Priyamvada Gopal

Priyamvada Gopal
Gopal in 2019
Born	1968 (age 52–53)
Title	Professor of Postcolonial Studies
Academic background
Alma mater	University of Delhi Jawaharlal Nehru University Cornell University
Thesis	Midnight's labors: Gender, nation and narratives of social transformation in transitional India, 1932–1954 (2000)
Doctoral advisor	Biodun Jeyifo[1]
Academic work
Institutions	University of Cambridge Churchill College

Priyamvada Gopal (born 1968)^[2] is an Indian-born academic, writer and public intellectual who is Professor of Postcolonial Studies in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge. Her primary teaching and research interests are in colonial and postcolonial studies, South Asian literature, critical race studies, and the politics and cultures of empire and globalisation.^[3] She has written three books engaging these subjects: Literary Radicalism in India (2005), The Indian English Novel (2009) and Insurgent Empire (2019). Her third book, Insurgent Empire, was shortlisted for the 2020 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding.^[4][5] She also regularly contributes to several newspapers and publications, including The Guardian, The Hindu, Al Jazeera, and The Nation. Gopal's remarks about race and empire have received extensive media attention.^{[6][7][8][9][10]} In 2021, she was named one of the world's top 50 thinkers by Prospect magazine.^[11]

Biography[]

Early life[]

Gopal was born in Delhi, India. The daughter of an Indian diplomat, she spent her childhood in India, Sri Lanka and Bhutan, and attended an international high school in Vienna, where her father served as a diplomat in the mid-1980s.^[12][13] She is a Brahmin, but has stated: "Brahminess, as a system of racial hierarchy, should be abolished".^[14][15]

Education and career[]

Gopal received a BA from the University of Delhi in 1989 and an MA from Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1991. After finishing her studies in India, she moved to the United States, where she taught at different institutions and completed her PhD in colonial and postcolonial literature at Cornell University in 2000.^[16][17]

She moved to the University of Cambridge in 2001, where she is Professor of Postcolonial Studies in the Faculty of English and a Teaching Fellow at Churchill College.^[18][3] She supervises and teaches in the areas of literary criticism, modern tragedy, 19th-century and modern British literature, and postcolonial and related literatures. Her primary interests are in colonial and postcolonial literatures, with related interests in British and American literatures, the novel, translation, gender and feminism, Marxism and critical theory, and the politics and cultures of empire and globalisation. From 2006 to 2010, she was Dean of Churchill College.^[17][3]

She also regularly contributes to several newspapers and publications, including The Guardian,^[19] The Hindu,^[20] The Independent,^[21] Medium,^[22][23] New Statesman,^[24] HuffPost,^[25] Al Jazeera,^[26] Politico,^[27] The Big Issue,^[28] New Humanist,^[29] Open Democracy,^[30] Outlook India,^[31] Open,^[32] and The Nation.^[33]

Work[]

As a literary critic, Gopal explores a range of issues and ideas, with a focus on race, empire, and decolonisation.

Empire[]

Gopal has written extensively about the impact of empire on contemporary culture in Britain and examined its broader social and cultural effects in South Asia and other former colonial societies.^[34][35][36]

In her book Insurgent Empire, Gopal examines traditions of dissent on the question of empire and shows how rebellions and resistance in the colonies influenced British critics of empire in a process she calls "reverse tutelage".^[37] She argues that ideas of freedom, justice, and common humanity had themselves taken shape in the struggle against imperialism.^[38]

Gopal has also written about Britain's imperial amnesia and has called for a more honest account of how the country came to be what it is today. She argues that developing a more demanding relationship to history is essential for moving beyond institutionalised amnesia about the past.^[39]

BBC Radio 4: Start the Week[]

In 2006, Gopal took part in a debate on BBC Radio 4's Start the Week.^[40] In the segment, historian Niall Ferguson argued that the British Empire was, by and large, a benevolent and virtuous enterprise. Gopal challenged Ferguson's account, questioning his assertions about the greatness of empire.^[41] The programme became a matter of controversy. That evening, the BBC invited another Indian woman onto their programme, who said that not all young Indians thought in the way that Gopal did. Gopal later accused the BBC of pushing an agenda and playing off "natives" against each other.^[42] Gopal said that it was this experience that galvanized her to write and think more publicly about empire.^[43]

Churchill, empire and race[]

In October 2020, Churchill College set up a working group to critically examine Winston Churchill's views and actions relating to empire and race. The working group held two events: "Churchill, Empire and Race: Opening the Conversation" and "The Racial Consequences of Mr Churchill". Gopal was a member of the Working Group and a speaker in both panel discussions.^[44][45][46]

In June 2021, college Master Athene Donald ended the Working Group's role after a dispute between the College Council and the working party. In her statement, Donald stated that Gopal was frustrated over the Council's rejection of the Working Group's proposals for the third event. She said that Gopal consequently wrote that the group might as well dissolve themselves. Donald said that rightly or wrongly, she took that statement at face value and abruptly ended the role of the group.^[47][46][45] Gopal rejected the rationale given for the group's dissolution and said that the college had instead disbanded the group. She said that the disbanding was a way for the college to preempt the resignation of several members of the working group over the college pandering to the tabloid press and other groups. In her Twitter feed, Gopal called attention to the role of the Daily Mail, Policy Exchange and the Churchill family in pressuring the college to discontinue the event, accusing university leaders of "taking fright" after the backlash. Gopal tweeted: "Let me repeat: under pressure from groups like Policy Exchange and some members of the Churchill family, Churchill College has dissolved a group created to critically engage with Churchill's complicated legacies. Let that sink in."^[45][46][48]

In July 2021, the Working Group released a statement refuting that they had disbanded themselves and accused the college of not following due process in ending its role. The group also accused the College Council of undermining academic freedom and bringing the college into disrepute.^[49][50]

Decolonisation[]

For Gopal, decolonisation is about a process of thinking about our intellectual, personal and political formation in a historical frame.^[51] Gopal has stated that decolonisation "commits to recognising the centrality of colonialism in shaping the globe as we experience it today; to assessing its consequences for communities and cultures; to interrogating and dismantling harmful mythologies and falsehoods on which the colonial project relied as well as those that underpin its afterlife today; and to repairing the great gaps in our knowledge and understanding that have emerged consequently."^[52] In relation to cultural and intellectual work, she argues that decolonisation poses different kinds of questions in different contexts about our relationship to colonialism.^[52]

She argues that decolonisation in the European context involves Europe 'reckoning with its colonial self-constitution and thinking about the legacies and afterlives of colonialism both "within" and "without" its complicated and shifting borders.' She draws on Ngũgĩ and Fanon to argue that Europe's material, cultural and intellectual riches also cannot be separated from its encounters with the Global South.^[52]

Gopal contends that decolonisation must begin with an unflinchingly truthful engagement with empire and colonialism, and a sustained study of how Europe's forays into the world made 'Europe'.^[52]

She has also been a long-standing advocate for the 'decolonisation' of Cambridge's English curriculum. In June 2017, a group of Cambridge students had called for the university to include more black and ethnic minority writers in its English literature curriculum, an initiative strongly supported by Gopal.^[53] She argues that decolonisation in the curriculum context is about having access to information and narratives, which reframe our understanding of the multiple lineages and sources of knowledge.^[54]

Race[]

Gopal has written and commented extensively on the subject of race and how it operates in contemporary society. She argues that whiteness is primarily a cultural category, not a biological one, and is useful for explaining how western societies work in terms of how society is structured, and how such structures determine power relations between dominant and non-dominant groups.^[55][56]

In the context of racial discrimination in the United Kingdom, Gopal has discussed white fragility, suggesting that a "way of deflecting engagement with race is to personalise matters".^[57] In October 2019, Gopal criticised the Equality and Human Rights Commission report "Tackling racial harassment: Universities challenged" for its language and not addressing the systemic disadvantages faced by black and minority ethnic students or the ways whiteness dominates power structures and pedagogy.^[58][59]

King's College racial profiling row[]

In June 2018, Gopal alleged racial profiling by college porters at the gate of King's College, Cambridge. Gopal said that she was subjected to racial profiling and aggression by the porters and gatekeepers of King's and said porters frequently hassled non-white staff and students at the gates.^[60][61] Gopal announced that she would no longer teach at King's until there was a resolution to the long-standing problem.^[7][62] The incident also attracted media attention, both positive and negative. The Times wrote that "Depending on your point of view, Priyamvada Gopal is either a warrior for racial justice or a professional victim with a persecution complex."^[63]

As a result of the attention the issue received, Cambridge University students came forward describing similar experiences. Students of English at King's also issued an open letter in support of Gopal, urging the college to offer her a "proper apology": "The many testimonies from black and minority ethnic students that have come in the wake of Dr Gopal's statement make apparent that her treatment is not unique or isolated. We strongly condemn the actions of the college and fully support Dr Gopal in her decision to boycott it."^[64] Gopal said that she received hate mail following her announcement.^[65]

In October 2018, King's issued a statement accepting that there had been several reports of discrimination and racial profiling.^[66] Gopal said that senior members of the college had also conveyed their private apologies and assured her that the problem was being taken seriously. Shortly afterward, Gopal rescinded her decision to withdraw her labour from the college.^[12]

"White lives don't matter. As white lives" tweet[]

On 23 June 2020, Gopal tweeted "White lives don't matter. As white lives" and "Abolish whiteness", in response to a banner flown over a Premier League football stadium that read "White lives matter Burnley". She received abusive messages, including death threats, following her tweet.^[67][68] Gopal told the media that her comments were opposing the concept of whiteness – the presumption of white superiority – and challenging the racial basis for lives mattering, adding that it wasn't whiteness that gave lives their dignity, nor should it be the criteria for lives mattering.^[69] Gopal stood by her tweets asserting that her comments were "very clearly speaking to a structure and ideology, not about people".^[70]

The following day, the University of Cambridge tweeted a blanket defence of its academics' right to free speech, without explicitly referencing her case. A statement released by the university read: "The University defends the right of its academics to express their own lawful opinions which others might find controversial and deplores in the strongest terms abuse and personal attacks. These attacks are totally unacceptable and must cease".^[71]

In November 2020, the Daily Mail paid £25,000 in damages to Gopal after the paper falsely alleged that she was attempting to incite a race war and that she supports and endorses the subjugation and persecution of white people.^[72] The allegations, made by Amanda Platell in a column following the "White lives" tweet, were based on an inflammatory quote from a fake Twitter account, which Platell's column falsely attributed to Gopal.^[72] The column had also partially quoted Gopal's "White lives" tweet as saying 'White lives don't matter.', but chose to omit the remainder of the quote, which went on to state "As White Lives", distorting its context and meaning.^[72] In addition to paying damages, the newspaper also published full apologies in the Daily Mail and agreed to pay Gopal's legal costs.^[72]

Criticism of Tony Sewell, chair of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities[]

In March 2021, the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, chaired by educational consultant Tony Sewell, released its report on race and ethnic disparities in the UK.^[73] Gopal, along with other academics, criticised the report for cherry-picking data and minimising and denying structural and institutional racism, asserting that the report read like a propaganda document rather than a piece of research.^{[74][75][76][77][78]} She also questioned whether Sewell had a doctorate. When she learned he did, Gopal tweeted: "Okay, established. It is, in fact, Dr Sewell. Fair enough. Even Dr Goebbels had a research PhD. (University of Heidelberg, 1921)". The comparison to Goebbels, a prominent Nazi, attracted criticism from commentators writing for The Times and The Daily Telegraph.^{[9][79][80][81][82]} Gopal said that her remark was a reference to Goebbels, not a comparison.^[74]

Bibliography[]

• Literary Radicalism in India: Gender, Nation and the Transition to Independence (Routledge, 2005)^[83]
• The Indian English Novel: Nation, History and Narration (Oxford University Press, 2009)^[84]
• Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent (Verso, 2019)^[38]

References[]

External links[]

• University of Cambridge Staff Profile
• Churchill College, Cambridge Staff Profile