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St. Joseph’s College of Commerce (Autonomous)
End Semester Examination – March /April 2016
B.COM (T.T.) – II Semester
C2 15 2 GE: GENERAL ENGLISH
Duration: 3 Hours Max. Marks: 100
Section -A
- Write short notes on the following: (4×5= 20)
- Effim’s visit to Holy Sepulcher.
- The Manganiyar group described in Tracing the Roots of Rajasthani Music.
- Sir Mohan Lal’s English.
- “Another phase was reached when we
Were twice attacked, and lost our way”. – Enterprise
Section -B
- Answer the following questions in about 250 words. (4×10 =40)
- Describe the metaphorical significance of pilgrimage in the story Two Old Men. Comment on religious spaces, its architecture, serenity and religious symbols that you have seen during your visits.
- “He will not be engaged in the superficial pursuits of tourists but in the difficult task of trying to make sense of an alien culture”. According to Tom Swick what are the artificial pursuits of a tourist and how does he claim to be different from them? Elucidate your answer by giving examples from the text.
- 7. Karma had its wrath on Sir Mohan Lal. If you are asked to narrate the story after this event, how will you portray the wrath of karma on the two English soldiers who threw Sir Mohan Lal outside the compartment? Use your imagination to write the answer.
- What made Alex Shoumatoff state at the end of the text “As I listened, I eventually stopped imposing what I was looking for and began to enjoy the music for what it was: beautiful, alive and present”. Narrate an experience in which you have discovered a lifestyle that was not a part of the culture that you grew up with.
III. Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions in about two to three paragraphs each. (4×10=40)
Objects that once adorned display cases in museums around the world are disappearing from view. In recent decades, dramatic wooden Iroquois face masks, crafted by the nations and tribes of indigenous people of North America, have been taken off the shelves. Rattles and masks made by the Coast Salish peoples of the Pacific Northwest, in British Columbia, have been moved to restricted areas of museum storerooms. And at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, ‘secret/sacred’ Aboriginal objects have been separated from the main collection: only tribal members of particular standing are permitted to see them.
Such removals are political, enacted in the name of decolonisation and the right to self-determination of Native peoples. By way of restitution, argues the museum scholar Janet Marstine of the University of Leicester, ‘Institutions need to develop long-term relationships with source communities built on trust.’ ‘Source communities’ is the buzzword for groups of people, or tribes, considered to be affiliated to the artefacts, and Marstine believes that they should control the interpretation of the past. That includes how cultural artefacts are understood, presented and stored in museums – and if they are displayed at all.
The idea that one culture ‘owns’ a particular heritage is having a profound impact on museums. Just as campaigners are urging the nations of Greece and Turkey to see themselves as the true owners of cultural artefacts – such as the Parthenon marbles, or sculptures from the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, both in the British Museum – so too do activists and sympathetic museum professionals, who are facilitating these removals, consider certain indigenous peoples – Native Americans, Aboriginal people, First Nations – the primary, if not sole, arbitrator of their history and cultural artefacts. Lissant Bolton, a keeper at the British Museum, puts the point like this: ‘In the Australian context, this means that any Indigenous Australian is understood to have a greater right to speak about any Aboriginal object than any non-Indigenous Australian.’
The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), which opened on The Mall in Washington, DC in 1990, has been at the forefront of implementing new museums and policies that make formal concessions to particular groups on the basis of their ethnicity. The US arts journalist Edward Rothstein calls the NMAI and its ilk ‘identity museums’.
The devolving of authority at the NMAI embraced a range of activities, including who designed and built the museum, who selects what is in the collection, and how it is interpreted and presented – as well as how artefacts are conserved, and who can see them. In a similar spirit, in 1993 the Council of Australian Museum Associations endorsed a document, now titled Continuous Cultures, Ongoing Responsibilities, which set a new bar by compelling institutions to work collaboratively with indigenous groups on all aspects of running a museum. The premise behind this move was that indigenous people should be the ones to tell and organise their history: only Native Americans can speak for and tell the story of Native Americans. The Maori for the Maori. Aboriginal groups for the Aboriginal past.
The motives are understandable. Colonisation had a devastating impact on indigenous peoples. But the new identity museums are troubling on many levels – and not just because material is taken off display. Imagine if a museum was established, with public money (the NMAI is federally funded), where white people from one geographical area – sometimes only white men with status – were given the authority to decide what exhibits visitors could and couldn’t see. There would quite rightly be outrage.
Instead of decolonising museums, the new practices echo and reinforce a racial discourse. They present an idea of culture as fixed and immutable – something people own by virtue of biological ancestry. This racial view of the world should trouble us.
We need to ask who speaks for the relevant indigenous community, and on what basis. Even who qualifies as indigenous is a vexed question, as is the fact that ‘the indigenous’ rarely speak with one voice. Ethnocentric policies therefore tend to vest authority in anointed chiefs and elders (local equivalents of the privileged white male), without asking how many and which tribal members need to subscribe to the traditional view for it to remain authoritative. What about those who disagree? And what about those who want to change it, or challenge it from within?
It also follows, according to the logic of identity museum practice, that those outside the culture cannot truly understand it because they’ve never experienced it. It’s an approach that creates barriers between people. And also between people and artefacts. It advances the idea that cultures are separate and irreconcilable. When Seddon Bennington was chief executive of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington – formally a bi-cultural museum – he articulated precisely such a view: ‘There is a Western way of seeing the world and a Matauranga Māori way. The rest of the world cannot tap into Māori wisdom.’
But handing over the right to narrate history to those with the approved ethnicity is not the way that knowledge works. The pursuit of truth and the understanding of history must be open to everybody, regardless of class, ethnicity or gender. There must be universal access. That is how questions can be explored, and old forms of authority challenged.
We often hear about the problem of hidden histories, invisible and unheard because the stories of women and minorities have been written out of mainstream narratives. But identity museums are guilty of the same sin of omission, since surrendering the authority to shape museum collections to indigenous communities hinders the understanding of the very people it claims to help. It creates an idealized version of the past – one that never accounts for itself, because it cannot be questioned.
- What is the author’s argument with regard to an ethnic group being the owner of cultural artifacts? Do you agree to his view?
- What does the author mean by ‘decentralization of cultural artifacts’? Does it promote racism and separatism?
- In a larger context do you think that in this segregation of cultural artifacts the third world countries will have a greater advantage over the First world countries? Also, give your opinion on whether it is a rightful demand to bring the Kohinoor Diamond which was taken away by the British, back to India.
- Museums can recreate past in the minds of the visitors. They are also a way of understanding the past. Narrate your first impression of a visit to a museum or gallery of cultural artefacts. Do you think we, as a society, attach any importance to museums and galleries?
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