Colonial Memory and Identity in Zadie Smith's White Teeth
Zadie Smith's "White Teeth" offers a richly layered portrait of London that reflects her incisive critique of Britain's colonial past, its selective historiography, and the politics of public memory. Through the novel's characters, settings, and debates, Smith interrogates how colonial history is remembered, distorted, and ultimately forgotten - and what the cost of that forgetting truly is.
The Indian Mutiny of 1857
At the heart of this critique is the Indian Mutiny of 1857. Smith uses her central character, Samad Iqbal, as a vehicle to revisit this defining moment in colonial history. Samad repeatedly narrates the story of his great-grandfather, Mangal Pande, who allegedly fired the first shot that triggered the Meerut uprising on 10th May 1857 - the event widely regarded as the beginning of the Mutiny.
The rebellion was the bloodiest in the history of the British Empire, claiming lives on both sides and ultimately planting the seeds of Indian self-rule, though independence would not come for another hundred years. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, among others, called it the "First Indian War of Independence." Through Samad's passionate retellings, Smith positions her characters as unofficial historians - people who decide, outside the walls of institutions and monuments, who the true heroes of that revolt were and why their stories matter.
Smith suggests that certain aspects of colonial history are simply too significant to ignore. The Mutiny was not merely a military event but a rupture in the relationship between colonizer and colonized - one whose reverberations are still felt in the lives of postcolonial immigrants living in contemporary London.
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Archie, Samad, and the Unofficial Histories
Smith depicts Archie Jones, an Englishman, and Samad Iqbal, a Bengali Muslim, who forged an unlikely friendship during World War II. Their daily meetings at O'Connell's Pool House become a space for debating conflicting versions of history with humor, warmth, and occasional exasperation. The narrator captures this vividly:
"The whole of the steamy Indian summer of 1857, the whole of that year of mutiny and massacre would be hauled into O'Connell's and brought to semi-consciousness by these two makeshift historians." (218)
O'Connell's itself is a powerful symbol of multicultural London. George Stubbs' racehorse paintings hang beside framed excerpts from the Quran, and an Irish flag sits alongside a map of the United Arab Emirates. It is in this dingy, eclectic, gloriously improbable space that unofficial histories are kept alive - away from monuments, textbooks, and the sanitized narratives of the powerful.
Their debates are both humorous and historically significant. Archie represents the pragmatic Englishman who accepts the official record, while Samad embodies the postcolonial subject who knows that official records are never the whole truth. Together, they dramatize Smith's central argument: that history is always a matter of perspective, and that the perspectives of the colonized are routinely excluded from public memory.
Trafalgar Square and the Failures of Public Memory
Smith's most powerful critique of colonial memorialization centers on Trafalgar Square. In an interview for Tate: The Art Magazine, Smith draws attention to the statue of Henry Havelock - a man responsible for the deaths of thousands of Indians - standing largely unnoticed in one of London's most iconic public spaces. She observes:
"This man was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Indian people. His most famous crime was forcing a group of people in a village to lick up a square meter of blood of their relatives he'd killed. On the back of the statue it says something about Englishmen never forgetting, but Trafalgar Square is a monument to our ability to forget everything about our history." (41)
For further context, explore the British Library's introduction to postcolonial literature.
Through her analysis of Trafalgar Square, Smith raises urgent questions about how national and personal tragedies are commemorated - and how easily inconvenient histories are erased from public consciousness. The square, with its grand architecture and imperial symbolism, becomes a site of contested memory where the celebrated and the silenced stand side by side, though only one is given a pedestal.
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Samad as Keeper of Memory
Samad's role in the novel extends beyond that of a character - he is a keeper of suppressed history. After a decade of persistence, he convinces O'Connell's proprietor Abdul Mickey to display a portrait of Mangal Pande, even if it might "put people off their food" (213). This small, hard-won victory is deeply symbolic. In the absence of public monuments and official recognition, the responsibility of remembrance falls to individuals and families.
Samad's determination reflects his core belief that the past shapes the present and future. He believes that "we are creatures of consequence" and that "children will be born of our actions that will become their destinies" (102). For Samad, forgetting Pande is not merely a historical oversight - it is a moral failure. As he tells his family with characteristic passion:
"Gandhi had Mr Kingsley - bully for him - but who will do Pande, eh?... That's why I am always having to tell you ingrates a thing or two about Mangal Pande. Bottom line: if I don't, nobody will." (195)
Millat and the Second-Generation Perspective
The weight of this history passes to the next generation through Samad's son, Millat. Standing before Havelock's statue in Trafalgar Square, Millat confronts the stark reality of colonial power and its enduring legacy:
"Means you are nothing and he is something... That's the long history of us and them... But no more. Because Millat was here to finish it. To revenge it. To turn that history around." (433)
Millat's response represents the second-generation immigrant experience in its rawest form - inheriting the wounds of colonial history while forging a new identity in the city of his birth. Where his father sought recognition and remembrance, Millat seeks transformation. He rejects his father's reliance on storytelling and instead embraces direct action, reflecting the generational shift from memory to resistance.
Smith presents this shift with both sympathy and complexity. Millat is not simply a radical - he is a young man shaped by his father's stories, by London's streets, and by the gap between the history he has been taught and the history he has lived.
Conclusion
In White Teeth, Zadie Smith masterfully weaves colonial history into the fabric of contemporary London. Through Samad's storytelling, the symbolism of Trafalgar Square, and Millat's generational reckoning, Smith challenges readers to confront the distortions of British public memory and acknowledge the stories that official history has chosen to forget. The novel reminds us that memory is never passive - it is always political, always contested, and always consequential.
For further reading, explore history, identity, and colonial memory in White Teeth and multicultural families and hysterical realism in White Teeth.
Recommended Reading: White Teeth by Zadie Smith — Study Guide — get the book on Amazon for deeper insights.