73 pages • 2 hours read

The Glass Palace

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2000

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Parts 3-4, Chapters 19-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3, Chapter 19 Summary

Before leaving for Rangoon, Uma is told that Dolly spends an inordinate amount of time alone each morning; Dinu says that she is meditating. Once onboard the ship, Uma and Dolly rekindle their old friendship. While talking, Dolly confesses that Dinu’s illness changed her and that she has decided to one day join a Buddhist nunnery. Only her family has stopped her from doing so. There is a bubbling resentment towards Indians in Burma, Dolly explains, and it makes her fearful.

Uma finds Rangoon transformed from the city she once knew. An earthquake strikes the city, toppling the Shwe Sagon Pagoda. Taking a tour of Burma, Uma notes the widening rift between the locals and Indians. One day, driving through Rangoon with Dolly, Uma sees a queue of men having their chests tattooed. Dolly panics, as the tattoos mean the men are preparing for war. Fleeing home, they see an Indian man killed in the street. Uma hides in the back seat.

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The riots last several days. Uma delays her departure, noting Dolly’s fear whenever she is about to leave. Months pass; a man stops Dolly in the street and tells her to prepare for the coronation of a new Burmese prince, a man who will liberate Burma. A local healer crowns himself and a wave of violence spreads across the country. Distraught at what is happening, Uma books a plane to Calcutta. Before she leaves, she angrily accuses Rajkumar of being complicit in the violence: his transporting of Indian workers to Burma mirrors the British Empire’s actions. She departs, promising to see Dolly again.

Part 4, Chapter 20 Summary

Uma is met in Calcutta by her brother and his family. The family’s two twins have long admired her from afar and, in the car ride home from the airport, she bursts into tears. For the next months, Uma dedicates her life to making Indians aware of the situation in Burma. She has little effect and remains haunted by what she has seen. From then on, Uma forsakes her belief in armed insurrection, as it has little power in the face of Empire. Gradually, she begins to sympathize with the position of Mahatma Gandhi. She writes to him and is invited to visit his ashram.

Part 4, Chapter 21 Summary

Arjun, Uma’s nephew, is accepted into the Indian Military Academy. The family are split; it is the first time that Arjun has shown any ambition and his father is grateful. Uma, unexpectedly, supports Arjun and believes the army needs men of conscience. Arjun’s twin sister, Manju, is approached to appear in a film. Unsure of what to do, she revisits the letters from her twin that detail his burgeoning military career. Jealous of Arjun’s life outside the family, she decides to attend the screen test.

Manju’s trip to the test is beset by issues as she tries to keep her escapades a secret. Full of nerves, she arrives at the audition to find that the financier of the film is Neel, the son of Dolly and Rajkumar. Neel is struck by Manju’s beauty and the pair leave the studio lot and take a drive. Manju confesses how lonely she has been since Arjun left and Neel admits that he is not really a film producer; though he wanted to go into the teak business, Rajkumar insisted that it was not a suitable profession. Neel must demonstrate his business acumen to his father and has chosen film financing as a potential means to do so. Manju and Neel meet each other every day, until Dolly arrives at Uma’s door with a proposition.

Parts 3-4, Chapters 19-21 Analysis

In these three chapters, the author explores the idea of resistance against colonialism, while characters are forced to confront their own role in imperialistic practices. During the opening chapters, the British army functioned as the face of colonial overthrow but Uma accuses Rajkumar’s action of being “far worse than the worst deeds of the Europeans” (217). There is a subtle shift; the British imperial forces are all but absent from this part of the narrative and the actions and caused by men such as Rajkumar. This is a reflection of the malleable face of colonialism in the novel.

The practice of importing cheap Indian labor has birthed a bitterness in Burma, which manifests as street violence and riots. The vivid reality of this violence forces Uma “to rethink her political ideas in their entirety” (221). Colonialism is no longer an academic matter and her words and speeches have done nothing to highlight Indians to the wave of violence in Burma. She finds solace in the non-violent practices of Mahatma Gandhi, so the reader explores various anti-imperialist ideologues vicariously through Uma’s eyes.

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The introduction of Arjun and Manju offers a new perspective in the novel. These two children grow up in India and consider themselves Indian. Unlike Rajkumar, who left at a young age, they will be seen as subjects by the British and colonial oppressors by the Burmese. Later, as Arjun navigates his career in a colonial army, this will become even more explicit.

In Chapter 21, two separate institutions are used to introduce the reader to different types of oppressive forces. Not for the first time, the reader sees how marriages are arranged and conducted in these societies; they are often at the behest of the family, rather than the bride or the groom and can be considered examples of patriarchal behavior, which Uma pushes back against. Likewise, the Indian army is an imperial institution which is undergoing changes. The recruitment of officers like Arjun signify a new era for the institution and, as is explained later in the text, its downfall.