of us has a name given by our sins and given by our longing Each of us has a name given by our enemies and given by our love Each of us has a name given by our celebrations and given by our work Each of us has a name given by the seasons and given by our blindness Each of us has a name given by the sea and given by
2our death.
(Translation text downloaded from http://www.bgsu.edu/downloads/execvp/file8484.pdf; this might be a download from Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio.)
I Introduction
Renaming is a prominent element that Avitam Ghosh uses in
his novel, Sea of Poppies, to depict the relationship between
cultures, especially the relationship between the culture of a
colonial power – Great Britain – and the culture of the colonized
– the native population of 19th-century India. I will focus here
on two types of renaming: friendly renaming, which expresses
acceptance and/or appropriation of the Other, and inimical
renaming, which expresses rejection of, even contempt for, the
Other and a clear demarcation line between the renamer and the
renamed Other. There is a connection between friendly or inimical
renaming and colonialism and, on the other hand, there is a
connection between friendly renaming and hybridization.
Whereas, the two examples I will give of friendly renaming
are indirect outcomes of Britain’s colonial presence in India,
3the two examples I will give of inimical renaming are directly
linked to British colonialism.
There are many instances of renaming in Sea of Poppies;
however, in the context of this brief essay, I will focus only on
five instances that express either appropriation or rejection. In
four of the five instances, the renaming involves the expansion
or alteration, but not the elimination, of the original name. The
fifth example, the language used by the hybrid crew is itself a
hybrid, and, in some cases, expands or alters the original terms
while, in some cases, it replaces the original term altogether.
Renaming is but one of the linguistic elements that Ghosh
uses to represent hybridity and processes of hybridization. Other
devices include consecutive translation of foreign terms into
English and the use of hybrid language in the text (as seen, for
example, in the linguistic amalgam used by Doughty or in the
names of the dishes served by the Burnhams at the banquet that is
depicted in the novel). By considering inimical versus friendly
renaming, it is possible to more clearly understand how the novel
juxtaposes hostility toward the Other and love for the Other.
5II Renaming as an expression of rejection
The two instances of renaming as an expression of rejection
are associated with two representatives of British colonialism.
The inimical renaming in which they engage does not involve any
attempt at incorporating the Other into the renamer's world; it
is simply a way of defining the Other in terms of the renamer’s
world.
For instance, Burnham’s renaming of Baboo Nob Kissin as
Baboon. On the one hand, it could be argued that there is an
element of endearment in Burnham’s use of the name “Baboon” –
albeit, this sounds very much like the kind of endearment that is
often expressed toward a pet animal (baboons can fit into that
category) – and there does seem to be some kind of emotional bond
between the two – as can be seen in the following passage:
Mr. Burnham was sitting at a massive desk, bathed in the muted glow of a skylight, far above. His eyes widened ashe watched Baboo Nob Kissin walking across the room. ‘My good Baboon!’ he cried, as he took in the sight of the gomusta’s oiled, shoulder-length hair and the necklace that was hanging around his neck. ‘What on earth has become of you? You look so . . .’
‘Yes, sir?’
6‘So strangely womanish’ (223).
It is interesting to note that Burnham is not consistent in
his use of the rename Baboon and twice reverts to the gomusta’s
original name in this same section of the novel:
‘You?’ Mr. Burnham looked up at the gomusta in surprise. ‘But Baboo Nob Kissin! Whatever for?’ (225)
Mr Burnham cast a dubious glance at the gomusta’s matronly form. ‘I am impressed by your enthusiasm, Baboo NobKissin. But are you sure you’ll be able to cope with the conditions of a ship?’ (225-26)
However, these lapses are far outnumbered in that particular
section by the usage of the rename “Baboon.” It could be argued
that the rename suggests that Burnham considers his employee to
be on a much lower level – that of an animal, albeit an
intelligent one. In the conversation that takes place in that
section, Burnham shows a certain, although perhaps limited,
respect for Baboo Nob Kissin’s shrewdness: “The shrewd glint in
Baboo Nob Kissin’s eye was not lost on his employer. Mr. Burnham
leant forward in his chair, “Do you think she might testify?”
(227)
7The second example of inimical renaming is James Doughty’s
renaming of Neel's father, the late Raja of Rashkali, as
Rascally-Roger. Here, the gap between the renamer and the renamed
is much wider. Doughty feels that he is morally superior to the
late Rajah:
The unexpected dinner invitation from the budgerow started Mr Doughty off on a journey of garrulous reminiscence. ‘Oh my boy!” said the pilot to Zachary, as they stood leaning on the deck rail. ‘The old Raja of Rashkali: I could tell you a story or two about him – Rascally-Roger I used to call him!’ He laughed, thumping the deck with his cane. ‘Now there was a lordly nigger if ever you saw one! Best kind of native – kept himself busy with his shrub and his nautch-girls and his tumashers.… He was a shy little shaytan too, the Rascally-Roger….’ (49).
Renaming in this case – that is, the inimical renaming
carried out by Burnham and Doughty – is both symbolic of and
metonymic of the colonial power’s imposition of its own culture
on the colonized entity. On the one hand, it symbolizes the
colonial power’s authority and sense that it is free to operate
in the colonized entity (although Burnham is careful to act only
within the strictures of the local legal system); on the other
8hand, it is metonymic because it is one manifestation, albeit a
major one, of the colonial power’s influence.
A link between colonization and renaming in Hawaii is
referred to by Lisa Kahaleole Hall, who claims that
… European and American colonization stripped political power and voting rights from Hawaiian women.
For Hawaiian women, the imposition of Christianity within the Western legal system forced their literal renaming with both “Christian names” and patrilineal surnames, and enforced monogamy and heterosexual marriage through the criminalization of sexual behavior (278).
III Renaming as an expression of acceptance and appropriation
Friendly renaming bridges different worlds, where one
character renames another in order to incorporate the latter into
another world or into the former's world.
It is significant that two of Sea of Poppies' chief
protagonists – and one could argue that they are the chief hero
and chief heroine – are given hybrid names and are also hybrids
in themselves: Zachary racially (white father, black mother) and
Paulette culturally (being exposed to Hindu, Muslim and French
9cultures). Thus, in their case, renaming emphasizes their hybrid
nature.
Serang Ali's renaming of Zachary as Malum Zichri as part of
a Pygmalion-like process of turning Zachary into a part of the
ruling class aboard the Ibis; this is an appropriation but it is
also a recognition of Zachary’s new status as one of the
commanders of the ship. This changeover process is depicted in
two scenes. The first is when Zachary must go ashore
to conduct the shipowners’ business on the island, which included the delivery of a letter to the owner of a plantation, some six miles from Port Louis. Zachary was making ready to go ashore with the letter when he was intercepted by Serang Ali, who looked him up and down in concern.
‘Malum Zikri catch plenty trouble’n he go Por’Lwee likethat’ (19).
What follows is a total overhaul of Zachary. Thus, the
renaming is symbolic of and metonymic of a dramatic
transformation in his status:
Here again, Serang Ali came to Zachary’s aid: it turnedout that among the lascars there were many who boasted of skills apart from sailoring – among them a kussab who had once worked as a ‘dress-boy’ for a shipowner; a steward who
10was also a darzee and earned extra money by sewing and mending clothes; and a topas who had learnt barbering and served as the crew’s balwar. Under Serang Ali’s direction, the team went to work, rifling through Zachary’s bags and trunks, picking out clothes, measuring, folding, snipping, cutting. While the tailor-steward and his chuckeroos busied themselves with inseams and cuffs, the barber-topas led Zachary to the lee scuppers and, with the aid of a couple oflaunders, subjected him to as thorough a scrubbing as he hadever had….
In a couple of hours Zachary was looking at an almost unrecognizable image of himself in the mirror…. (19-20).
Here the renaming symbolizes not only appropriation and the
establishment of a new bond between Serang Ali and Zachary; it
also symbolizes Zachary’s elevation of status.
A similar elevation of status can be seen in four biblical
figures who are renamed: Abraham, Jacob, Joseph and Joshua. In
all these instances, the renaming, as in the above cases of
renaming in the novel, is both symbolic of and metonymic of a
fundamental change in – and an elevation of – status. In the case
of Abraham, Joshua and Joseph in the second of the renaming
processes he undergoes, renaming is name expansion; in the case
of Jacob and Joseph in the first of the renaming processes he
undergoes, the original name is replaced by a new one.
11God renames Abram Abraham by expanding his previous name in
order to signify his new status as founder of the Jewish people:
And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God;walk before me, and be thou perfect. And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly. And Abram fell on his face: and God talked withhim, saying, As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee. And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nationsof thee, and kings shall come out of thee. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed afterthee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to bea God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. And I will giveunto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thouart a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God (Genesis 17:1-8).
God renames Jacob Israel to signify his new relationship
vis-à-vis God and to signify his elevation of status: Like
Abraham, he is transformed and the transformation is symbolized
by his new name. After struggling with the angel, Jacob is
renamed Israel by God:
And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint, as
12he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power [or, for thou hast struggled] with God and with men, and hast prevailed (Gen. 32:25-29; 24-28, according to the King JamesVersion system of verse numbering).
Perhaps this is also an allusion to Abraham who argues –
that is, verbally struggles – with God in order to try to save
Sodom and Gomorrah from destruction. Herbert Marks considers
Jacob's renaming as Israel by God to be a correctional measure
whereby God assigns Jacob two names to balance Esau's two names,
the second being Edom; however, more importantly, Marks argues
that the name Israel can be glossed as “God strives for you” and
sees in the renaming the establishment of an alliance with God
(39-40).
Joseph undergoes two renamings. When Pharaoh proclaims him
viceroy, Joseph rides in a royal chariot through the streets of
the capital as the people in the crowd, or perhaps Pharaoh’s
heralds, call out, “Avrekh!” (Gen. 41:43). According to the
classic medieval biblical commentator Rashi, the rename should be
13read as av (father in Hebrew) – rakh (rech? king in Aramaic); that
is, Joseph is perceived as the king’s father. Public renaming of
Joseph as Avrekh can be seen as the public’s recognition of his
power, and can also be seen as an expression of its awareness of
his being both its father (that I, its ruler) and yet a young
man.
Pharaoh renames him (Gen. 41:45) Zaphnath-paaneah (or
Tzafnat Pane’akh), which, according to Rashi, means interpreter
of hidden things. Pharaoh’s renaming of Joseph, is, on the one
hand, recognition of Joseph’s powers as a dream interpreter,
while, on the other hand, it is perhaps an attempt to appropriate
Joseph and make him a part of Egyptian society by giving him an
Egyptian name.
Moses’ renaming of Joshua before he sets out with the other
11 spies to Canaan is an expression of Joshua’s new elevated
status: “These are the names of the men which Moses sent to spy
out the land. And Moses called Oshea the son of Nun Jehoshua”
(Numbers 13:16). Moses adds the letter yod, which is also the
first letter in God’s ineffable name, the Tetragrammaton, in
14order to give Joshua the added protection of God and in order to
elevate his status by reinforcing his relationship with God (as
is the case with Jacob).
In the novel, Jodu's mother renames Paulette Putli. This
“was her way of domesticating her” (69). Paulette “in the
confusion of tongues that was to characterize her upbringing”
reciprocates by renaming her adoptive mother “Tantima” (“aunt-
mother”), a hybrid French-Arabic title (69).
For Zachary and Paulette, the renaming is only part of an
entire hybridization process: Serang Ali treats Zachary as a
protegé, while Jodu's mother gives the motherless French girl an
Indian-Muslim upbringing. Actually, both Zachary and Paulette are
protégés, and this status is articulated through their being
renamed by their respective patrons.
There is another manifestation of renaming that is linked to
appropriation in the novel. It is the renaming that takes place
aboard the Ibis, which is a sort of melting pot that produces a
hybrid society. However, the ship’s hybrid society is unlike most
hybrids, which are the product of an amalgamation of two
15elements: The ship’s crew represents many different societies.
Thus, the Ibis can be seen as an example of a healthy hybrid
society that is able to work together for a common goal: In the
case of the Ibis, that goal is getting the ship to its
destination. The mutiny towards the end of the novel indicates
that, even in such a seemingly unified context, tensions can
break down bonds of solidarity.
However, it should be pointed out that there is great
significance – as far as the idea of hybridity is concerned - in
the novel’s ending: The two hybrid chief protagonists – Paulette
and Zachary – are left as a pair on deck, while, in the longboat
depicted in the last two paragraphs of Sea of Poppies, we see a
truly hybrid team representing different racial or ethnic groups:
Jodu, Neel, Ah Fatt, Kalua and Serang Ali.
The initial picture that Zachary receives of the
multiracial, hybrid crew, which is linked linguistically by the
renaming (or hybridization) of nautical terms, is impressive, and
the solidarity remains for the bulk of the novel. The
appropriation is directed towards all the members of the crew
16who, despite their different origins, are in a very real sense
homogenized into a single society with a specific, albeit richly
variegated culturally, identity.
Sohn, Stephen Hong Sohn, Paul Lai and Donald C. Goellnicht
point out that Sea of Poppies is
a novel that for the most part takes place on a boat (called the Ibis). The titular poppies of course reference the opium trade, and in that regard, the global scope of thenovel is not surprising, but Ghosh’s status as an Asian American author signifies the malleable nature of the field’s classification practices. Although many still consider Ghosh primarily through an Anglophone lens, as a South Asian Indian author writing in English, his residency status—where he is known to divide his time between India and the United States—certainly complicates his position within American and postcolonial literatures more broadly. His novels too do not yield to a specific geographic centrality as evidenced especially by Sea of Poppies, as so much of that novel occurs literally on the ocean, a border space if you will, that emphasizes the transit between and among different national locations (15).
In the depiction of the hybrid crew of the Ibis, the
linguistic element in the hybridization of nautical terms used by
the hybrid crew of lascars is prominent. His introduction to the
ship’s crew initially stresses its lack of homogeneity:
17This was Zachary’s first experience of this species of
sailor. He had thought the lascars were a tribe or nation, like the Cherokee or Sioux; he discovered now that they camefrom places that were far apart, and had nothing in common, except the Indian Ocean; among them were Chinese and East Africans, Arabs and Malays, Bengalis and Goans, Tamils and Arakanese (14).
However, a passage only two pages later clearly indicates
that the heterogeneity is overcome by language – by friendly,
appropriating renaming. The crew, despite its diverse origins,
speaks a single, hybrid language:
Once under sail, Zachary was forced to undergo yet another education, not so much in seamanship this time, as in the ways of the new crew…. Having been put in charge of the ship’s stores Zachary had to familiarize himself with a new set of provisions, bearing no resemblance to the accustomed hardtack and brined beef; he had to learn to say ‘resum’ instead of ‘rations’, and he had to wrap his tongue around words like ‘dal’, ‘masala’ and ‘achar’. He had to getused to ‘malum’ instead of mate, ‘serang’ for bosun, ‘tindal’ for bosun’s mate, and ‘seacunny’ for helmsman; he had to memorize a new shipboard vocabulary, which sounded a bit like English and yet not: the rigging became the ‘ringeen’, ‘avast!’ was ‘bas!’ and the cry of the middle-morning watch went from ‘all’s well’ to ‘alzbel’. The deck now became the ‘tootuk’ while the masts were ‘dols’; a command became a ‘hookum’ and instead of starboard and larboard, fore and aft, he had to say ‘jamna’ and ‘dawa’, ‘agil’ and ‘peechil’ (16).
18 The lascars can be seen as a kind of hybrid society, linked
together by language, specifically, by the renaming of the
fundamental elements of shipboard life; thus, they effectively
represent a connection between hybridization and friendly
renaming.
The renaming in the novel can be linked to other instances
of renaming in other contexts. For instance, the renaming of
streets in New York City – Manhattan's Upper West Side in the
late 19th century and Harlem streets in the late 20th. Concerning
the renaming of New York streets, Reuben S. Rose-Redwood, citing
Maoz Azaryahu, notes that the “practice of symbolic erasure is
most evident in the act of street renaming, where one name is
officially replaced by another” (533). He links street naming as
a commemorative practice to the more general issues of place-
making, memory and “symbolic capital.” Maoz Azaryahu discusses
the nomenclature “Hebrew Sea” in Zionist history before the
establishment of the State of Israel in 1948; he argues (252)
that the metamorphosis of the Mediterranean Sea into the “Hebrew
Sea” turned a mere geographical entity into an integral element
19of Zionist ideology. Thus, a geographic entity was appropriated
into the Zionist lexicon.
IV Conclusion
Sea of Poppies is rich in allusions to and expressions of the
way different cultures interrelated in 19th-century India during
the period of British colonialism. It uses various tools to
articulate these interrelationships; one of those tools is
renaming. In this brief essay, I have given five examples of
renaming: three examples of friendly renaming, which expresses a
desire to create a bridge between cultures and even to
appropriate another culture, and two examples of inimical
renaming, which, in the case of two of the novel’s
representatives of British colonialism in India, expresses both
an antagonism towards the colonized culture and the desire to
emphasis the superiority of the colonizing power’s culture over
that of the colonized entity.
21Works Cited
Primary Source
Amitav Ghosh. Sea of Poppies. London: John Murray, 2008.
Secondary Sources
Azaryahu, Maoz. “The Formation of the 'Hebrew Sea' in Pre-State Israel. Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 7.3 (November 2008): 251-67.
Hall, Lisa Kahaleole. “Strategies of Erasure: U.S. Colonialism and Native Hawaiian Feminism,” American Quarterly 60.2 (2008), 273-80.
Marks, Herbert. “Biblical Naming and Poetic Etymology.” Journal of Biblical Literature 114.1 (Spring 1995): 21-42.
Rose-Redwood, Reuben S. “From Number to Name: Symbolic Capital, Places of Memory and the Politics of Street Renaming in New York City.” Social and Cultural Geography 9.4 (June 2008): 431-52.
Sohn, Stephen Hong, Lai, Paul, and Goellnicht, Donald C. “Theorizing Asian American Fiction,” MFS Modern Fiction Studies 56.1 (2010), 1-18.
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