American Imperialism

Culture consists of manners, tradition, language, ideology, values and artistic expression. External and internal aspects of culture are included in it. External form of culture organized on the basis of internal ideologies.

Only one change occurred in our culture, which was the result of British imperialism in the form of social, economical and political structure. This change was the important phase of our historical development. Faiz talks about both negative as well as positive side of the imperialism.

East West encounter is considered as the most prominent theme in literature of Pakistan and many other formerly colonized countries.

The integration of western culture into an Eastern nation and the population is widely apparent. The British

Language and culture are mutually inclusive entities; one can exist concurrently in the presence of another. Therefore the translation of local culture through the foreign language perpetuates local colors. The Pakistani post-colonial writers used the English language as a mean of explicating local ethos, which resulted into pidiginization as well.

Every language is rule governed and culturally specific and eventually restricts the writers to explicate cross cultural conceptions. However, these constraints are observed in the Post- colonial literature, for instance; Ahmad Ali in his novel, Twilight in Delhi illustrates: zanan Khana, Mardan Khana, rakhail, Hakeem’ and so on which highlights sociolinguistic limitations of English. In “Twilight in Delhi” literal translation of fragments and expressions are also observed. For example,

‘Blood in his eyes’ for ‘us ski ankhoun MA khan’, ‘breast of Hindustan’ For ‘Hindustan ka Seena’, ‘naked swords’ for ‘nangi talwar’, ‘Farangis’ for ‘Farangiyoun‘Mussalmans’ for ‘Musalmanoun’, ‘fell into the hands’ for ‘hathoun MA girna’ and ‘Mohursfor

Language is the major concern of the post colonial writer. Two African writer Chinua Achebe and Ngugi WA Thiong took the stance of language. Ngugi after writing his few works in English turned his way towards his native tongue Gikuyu.

He states

"The domination of a peoples' language by the languages of the colonizing nations was crucial to the domination of the mental universe of the colonized.

But Achebe’s view is that English is the best language to represent the culture of the nation to the world.

Sidhwa favors Achebe point of view and in her interview with Feroza She states:

My first language of speech is Gujarati, my second is Urdu, my third is English. But as far as reading and writing goes I can read and write best in English. I'm a tail end product of the Raj. This is the case with a lot of people in India and Pakistan. They're con¬demned to write in English, but I don't think this is such a bad thing because English is a rich language. Naturally it is not my first language; I'm more at ease talking in Gujrati and Urdu. After moving to America I realized that all my sentences in English were punctuated with Gujrati and Urdu words.

Sidhwa writes in English, it is a new English with words from the native