TRAVEL WRITING

andtheEMP IRE
 ‘Travel Writing
andthe Empire

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 ‘Travel Writing
andthe Empire

Essaysby
Mohammed Zaheer Basha, Narendra Luther,
Pallavi Pandit Laisram, Pramod K Nayar,
Sindhu Menon, Susan Bassnett,
V B Tharakeshwar, Tutun Mukherjee,
William Dalrymple

Editedby
SachidanandaMohanty

a
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ISBN 81-87649-36-4
CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Beyondthe ImperialEye
BySachidanandaMohanty

The Empire, TravelWriting,and BritishStudies

BySusan Bassnett
Hajji Baba: Ideological Basis of the Persian Picaro
By PallaviPandit Laisram

Porous Boundariesand Cultural Crossover:FannyParkes 42

and “GoingNative”
ByWilliamDalrymple

Colonialism, Surveillanceand Memoirs of Travel: 63

Tegart’sDiaries and the Andaman CellularJail

ByTutun Mukherjee

Propagandaas Travelogue:A Studyof Katherine 84

Mayo’sMotherIndia
ByMohammedZaheer Basha
Constitutive Contradictions: Travel Writing and 100

Construction of Native Women in Colonial India

By Sindhu Menon

TouringAesthetics:The ColonialRhetoricof Travel 112

BrochuresToday
By PramodK Nayar
Empire Writes Back? Kannada Travel Fiction and 126

NationalistDiscourse
By VB Tharakeshwar
HyderabadThroughForeignEyes 150

ByNarendraLuther

SelectBibliography 177

Biographical
Notes 182
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Some of the papers in this volume originated in a national seminar

on travelwriting I coordinated under the UGC’s SpecialAssistance
Programme (SAP) of the Department of English, University of
Hyderabad in March, 1999. A few other essayshave been specially
commissioned for this volume,which, however,does not represent
the proceedings of the seminar.
I am indebted to several individuals and organizations for the
making of this book:

The Chairman,Departmentof English,Universityof Hyderabad,

ProfessorK NarayanaChandran, my facultycolleaguesas well as
students/scholarsof the Department of English.
Professor Mohan G Ramanan, former Head and Coordinator of
the UGC’s Special Assistance Programme of my Department for
his unreserved support.
Professor Sudhakar Marathe, former Head, Department of
. Englishforbeingparticularlysupportivewithideasandarrangements
duringthe seminar.
The academic publishingunit of Katha, New Delhi, especiallyits
Executive Director, Geeta Dharmarajan, for her keenness on this
project.
Severaleditors of Kathathrough whose hands the manuscript
passed:MousumiRoyChowdhuryand Urmila Dasgupta.
To ParnalChirmuleyfor her sense of professionalism,and her
spirit ofconsideration.I alsothankGitaRajanfor ablycoordinating
this project at Katha. Similarly,I acknowledgewith thanks the
editorialassistanceby ShomaChoudhury.
The contributors of this volume, many of whom had initially
responded to my call for papers and later submitted several revised
drafts. They readily gave a great deal of their time and stood by me.
Professor Susan Bassnett and Mr William Dalrymple for allowing
me the use of their essays.

Sinceregratitude to my father Sri PanchananMohanty for his

constant push and moral support for all my academicadventures!
Finally, the real credit of this venture goes to the spirit of travel in
each one of us. It is this that has clearly inspired all the contributors
to this volume, as indeed the innumerable readers and critics of
travel literature. This book is dedicated to them.
INTRODUCTION: BEYOND THE IMPERIAL EYE

SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY

hough traveland travelwritinghavealwaysfascinatedhuman

beingseversincethe dawnofhumanhistory,travelliteratureas
a genre has been traditionallyregardedas a form of entertainment
and relaxationrather than asa matter worthyofseriousscholarlyor
literary attention. True, we have alwaysbeen captivatedby travel
narratives—Jonathan Swift’sGulliver’s Travels
and R L Stevenson’s
Travels witha Donkey,to mention onlytwo examples.Wemighteven
confess in more honest moments that travel books of an Aldous
Huxley,a DH Lawrence,or a GrahamGreenemightedgeout other
heavyweightsin theirsheermagicofappealandpowerofcaptivation.
It is not just its universal appeal to human nature across all
cultures that makes travel literature powerful and irresistible. In
recent times, newer approachesto literary studies such as colonial
discourse,gender,postcolonial,and translationstudieshavebrought
travel and travel literature to the forefront of the mainstream
academia. Such approaches havecontributed to a radical revision
INTRODUCTION

of our understandingof the literary texts and the socialcontexts,

the politicsof representationand more fundamentally,the way in
whichdisciplines,previouslyseenascompartmentalizedand at odds
with each other, appear to mutually reinforce in terms of the
gatheringof knowledgeand the understandingof socialbehaviour.
While travelling is often seen as synonymous with leisure, there
are many formsoftravel that are prompted by considerations other
than leisure —matters of exigency and survival, for instance. Bands
of hunters and food-gatherers from early human history, travelling
in search of prey or fresh pastures, have been a universal
phenomenon. Although it has been valorized, at times as a conscious
and significant act carrying moral, intellectual and spiritual
significance, it would be far from true to suggest that all travelling is
exclusively or precisely of this kind. Whether at war or at peace,
travel has always gone hand in hand with the march of human
civilization.The image of the journey or voyage,as in TheIlliad, The
Tempest,TheRamayana,or in “The Ancient Mariner,” has often served
as a universalarchetype for the human condition and man’s turbulent
passage through the world.
Indeed, ifwe were to think of one singleterm that would sum up
the sustained and near-universaldrive for cultural travel throughout
the world eversincerecorded history,it would perhaps be the ceaseless
humanurgefor exploration. The drive for exploration isan insistent fact
of life, constantly observed. It is repeatedly inscribed in all the great
literatures of the world —the Miltonic Adam looking down on the
beatificearth, Ulysses’ceaselessvoyagesto strive,to seek to conquer
and never to yield, Prospero’s magical creations in Shakespeare’s
islandof imagination,Rasselas’yearning to leavethe “Happy Valley,”
the epic journeys of a Dante and Virgil;or Nachiketa and Orpheus’
entry into the World of the Dead. Similarly,the great Middle Eastern
narratives of the Arabian Nights and Sinbad the Sailor,the travels of
the spiritual pilgrim in the East, the time travellersof an H G Wells,
 INTRODUCTION

or the scientificadventuresofJulesVerne’sfantasyworld—allunderlie
the universaldesire for travel.' It must be man’sdeep idealismand
endless longingthat make hima perpetuallydissatisfiedwayfarer.
Indeed, followingSusanSontagwe maysaythat allseriousthought
struggleswith a feelingof homelessness.The traveller’sdeliberate
denial of roots makeshima ceaselesswayfarer.
Travelwriting as a genre has moved out from the earlier periphery
of guide books and has come centre stage today. It has
accommodated within its fold, while simultaneously critiquing the
various social, cultural and ethnographic discourses that lend it a
richly textured significance. It is instructive to find in this context
Paul Fussell in his book Abroad:BritishLiteraryTravellingbetweenWars
making a useful distinction between an explorer, travellerand tourist.
As Fussell suggests:

“Explorers,” accordingto Hugh and PaulineMassingham,

“are to the ordinary travellerwhat the Saintisto the average
Church congregation ...” No traveller, and certainly no
tourist, is ever knightedfor his performances,althoughthe
strainshe mayundergocanbe asmemorableasanexplorer’s.
All three make journeys, but the explorer seeks the
undiscovered,the traveller,thatwhichhasbeendiscoveredby
the mind workingin history,the tourist that whichhasbeen
discoveredbyentrepreneurshipandprepared forhim bythe
arts of masspublicity.The genuinetravelleris,or used to be,
in the middle between the two extremes. If the explorer
movestowardsthe risksofthe formlessandtheunknown,the
tourist moves towards the security of pure cliché. It is
betweenthesetwopolesthat the travellermediates,retaining
allhe canof the excitementor the unpredictableattachingto
exploration and fusingthat with the pleasure of “knowing
where one is” belongingto tourism.’

xl
 INTRODUCTION

While much of postcolonialtheory today tends to equate travel

invariablywith empire, recent works such as the one by Joan Pao
Rubies entitled Traveland Ethnicityin the Renaissance,suggeststhat
there is actuallya sense of diversityin the European perception of
the rest of the world from fourteenth to the nineteenth century,
“that travellersmay reproduce local knowledgeand prejudices as
much as import some of their own ...”?What Rubies allowsus to
see is the pre history of an imperial discourse without allowingus
the lazycomfortofa teleologywhichseesRenaissancetravelaccounts
as a prelude to the Orientalists’imagination.‘
It is, however, noteworthy that the advent of large empires,
beginningwith the earlynineteenth century in different parts of the
world, gaverise to special forms of travel. Of course, it would be
erroneous and plainlyunhistoricalto suggestthat colonialtraveldid
not existprior to the nineteenthcentury.In Europeitself,the exploits
of conquerorssuchasAlexanderthe Great, Hannibaland Napoleon
inspired travel for conquest and subjugation. Not all individuals
were motivated by the spirit of exploitation and appropriation,
however.Severalhad more honourable intentions, and undertook
journeysbravingformidableobstaclesforthe sakeof buildingcultural
bridges as Huen Tsangdid in seventh Century AD. It is true that
the question of motive is analyzedcriticallywithin the academia
today.However,we maybe makinga serious error by ignoring the
issue or treating it as completelysuspect.
However, it testifies to the power of the colonial state and not so
subtle systems of rewards and punishments that the colonial
administrative apparatus was capable of promoting cultural travel
of a select kind. The collusion and coalition between the colonial
state and cultural institutions such as are manifest in the School of
Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) begun by George V, reveals
points of contact between knowledge and power. It is instructive to
note that institutions like the SOAS that are recognized today for

xii
 INTRODUCTION

carrying out valuable research had earlier enjoyed a colonial

mandate.
It is only now that we are beginning to understand the full extent
ofthis interface and its debilitating influence. The “willingconsent”
of the ruled based on the internalization of colonial values at the
deeper psychological level offers us instructive lessons for
understanding colonial travel, then as well as now. Narratives of the
nineteenth century, both adventure as well as science fiction,
repeatedly enact their stories ona soil that presents itself as remote
and exotic. H Rider Haggard’s adventure novels or Edgar Rice
Burroughs’ celebrated Tarzan tales set in the deepest forests of
Africa, recurrently punctuate the narrative with the mines of a King
Solomon or civilizations of the Lost Whites in the heart of black
Africa, just as Starship Enterprise’sjourney into outer space may
represent the ultimate in Western imagination for conquest and
colonization.
Indeed, Mary Louise Pratt in her pioneering work ImperialEyes:
TravelWritingand Transculturation,formulates the important concept
of “contact zones.” These zones, according to her, are “social spaces
where disparate cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other,
often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and
subordination.”* Thus, travelwriting isviewedas one of the ideological
apparatuses of the empire. Pratt uses the term “transculturation”
to describe how subordinate groups absorb dominant cultures.
Contact zones, according to her, are determined by the extent of
transculturation.
Thus, sponsored or institution-backed travel in the late eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, even when carried out under the guise of
a more honorific study and research, often concealed a set of aims,
objectives and agenda ulterior in motive. The rapid growth of area
studies in Western universities often went hand in hand with the
colonialenterprise.The introductionof foreignlanguageschools

xiii
 INTRODUCTION

for the studyof regionalcultureswasprompted, for the most part,

by the need to generate a favourable climate for conducting
diplomacy,commerce, business, and also war.°The institutional
history of many such centres in Britain, Franceand Belgium,the
majorcolonialpowers,oftenparallelsthe trajectoryof their overseas
missionsand their cultural empire in the postcolonial period —
French-speakingenclavesin North and West Africa,Anglophone
nations in Asiaand Africa,and Spanish-speakingLatin America.
Knowledgeofthe historyofcolonialinstitutionsaddsimmeasurably
to our understandingofpowerandpatronagebehindculturaltravel.
Whilecultureisostensiblytreated asa softoption, the mobilization
of colonialresources,both by the State as well as through private
efforts,indicatesthe historicroleactuallyplayedbysponsoredtravel
in the domestication of the colonial empire.’

II

While it wouldbe sweepingto push alltravelliterature under an all-

purpose politicalor imperialdesign,the factremainsthat it isduring
the consolidationof largeempires in the nineteenth century that we
seetravelliteraturebetrayingaparticularawarenessofthe ideological
and political.That is how travelwritingoften becamea site for the
collisionandcontestationofpower.Suchaccountscouldbe variously
read as a means of cultural domination and appropriation, and
alternatelyas identity formation under colonialrule.
Indeed, it is onlynow that we are beginningto realizein India,
thanksto the newscholarshipinthe fieldofgender,tribal,minorities,
ethnic and subaltern studies, the disturbinglypronounced use of
the travel motif for cultural appropriation. The exhibition of our
tribalpopulation,theirlifestyleandheritagethroughsafari-liketravel,
results inevitablyin cultural tourism, just as the display,sale and
consumption of ethnic ware, through the pan-Indian cinema and
advertisement campaigns, result in the commodification of culture.

Xiv
 INTRODUCTION

The passage of our exotic North East through the Republic Day
tableaux may bolster the Indian State and its increasing reliance on
the military, but it conceals the many wars of attrition and
insurrection, pervasive in our near-breakaway provinces.
We see a similar pattern in the use of the travel motif of the
colonialkind in the world of advertisement.The sex appealevoked
by the exhilaratingpuffof aCharms cigaretteor the welcomesip of
Nescafealwaysprecedes in cinemascopea controlled adventure in
the cinematicjungle.The hero’sdestinedencounterwith a domestic
man-eater foreverwinsgratitudefromthe maidenin distressaround
the glowingcampfire,just as the advertisementfor BajajSunny,the
popular two-wheeler,shows the White travellermerrily riding off
into the distance as the group of blacksgape helpless,stupified.
Severalcategories are often seen embodied in travel motifs that
are deployed in the advertisement world and elsewhere: orality-
literacy, nature-nurture, primitivism-civilization. Similarly, the
celebration of the exotic through such recurrent images as vacation
cruises to Tangiers and Casablanca or voyages to Congo, Sierra
Leone or India reveal the working of the “Orientalist” and other
fantasies. These could range from the enormously popular tales
like TheSheikhset in the Middle East and other texts mentioned by
Ketaki Dyson in aA VariousUniverse,* to those by sophisticated travel
writers such as D H Lawrence, Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley,
Mark Twain, Harriet Tytler, Carlos Fuentes, Pico Iyer, as well as
British and American travellers in India.
With the advent of colonialmodernity in the nineteenth century
in India, we see a form of colonial travel within India as a
geographical space. The element of keenness and curiosity
evidenced by those who took the earlyIndian railways,for instance,
can be seen in early travelogues in the various Indian languages.
In the Oriya author Sashibhushan Ray’s Dakhinatya Bhramana,
(Travelto the South), 1897, for example,we see preciselysuch a
 INTRODUCTION

trend. There is much oflocal colour here, aside from a discovery

of new lands and regions. But there is also the self’s encounter
with the mighty power of the British Empire. Similar narratives,
many of which have been discovered by archival research, would
clearly enhance a better understanding of travel and colonial rule
in British India.
Twentiethcentury travel writing by Western authors displays
richlycomplexand often rewardingwaysof dealingwith the exotic.
MichaelWood’sTheSmileofMuruganor WilliamDalrymple’sDelhi:
TheCityofDjinnsare interestingexamplesofthis trend. Components
of John Master’s fictional narratives are open to an Orientalist
reading. Similarly,diasporic Indian academicsand physicianslike
AbrahamVergheseoffer travelnarrativesthat serve as a typicalrite
depassageto a new world, On the other hand, accordingto some,
even“progressive”travelwritersare not freefromthe colonialgaze.
Forinstance,IlijaTrojanowcontendsthat “progressive”intellectuals
like Giinter Grassand Pier PaoloPasolini,championsof the Left,
“mirror the imperial hegemony of the first world while
simultaneouslydenouncingit. Byrefusingto enter intoa relationship
with what they describe, by refusing to lose themselves in the
unknownand let themselvesbe changed,theydenydifferencesand
the evolutionof a hybriddiscourse.”?
Travelin the twentieth century thus comes through an amazing
variety of ways such as diaspora, migration, exile, excursion and
exploration and there is rich literature in each of these categories.
One of the significantmanifestationsof travelin this sense is travel
account bywomen. Followingthe theoreticalformulationsof Mary
LouisePratt and SaraMills,womencriticslikeMargaretMacmillan,
Indira Ghose, and Indrani Sen have criticallystudied the women
travel writers of the Raj. They argue that colonial space was a
gendered terrain. They explore the interface between colonialism
and gender representation.This isa newand fruitfularea of enquiry
 INTRODUCTION

that opens up newer avenues of research into travel writing from

the woman’s point of view.
Another interesting dimension of travel in the twentieth century
has been with regard to the issue of faith or pilgrimage. We see in
this context travel accounts of writers like Paul Brunton and Sister
Nivedita. To what extent their sympathetic narratives of India were
free from the colonial bias is a matter for debate and exploration:

That travel writing is more than‘a geographicalaccount, local

colour, spirit of place, or depiction of manners and morals, and is
actually a form of a memoir, an autobiography, dates back to
Emersonand Thoreau, ifnot to the earliermasters.What isradically
new is perhaps the perception that travel books map out the
territories of the mind, definecontoursof nationsand communities,
and determine forms of culturaland politicalrepresentations.They
mediate across disciplinary boundaries and knowledge systems.
Thus, while the earlier approaches retain their charm and validity,
the newer ones pose challengesto our earlier paradigms. Properly
handled, they illuminateour understandingof societyand culture.

II
This volume is based on the assumption that travel writing’s
intersection with the empire, especially during the nineteenth
century, ends in a unique configuration.Travelnarrativesespecially
in the postcolonial context often become self-assuringexercises, a
site for the collisionand contestation of cultures, and for the natives
the internalization of their subject status. India has beena particular
site for this kind ofwriting. Recent developmentsin theory havealso
made travel writing a more fruitful area in cultural study. Viewed
from this angle, many travelbooks seem to show an enigmatic mix
of conflicting drives. William Dalrymple’s well known novel The
WhiteMughalsprovidesan interestingexampleofsucha cultural mix.
The main focus of this study is the Indo-British cultural encounter

xvi
 INTRODUCTION

through the mode of travel, although there is a comparative

perspectivefromPersiaaswell.
The volumeattempts to bring togethera set of reflectiveessays
that straddle many disciplinesand newlyemerging areas of study
such as colonial discourse, gender, and postcolonial studies. It
contains ten chapters, all of which are focussed on the imperial
dimension of travel writing. While the introduction believesthat
travelis not alwaysforedoomed to a colonialgazeand can aspire to
lookbeyondthe imperialeye,thecontributorsto thevolumenegotiate
and answer this question in variedways.
“TravelWritingand BritishStudies”by SusanBassnett,explains
the primaryreasonsas to whytravelwritinghas come centre stage
today.Thisessay,it maybesaid,offersa rationaleforthe preparation
ofthisvolume.Astheopeningchapter,it unveilsexcitingpossibilities
latent in the emergingdisciplineof travelwritingas a genre.
In the next chapter, “Hajji Baba:IdeologicalBasisof the Persian
Picaro,”PallaviPanditLaisramexaminesnineteenthcentury European
construction of Persiathrougha specific novel with a travel motif.
There is a rich understanding here of the Islamicworld vis&visthe
Western perceptions of the Middle East. FollowingSusanBassnett’s
excellent introduction to the theme of travel, as a corollary, this
essay offers an important comparative perspective regarding the
colonial gaze of the Orient as manifest in Western travel accounts
of Persia.
Continuingthe theme of Westerntravelaccounts,albeit of a
radicallydifferentkind,“PorousBoundariesandCulturalCrossover:
FannyParkesand‘GoingNative”bytheBritishtravelwriterWilliam
Dalrymple,underlineshybriditiesandmixedmotivesthatcharacterize
some of the Indo-Britishencounters.Dalrymplearguesthat the
earlierinteractionsbetweenthe Britishand the nativeIndians,as
recordedin travelaccountsbyFannyParkes,prior to 1857,suggest
agreaterminglingininterracialterms.Thisaccountisinrefreshing
 INTRODUCTION

contrast to someof the recent postcolonialthinkingthat suggestsa

morerigidboundarylinebetweenthecolonialrulersandthe natives.
An important dimension of the colonial rule in India was the
British Prison system or remote islands such as the Andamans,
known as Kala pani that acted as penitentiaries. “Colonialism,
Surveillance and Memoirs of Travel: Tegart’s Diaries and the
Andaman Cellular Jail” by Tutun Mukherjee relates memoirs of
British functionaries with colonial incarcerations. It specificallylooks
at a very interesting dimension of the machinery of the colonial
state. Thereby, the chapter promotes the discourse on colonial travel
in India.
In continuationofthe samethemewitha differentsubjectmatter,
“Propagandaas Travelogue:A Studyof KatherineMayo’sMother
India”by MohammedZaheer Basha,makesa freshassessmentof
MotherIndia,earliercastigatedbyM KGandhi.This book,we may
recall, became a powerful instrument for the national freedom
struggle.It isa critiqueofMayothatcontinuesthetraditionalreading
of the text.
The following chapter, “Constitutive Contradiction: Travel Writing
and Construction of Native Women in Colonial India” by Sindhu
Menon reveals a new dimension to the colonial travel. It offers an
admirable interface between travel literature and gender studies. It
suggests that Western “male travellers often give lyrical accounts of
the appearance and appeal of the: Indian women.”
Takingthe discussionto a hitherto unexplored area, Pramod K
Nayar’s “Touring Aesthetics: The Colonial Rhetoric of Travel
Brochures Today,”shows the texts of travel brochures in India
containingcolonialrhetoric. It adoptsa “literaryapproach”locating
certain tropologicalfeatures in them. It concludes that the tourist
brochures create “both a shikari(hunter) and an aesthete in its
tourist.” This chapter dealswith an important aspectof the popular
sub-culture in India from the point of viewof colonialtravel.

xix
 INTRODUCTION

In recent years, new and fruitful research has been carried out
in the field of regional literature and culture in India. In “Empire
Writes Back? Kannada Travel Fiction and Nationalist Discourse” by
V B Tharakeshwar, we see a fresh dimension that links travel writing
with nationalist discourse, especially in Karnataka. It attempts to
explore: “the process of the formation of a nationalist identity
through travels as witnessed in the Kannada travelogues and also
in Kannada fiction where travel is major component.” This is an
area that is currently under debate in many social scientific
disciplines.
A fascinatingbut little knownaspect of colonialtravelhas been
recordedbythosewhovisitedthe courtsof kingsand nawabsduring
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. “Hyderabad Through
Foreign Eyes”by Narendra Luther, is an emblematic account of
the seat of the Deccanas seen through the eyesof foreigners.
The essays, logically connected, thus deal with the interface
between the travel narrative and the empire. They speak in many
voices and assume many positionalities, That the empire is aliveand
well despite: political emancipation of the former colonies, is an
unstated assumption of postcolonial thinking. And yet, it seems to
me that travelnarrativescanovercome the Manichean divide between
cultures and establishbondingsacross politicalfrontiers,

Notes

1 For an,excellent record of cultural travel from ancient times to AD 1600, see J
G Links, Travellersin Europe:PrivateRecordsof the Greatand the Forgotten,(London:
Bodleyhead, 1990),
zZ PaulFussell,Abroad:BritishLiteraryTravelling
betweentheWars,(NewYork:Oxford
UniversityPress, 1980),
3... Joan PaoRubies,TravelandEthnology in theRenaissance,
(Cambridge:Cambridge
UniversityPress, 2000),
4 Dilip Menon, “Travelleras Historian” TheHindu, SundayLiteraryReview,2"!
September, 2001. MinHt |
 INTRODUCTION

Mary Louise Pratt, ImperialEyes:TravelWritingand Transculturation,(London:

Routledge, 1992).
As is well known, Edward Said’s Orientalism(1978), provides an early account
of the collusion between cultural travel and colonialism, especially in the Near
East. Similarly,European male erotica of vacation cruises in Tangiers,Casablanca
or Cairo betrays insistent undertones of the exotic and the unbridled (at times
forbidden) sexuality. Another mode of appropriation.
For a related treatment of the same issue, please see my book, In Searchof
Wonder:UnderstandingCulturalExchange,(New Delhi: Vision Books, 1997).
Ketaki Dyson, A VariousUniverse:TheJournals and Memoriesof BritishMen and
Womenin the Indian Subcontinent,1765-1856, (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1978).
llija Trojanow,“Imperial Politicsin the ProgressiveGaze,” TheHindu, Literary
Supplement, 2™December, 2001.

References

Fussell, Paul, Abroad:BritishLiteraryTravelling

betweenthe Wars,(New York:Oxford
University Press), 1980.
Ghose, Indira, ed, MemsahibsAbroad:Writingsby WomenTravellers in Nineteenth
CenturyIndia, (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988).
Dyson, Ketaki, A VariousUniverse:TheJournals and Memoriesof BritishMen and
Womenin the Indian Subcontinent,1765-1856, (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1978).
Menon, Dilip, “Travelleras Historian,” TheHindu,SundayLiteraryReview,oe
Septemeber, 2001.
Mills,Sara,Discourses
ofDifference:
AnAnalysisofWomen’s
TravelWriting
andColonialism,
(London: Routledge, 1993).
Mohanty, Sachidananda, In Searchof Wonder:UnderstandingCultural Exchange,
(New Delhi: Vision Books, 1997). ,
Pratt, Mary Louise, ImperialEyes:TravelWritingand Transculturation,
(London:
Routledge, 1992).
Rubies,Joan Pao, Traveland Ethnologyin theRenaissance,
(Cambridge:Cambridge
University Press, 2000).
Sontag, Susan, “The Anthropologist as Hero,” in AgainstInterpretationand other
Essays,(New York: Dell, 1978).
Trojanow,Ilija, “Imperial Politics in the ProgressiveGaze,” TheHindu, Literary
Supplement,2"' December, 2001.

XXi
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THE EMPIRE, TRAVEL WRITING, AND BRITISH STUDIES
SUSAN BASSNETT

here is great interest in travel writing at the present time.

Bookshops have whole sections devoted to the genre; new
journals have emerged in the 1990s, and the names of diverse
generations of travel writers such as Geoffrey Moorhouse, Eric
Newby,Colin Thubron or Dervia Murphy,and evenyounger writers
such as Bill Bryson, Nick Danziger or William Dalrymple are
regularly seen in British bestseller lists. Clearly,there is ademand
for their kind of writing, though it is important to note that the
demand is relativelylocalized; the great interest in travel writing is
predominantly a British phenomenon, not even an Englishlanguage
phenomenon. The very category of travel writing is not universal,
and there are many literary systems that do not distinguish travel
writing as a distinctive form at all.
However,there iscurrentlygreat interest in studyingtravelwriting,
and this interest is not so localized. One of the key figures in this
field, the Canadian Mary Louise Pratt, points out in the Preface to
 THE EMPIRE, TRAVEL WRITING, AND BRITISH STUDIES

her seminal book, ImperialEyes,that she taught a course on travel

writing and European expansion at Stanford as long ago as 1978.
As the title of Pratt’s book suggests,there is a direct link between
travelwritingand the historyof imperialismand colonization.Hence
the interestin thispostcolonialmoment in examiningthe implications
of texts produced by travellersfrom the initial period of European
voyagesof discovery.
The purpose of this essay, however, is to consider aspects of
travelwriting within the expanding fieldof British Studies. Keyissues
significantto both these interdisciplines include the problematics of
defining travelwriting as a genre, of tracing its origins, of considering
who writes it and why,who reads it and why it should emerge as a
popular form at certain significantmoments in time. Perhaps, more
fundamentally, it is important to ask, within the context of British
Studies, what travel writing can tell us about how one culture
constructs its image of other cultures.

LiteraryTravel
Pratt argues that travel writing is intrinsically linked to the
processesof colonization.Still, it is important not to lose sight of
the fact that travel writing has a long history, as does the use of
travel as a literary device. The metaphor of the journey that
represents the passage through life is firmly established in the
literatures of many cultures around the world. Dante Alighieri’s
greatjourney through Hell, Purgatoryand Paradisein his TheDivine
Comedy beginswith the famousimageof being lost in a dark wood
midway through his life. This is a familiar image in Jungian
psychology—the traveller,i.e., Everyman,who loses his Wayat a
certain point in his existenceand has to be shown the true path to
enlightenment. It cannot be accidental that the great cycles of
European medievalpoetry all concern travel —the journeying of
Orlando and his fellowknights,the quests of KingArthur and the
 SUSAN BASSNETT

denizens of Camelot, the great seafaring journeys of the Norse

sagamen.
The popularity of this trope reflectsthe processesof movement
and changein feudal,pre-urban societies.It is significantthat once
the processesof urbanizationbegan, the quest theme lost much of
its appeal. It is also interesting that at the point when European
societywas changinginto a more recognizableshape for us today,
in what we maylooselyterm the EarlyModern period, a great deal
of energy and interest was going into expansion outside the
boundaries of Europe. The great cycles of heroic questing were
accompanied, in the later stages, by the journeys of Henry the
Navigator,and by an unprecedented fascinationfor map-making,
and for improvingthe scientificdevicesrequired to undertake long-
distance travel. Bythe sixteenth century, the wanderingknight, on
his eternal quest through the forests, was replaced in popular
imagination by the seafarer,bringing back strange treasures from
unknown lands beyond the horizon.
Struggling to find a languagewith which to describe what they
saw,travellersoften borrowed from the romancestheywere familiar
with. Hence the extraordinary accounts that came back with the
ship—accountsof amazingcreatureswith severalheads,superhuman
strength, astonishingcolours,and unbelievableeatinghabits.Gabriel
Garcia Marquez, in his Nobel Prize address in 1982, pointed out
how the fantasticaldepictionsof the Americasby European travellers
created an idea of a continent fullof marvels and bizarre realities, a
perception that continues to the present day,and which, he argues,
is all too often detrimental.
Describingand categorizingthings that were seen for the first
time was, in the earlyyearsof the voyages,unscientificas theywere
inspiredbythe romancesthatwerethe equivalentsofpopularfiction.
The letters of Columbus, for example, are full of references to
being on the brink of discoveringthe extraterrestrial lands. In the
THE EMPIRE, TRAVEL WRITING, AND BRITISH STUDIES

accountof histhird voyagein 1498,he writes:“Thereare powerful

signsof the presenceof the earthlyParadise,for the place accords
with the opinionsof those holyand sacredtheologians”!
Alongside what might be termed the fantastical realism of
travellers’ tales, there is another powerful literary tradition —the
use of the travel account for satirical purposes. In this tradition, a
fictitious traveller is created who comments on the places he visits
from a naive perspective. Goldsmith’s Chinese traveller to England
in Citizenof the World,or Swift’s Gulliver, in different ways criticize
their own English society. Likewise, Defoe’s Moll Flanders can be
seen as a character whose experiences givethe author an opportunity
to make critical comments on his own society.
The use that satirists have made of the travellers’ tale reminds us
of Plato, who was not in favour of travel at all because he felt that it
could be a threat to his own culture. Only trustworthy elderly men,
according to Plato, should be allowed to travel, and even then, their
accounts should be carefully scrutinized by the authorities. The
contrast that travel accounts can offer between what are the norms
at home and alternative norms can be potentially very subversive
indeed.

Travelas Tourismand Diplomacy

In the latter part of theeighteenthcentury,the emergent middle
classesbegan to engagein the newlypopular pursuit that has since
become part of common life experience in the West —tourism.
The phenomenon of the Grand Tour, with which we are all so
familiar,when young men (and later women too) were sent on an
educational tour of Europe, became increasinglypopular. Roger
Hudson, in hisentertainingbook TheGrandTour, 1592-1796,points
out that the dreadful state of Englishuniversitieswas a significant
factorin the initialphaseof popularizingforeigntravelsince fathers
preferred to spend their money sending their sons abroad. One
 SUSAN BASSNETT

exampleof the dreadfulstateof Britishuniversitiesmaybe found in

1733, when Christ’s College Cambridge admitted only three
students.
Edward Gibbon defined the ideal traveller of 1763 as follows:

He should be endowed with an active, indefatigablevigour of

mind and body, which can seize every mode of conveyance
and support with a careless smile every hardship of the road,
the weather or the inn. I must stimulate him with a restless
curiosity, impatient of ease, covetous of time and fearless of
danger ... with a copious stock of classical and historical
learning, my traveller must blend the practical knowledge of
husbandry and manufactures; he should be a chemist, a
botanist, and a master of mechanics. A musical ear will
multiply the pleasures of his Italian tour; but a correct and
exquisite eye, which commands the landscape of a country,
discerns the merits ofa picture and measures the proportions
ofa building is more closelyconnected with the finer feelings
of the mind ...

Such exaggeratedlyhigh-blownexpectationswere predictably

satirized by eighteenth century writers who saw reality rather
differently.AlexanderPope,in TheDunciad,drew a portrait of the
youngEnglishtravelleras a stupid,drunken, self-indulgentwastrel
learningnothingexceptthe latesthit-song,a visionthat wouldnot
be out of placetodaywhenrecallingsomeof the Englishtouristson
the Costa Brava.
Tourism, of course, was not confined to Europe, and soon
extendedeastward.It wasat thispoint,withthe burgeoningindustry
of guidebook production, dictionaries and phrase books for the
tourist trade, that the literary traditions of travel accounts
convergedwith another, completelyseparate tradition —the travel
accounts produced for officialpurposes, the letters and reports
THE EMPIRE, TRAVEL WRITING, AND BRITISH STUDIES

fromgovernmentofficials,ambassadors,trade delegates,military
figures.
Familiar early texts include the accounts of Suetonius, Roman
commander in Britain in 61 AD, who later became the first Roman
to cross the Atlas Mountains; Othere and Wulfstan, reporting back
to King Alfred; Marco Polo; Friar Odoric, who travelled through
Asia for fourteen years in the early fourteenth century; Ambassador
Clavijo, the Spanish envoy to the court of Tamberlaine the Great.
These accounts were written for a specific purpose, that of
transmitting useful information to the home culture, and they contain
a great deal of detail. Here, for example, is an extract from the
account of a journey to the court of Kuyuk Khan undertaken in
1245-47 by Friar John of Pian de Carpini:

The Mongols,or Tartars,in outward shape,are unlike to all

other people. For theyare broader betweenthe eyesand the
ballsof their cheeks,than men of other nations. They have
flatand smallnoses,little eyesand eyelidsstandingstraight
upright,theyareshavenon the crownslikepriests,Theywear
their hair somewhatlonger about the ears than upon their
foreheads;but behindtheylet itgrowlonglikewomen’shair,
whichtheybraidintotwolocks,bindingeachofthem behind
either ear. They have short feet also.’

His account is full of this kind of minute anthropological detail,

carefully noting the customs, appearance, eating habits and social
rituals of the people he encountered. It is obvious that this kind of
text is target-focussed. There is a clear purpose in producing such
an account. In the firstplace, it isbeingwritten for someone specific,
and so a perspective on the lands and people visited by the writer is
synthesized into an accessible form. The writer acts as a kind of
translator, reading the signs he encounters on his journey and
endeavouring to translate them for his target reader. Indeed, it is
 SUSAN BASSNETT

helpful to think of travel writing as closely linked to translation, for

a similar relationship obtains in that there are two distinct poles —
the culture of the writer and the culture that is depicted, and only
the writer has access to both. The reader has to take on trust the
_ version presented, becauseonly the travellerhas first-hand experience
of what is being described, just as the translator alone has first-
hand knowledge of the source knowledge.Moreover,likea translator,
the travel writer is creating a text for consumption by readers at
home, and in consequence, a study of the kind of writing that
becomes popular at different moments in time can tell us a great
deal about that particular culture. For instance, we can learn a lot
about Britain by reading accounts of foreigners produced by British
travellers.

TheVeracity
ofTravel
Accounts
From this briefest of sketches of the diachronics of European
travel writing, it is apparent that there are all kinds of literary
conventions involvingtravel, both literal and metaphorical. There is
also a strong element of fantasy,and a whole line of travel writing
that is premised on the fantastical —from Coleridge’s Ancient
Mariner to Star Trek or the intergalactic journeyings of the
protagonists of novels by Ursula Le Guin or Doris Lessing.
Travel accounts as literature are enormously varied, and offer a
rich field of study. On the other hand, there is travel writing that
purports to offer first-hand truthful accounts of other cultures,
and is premised ona principle of veracity. The texts mentioned so
far in this category are those that were specially commissioned for
specific purposes. But as has also been suggested, particularly in
respect of the accounts of early travellers to the Americas, the line
between the fictitious and the factual is difficult to define. In other
words, travel writing faces the reader head on with the problem of
boundaries.
 THE EMPIRE, TRAVEL WRITING, AND BRITISH STUDIES

Thismay,in part, explainsomethingof the fascinationthat travel

writingasa distinctgenreiscurrentlyexercisingin Britain,a society
characterizedbyenormouschangesthat involveredefiningallkinds
of boundaries, from devolutionon the politicallevelto redefining
parameters of spirituality.Britishsocietyis becomingincreasingly
multi-ethnic, thereby creating a new space in which to model
appropriate new rituals. The old boundaries have no validityin a
changed socialenvironment,and out of this sense of uncertainty
comesan interest in booksthat provideaccountsof other cultures,
books that focusupon difference.
It cannot be accidental that the previous great age of travel writing
was the nineteenth century, the period when Britain was the greatest
power in the world, both economically and politically, seeing itself
as the hub of a great empire that stretched around the world. In
this present moment, when Britain is undergoing radical
transformations, of which the most emblematic is Scottish and Welsh
devolution, there is a vogue for a certain kind of travel writing that
is unprecedented in this century. What can be deduced from this is
that in times of great change, people look comparatively at their
own culture, seeking to explore alternative models, and at the same
time, taking an interest in books that offer alternative perspectives
on the familiar. Such a model is familiar to us from Translation
Studies, where Polysystems theorists have shown that translation
activity is at its highest when cultures are hea: radical periods
of social and political change.
Mary Louise Pratt uses the term “contact zone” to refer to what
she calls the space of colonial encounters, “in which people
geographically and historically separated come into contact with
each other and establish ongoing relations.”* However, she sees
this contact zone not as a neutral space but as a space charged with
conflict, both actual and potential. For, as Edward Said points out
in his Orientalism, there is an intrinsic power relationship in the
 SUSAN BASSNETT

writingof accountsofother cultures.Said’sfocusison

those writers
who write about the Orient, but his assumptionscan be applied to
travel writing more generally.The Orientalist, says Said, “writes
about something,”in contrast to the Oriental who iswritten about.
The one becomesthe objectof the other’sstudy,and in consequence
is placed in a passiverole. Saidviewsthis difference as disturbing
becauseit impliesan inequalityin the relationshipbetweenobserver
and observed:

The Oriental is given as fixed, stable, in need of investigation,

in need even of knowledge about himself. No dialectic iseither
desired or allowed. There is a source of information (the
Oriental) and a source of knowledge (the Orientalist), In
short, a writer and a subject matter otherwise inert.”

Orientals and their culture are, therefore, packaged for

consumption by Western readers. Moreover, the underlying
assumption is that the presentation of the Oriental (or perhaps we
should simplysay,the Other) is that of negativecomparison between
the civilizedtraveller (and by implication, the civilizedreaders for
whom he/she iswriting) and the uncivilizedinhabitants of the home
culture.
This contrast between civilizedand uncivilized,which obviously
leads to an unequal relationship in the depiction of the Other, is
premised upon the idea of the fixityof the subject. The starting
point for an account of something that has been observed is, as
David Spurr (1993) points out, looking.Visualobservation is the
keyand the point ofdeparture simultaneously.Butvisualobservation
is subjective.And here we come to the nub of the problem, for
travel writing is a discourse that is premised upon objective
representation of another reality,even though that representation
cannot be subjective. In an essay on two travel writers of the
seventeenthand eighteenth centuries, Stephen Banndiscussesthe
 THE EMPIRE, TRAVEL WRITING, AND BRITISH STUDIES

viewof LouisMarin that the ideologyof travelimpliesa departure

from one placeanda return to the same place enriched with “the
booty of knowledge.”How can the traveller return to the same
place, Bannasks,sincenot onlyis there a time lapse (and although
not all travellersare awayfor more than a dozenyears,all are away
for sometime), but the veryexperienceof travellingwillalsochange
the individual.The traveller,then, experiencesthings that change
his/her lifeand alter his/her relationshipwith his/her own culture.

Questions
ofIdentity
Travelalsoinvolvesissuesof identity.Sometimes,it eveninvolves
transformationsof identity,assomeof the extraordinaryexamples
_of many women travellersof the nineteenth century and early
twentiethcentury appearto confirm. IsabellaBird,whojourneyed
throughsomeof the most hostileregionsof the world and recounts
hardships that appear barely imaginable,was a semi-invalidwho
began her travelsas a result of medical advice. Havingcared for
aged parents until the age of forty,she was diagnosedas suffering
froma debilitatingspinalcomplaint,acuteinsomnia,and depression.
Thesephysicaldifficultiesdid not stopher fromtravellingto Hawaii,
Japan, China, Tibet, Kurdistanand the RockyMountains, where
she appearedto enjoynot onlygood healthbut extreme fitnessand
resilience.®
Similarly,Mary Kingsleyleda life of dull domesticityat home
nursing her invalid mother and sickly younger brother. Then
suddenly,she found herselfalone after her parents’death, and at
the ageof thirtywentoffto WestAfrica,trekkingthroughuncharted
junglesin hercorsets,andconsequentlywrotetwobest-sellingbooks
on her scientificexpeditions.
These two cases involve dramatic shifts of identity for, in each
case, the woman at home appears barely recognizable as the woman _.
abroad.It ishardlysurprisingthatthereisagrowingbodyofresearch

10
 SUSAN BASSNETT

into women travellers, for the gap between their achievements

overseas and their expectations and lives at home is enormous.
Travel, in many cases, appears to have provided the space necessary
for them to assert themselves, a space denied to them within the
conventions of their upbringing in British society.
It also seems to have enabled some women to realize their own
sexualityin waysthat wouldhavebeen unthinkableat home. Margaret
Fountaine (1862-1940), for example,travelledthe world for twenty-
fiveyears with her Syrianlover,KhalilNeimy,each equipped with a
bicycle and a butterfly net. Her diaries have only recently been
edited and published, but the combination of scientificrigour and
open expression of desire is extraordinary,a far cry from the image
of the Angel in the House, the model for Victorian womanhood.

WritingtheSelf
Travel writing also comes close to autobiography. William
Kinglake,author of one of the classicnineteenth century travel
texts, Eothen,is quite explicitabout howthe text is a product of the
writer’ssubjectivity.ForKinglake,the taskisto balanceone’spersonal
impressionsand feelingswith the responsibilityof the writer to give
what he callssome “true ideas”of the country through whichone
passes. He defines his traveller in the following terms:

His very selfishness—his habit of referring the whole external

world to his own sensations, compels him, as it were, in his
writings, to observe the laws of perspective; he tells you of
objects, not as he knows them to be, but as they seemed to
him. The people, and the things that most concern him
personally, however mean and insignificant, take large
proportions in his picture because they stand so near to him.
He shows you his Dragoman, and the gaunt features of his
Arabs, his tent, his kneeling camels, his baggagestrewn upon
the sand; but the proper wonders of the land —the cities, the
 THE EMPIRE, TRAVEL WRITING, AND BRITISH STUDIES

mightyruinsandmonumentsofbygoneages,he throwsback
faintlyinto the distance ... Youmay listen to him forever
without learningmuch in the wayof Statistics;but perhaps
if you bear with him long enough, you may find yourself
slowlyand faintlyimpressedwith the realities of Eastern
Travel.’

Kinglake is talking about himself here, of course, and if we start

to compare different travel writers, what is apparent straight away
is not the homogeneity of the genre but the enormous difference
between writers. These differences have not yet been adequately
analyzed,and this is another rich area for future research. Obviously
there are stylisticdifferences,differencesof tone, different emphases,
et cetera, and there are also differences conditioned by the initial
targeting of the work. For, even as we talk about “travel writing,”
we are on very slippery ground. What makes Kinglake’s book
significantis that it isan earlyexample of non-scientific travelwriting,
and it was a bestseller. AsJan Morris points out in her introduction
to the 1982 reprint:

Its effect upon the art of travel writing has been profound,
and its influences may be traced down the generations from
Robert Curzon’s Monasteriesof the Levant (1849) to Robert
Byron’s Roadto Oxiana(1937) or PaulTheroux’s GreatRailway
Bazaar (1975).8

The Kinglake of the end of the twentieth century may well be

Bill Bryson. His books are hugely successful, and his Notes Froma
Small Island stayed on the bestseller lists in Britain for over two
years. The opening paragraph of this highly personal comic account
of an American’s perception of England, from the 1970s to the
1990s, sets the tone for the rest of the book:

MyfirstsightofEnglandwason a foggyMarchnightin 1973

whenI arrivedonthemidnightferryfromCalais.Fortwenty
12
 SUSAN BASSNETT

minutes, the terminal area was aswarm with activity as cars

and lorries poured forth, customs people did their duties and
everyone made for the London road. Then abruptly all was
silence and I wandered through sleeping, low-lit streets
threaded with fog, just like in aBulldog Drummond movie.
It wasrather wonderfulhavingan Englishtownallto myself.
Theonlymildlydismaying
thingwasthatallthehotelsand
guesthouses
appearedto beshutupforthenight.”
Bryson’stechnique is to use very simple sentence structures,
constantlydemolishinganyhints of literariness.The lyricismof the
fictitious image of foggyEnglandis immediatelyundercut by the
realizationthat he isn’tgoingto findanywhereto sleep. He depicts
himselfasa sentimentaltravellerof the modern age,rather slowon
the uptake, and as an idealistwho strivesto hold onto his illusions
regardless.Pokingfun at the strangenessof Englishinstitutionsand
practices, appalling food and amateurishness, he nevertheless
concludes his journey with a hymn of praise for the country he
chose to settle down in:

What other country, after all, could possiblyhavecome up

with names likeTootingBedand FarleighWallop,or a game
like cricket that goes on for three days and never seems to
start? Who elsewould think it not the least bit odd to make
judges wear little mops on their heads, compel the Speaker
of the House of Commons to sit on something called the
Woolsack,or take pride in a military hero whose dyingwish
wasto be kissedbya fellownamedHardy?"
Brysonwrites not so much aboutthe Englishasfor the English.
His book is not an attempt to provide armchair travellers with
accountsof distant placesthat they mightaspireto visit,but rather
to bolster their confidencein what they havecloseat hand. Hence
 THE EMPIRE, TRAVEL WRITING, AND BRITISH STUDIES

the interesting moveback acrossthe Atlantic. Bryson is an outsider

who has double vision;havinglived in England for so many years,
he can shift between the perspectiveof foreigner and native.This is
the quality that makes his work so appealing to large numbers of
readers. It couldbe arguedthat he writesfrom a position of immense
flexibility,and that at this point in time, in Britain, flexibility is
perceived as a virtue. He playswith stereotypes of Englishness,but
ultimately
deconstructs
them.

FantasiesofEmpire
Bill Bryson is one of many bestsellingtravel writers in Britain
today,though significantly,he writes about familiarlandscapesand
societies.Other writers chooselesswellknown regions,and one in
particular stands out as exerting a particular fascinationfor British
readers of the 1990s—CentralAsia.Writers of severalgenerations,
from GeoffreyMoorhouse, Colin Thubron and Peter Hopkirk to
NickDanzigerandGilesWhittellhavewrittenhighlysuccessfulbooks
about this part of the world. CentralAsiaappears to be the locusof
fantasyfor many travellers,and the fantasyis directly linked to its
nineteenth century imperial history. It is an area without clearly
definedborders or frontiers,other than those created bygeography,
an area that has constantlybeen overrun by invadinghordes, both
from the West (the Greeks reached what is now Afghanistan)and
from the East.It isan areawhere religions,languages,ethnic groups
of various kinds have met, clashed, mingled or moved on. It
represents the outer limits of the West, and from the opposite
perspective,the outer limits of the East. The inhospitable climate
and geographymean that traditionally,populationshavebeen either
nomadic or very isolated, with communication routes absolutely
fundamental to their existence, but difficult to traverse. It is the
territory throughwhichthe SilkRoadpassed,and in the nineteenth
century —when the British establishedthemselvesfirmly in India

14
 SUSAN BASSNETT

and the Russians began to seek access to all-year ports —it was the
territory across which the Great Game was played out. And, at the
end of the twentieth century, there was a revival of interest in the
territories of the Great Game (Dalrymple 1990; Glazebrook 1992;
Hopkirk 1993; Hopkirk 1990, 1996; Moorhouse 1990; Thubron
1994; Whittell 1995).
One obvious explanation for the number of books written about
Central Asia derives from political changes in the region, which
have meant that it is easier for travellers to get into what Danziger
has termed the “forbidden zones.” But this is by no means the
whole story. Although one aspect of these books is the provision of
first-hand information on areas previously difficult to access, it is
obvious from the structure of the texts themselves that the authors
are seeking to represent themselves as the continuation of the line
of nineteenth century travellers to the region. The fascination with
Central Asia could therefore arguably be an expression of nostalgia
for a lost era, for the end of the Empire, so that in writing about
seemingly distant territories, the authors are actually writing about
England and her history. The elegiac note in many of the books
about Central Asia and the incessant recall of the real and fictitious
heroes of the Great Game —Connollyand Stoddart, Bukhara Barnes,
Kim, Francis Younghusband —reminds readers that the writers are
not just travelling in post-Soviet territories, they are travelling in
zones that were once crucial to the British imperial design. Basically,
most of these books are adventure stories, and the proliferation of
dialogue in them reinforces this view.They are travel books written
like novels, full of characters —the ghastly Rosa, Professor at the
Academy of Sciences in Kara Kum, who drags Giles Whittell to a
dance wearing a diaphanous sixty-fivedollar pink suit from Sears in
Dayton, Ohio, with matching pink stilettos; the obstructive guides
and waiters whom Geoffrey Moorhouse meets in Uzbekistan; Safar
who tries laconically to help Colin Thubron find the site ofa recent

15
THE EMPIRE, TRAVEL WRITING, AND BRITISH STUDIES

Turcoman massacre; the Iranian policeman who helps William

Dalrympleonlyafterhehas,indesperation,producedhisCambridge
Universitycard as a form of identification;or the Tibetan who
offers Nick Danziger hospitality.One extract from the dialogue
betweenDanzigerand the Tibetanservesto illustratethe pace and
styleof these adventurenarratives:
Our diet on this side trip was limited. Normally, I would
happily eat dry raw yak meat, but on one occasion I hesitated.
In fact, my stomach turned, for I was offered some really
ancient meat, covered with a patina of dust and grime. It
lookedas if it had been festeringin a cupboardfor years.
“Howold mightthis be?” I askedtactfully,as one enquiring
about the vintage of a wine.

The questionpleasedthe Tibetan. “1983,” he saidproudly.

“1983?”Horrified!
“November.” A true connoisseur.

There was no answer to that. I ate it. I must admit that it

tasted just like what it was —vintage, raw yak meat. Dried. I

felt that it was evena good year,and a good month"!

The ghosts of Sterne and Thackeray and Dickens and Evelyn
Waugh haunt many travel writers writing today. Yet these were
primarily novelists, while travel writers claim not to be writing
fiction, but to be writing truthful accounts of their travels. In
other words, the travel writer claims to occupy a position
somewhere between that of a journalist and biographer. It is here
that the greatest paradox of much contemporary travel writing
resides. For while on the one hand, we have the convention of the
reporting journalist/author who “tells it like it is,” on the other
hand we havethe obviousmanipulation of material for the delight

16
 SUSAN BASSNETT

of the readers. One of the most basicexamplesof the manipulation

is the way in which so many travel writers, despite crossing
countless linguistic boundaries and their self-confessed
monolingualismor smatteringof one or two languages,nevertheless
manage to report lengthy conversations with peasants in the
mountains or camel drivers or children from Herat to Kashgar.
The moment we pause to ask ourselves in what language might
this or that conversation have taken place, we know that we are
no longer reading “truthful” accounts, but have stepped across
into the realms of fiction.

BritishStudiesand TravelWriting
The study of travel writing deserves to occupy an important
place in British Studies for anumber of reasons. The very fact of so
many travelaccounts beingwritten for consumption by Britishreaders
from the late eighteenth century to the present deserves our
attention. Travelwriting, like detective fiction that emerges along a
parallel track in roughly the same historical moment, appears to be
particularly important to British readers. Both genres involve the
reader in a process of hermeneutic exploration, and the question
needs to be asked as to why this should be so appealing to British
readers and writers.
It is also the case that travel writing relies heavilyon stereotypes.
The study of stereotypes is central to any form of Area Studies, and
again, this is a rich field to explore. The stereotype relies upon a
relationship between the Insider and the Other. Understanding the
origins of such relationships and the ways in which they continue to
dominate is vital in any form of intercultural work. The ways in
which travel writers construct images of otherness for a particular
readership at a given moment in time need to be mapped out and
analyzed.
It would also be important to investigatethe differences between

17
 THE EMPIRE, TRAVEL WRITING, AND BRITISH STUDIES

styles of travel writing in a diachronic continuum. How great is

the contrast between the colonial and post-colonial travel writing
traditions, for example? To what extent, we might ask, are the
supposedly comic travel books such as those by Nick Danziger or
Redmond O’Hanlon a departure from or a continuation of an
earlier tradition that does indeed set the culture of readers in a
superior position to that of the culture depicted by the writer?
And if this is the case, does this explain the success of Bill Bryson
in the 1990s, given that whilst his books on the United States and
Britain can be said to place both cultures under scrutiny in a
position of superiority alongside his readers, his book on Europe
is little more than a series of exaggerated, deeply prejudiced,
xenophobic sketches?
A study of the historical antecedents of today’s travel writing
takes us straight into the combined histories of literature on the one
hand and society on the other. Traveltexts provide an immediate
way of accessing a great body of material that might otherwise be
impossibly wide to cover. Significantly, a great many travellers
deliberately follow the path of travellers from previous times, so
there is a strong sense of this kind of writing presenting itselfas part
of a continuity.
The current fascination with the Central Asian regions, a
fascination that has come to the fore in the past decade, provides
one example of how travelwriters are also intrinsicallywriting about
their own culture evenastheypurport to be writingabout somewhere
else. Aboveall, travel writing can tell us about contacts —how they
happen, what takes place in the contact zone. We can learn how
cultures construct their image of other cultures, how that image
changes (or remains constant through time). Whether we approach
the subject from within or without Britain, we will inevitably find
our perspectives forced to move. And once we can begin to look
differently,
wecanbegintochange.

18
 SUSAN BASSNETT

Notes

FelipeFernandez-Armesto,ed, Columbus
onHimself,(London:The FolioSociety,
1992), 162.
Edward Gibbon, in Roger Hudson, ed, The Grand Tour,1592-1796, (London:
The Folio Society, 1993), 16-17.
Manuel Komroff,ed, ContemporariesofMarcoPolo,(Consistingof the travel records
to the Eastern parts of the world of William of Rubruck, 1253-1255; the
journey of John of Pian de Carpini, 1245-1247; and the journal of Friar
Odoric, 1318-1330), (London: Cape, 1929).
Mary Louise Pratt, /mperialEyes:TravelWritingand Transculturation,
(London and
New York: Routledge, 1992), 6.
Edward Said, Orientalism, (New York: Pantheon, 1978), 308.
Isabella Bird, TheYangtzeValleyand Beyond:
AnAccountofJourneysin China,Chiefly
in theProvinceofSzeChuanandAmongtheMan-TzeoftheSomoTerritory,(London:
John Murray, 1879; 1880; 1899).
William Kinglake,Eothen:Tracesof TravelBroughtHomefrom the East, (Oxford:
Oxford UniversityPress, 1982), S.
Jan Morris, in “Preface” to Kinglake,Eothen:TracesofTravelBroughtHomefrom the
East, xiv.
Bill Bryson, Notes From a Small Island, (London and New York: Doubleday,
1995), 1h.
10 Bill Bryson, Notes From a Small Island, 351-352.
11 Nick Danziger,Danziger’sTravels:
BeyondForbidden
Frontiers,(London: Flamingo,
1988), 336.

References

Bann, Stephen, “Travellingto Collect:The Bootyof John Bargraveand Charles

Waterton,” in Robertson et al, 1994, 155-164.
Bassnett, Susan, “Grieving for the Great Game: Loss and Englishness in the
1990s” in FromEmpireto MulticulturalSociety:Culturaland InstitutionalChangesin
"Britain,(Wurzburg:WVT,2000).
Bird, Isabella, ALady’sLifein theRockyMountains,(London:John Murray, 1879).
Bird, Isabella,UnbeatenTracksin Japan: AnAccountof Travelson Horsebackin the
InteriorIncludingVisitsto the Aboriginesof Yezoand the Shrinesof Nikkoand Ise,
(London: John Murray, 1880).
Bird, Isabella,TheYangtzeValley and Beyond:
AnAccountofJourneysin China,Chiefly
in theProvinceofSzeChuanand AmongtheMan-TzeoftheSomoTerritory,(London:
John Murray, 1899).

19
 THE EMPIRE, TRAVEL WRITING, AND BRITISH STUDIES

Clavijo, Embassyto Tamerlaine,1403-1406, Translated by Guy Le Strange,

(London: George Routledgeand Sons, 1928).
Bryson, Bill, NotesFroma SmallIsland, (London and New York: Doubleday,
1995).
Dalrymple, William, In Xanadu:A Quest,(London: Harper Collins, 1990).
Danziger,Nick, Danziger’sTravels:
BeyondForbiddenFrontiers,(London: Flamingo,
1988).
Even-Zohar,Itamar,“The Positionof TranslatedLiterature within the Literary
Polysystem”,in Holmes, Lambertand Vanden Broek, 1978.
Fernandez-Armesto,Felipe,ed, Columbus onHimself,(London:The FolioSociety,
1992).
Fountaine, Margaret, LoveAmongthe Butterflies:The Travelsand Adventures
of a
Victorian
Lady,Edited by WF Cater, (London: Collins, 1980).
Fountaine,Margaret,Butterflies
and LateLovers:
TheFurtherTravels andAdventures,
Edited by WF Cater, (London:Collins, 1986).
Gentzler, Edwin, ContemporaryTranslationTheories,(Clevedon: Multilingual
Matters, 1986).
16 Gibbon, Edward, 1993, in Hudson, The Grand Tour 1592-1796, 16-17.
17 Glazebrook, Philip, Journey to Khiva, (London: Harvill, 1992).
18 Guin, Ursula Le, TheLeftHand of Darkness,(New York:Ace, 1969).
19)
Hakluyt,R,ThePrincipal
Navigations,
Voiages,
Traffiques
andDiscoveries
oftheEnglish
Nation(Vol.1),(London:Dent,1907).
20 Holmes, James S,Jose Lambert and Raymond Vanden Broek, Editors, Literature
and Translation:NewPerspectives,
(Leuven: ACCO, 1978).
21 Hopkirk, Kathleen,ATraveller’s
Companion to CentralAsia,(London:John Murray,
1993).
22 Hopkirk, Peter, TheGreatGame,(London:John Murray, 1990).
23 Hopkirk, Peter,TheQuest
for Kim:In SearchofKipling’sGreatGame,(London:John
Murray, 1996).
24 Hudson, Roger, ed, TheGrandTour 1592-1796, (London: The Folio Society,
1993),
25 Kinglake,William,Eothen:Tracesof TravelBroughtHomefrom the East, (Oxford:
Oxford UniversityPress, 1982).
26
Kingsley,
Mary,Travels
inWest
Africa:
Congo
Frangais,
Corisco
andCameroons,
(London:
Macmillan,1879).
AG
Kingsley,Mary, Wese AfricanStudies,(London: Macmillan,1899).
28 Komroff, Manuel, ed, Contemporaries ofMarcoPolo,(Consisting of the travel
records to the Eastern parts of the world of William of Rubruck, 1253-1255;
the journey ofJohn of Pian de Carpini, 1245-1247; and the journal of Friar
Odoric, 1318-1330), (London: Cape, 1929).
Zo Lessing,Doris, Canopusin Argos:Archives, (London: Cape, 1979-83).

20
 SUSAN BASSNETT

30 Marquez, Gabriel Garcia, “The Solitude of Latin America” (Nobel Address,

1982), in McGuirk and Caldwell, 1987, 201-211.
31 McGuirk, Bernard and Richard Caldwell, eds, GabrielGarciaMarquez:New
Reading,(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
a2 Moorhouse, Geoffrey, Applesin the Snow:A Journey to Samarkand, (London:
Hodder and Stoughton, 1990).
33 Morris, Jan, “Preface,” in Kinglake,1982.
34 Plato, The Republic,Translated by Desmond Lee, (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1974).
35 Polo,Marco, TheTravelsofMarcoPolo,TranslatedbyR E Lathan,(Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1958).
36 Pratt, Mary Louise,ImperialEyes:TravelWritingand Transculturation,
(London and
New York: Routledge, 1992).
37 Robertson, Georgeet al, eds, Travellers’
Tales:Narratives
ofHomeand Ki aireaicnes
(London and New York:Routledge, 1994).
38 Said, Edward, Orientalism, (New York: Pantheon, 1978).
Se Spurr, David, TheRhetoricof Empire:ColonialDiscourseinJournalism,TravelWriting
and ImperialAdministration,(Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993).
40 Suetonius, Historyof the TwelveCaesars(2 volumes), Translated by Phileomon
Holland, (London: David Nutt, 1899).
41 Sweet, Henry, Editor, “The Voyagesof Othere and Wulfstan,” KingAlfred's
Orosius,(London: Early EnglishText Society,1883).
42 Thubron, Colin, The LostHeart of Asia,(London: Heinemann, 1994).
43 Whittell, Giles, ExtremeContinental:BlowingHot and Coldthrough CentralAsia,
(London: Gollancz, 1995).

21
 HAJJI BABA: IDEOLOGICAL BASIS OF THE PERSIAN PICARO

PALLAVI PANDIT LAISRAM

nglo-Persianinteraction in the nineteenth century resulted ina

gr number of texts on Persia:the most famousof these was
James Morier’s “best-seller,”TheAdventures ofHajjiBabaofIspahan
(1824). This fastpacedpicaresquenovel/travelaccount merits close
scrutiny in the lightof our current knowledgeabout the discourses
of power, particularly Orientalist discourse. Like many other
nineteenth century accounts of the Orient, Hajji Babadisplays a
binaryviewoftheworld:“good”isWesternand Christianand “bad”
is Oriental/Persian and Mussalman. Hajji Baba, however, moves
beyonda simplegood/baddivisionof the world; it alsoenvisionsthe
Orient asa mute, powerless,non-evolvingentitywhich findsa voice
only when controlled and improved by the “superior” Western
world,
Edward Said, the first major critic to pursue an extended study
of Orientalist thought and Orientalist discourse, argued that so
pervasiveand powerful was Orientalist discourse in the eighteenth
 PALLAVI PANDIT LAISRAM

and nineteenth centuries, that no one writing on or thinking about

the Orient —scientifically,politicallyor imaginatively—could ignore
the large mass of Western works available on the Orient.'! The
writer was conditioned by Orientalism and the Orientalist archive,
that is, the large mass of written and unwritten cultural attitudes
toward the Orient. Asa result, the subject, the Orient, disappeared,
and all that remained was works by Orientalists which fed on their
own preconceived notions of the Orient.
Although Hajji Babahas received considerable academic attention
in the twentieth century, its livelystyleand exciting adventures appear
to have obscured, for most literary critics, its visibly Orientalist
nature.’ Art and ideology are, however, closely linked aspects in
literature and should not be studied as separate entities. I propose
to re-assess the “art” of the novel in the context of its representation
of Orientalist discourse. The much praised narrative voice, the
“lively” character sketches, and the representation of the picaros
within the framework of the picaresque tradition revealan imaginative
control of the inferior, degenerate, frightening, and erotic “other.”
It comes as no surprise that a nineteenth century British novel
represents an Orientalist vision of the East; what is amazing is the
neglect of this aspect of Hajji Babaeven in the face of James Justinian
Morier’s well-documented personal sense of alienation from the
East. Morier did not initially distance himself from the East: he
grew up in Smyrna, and even after being educated in England he
returned to Turkey. It was later, during his two diplomatic
appointments to Persia, that we see a definite shift from an
empathetic to an Orientalist approach to the East.
In 1808 Morier went to Persia in the capacity of private secretary
to the envoy, Harford Jones, and wrote one travel account based on
this short six-month trip: AJourney to Persia,Armeniaand AsiaMinor,
to Constantinople,in the Years1808 and 1809.° In 1810 he went again
to Persia, this time elevated to the position of Secretary of the Legation
HAJJI BABA: IDEOLOGICAL BASIS OF THE PERSIAN PICARO

headed by Ambassador Gore Ouseley. He remained in Persia for

fiveyears, until 1815, even takingover the reins of diplomatic power
after Sir Ouseley’s departure in 1814. This second trip culminated
in one more travel account, A SecondJourneyThroughPersia,Armenia
and AsiaMinor,to Constantinople,in the Years1810 and {8162
The twoJourneysrecord a great change in Morier’s attitude toward
the East. In the firstJourneywe see an empathetic personal approach
that treats Persians as individual human beings, mingled with a
reductive tendency to stereotype them anda conscious desire to
present himself as a contributor to Western scholarly studies of the
Orient. In the second Journey there is a marked shift towards an
Orientalist attitude which sought to study the Orient only to
demonstrate or claim Western superiority.
This shift in Morier’s perception of the East did not take place in
a vacuum. It was closely related to his personal concerns and the
political environment he found himself in. Morier’s attitude in the
firstJourneywas probably more humane because he travelled under
the auspices of Harford Jones, a person who had “adopted both
the habits and the mores of the people with whom he transacted
business.”* Underlying Morier’s humane approach to Persia and
the Persianswas also the political situation. Jones had been sent to
Persia to eliminate the French influence, and in sucha situation
arrogance was hardly the appropriate attitude. With the French
and the British both begging for alliance with Persia, the Persians
had the diplomatic edge. Courtesy, respect, and equality were the
passwords, and as Morier informs us inJourney 1808, even-when
they were permitted to followtheir own inclinations they preferred
to follow Persian customs.
Harford Jones’ own politicalproblems led to something more
than a diplomaticfriendship.The then Governor-Generalof India,
LordMinto, had wanted his favourite,SirJohn Malcolm,to be the
Envoy to Persia, and he tried to make Jones’ Persian mission

24
 PALLAVI PANDIT LAISRAM

politically uncomfortable and even dangerous. It was the support

of the Persians at this time that made Morier regard them as his

“countrymen”:
Throughout the whole management of a new and very
delicate situation, their proceedings were soplain,soupright,
and so cheering,... that we regarded them with the liveliest
gratitude; and felt relieved in finding among strangers all the
heart and principle of countrymen.®(Emphasismine).
\
However, in Morier’s second travel account there is a strong
consciousness of the East-West difference and a tendency to view
the East as a homogenous, alien world: “whatever differences of
creed, of government, or of language may exist between them,
there is still no line of separation between any two Eastern nations
so strong as that which is between Europeans and Asiatics.”’ Morier
also expresses a marked sense of Western superiority; he believes
that the Persians are “pliable” and “might be entirely civilized” if
guided by European nations. Morier’s great-niece, Alice Wemyss,
has attributed this change in attitude to the lonelinessof long residence
in a foreign country combined with his isolation from all mission
activities due to Sir Ouseley’s strange desire to do everything (even
the kitchen accounts) all by himself.*
The altered political climate, which Morier was aware of as a
diplomat,musthavealsoplayedan importantrolein the development
of this Eurocentric view of the world. A Persian alliancewas no
longer criticallyimportant to the English,whilean Englishalliance
had now become vitallyimportant to the Persians(to protect their
country from Russianincursions). Englandhad required Persian
support as a bufferagainstFranceand Russia,but with Napoleon’s
invasionof Russiain 1812, Russiabecamean important allyfor the
British,not an enemy.ConsequentlyOuseleynegotiatedthe peace
treaty of Gulestan (1813) which ceded Persian territories to Russia.

25
HAJJI BABA: IDEOLOGICAL BASIS OF THE PERSIAN PICARO

The British even rewrote their treaty with Persia, removing those
clauses which ensured their help to Persian forces. This awareness
of Persian dependence on superior British power was evident to the
diplomat Morier who even commented on it in hisJourney | 8/0.
In 1817 Morier retired from foreign service (except for a special
service in Mexico in 1824) and spent his time recording his
experiences in Persia in the form ofa fictional narrative by a Persian
picaro, TheAdventuresof Hajji Babaof Ispahan. Although written in
the form of a picaresque novel, it is clearly based on Morier’s
experiences in his travels and reflects his intimate knowledge of the
customs and practices of Persian society.Along with Hajji we travel
to Ispahan, Tehran, Qum, Meshed, the Georgian frontier, Baghdad,
and eventuallyto Constantinople, encountering people from different
walks of life: robbers, traders, physicians, soldiers, Christian
missionaries, dervishes, mullahs, to name a few.We travel not just
through differentplaces,but through manylevelsof society.

II

Abriefsurvey of the plot of Hajji Babais in order here before we enter

into an analysis of Morier’s Orientalist vision and its presence in his
novel.’ Hajji, the son of an Ispahani barber, starts life as a naive young
man who has never seen the outside world, but longs to be something
more than just a barber all his life, for “he had a soul above razors.”
He accepts a job with Osman Aga because it will give him an
opportunity to see life outside Ispahan, but when their caravan is
captured by the Turcomans his first act is to steal his master’s money
because it might be useful in case he succeeds in escaping from the
bandits.
Hajji is an innocent boy, naive about the other tricksters in the
world, but he does not need anyone to teach him roguery. After he
escapes from the Turcomans Hajji becomes a water carrier, but

because of a sprained back he shifts to tobacco selling.

26
 PALLAVI PANDIT LAISRAM

Unfortunately,to make a quickprofit, Hajjistarts sellingadulterated

tobacco, for which he gets punished by the officersof the law.After
this he becomes a dervish, a teller of traditional folk tales in this
case, but when he accidentallyruns into a messenger carrying the
court poet’s letter to his family, he steals the letter and the
messenger’s horse, and deliversthe letter himself in the hope of a
reward. When the poet returns home he begs of him some kind of
employment,and the poet obliges,placinghim in the royalphysician’s
service. But Hajji wearies of working for the physicianbecause he
sees no future in it, and he requests the doctor to recommend him
to the chief executioner to replace an officerwho had died recently.
Asan officer, Hajji is up to mischiefagainbecause his comrade,
ShirAli,“gaveme suchan insightinto the advantagesof the situation,
that I could dream of nothingbut bastinadoingand gettingmoney.”"”
Hajjisoon has to leavethisjob and run for his lifefor havingseduced
Zeenab, one of the inmates of the Shah’s harem, but ultimately
after living for some time as a holy man in the protection of a
religious sanctuary, he obtains the Shah’spardon. But soon after
he engages in illegalwork, arranging temporary marriages, or in
other words dealing in prostitution, until finally,when his illdoings
lead to the harassment of the Christians, the Shah expels him from
Tehran. Partly through luck and partly by connivance Hajji steals a
horse and some money and crosses the frontier into Turkey.Here,
with the help of Osman Aga,his first master, he sets up a business,
but his greed, and vanity,and deceit, soon bring him down, and
penniless he turns to the PersianAmbassadorwho offers hima job.
By the time Morier wrote HajjiBabahis immense knowledgeof
many facetsof lifein Persiawasstronglyinfusedwith the Orientalist
perception of the Eastas an inferior,degenerate, erotic place which
requires the guiding light of Western civilization,The very style of
the novel —the narrative voice, the character portrayal, and the
depictionof the picaroswithinthe picaresqueform—imaginatively

27
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HAJJI BABA: IDEOLOGICAL BASIS OF THE PERSIAN PICARO

is through asideslike these, placed in Hajji’smouth, that Morier

presents a so-called“realistic”Persiancommentary on cowardly
Persians.
Under the guise of first person narration, the guise of realism
and authenticity, we are presented a Eurocentric “realism,” that is,
what the Western world chose to define as authentically Oriental.
Morier’s Western voice is so obvious that one wonders why it has
not been noticed before. Perhaps sucha state of affairs exists because
Western scholars like Wallace Cable Brown would unconsciously
endorse Morier’s perspective, and therefore would not question his
subtle, and often unsubtle, intrusions. '°
Morier also portrays characters in a manner which reflects his
Western orientation to the East. To the Western world, the Orient
was just one imaginary entity, different and inferior, and it could
not see the Orient as composed of people of various traits and
personalities. Consequently,although they observed the Orientals
in minute detail, they ultimately reduced them to objects, to
stereotypical beings who can have no individual life history or
development, but are merely “specimens.” It was as though the
Western observers could not cope with this alien world unless they
fitted it into some preconceived category. Morier, in spite of his
personalexperiencesin the Orient too tends to reduce his characters
to types which embody the Western notion of Orientals.
Hajji himself appears to be an embodiment of Western notions
of the static, unchanging East, of that “singularlyunchanging Oriental
people,” as Lord Curzon said in his introduction to the 1895 edition
of the novel.'’ Hajji embodies this quality in the essentially
unchanging nature of his character. We see him through various
adventures, trials and tribulations, we see him as a young boy just
starting out in life, and finallyas secretary to the Persian Ambassador,
but we see no change in his personality. He starts life as a vain
young man and as a rogue, and when we last see him he is still vain

30
 PALLAVI PANDIT LAISRAM

and roguish, but much older. Even though he sees examples of

“noble” Englishmen, he remains the same, thus fulfilling the
expectations of the Orientalist C J Wills that “Persia does not
change.”'*
The other charactersin HajjiBabado not developa lifeof their
own eventhough theyeither narrate their own lifehistoriesand/or
are described by other Persiansin the novel. Two such notable
charactersare Zeenaband Seferwho embodyWesternstereotypes
of Eastern sexualityand decadent religiousbeliefs.
Dervish Sefer’s account of his life and adventures contains only
incidents that pertain to the fraudulent nature of dervishes. And his
manner of referring to dervishes in the plural pronoun further
reduces any trace of individuality: he sprinkles his entire dialogue
with “us” dervishes, and “we,’ and “our.” Sefer’s individuality is
reduced to such an extent that he even becomes the spokesrnan for
Western attitudes toward Islam. The success of Islam was very
threatening to the Western world (this sense of threat can be seen
in English literature as early as in the sixteenth century and well
into the nineteenth century) because its very basis challenged and
superseded their religion, and one of their ways of coping with it
was by attributing the Prophet’s success to cunning and trickery.
According to Sefer, or rather according to Morier, Sefer says that
“(I]f 1chose to give myself the trouble, and incur the risks which
Mahomed himself did, I might even now become asgreat a prophet
as he.”!? Sefer has no life of his own, he has merely become a
specimen in a Western sociologicallaboratory, studied by a scientist
who first forms his conceptions of the object and then in a “realistic”
manner applies it.
Zeenab, Hajji’s beloved, conveys a different kind of Western
image of the Orient, that of the sexuallyappealing Oriental woman:
Her blue veil was negligently thrown over her head; andas she
stooped, the two long tresses which flowed from her forehead

31
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 HAJJI BABA: IDEOLOGICAL BASIS OF THE PERSIAN PICARO

corrupting influence of court life, working among honest merchants,

he continues with his tricks. It is this deviation from the development
of the picaro in a picaresque world that leads one to conclude that
it was Morier’s deliberate intention to demonstrate what he regarded
as the inherently decadent nature of the Persians. The picaresque
form was ideal for Morier because while it enabled him to depict a
chaotic world and to survey its rogues, a slight, but important,
change in the genre also permitted him to represent his conception
of the ethical inferiority of the Orientals.
Hajji’s immaturity and lack of growth also distinguishes him from
the traditional picaro, and this deviation too reveals the Western
assumption of cultural superiority. A picaresque novel, as defined
earlier, is written by a mature narrator who, even if he does not
criticize his society, at least knows what there is to criticize. Hajji,
however, is far from mature, and he never looks back and comments
_on his society. Only once, when he observes that he is not cruel by
nature but has become hardhearted by the example of the other
nasakchi’s (officer attached to the chief executioner, or bailiff),
does he imply a comment on the brutality of the society. Generally
speaking, Hajji is content to describe events in a deadpan tone,
neither implying criticism, nor directly commenting on the nature
of the incident he is presenting to us. Even when he makes remarks
on the “Persians,” as mentioned earlier, he does not intend any
criticism. Hajji may comment on the envy and malevolence of the
Persian, but it is not a moral issue for him because he revels in this
kind of behaviour and he deliberately tries to make other people
jealous because it makes him feel important.
Hajji is obviously a very different character from Gil Blas who
observes and comments on the ills of his society, and ultimately
retreats from it completely. Morier borrowed considerably from Gil
Blas—both themes and incidents —and therefore any significant
change in the narrative of Hajji Babais worth noticing.” The

>
 PALLAVI PANDIT LAISRAM

alterations that Morier made in the presentation of the rogues is

particularly important because it reveals his conscious intention of
demonstrating that the viceshe is presenting are specificallyOriental
and Islamic, and definitely not English/European or Christian.
When Le Sage exposes the vices of his society, he often does so
by presenting an ideal in the form of an individual, or a critic, from
within that same community. In Gil Blaswe witness corrupt doctors
and ministers, but we also see doctors who critique the corrupt
among them, and noble lords who use their influence to protect
their friends from corrupt ministers. Dr Sangrado, the incompetent,
unethical, and comical doctor, is mocked by Dr Cuchillo who even
gets into a fight with the doctor’s apprentice, Gil Blas. And for all
the corrupt officers we meet at court, particularly the Duke of
Lerma, prime minister to the Spanish Crown, we are presented
with a counterbalance in the Lords of Leyvawho consistently assist
Gil Blas. For all the Sirenas we also have the virtuous wives, Seraphina,
Antonia, Beatrice, and Dorothea.
Morier’s narrative, however, consists of a series of oppositions
between Westerners and Christians on the one hand, and Persians
and Muslims on the other hand, which serves to make it very clear
that these vices are connected with origin and religion, not the
socio-economic and political conditions of a Persian’s life. Moreover,
although these faults and vices of greed, hypocrisy, and deceit are
universal in nature (as Weinberger and Grabar observe), Morier
presents them not only as essentially Persian in nature, but also as
absent in English and Christians.
The pairs of contrasts that the narrative sets up demonstrate
that the vicesare indeed “foreign”to a superior Western,Christianized
culture. Hasan Javadi, analyzes one such contrast: the “parallel
stories” of Zeenab and Hajji, and Yusufand his Mariam.’* Zeenab
gladly leaves her lover when a better opportunity presents itself,
whereas Mariam, risking her life, escapes to her lover; and as for

35
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HAJJ! BABA: IDEOLOGICAL BASIS OF THE PERSIAN PICARO

Kamshad’ssummary of the omissionsand transformations made

by the translator provide some clues that can help answer the
question.”
Hassan Kamshad notes that the extended Mariam-Yusuf tale,
which runs parallel to the Hajji-Zeenab relationship was shortened
to a mere five pages in the translation. Moreover, instead of referring
to Persian officials by their ranks, as Morier did, the translator refers
to them by their actual names or titles.
The abridgement of the Mariam-Yusufstory makes a vast
differenceto the intent of the translation.The Mariam-Yusufstory
in the originalfollowsZeenab’sjoyfuldepartureto the Shah’sharem,
and developswith Mariam’sescape from the Governor’s palace,
concludeswithYusuf’scourageousrescueof Mariamand his family,
which is soon followedby Hajji’scowardlyself-preservationand
Zeenab’sdeath. The tale is clearlyintended as a contrast between
goodChristianbehaviour,andthat oftypicalself-serving,Mussalman
lovers.Tocompressthis tale is to mitigatethe implied comments,
and to probably also disturb the sequence of events, a sequence
whichhighlightsthe contrastbetween Christianityand Islam.
The other change is the most important of all because it is this,
which makes the novel a political satire, not adocument attesting
Western superiority. Bychanging the references to officialsin Hajji
BabaofIspahanto recognizable,well known, corrupt politicians, the
translator was commenting not on the nature of Persians, but on
the characters of specific, notorious individuals.Thus we now have
a novel,written by a Persian,and directed toward a Persianaudience,
because only a Persian audience would recognize the figures being
satirized. The British-Persian contrasts in the novel would cease to
be comments on Persianculture, and instead becomea criticism of
specificindividuals.
The Persians themselves viewed the book as a political satire for,
according to Phillot (the British Consul in Kerman), the Persians

38
 PALLAVI PANDIT LAISRAM

appreciated “the skill with which their countryman had depicted

certain notable characters.”*! It was only when “the English original
reached me [Phillot] from India, ... [that] Haji [sic] Baba ceased to
be popular,” because the Persians now realized the true intent of
the book. Phillot’s reference to a Persian’s reaction to the English
version shows this new awareness: “the author has overstepped his
bounds; he has made fun of everyone from the Shah downwards,” ”
The Orientalist aspects of Hajji Baba clearly cannot be wished away
by reference to the success of the Persian translation.
Hajji Babais undoubtedly a fast-paced, exciting narrative, full of
characters whose foolish behaviour and unethical conduct is comical
in their innocent acceptance of it. However, we must not be
insensitive to the attitudes underlying the novel, nor to the attitudes
that we reflect when we find it comical. To do so would be to ignore
the individuality and humanity of the people it describes, and from
a literary standpoint, a failure to see the relationship between form
and content.
Hajji Baba’spopularity continued well into the first half of the
twentieth century, thus demonstrating not only Morier’s skill as a
writer,but alsothe extent to whichthe Westernworld unconsciously
endorsed his vision of Orientals. Unfortunately,educated Oriental
readers havea tendency to imitate Western attitudes: “One wonders
why sucha delightful book should have been saddled with such
ethnological, cultural or political interpretations,” writes Moussa-
Mahmoud.*?The purpose of thisanalysisisnot to denigratethe artistic
valueof this book, but to sensitizeboth the Western and the Oriental
reader to the reductive and offensiveaspects of the text. Readers
should be able to enjoythis novel,and manyothers of its kind, but at
the same time developan understandingof the waysin which it can
offend cultural sensibilities. Ameaningful, non-hegemonic, cross-
cultural dialogue can take place only when individuals can
sympathetically “travel”intothe thoughtsandfeelingsofanotherculture.

39
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POROUS BOUNDARIES AND CULTURAL CROSSOVER:
FANNY PARKES AND “GOING NATIVE”

WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

W. are rather oppressedjust now bya lady,Mrs Parkes,who

insistson belongingto our camp,’ wrote Emily Eden in
b]

December 1837.
“She has a husband who always goes mad in the cold season,
so she says it is her duty to herself to leave him and travel
about. She has been a beauty and has remains of it, and is
abundantly fat and lively. At Benares, where we fell in with her
she informed us she was an Independent Woman.”

EmilyEdenwasthe sisterofthe GovernorGeneral,LordAuckland,

and the First Ladyof BritishIndia. FannyParkeswas the wife of a
mentallyunstablejuniorofficialinchargeof icemakinginAllahabad..
The differentstatusof the twowomenmadefriendshipbetweenthe
two impossible,and posterityhas been far kinder to Emilythan it
hasbeen to Fanny:Eden’sUptheCountryhas longbeen regardedas
one of the greatclassicsof BritishImperialliteratureand rarelybeen
 WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

out of print since it was first published in 1866 —the critic Lord
David Cecil went as far as placing the author “in the first flight of
English women letter writers.” In comparison Fanny Parkes’s
Wanderings ofa Pilgrimin SearchofthePicturesque
had no second edition,
and has only recently been reprinted, and that in an expensive two
volume academic edition. In contrast to the fame of Emily Eden,
few have ever heard of Fanny Parkes. Fewer still have read her.
Yetanyonewho todayreadstheworkofthesetwowomentogether
can hardly fail but to prefer Fanny’swriting to that of her more
famous contemporary. While Emily is witty and intelligent but
waspish, haughty and conceited, Fanny is an enthusiast and an
eccentric with a burning loveof India that imprints itselfon almost
everypageof her book. Fromher firstarrivalin Calcutta,she writes
how “I was charmed by the climate;the weather wasdelicious;and
I thought India a most delightfulcountry ... could I havegathered
around me the dear onesI had left in England,myhappinesswould
havebeen complete.” The initialintuition was only reinforced the
longer she stayedin SouthAsia.In the twentyfour yearsshe livedin
India, the country never ceased to surprise, intrigue and delight
her, and she was never happier than when off on another journey
under canvasexploringnewparts of the country: “Oh the pleasure,”
she writes, “of vagabondizingin India!”
It was partly the sheer beauty of the country that hypnotized
.

her. Indian men she found “remarkably handsome,” while her

response to Indian nature wasno lessadmiring:“The eveningsare
cooland refreshing...The foliageofthe trees,soluxuriouslybeautiful
and so novelis to me a source of constant admiration.” But it was
not just the waythe place looked. The longer she stayed in India,
the more Fannygrewto be fascinatedbythe culture,history,flowers,
trees, religions,languagesand peoplesof the country,the more she |
felt possessedby an overpoweringurge just to pack her bags and
set offand explore:“With the Neapolitansaying,VediNapoli,e poi

43
 POROUS BOUNDARIES AND CULTURAL CROSSOVER

mori,’ I beg to differ entirely,”she wrote, “and would rather offer

thisadvice,—‘Seethe TajMahal,and then —see the Ruins of Delhi.’
How much there is to delight the eye in this bright, this beautiful
world! Roaming about with a good tent and a good Arab [horse],
one might be happy for ever in India.”
It is this sheer joy, excitement and even liberation in travel that
Fanny Parkes manages so well to communicate. In the same way,it
is her wild, devil-may-careenthusiasm, insatiable curiosity and love
of the country that immediately engagesthe reader and carries him
or her with Fanny as she bumbles her wayacross India on her own,
wilfullydismissiveof the dangersof dacoitsor thugs or tigers,learning
the sitar, enquiring about the intricacies of Hindu mythology,trying
opium, taking down recipes for scented tobacco, talking her way
into harems, befriending Maratha princesses and collecting Hindu
statuary,fossils,butterflies,zoologicalspecimenspreserved in spirits,
Indian aphorisms and Persian proverbs —all with an unstoppable,
gleeful excitement. Even when she dislikes a particular Indian
custom, she often finds herself engaged intellectually.Watching the
Churuk Puja, or “hook swinging,” when pious Hindus attached
hooks into the flesh of their backs and were swung about on ropes
hanging from great cranes for the amusement of the crowds below,
“some in penance for their own sins, some for those of others,
richer men, who reward their deputies and thus do penance by
proxy,” Fanny wrote that: “I was much disgusted, but greatly
interested.”
Moreoverthe longershe stayedin India, the more Fannybecame
slowlyIndianized.The professionalmemsahib, herself the daughter
of a colonial official(Captain William Archer), who came to India
to watch over her colonial administrator husband, was gradually
transformed into a fluent Urdu speaker,who spent less and less of
her time at her husband’s mofussilposting, and more and more of
hertimetravelling
aroundtovisitherIndianfriends.Aesthetically

44
 WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

she grew slowlyto prefer Indian dress to that of the English.At one
point watching Id celebrations at the Taj she notes how

Crowdsof gailydressed and most picturesquenativeswere

seenin alldirectionspassingthroughthe avenueoffine trees,
and bythe sideofthe fountainsto the tomb: theyaddedgreat
beauty to the scene, whilst the eye of taste turned away
pained and annoyedby the vileround hats andstiff attire of
the Europeangentlemen, and the equallyuglybonnets and
stiffand gracelessdressesof the Englishladies.
Later, visitingthe women in Colonel Gardner’s Khasgungezenana,
she again praises Indian ways over those of Europe:

[MulkaBegum]walksverygracefully,and is as straightas an
arrow. In Europe how rarely —how very rarely —does a
woman walkgracefully!Bound up in stays,the boy as stiffas
alobsterina shell;that snake-likeundulatingmovement—the
poetry of motion —is lost, destroyed by the stiffnessof the
waistand hip, which impedes free movementofthe limbs.A
lady in European attire gives me the idea of a German
manikin;anAsiatic,in her flowingdrapery,recallsthe statues
of antiquity.

She can barely believe the philistinism of the Government in

Calcutta and recoils in horror when she sees what the Englishhave
done to the beautifullyinlaidMughalzenanaapartments in the Agra
Fort:
Some wretches of European officers —to their disgrace be it
said —made this beautiful room a cook-room! And the
ceiling, the fine marbles, and the inlaid work, are allone mass
of blackness and defilement! Perhaps they cooked the su’ar,
the hog, the unclean beast, within the sleeping apartments of
Noor-Jahan —the proud, the beautiful Sultana!

49
POROUS BOUNDARIES AND CULTURAL CROSSOVER

Even more angry is her response when she hears that the Turkish

Baths in the apartments below the palace, which most

probably belonged to the zenana, were broken up by the
Marquis of Hastings: he committed this sacrilege of the
past ... [Then]havingdestroyedthe beautyofthe bathsofthe
palace,the remainingmarblewasafterwardssoldon account
of the Government; most happily the auction brought so
small a sum, it put a stop to further depredations.

Gradually,over the twenty four yearsshe livedin India, and as

her Wanderings took shape, Fanny’sviewsbegin to change. Having
assumed at first that good taste is the defining characteristic of
Europeancivilizationand (especiallythat of her own people,) she
findsher assumptionsbeingchallengedbywhatshecomesto regard
as the rampant philistinism of the English in India, and by the
beautyof so much of Indian life,not least its architecture. (In this,
incidentally,she would have agreed with Robert Byron who was
equallyhorrified bywhat the Englishhad done to India a hundred
years later: “In a country full of good example,” he wrote, “the
Englishhaveleft the markof the beast.” He alsowrote with horror
about “how the wholeof [British]India is a giganticconspiracyto
make one imagine one is in Balham or Eastbourne ... [as for
Darjeeling]imagineBognoror Southendroofedin corrugated iron
and reassembledin the form of an Italianhill town ...”)
Every bit as bad, in Fanny’seyes, was the attitude of the British
who employed a band at the Taj so that visiting Company officials
could havethe opportunity to dance a jig on the marble platform in
front of the tomb: “Can you imagine anything so detestable?” she
wrote.
Europeanladiesandgentlemendancequadrillesin front of
the tomb! I cannot enter the Tajwithout feelingsof deep
devotion: the sacredness of the place, the remembrance of

AL
 WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

the fallengrandeurof the familyof the Emperor,the solemn

echoes,the dimlight,thebeautifularchitecture,theexquisite
finish and delicacyof the whole ... all produce deep and
sacred feelings;and I could no more jest or indulgein levity
beneath the dome of the Taj, than I could in my prayers,

On leaving the enclosure, she writes, movingly:

And now adieu! BeautifulTaj—adieu! In the far, far West I

shallrejoicethat I havegazedupon your beauty;nor willthe
memorydepartuntilthelowlytombofanEnglishgentlewoman
closes on my remains.

Overtime, theseemotionaland aestheticresponsesto Indiaslowly

consolidatedthemselvesinto somethingmore structured, and in due
course they clearlyprofoundly altered Fanny’spoliticaloutlook. By
the late 1830’sshe came to be increasinglycriticalof the East India
Company her husband served. In her publishedwork that criticism
wasby necessitymuted, but her allegiancesare clear.At a time when
many of her contemporarieswere callingfor the Britishto annex the
“degenerate”Kingdomof Oude (or Avadhasit is more usuallyspelled
today) Fanny was quite clear that, “the subjects of his Majestyof
Oude are by no means desirous of participatingin the blessingsof
British rule. They are a richer, sleeker, and merrier race than the
natives in the territories of the Company.” She rails against the
authorities for failingto reward her friend William Gardner for his
gallantry(largely,though she does not saythis, becauseof the degree
to which Gardner wasbelievedto have“gonenative”bythe “rulers of
the land” as Fannycallsthem.) She points out how many havedied
painful,unnecessarydeathsfromsmallpoxas “LordWilliamBentinck
did awaywith the vaccinedepartment, to savea few rupees; from
which economy many havelost their lives.”
At the end of her travels,when Fannyfinallylooks forward to
seeingher familyin Englandagain,she turns to a Persianaphorism

47
 POROUS BOUNDARIES AND CULTURAL CROSSOVER

to express the intensityof her feelings:“The desire of the garden

neverleavesthe heart of the nightingale.”Yetwhen she finallysets
foot on Englishsoilagain,her return is not a moment for rejoicing
but for depressionand disappointment:
We arrived at 6 am. Mayflowersand sunshinewere in my
thoughts.[Butinstead...] itwasbitterlycoldwalkingup from
the boat—rainwindand sleet,mingledtogether,beat on my
face. Every thing on landing was so wretchedly mean,
especiallythe houses,whichare built of slatestone, and also
slateddown the side;it wascold and gloomy... I felt a little
disgusted.
When she arrived home, her mother barely recognized her. It
was as if the current of colonization has somehow been reversed:
the colonizer had been colonized. India had changed and transformed
FannyParkes.She could never be the same again.

In 1822 when Fanny Parkes arrived in India, British attitudes to the

country were undergoing a major transformation.
In the late eighteenth century, the more intelligentof the British
in India tended to respond to their adopted country with amazement
and fascination.Under the influenceof SirWilliamJones, the Chief
Justice of the new Supreme Court at Calcutta, there was a sudden
explosionof interest for whatJonescalled“this wonderful country.”
In 1784, Jones had founded an AsiatikSociety “for inquiring into
the History, Civiland Natural, the Antiquities, Arts, Sciences and
Literature of Asia.” Its patron was the most enlightened of all the
British Governor Generals, Warren Hastings, who shared the new
enthusiasm for Hinduism and who declared “in truth ] love India a
little more than my own country.” Under Jones and Hastings, the
Royal Asiatic Society quickly became the catalyst for a sudden
explosion
ofinterest in Hinduism,asit formedenduringrelations

48
 WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

with the local Bengaliintelligentsiaand led the wayto uncovering

the deepest roots of Indian historyand civilization.In India,Jones
wrote that he had discoveredArcadia.Valmikiwasthe new Homer,
the Ramayanathe new Odyssey.The possibilitiesseemed endless.
Yetin the earlyyears of the nineteenth century, this optimism
and excitementbeganto wane, and senior figuresin the Company
began to become openlydisdainfulof all things Indian. Partlythe
reasons for this were political. In the eighteenth century the
Companywasa small,vulnerablecoastalpower that depended on
the goodwill of Indian rulers. Many Indian armies were better
equipped and better trainedthan thoseof the Company:the armies
of Tipu Sultanfor examplehad riflesand canon whichwere based
on the latest Frenchdesigns,and their artilleryhad a heavierbore
and longerrangethan anythingpossessedbythe Company’sarmies.
But by the 1830’s,havingdefeatedTipu Sultanand the Marathas,
the Britishhad becomethe paramountpower in India. For the first
time there wasa feeling that technologically,economicallyand
politicallythe Britishhad nothingto learn from India and much to
teach.It did not takelongforimperialarroganceto replacecuriosity.
Religionplayeda major role too. Perhapsthe most powerfulof
the new breed of hard-line criticsof Indian culture wasone of the
Company’sdirectors, CharlesGrant. Grant wasamongthe first of
the new EvangelicalChristians,and he brought his fundamentalist
religiousopinionsdirectlyto the EastIndia CompanyBoardroom.
Writing that “it is hardly possible to conceiveany people more
completely enchained than they [the Hindus] are by their
superstitions,”he proposedin 1787to launchmissionsto converta
people whom he characterized“universallyand whollycorrupt ...
depraved as they are blind, and wretched as they are depraved.”
Withina fewyears, the missionaries—initiallybased at the Dutch
settlementof Serampore—werebeginningto fundamentallychange
Britishperceptionsof the Hindus. No longerwere they inheritors

49
 POROUS BOUNDARIES AND CULTURAL CROSSOVER

of a body of sublime and ancient wisdom as Jones and Hastings

believed, but instead merely “poor benighted heathen,” or even
“licentious pagans,’’ some of whom, it was hoped, were eagerly
awaitingconversion, and with it the path to Civilization.
It was at this period too that you got the development for the
first time of ideas of racial purity, of colour and ethnic hierarchy,
and the beginnings of straightforward racialism: ideas which would
of course reach their most horrifying denouement in the middle
years of the twentieth century, but whose roots can be traced to
developments in European thought a century earlier, and at least
partly to developments in British India.
Thesenewracialattitudesaffectedallaspectsof relationsbetween
the Britishand Indians.The eighteenthandearlynineteenthcentury
had produced many“WhiteMughals”—characterslike the British
Residentat the Mughalcourt, Sir DavidOchterlony.When in the
Indiancapital,Ochterlonylikedto be addressedby his fullMughal
title, Nasir-ud-Daula(Defenderof the State)and to livethe lifeof a
Mughal gentleman: every evening all thirteen of Ochterlony’s
consortsused to processaround Delhi behind their husband, each
on the back of her own elephant. With his fondness for hookahs
and nautch girlsand Indian costumes,Ochterlonyamazed Bishop
ReginaldHeber,the AnglicanPrimateof Calcutta,byreceivinghim
sittingon a divanwearinga “chogaand pagri”while being fanned
by servantsholdingpeacockfeatherpunkhas.
Such people were becoming few and far between by the 1830’s,
and their way of life was beginning to die out. The Bengal Wills
show that it was at this time that the number of Indian wives or
Bibis being mentioned in wills and inventories begins to decline:
from turning up in one in three wills from 1780 to 1785, the practice
went into steep decline. Between 1805-10, Bibis appear in only one
in every four wills; by 1830 it is one in six; by the middle of the
century they have all but disappeared.

50
 WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

Englishmen who had taken on Indian customs likewise began to

be objects of surprise even, on occasions, of derision in Calcutta.
In the early years of the nineteenth century there was growing
“ridicule” of men “who allowwhiskers to grow and who wear turbans
&c in imitation of the Mussulmans.” Curries were no longer
acceptable dishes for parties, and pyjamas —common dress in
eighteenth century Calcutta and Madras —for the first time became
something that an Englishman slept in rather than something he
wore during the day. By 1813, Thomas Williamson was writing in
TheEuropeanin India how “The hookah, or pipe ... was very nearly
universally retained among Europeans. Time, however, has
retrenched this luxury so much, that not one in three now smokes.”
Soon the hookah was to go the way of the Bibi: into extinction.
Fanny stood in the middle of this process of change —this slow
alienation of the British from the India they ruled —and was one of
the last of the generation who was able to express unequivocal
admiration for India, though even at the time her attitudes were
clearly subject to criticism. On her travels, she found that Victorian
religiositywas alreadybeginningto make itselffelt, and that attitudes
were changing:“Methodismisgainingground very fastin Cawnpore,”
she records. “Youngladies sometimes profess to believe it is highly
incorrect to go to balls, plays, races, or to any party where it is
possible there may be a quadrille. Anumber of the officers also
profess these opinions, and set themselves up as new lights.” In
Calcutta she finds many of her contemporaries were “determined
to be critical” of anything in India. When she visitsan old Princess
who was a cousin of the Gardners in the zenana of the Red Fort in
Delhi, British opposition to Fanny’ssympathies comes out into the
open and she lets slip that that she was clearly regarded as suspect
by the British in Delhi for mixingwith (or even takingan interest in)
the sad, impoverished descendants of the Great Mughals and fires
back at the criticism, both of her and her Mughal hosts:

5]
POROUS BOUNDARIES AND CULTURAL CROSSOVER

I heard that I was much blamed for visiting the princess, it

being supposed that I went there for the sake of presents ...
I went there for curiosity, not avarice ... Look at the poverty,
the wretched poverty of these descendants of the Emperors!
In former times strings of pearls and valuable jewels were
placed on the necks of departing visitors. When the Princess
Hyat-ool-Nissa Begumin her fallenfortunes put the necklace
of freshly gathered white jasmine flowers over my head, I
bowed with as much respect as if she had been the Queen of
the Universe. Others may look upon these people with
contempt, I cannot. Look at what they are what.they have
been.

One day a gentleman, speaking to me of the extravaganceof

one of the young princes, mentioned that he was always in
debt, he could never live upon his allowance. The allowance
of the prince was twelve rupees a month! Not more than the
wages of a head servant.

With respectto myvisit,I feltit hard to be judgedbypeople

who were ignorantof the factof my being the friend of the
relativesofthoseI visitedinthezenana.Peoplewhothemselves
had,perhaps,no curiosityrespectingnativelifeandmanners,
and who, even if they had the curiosity,might have been
utterly unable to gratifyit, unless by an introduction they
wereprobablyunableto obtain.
With such criticism buzzing around her, it is hardly surprising
therefore that Fanny took refuge and found friendship among an
older generation of Indianized Europeans, men who had to some
extent crossed cultures, just as she was beginning to do.
In Calcutta,sheimmediatelyfellforthe dashingFrenchGeneral
Allard,a SergeantMajorof Joseph Bonaparte’sbodyguard,who
leftStTropezandendedup commandingtworegimentsofdragoons

52
 WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

and lancers for the Sikhleader Ranjit Singhin the Punjab, marrying
a beautiful Kashmiri girl and more or less becoming a Sikh himself:
“he is the most picturesque person imaginable,” wrote Fanny after
meeting him.
His long forked beard, divided in the centre, hangs down on
either side of his face; at dinner time he passes one end of his
beard over one ear, and the other end over the other ear. I
was much delighted with the General: he asked me to visit him
in Lahore, an invitation I told him I would accept with great
pleasure, should I ever visit the hills, and he told me he would
send an escort for me.

Fanny forged a deeper relationship still with William Linnaeus

Gardner, perhaps the single most intriguing character in Fanny’s
entire book. Gardner wasborn into a prominent Americanloyalist
familyon the banks of the Hudson. He had fled Americaafter the
Patriotvictoryin the Warof Independenceand finishedhiseducation
in France and Holland, before sailingto India to make his fortune.
There he inherited his father’speerage,married a beautifulMughal
Princessof Cambayand havingfoughtfor manyyearsasa mercenary
undera varietyof Indian rulers he eventuallyresumed hisallegiance
to the British Crown and formed his own irregular regiment,
Gardner’s Horse.
Gardner was very mucha family man, and in his private
correspondence[nowin the IndiaOfficeLibrary]he talksproudly
inhislettersofhismultiracialfamily:“Manmusthavea companion,”
he wrote to his cousin,

And the older I get the more I am confirmed in this. An old

age without something to love, and nourish and nurse you,
must be cold and uncomfortable. The Begum and I, from 22
years’ constant contact, have smoothed off each other’s

asperitiesandrollon peaceablyandcontentedly.NowI hope

53
POROUS BOUNDARIES AND CULTURAL CROSSOVER

both my boys willget me lots of grandchildren, for I find the

grandpapa is the greatest favourite they have. The shouts of
joy whenI return after an absence of any time can be heard
fora mile. Myhouse isfilledwith Brats, and the very thinking
of them, from blue eyes and fair hair to ebony and wool
makes me quite anxious to get back again ... There’s no
accounting for taste but I havemore relish in playingwith the
little brats than for the First Society in the World ... New
books, a garden, a spade, nobody to obey, pyjamas,
grandchildren, tranquillity: this is the summit of happiness,
not only in the East but the West too.
Gardner’s son James continued the family tradition by marrying
Mukhta Begum who was the niece of the Mughal Emperor Akbar
Shah as well as being the sister-in-law of the Nawab of Avadh, and
together they fathered an Anglo-Mughal dynasty, half of whose
members were Muslim and half Christian; indeed some of them
such as James Jehangir Shikoh Gardner seem to have been both at
the same time. Indeed even those Gardners who were
straightfor wardlyChristian had alternative Muslim names: thus the
Reverend Bartholomew Gardner could also be addressed as Sabr,
under which name he was a notable Urdu and Persian poet, shedding
his clerical dress in favour of Avadhipyjamas to declaim his achingly
beautiful love poems at Lucknavi mushairas.
Fanny’sdescriptionofher visitto Gardner’sjagir [or Mughal
landed estate] at Khasgunge,her detailed exposition of how an
Englishnoblemanlivedin a culturallyhybridhousewith a Mughal
zenana, Mughalcustoms, and her account of Gardner’s strange
Anglo-Mughalweddingcelebrationsis the most fascinatingsection
of her travelbook, a uniquerecord of an attractivelymulticultural
world that wassoon to vanish.Indeed Fannywasclearlya little in
lovewith the dashingColonel:

54
 WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

He must have been, and is, very handsome; such a high caste
man! How he came to marry his Begum I know not. What
a romance his love must have been! I wish I had his portrait,
just as he now appears, so dignified and interesting. His
partiality
flattersmegreatly!
It is also interesting that even at this stage that Gardner, though
clearly a survivor —even a museum piece from a previous age —
was nevertheless not alone in his tastes and sympathies. At the
wedding of the Colonel’s granddaughter, Fanny describes how
the European guests, like their host, were all in Mughal dress.
Later, “two English gentlemen, who were fond of native life, and
fascinated with Khasgunge, requested me to mention to Colonel
Gardner their wish to become of his family; I did so.” It was the
last gasp maybe, but the old inter-cultural hybridity was not yet
completely finished.
William Gardner died on his Khasgungeestate on the 29" of
July 1835, at the age of sixty five.His Begum,whose dark eyes he
had firstglimpsedthrough the chik in Surat thirty eightyearsearlier,
could not live without him. Fanny’s account of the death of
Gardner’s Begum is one of the most moving sections in the book:
My beloved friend Colonel Gardner ... was buried, according
to his desire, near the [domed Mughal] tomb of his son Allan.
From the time of his death the poor Begum pined and sank
daily; just as he said she complained not, but she took his
death to heart; she died one month and two days after his
decease. Native ladies have a number of titles; her death,
names and titles were thus announced in the papers:— “On
the 31st August, at her Residence at Khasgunge. Her
Highness Furzund AzezaAzubdeh-tool Arrakeen Umdehtool
Assateen Nuwab Mah Munzil ool Nissa Begum Dehlmi, relict
of the late Colonel William Linnaeus Gardner. The sound of

55
 POROUS BOUNDARIES AND CULTURAL CROSSOVER

Nakaras and Dumanas [kettle drums and trumpets] have

ceased.”

The following year Fanny returned, broken hearted and paid

her respects at the grave of her beloved friend: “I knelt at the grave
of my kind, kind friend and wept and prayed in deep affliction.”
The familynever reallyrecovered the position they held under
William.Despitepossessinga pukkapeerage,the Baronyof Uttoxeter,
over time, the familysquandered their wealth and became poorer
and poorer and more and more provincialIndian, graduallyloosing
touch with their aristocratic English relations. The penultimate
Vicereign, Lady Halifax, had Gardner blood and records in her
memoirs that she wasa little surprised when alighting from the
Viceregaltrain from Delhion her wayup to Simla,to see the Station
Master of Kalkabreak through the ceremonial guard and fight his
wayup to the red carpet. Shoulderinghis waythrough the ranks of
aides and the viceregalretinue, he addressed Her Excellencythe
Vicereine:
“YourExcellency,”he said, “my name is Gardner.”

“OF course,” replied Lady Halifax, somewhat to the

astonishmentof the viceregalentourage. “Weare therefore
cousins.”

The Gardner dynasty,incidentallystill survivesnear Lucknow,

today one of the most violentand backwardparts of India. The
present Lord Gardnerwho has neverbeen to Englandand speaks
onlyfalteringEnglish,contentshimselfwithfarminghisIndianacres
and enjoyingthe prestigeof beingthe villagewrestlingchampion,
but who, until he recentlymissedhis chance,threatened everyso
often to return “home” and take up his seat in the House of Lords.

Fanny enjoyed travel books, and mentions those of several of her

male contemporaries in her text. She was well aware that her

56
 WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

femininity made her vulnerable and so deprived her of opportunities

open to them; but she also knew that she had one distinct advantage
where she could trump her male rivals: her access to Indian zenanas.
No Englishman could go into the quarters of Indian women, and
Fanny was determined to make the most of the opportunity and to
report from beyond a frontier that her rivals could not cross.
In Calcutta, in Lucknow, at Khasgunge and in Delhi Fanny
repeatedly visits the women of different harems and reports about
the life, the pleasures and the sorrows of the women she encounters
there. One woman in particular she befriends, BaizaBai,the dowager
Maratha queen of Gwalior who had been deposed by her son and
sent into exile at Fatighar in British territory not far from Cawnpore.
Far from fantasizing the sensual pleasures to be had in the Eastern
harem, as was the want of many of the male painters and writers of
her time, Fanny reports on her perceptions of the reality of the lives
of Indian women, and especiallythe restrictions which she feltwomen
in both East and West suffered in common: “We spoke of the
severity of the laws of England with respect to married women,
how completely by law they are the slaves of their husbands, and
how little hope there is of redress.”
She also found a common love of riding with the Queen and
describeslearningto ride Marathastyle,whiletryingto teach Baiza
Bai’swomenhowto ride sidesaddle.AlwaysimpatientwithWestern
notions of feminine decorum Fanny records how “I thought of
Queen Elizabeth,and her stupidityin changingthe styleof riding
for women.”
If Fanny was able to break some contemporary stereotypes
about the life led by the inhabitants of Indian zenanas, she was less
perceptive with her passageson Thuggee: the stranglingand robbery
of travellers by what the British came to believe was an India-wide
brotherhood of Kali worshippers. Fanny devotes a great deal of
space to the sensational reports then being circulated in the British

57
 POROUS BOUNDARIES AND CULTURAL CROSSOVER

press about the prevalenceof thugswho were said to take the lives
of literallytens of thousands of travellers every year. Today few
woulddispute that merchantsand pilgrimbands were indeed very
vulnerable to attack and robbery during this period; but most
modern historiansnowbelievethat the Britishofficialsput in charge
of the “Suppressionof Thuggee”hugelyexaggeratedthe scale of
the problem and created a mythicalAll-India Thug Conspiracy
where in realitythere were only scattered groups of robbers and
highwaymen.Some historiansalsoallegethat the British used the
suppressionof thuggeeasan excuseanda justificationfor widening
their area of rule: it was no coincidencethat James Sleeman, the
man who led the Britishcampaignagainstthe thugs, was also the
manwho wrote mostvocallyfor the annexationof the Kingdomof
Avadh.
Yeteven here, while clearly fascinated by the threat and spectacle
of thugee, and excited by the idea of a conspiracy of sacred
stranglers, Fanny sounds a note of caution, remarking on hearing
about the mass execution of a group of twenty five thugs that, “it
cannot but be lamented that the course of justice is so slow; as
these men, who were this day executed, have been in prison more
than eight years for want of sufficient evidence.” So saying, she
leaves a question hanging in the air. If the thugs were so guilty, how
come there was so little evidence? It was certainly an apposite query.
In normal circumstances, courts in India did not accept the
statements of approvers who turned “King’s Evidence”; but in the
case of thugs colonial laws were altered to allow the conviction of
thugs on evidence which would in other circumstances be regarded
as suspect and inadequate.
The same EvangelicalVictorian colonial attitudes that wished to
sell the TajMahal for marble and demolish the monuments of Agra
was also the world that dreamed up India-wide thug conspiracies.
It was not a world where Indian and English could cohabit on any

58
 WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

terms of equality,and Fanny Parkes was one of the last English

writers to believe —or even to want to believe —that mutually
respectfulrelationshipswerepossibleor evendesirable.The inevitable
clash came in the Indian Mutiny of 1857, when the East India
Company’sown troops rose in rebellion,joined in much of North
India bygreat swathesofthe civilianpopulation. Nowhere wasthis
more the casethan in the supposedly“degenerate”and “effeminate”
townsof MughalDelhiand Lucknowwhere the Britishonlydefeated
the rebels with the very greatest difficultyand with unimaginable
causalitieson both sides.
The world beloved of William Gardner and General Allard, and
indeed of Fanny herself, was swept away in the mutiny. The uprising
led to massive bloodshed, desperate atrocities and with great numbers
of lives lost on either side. During the fighting, Gardner’s Anglo-
Indian descendants, like those of all the other White Mughals, were
forced to make a final choice between one or other of the two
sides —though for many the choice was made for them. After an
attack on their property, the Gardners were forced to take refuge
first in Aligarh then in the Fort of Agra, and so also ended up on the
side of the British —though given a free hand they might just as
easily have lined up behind their Mughal cousins in Delhi and
Lucknow.
Afterwards, nothing could ever be as it was. With the British
victory, and the genocidal spate of hangings and executions that
followed, the entire top rank of the Mughal aristocracy was swept
away and British culture was unapologetically imposed on India;
at the same time the wholesale arrival of the memsahibs ended all
open sexual contact between the two nations. White Mughals like
Ochterlony and Gardner died out, and their very existence was
later delicately erased from embarrassed Victorian history books.
Only now is their existence beginning to be unearthed. Moreover
at a time when respectable journalists and academics are again

59
 POROUS BOUNDARIES AND CULTURAL CROSSOVER

talking of the Clash of Civilizations, and when East and West,

Islam and Christianity are againengaged in a major confrontation,
Fanny’s record of this hybrid world has never been more
important.

At the time of her travels, Fanny Parkes was criticized by her

contemporariesfor“GoingNative,”forherover-developedsympathies
forcultures,religionsand peoplesof North India.Todayshe isunder
assaultfrom the opposite direction.
Following the success of Edward Said’sgroundbreaking work
Orientalismthere has developed a whole school of criticism which
has attempted to apply Said’sideas to the whole range of colonial
writings and art. Some of these applications have proved more
suitablethan others, and there sometimesseemsto be an assumption
at work in academia—especiallyin the US —that all writings of the
colonialperiod exhibitexactlythe sameset ofprejudices:a monolithic
modern academic Occidentalismwhich seems uncannily to match
the monolithic stereotypes of the original Orientalism.
Fanny has not escaped this academic pigeon-holing, and has
recently been the subject of two academic articles which would
haveher implicit in the project of gathering “Colonialknowledge”
and “imbricated with the project of Orientalism” —in other words
an unwitting outrider of colonialism,attempting to “appropriate”
Indian learning and demonstrate the superiority of Western ways
by “imagining” India as decayed and degenerate, fit only to be
colonized and “civilized.”Anyonewho reads Fanny’swriting with
an open mind cannot but see this as a wilfulmisreadingof her text,
an attempt to fit her book into a mould which it simplydoes not fit.
There are manywriters of the period to which such strictures could
be applied, but it seems misguided in the extreme to see Parkes as
any sort of gung-ho colonialist. Fanny wasa passionate lover of
India and though a woman of her time, in her writing and her

60
 WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

travels did her best to understand and build bridges across the
colonial divide.
As Colin Thubron has pointed out,

[T]ravel itself is traditionally subversive. The vagabond, the

gypsy,and the expatriate: they are those without allegiance ...
Todefine the genre [oftravelwriting] asan act of domination —
rather than of understanding, respect or even catharsis —is
simplistic. If even the attempt to understand is seen as
aggression or appropriation, then all human contact declines
intoparanoia.
The point is well made, and the attacks made on Fanny by modern
academic critics highlights the problem with so much of that has
been written about eighteenth and early nineteenth century India:
the temptation felt by so many critics to project onto it the
stereotypes of Victorian and Edwardian behaviour and attitudes with
which we are so familiar.
Yet these attitudes were clearly entirely at odds with the actual
fears and hopes, anxieties and aspirations of many of the eighteenth
and early nineteenth century Company officials and their Indian
wives whose writings can be read with the greatest of ease in books
such as Fanny’s Wanderings,quite apart from the fifty miles of East
India Company documents and letters stored in the India Office
Library in London. It is as if Victorians succeeded in colonizing not
just India but also, more permanently, our imaginations, to the
exclusion of all other images of the Indo-British encounter.
The travel book, by its very nature, records the transitory moment:
as Thubron puts it, a good travel book “catches the moment on the
wing, and stops it in Time.” Fanny Parkes’ wonderful book is an
important historical text for its record of the last moments of this
very attractive (and largely forgotten) moment of cultural and sexual
interaction and crossover: what Salman Rushdie —talking of modern

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POROUS BOUNDARIES AND CULTURAL CROSSOVER

multiculturalism—has called“chutnification.”The world described

by Fanny—especiallythe syncretic culture of Lucknow and Delhi,
and its satellite at Khasgunge—was far more hybrid, and had far
less clearly defined ethnic, national and religious borders than we
havebeen conditioned to expect, either bythe conventionalImperial
history books written in Britain before 1947, or by the nationalist
historiography of post-Independence India. It was a world where
British mercenaries married Mughal princesses and where Anglo-
Indianwomen entered the harems of Nawabi Avadh,where Muslims
attended Hindu ceremonies and viceversa.
This account of Fanny Parkes’ writing represents my own
personal selection of her work, but I hope it at least conveys a
flavour of her writing and revealsa little of the largely forgotten
world she so lovedand enjoyed.

62
COLONIALISM, SURVEILLANCEAND MEMOIRS OF TRAVEL:
TEGART’S DIARIES AND THE ANDAMAN CELLULAR JAIL
TUTUN MUKHERJEE

Howdo peopleget to thisclandestineArchipelago? Hour byhour

planesfly there,shipssteertheircoursethere,and trainsthunderoff
to it — but all with nary a mark on them to tell of their destination. '

[’ the last few decades, matters of empire and colony have

assumedgreatsignificanceintheunderstandingandinterpretation
of literature and culture. It is not surprisingthat this should be so.
Thoughthe era ofhighnineteenth-centuryimperialismended after
the SecondWorld War,the realityof the imperialpast and of the
historical experience of colonialism remain vivid as the shared
memory of the ruler and the ruled, and colourtheir expressionand
perception of culture, ideologyand politics.
The appeal to the colonialpast to interpret the postcolonialpresent
is not just an expedient strategy. It constitutes a revisionist inquiry
into the enterprise of the empire that created structures and
institutions to perpetuate colonialismand tried to incorporate within
its disciplinary discourses, the land, the culture, and the history of
 COLONIALISM, SURVEILLANCE AND MEMOIRS OF TRAVEL

the colony.It alsothrowslightupon the postcolonialpredicament or

the inheritanceofthepoliticsofdifferencethatwasdeeplyinterwoven
with practicesof colonialcontrol.That the basisof socialliferemains
deeplyinfectedbyideasofdifferenceand divisionevenin the absence
of foreignrule, is a soberingpostcolonialrealization.
By its very definition, empire denotes the effective control of
one state over the political sovereigntyof another society or state,
achievedby force, politicalcollaboration, or by economic, socialor
cultural domination. Yet,neither imperialism nor colonialism is a
simple act of expansion and acquisition. Albeit urged by capitalist
economies,the finalclaimoverterritoriesand possessions,geography
and power is often supported by ideologicalaspirations. So, besides
the desire for economic gain and political power, the colonial
consciousnessprioritizes certain cultural motivations.” Hence, the
empire’sethnocentric zealto “educate” and “civilize”the “natives”
is ensured approvalof the metropolis for the political technologies
of colonialism that includes the penetration of its ideological
machineryinto the so-calledprimitive/savagecultures.*One is aware
of the impressive range of historical studies on the impact of
Europeanideologieson the Third Worldcountries,and the fashioning
by the Westof the categoriesof difference and the backwardnessto
describethe people of the non-West—thus essentializedand othered,
producingwhat isnowtermed asalterity—andjustifythe domination
of the West.This alsojustifies the enforcing and maintaining of the
new hierarchies in the social body.*
Yet, it cannot be ignored that the ideological thrust of the Empire
that encouraged the flow of liberal ideas and social norms from the
West into the colonies also quickened the spirit of nationalism in
the colonized peoples. In turn, this soon channelled into forms of
native resistance.
Anyinstitutionbasedon forceand dominationcan surviveonly
as long as it is able to overcome the resistance of individuals or

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groups by force. When it is compelled to use force repeatedly,it

has conceded to havingprovokedseriousrevolutionarysituations,
challenging its organs of authority. The culture of colonialism
presumesa particular style of managingdissent. The survivalof
colonialismdepends on its abilitiesto promptly arrest insurgent
activities.Empires are establishedand maintained not merely by
military superiority,or by clevermanipulation/exploitationof the
colony’sdivisivesocialtensions [there is evidenceof tremendously
riskyphysicaldisparitybetweenthe smallnumber of colonizersat a
very great distance from home, and the much larger number of
natives on their home territory],’ but because they deploy a
sophisticatedintelligenceandsurveillancesystemforthe identification
and containmentof rebelliouselements.The qualityof militaryand
politicalintelligenceavailableto the colonialpowerveryoftenproves
to be the criticaldeterminantof itssuccessinconquestandprofitable
governance. This is the body of information that the masters
frequentlydrawupon and depend upon to understand the political
and economic activitiesand cultures of their colonies and their
indigenoussubjects.Surveillanceandintelligencenetworksthen form
the core of imperial governance, empowering it with critical
knowledgeof the strategiesto pre-empt revolutions/insurgence,and
with the technologiesof disciplineand punishment.
Webster’sDictionary defines “surveillance”as “a close watch
kept over a suspectgroup or a person and impliesin public mind
that the behaviour of the ‘surveilled’is not legitimate political
behaviour.The application of surveillancestigmatizes,that is, it
labelsas deviantand illegitimatethe behaviourof those involved.”
The efficacy of the surveillance system determines the power
spectrum of colonial masters. As Foucault says, “Power is not a
commodity,a position, a prize or a plot; it is the operation of the
politicaltechnologiesthroughoutthe socialbody... The functioning
of these ritualsof power is exactlywhatsetsup the non-egalitarian

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 COLONIALISM, SURVEILLANCE AND MEMOIRS OF TRAVEL

asymmetricalrelationships.”®It is possibleto unveilthe nexus of

power by isolating,identifyingand analyzingthe web of unequal
relationships. It is important to understand how power operates.

II

Colonial settlement has invariably been expressed textually.’ Vast

textual archives give evidence of the Empire being conceived and
maintained in an array of writings: political treatises, acts and edicts,
administrative records and gazettes, government briefs, the colonial
offices’reports, notebooks, diaries, memoirs, missionaries’ reports,
travel writing and letters “home.” In this segment of the paper, I
examine a text that makes accessible to analysis the enterprise of the
Empire in India and its political network that ensured the Empire’s
continued power over the colonial subject. Rather than as a récit de
voyage,I would like to study the text as a discourse de voyagein order
to affiliate the chronotope of travel to the strategies of domination
in the discourse of imperialism.
Charles Augustus Tegart, son of an Irish clergyman, Reverend J
P Tegart, was a British loyalistwho came to India as Inspector of
Police, Intelligence Branch, in 1901. His first post was Pataliputra,
which then came within the larger province of Bengal. He came to
Calcuttain 1906 as Deputy Commissionerof Police.He was elevated
to the post of PoliceCommissioner in 1923, and remained in India
till 1931. He went to England for a vacation (and also to have his
appendix removed) in 1931. He was offered a job in the Council of
the Secretary of State for India at London, and so resigned his job
in India. In 1933, TrinityCollege honoured him with the degree of
LLD(Doctor of Law).In 1936, KingGeorge VI bestowed the KCIE
(Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire) upon
him. In 1946, he suffered several cardiac attacks and died soon
after. His wife, Kathleen, wrote a three hundred forty page
manuscriptcalledMemoirofan IndianPoliceman,
inwhichshe compiled

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Tegart’s Diaries and file reports and wove them together with her
own story about two Bengali revolutionaries called Naren and Biren.*
TheMemoirrecordsa particularlyviolentchapterin the historyof
colonial India —the British encounter with armed struggle and
extremism.Anglo-Indianhistory generallyinterprets the dramatic
onsetofthe Revoltof 1857asan acutefailurein Britishintelligence—
gatheringand analysis—in directcontrastto, as SirJohn Kayenotes,
the “almost electric” manner in which the rebels and the Indian
population disseminatedinformation about the British activities,
weaknessesand disasters.’In the post-Mutinycontext, the Empire
not only concentrated on establishinga more professionalpolice
network,but alsoon the containmentand continuedsurveillanceof
the seditiouselements.The shift in Britishattitudesafter the 1857
SipahiRevoltwaspalpableand no effortswere spared to make the
politicalsurveillanceandmilitaryintelligencemoreeffective.Historians
haveargued that in the post-1857 years the Rajbecamea kind of
police state.'° Correspondingly,the indigenousreaction became
increasinglyviolent.Curzon’sprovocativeactionshad alreadyfired
nationalistpassions,and the Minto-Morleyrepressivemeasuresdid
nothingto quellthem.Therewasrenewedattractionforthe methods
of revolutionaryterrorism, especiallyamong sectionsof educated
youthin the regionsof Bengal,Uttar Pradeshand Punjab.The targets
of attack by bomb or gunshot were important officials,police and
bureaucratic personnel, British loyalists and informers. As
revolutionaryattacksbecame frequent, Tilak’scall for massaction
had a resoundingresponse.Interestingly,hisexhortationemphasised
the control of the information network. He said: “... [T]hough
downtrodden and neglected,you must be consciousof your power
of makingadministrationimpossibleifyou chooseto make it so. It
is you who manage the railroad and the telegraph, it is you who
make settlementsand collectrevenues...”'' The tendency toward
individual
aggressiveness
becamemorepronounced.

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COLONIALISM, SURVEILLANCE AND MEMOIRS OF TRAVEL

India witnessed the most intense phase of revolutionary and

terrorist actions between 1900 and 1931. It seems a strange
coincidencethat this period exactlyparallelsTegart’sstayin India.
Indeed,Tegart’sdiariesand filereports indicatea causalrelationship
with the youngrevolutionariesof Bengal.He hunted them and was
hunted himself.He escapedseveralattacksmiraculously—either by
the graceof god or by the graceof the intelligencenetwork!Tegart
remained ever vigilant. As the Memoirdescribes,

. [Tegart] had a life-size sketch of a Bengali assassin,

levellinga pistol, made on canvaswhich was kept on the roof
and when another officer (usuallyMr Colson who afterwards
succeeded him as Commissioner) joined in the practice, it
was the custom for one or the other of them, while they did
the morning exercise to give a sudden unpremeditated yell;
on this the other had to switcharound with his automatic and
shoot the canvas gunman in some vital part of his anatomy ... a

Other than direct encounter deaths, the Empire devisedanother

methodto arrest anddispersethe revolutionarysocialenergy.Besides
the Rowlatt Act, a special police ordinance was passed to allow
surveillanceoverallkindsof activities.The slightesthint of sedition
led to immediate apprehension and imprisonment. The political
prisoners or the detainees were often denied the benefit of a fair
trial;an informer’sreport wasenoughto incriminatethem." Capital
punishment was common enough for the revolutionaries till the
British Empire thought of the idea of transportation for life. This
was in keeping with the changes in the concept of discipline and
punishment that had taken placein Europe. Accordingto Foucault,
the Western systemsof administeringjustice and the concept of
punishmentchangedradicallythroughthe eighteenthand nineteenth
centuries with the growing awarenessof the forces of productive
capital. Instead of revenge through torture chambers and

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slaughterhouses, the aim of the punishment process came to be

seen as either correction or containment for the preservation of a
social order. The centre of this new process is what Foucault calls
discipline that has to be measured and continuous, though not
spectacular. A technology of observation is essential to it. Foucault
discusses the Benthamite Panopticon as a model for the perfectly
efficient mechanism of surveillance, a technical structure that ensures
the unrelieved presence of the watcher for the watched. The convict
in the Panopticon is “seen, but he does not see; he may be the
object of information but never a subject in communication.”'*

During their occupationof India, the Britishbuilt on the Andaman

Islands one such instance of control and punishment, a nexus of
power for the containment and dispersal of revolutionary social
energy —the dreaded Cellular Jail, aGulag Archipelago into which
all dissent and non-conformity could be funnelled.
On the map, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands seems a small
lush green cluster where the Bay of Bengal opens into the Indian
Ocean. It was rediscovered by the Western World (Marco Polo
touched the Islands in the fifteenth century on his way back from
China) by the surveyors and travellers of the East India Company
and the British Empire. Captains John Ritchie in 1777, and Thomas
Forrest and Hamilton Buchanan in 1783 surveyed the Islands as a
possible site for the East India Company, a site that could cater to
ships in distress in the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean, especially
during the monsoons, and also to control the Malay pirates. Later,
Lieutenant Archibald Blair mapped the Islands, and his report on
their strategic importance as well as their out-of-reachness made
the Andamans the obvious choice for the penal colony along with
the armed outpost that the British planned to build after the 1857
uprising. On 15January 1858, the Governor General in the Council
considered it tactical to “colonize” the Islands, and resolved “to
establish a penal settlement on the Andamans for the reception in

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COLONIALISM, SURVEILLANCE AND MEMOIRS OF TRAVEL

the first instance of convicts sentenced to imprisonment or to

transportation, for crimes of mutiny and rebellion and for other
offences therewith ...”'> This method of segregation of the people
to discipline and control was a new feature of the British
administration. The construction of the jail was completed in 1908,
and thereafter it became the jail for life prisoners. Mostly political
prisoners and those sentenced to die were condemned to the prison
of the Andamans. Some of the most daring leaders of the Indian
freedom struggle were sent there. Because exile for life seemed to
most people like living death, the deportation to the Islands came
to be called “Kala Pani” or the final journey to the place of
permanent exile,the legendaryhellfrom which no one ever returned.
Indeed, in the span of twenty years, which constituted the period
of imprisonment, the convict would lose all links not only with his
familybut alsowith civilization.“Kalapani,” literallymeaning “black
water,” referring to the taboo of crossing the seas,gradually acquired
an aura of uncanny fear about it. Even those who could survive the
incarceration were exposed to a synonymous danger of black-water
fever, a virulent form of malaria.
In 1880, RadhacharanGoswami,an ardent member of the Indian
NationalCongress,serializedin the Sarasudhanidhi, aprominent Hindi
periodical, a narrative called “Yamalokki Yatra.” It described the
visit of an “enlightened” young man to the kingdom of Yama,the:
god of death. This was a special hell created for those who had
fought the British in 1857. The correspondence was intentional.
Such imageswere replicated in many write-ups, as for example, in
Colonel Wedgewood’sdescription of “Hell on Earth” (1921) and
in BijoyKumar Sinha’sAndaman:TheIndianBastille(1939). Clearly,
the AndamanCellularJail isvestedwithgreat sentimentalsignificance
for the Indian people.
In 1913,CharlesTegarttravelledto the Andamansona special
mission. Not satisfied with the way the confrontation with the Bengal

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revolutionaries was going, he wanted to extract all information about

“suchactivitiesfromthe inmatesofthejailwhohadbeenimplicatedin
variouscasesof bombingand sedition. He was empoweredby his
Governmentto suspendthesentencesofthosewhodivulgedinformation
thatwouldprovehelpfulto theGovernment.TegartsailedforRangoon
on Sunday,7 August1913bythe B/SSArankola. Travellingwithhim
were the famousrevolutionaryNonigopalMukhopadhyay’s brother,
SurendraMukherjee,and the lawyerRaisahebS K Mahapatra.The
planwasto usenot onlypoliticalbut alsoemotionalandpsychological
inducementto elicitinformationfrom the prisoners.Tegartreached
Rangoonon 26" August,and startedhis trip to the AndamansbySS
Maharaja.InhisDiary,henotesthattheytravelledthroughthemonsoons
andreachedtheverdantislandsaftertwodays.Charmedbythe beauty
and the isolationof the place,he rationalizesthe existenceof a penal
institutionin sucha place.
The idea of a penal colonywas alreadya part of the colonial
technology.AsFoucaultemphasises,the systemsof punishmentin
contemporarysocietiesare situatedin a certainpoliticaleconomy
of the body,It is alwaysthe bodythat is in issue—the bodyand its
forces, its utility,and its docility,its distributionand submission.
The body is directlyinvolvedin a politicalfield;power relations
have an immediate hold upon it; they investit, mark it, train it,
torture it, force it to carry out tasks,to perform ceremonies,to
emit signs.This politicalinvestmentof the body is bound up in
accordancewith complexreciprocalrelations,with its economic
use; it is largelyas a force of production that the body is invested
with relations of power and domination. But the constitution of
labourpowerispossibleonlyifit iscaughtup ina systemofdiscipline
and subjection.Discipline,as Foucaultdescribesit, emergesas a
structuring in space and time of the activityof work. Discipline
seeksalsoto mould“souls”throughthebody;the disciplinedsubject
is one whose actions and reactions are totally under control. This

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 COLONIALISM, SURVEILLANCE AND MEMOIRS OF TRAVEL

subject is, finally, a subject of knowledge through systematic

examination and surveillance.And since this needs sets of norms
againstwhich individualsmay be measured, a political instrument
has to be meticulouslyprepared and used. This subjection can be
obtained by instruments of violence or ideology; it can also be
direct and physical,pitting force againstforce. Thus, the body is
usefulonlyas a productivebodyor a subjectedone.
Illustrative of the effectiveness of such correctional discipline is
the report on the convict system and progress in the Andaman
Settlement submitted by the Chief Commissioner in Residence,
Lieutenant
ColonelR CTemple:
... The convict comes to the Andamans, a creature who by
his life or his acts, has shown himself to be so unfitted for
human society that he has been cast out of it for life, or for
a long term of years. Received thus, he is first subjected for
six months to a most severe discipline — hard, rigid,
uncompromising. He is taught what it is like to be forced to
bend his uncontrolled nature to the iron yoke of a regime ...
he is next transferred to work in the company with others, but
still under a strict discipline ... Here he stays for a year and
a half, and then for the next three years he is a slave, as the
word is ordinarily understood, locked up with other slaves in
the barracks at night, but well-fed, housed, clothed, and
cared for and always under watch and guard. During the
following five years he is still a labouring convict, but the
severity of his life is eased down a little ...,having thus served
ten long probationary years he is eligible, if he has any
capacity to take a ticket-of-leave and become what is locally
known as a self-supporter. The convict is now in a sense
“free” ... It does not require much imagination to contrast
the difference in the personality of the same human being as
he reaches and leaves Port Blair, He that arrived an outcast,

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 TUTUN MUKHERJEE

void of restraint, and unfit for association with his kind on

equal terms, goes forth a useful citizen, broken to restraint,
and not only fitted for human society, but well used to submit
to the conventions by which alone that society can be
maintained ... the incorrigibles are kept till death, and the
slowto learn are kept until they mend their wayscod
In effect,disciplineisthe techniquebywhichthe bodyisreduced
as a “political”force and maximizedas a usefulforce.
According to Tegart, the administration would not have
recommended such methods had there been any alternatives and
had the administration not been satisfiedwith the effectivenessof
the prison system in the Andaman Cellular Jail. Tegart’sDiaries
describe the technology of the penal architecture that ensures
continuous surveillance of the political criminals who are more
dangerous because they violate the law motivated by the desire to
influence existing policy and power relations. Their goals are not
personal gains, but broader social contexts. Sentences passed on
them are necessarilyharsh. Transportation for life for the political
prisoner meanta life of oblivion. |
No one could remain immune to the beauty of the Islands. For
example, V D Savarkar was enchanted by his first glimpse of the
Islands, and writes: “The Island ornamented the sea like a palace
built in the land of the fairies ... It was so picturesque and compact
that it could not fail to ravish the mind of even a prisoner in chains
like me.”"”
Tegart comments on the appropriateness of the disciplinary
structure —so stark in an environment of beauty —intended for
visualand auditorydeprivation,and physicalcurtailmentof freedom
for those fightingfor freedom.Tegartdescribesthe circleofwell-lit
cells facing inwards with the surveillancetower as the hub. The
entire set-up was intended to dissociatepower from the people,
investingit in topologicalconfigurationof light,bodies,gazeand

aS
COLONIALISM, SURVEILLANCE AND MEMOIRS OF TRAVEL

architecture —and thus becoming automatic, residing in the

arrangement itself.Hemmed byobdurate structures, locked doors,
guards on duty, barbed wire, gun tower, electric cable, the prison
was structured for total control and deprivationof the prisoners of
auditory and visual information. It would seem that with
imprisonment in the Andamans,lifestopped ... but onlyapparently
so. Tegart’saccount suggests his dissatisfactionwith the rule of
letting the prisoners roam about freelywithin the Settlement. He
notes that besidesthe incidentsof prisoners escaping,there existed
a surreptitious but regular supply of seditious material to the
prisoners. Moreover,those incarceratedwithin the four wallsmade
their bodies the site of resistance. Tegartrecords that Nonigopal,
for example, was totally uncooperative and refused even to wear
clothes.There were manywho refused to talk or eat. Tegarttravels
through the islandarchipelago,and his alert eyes,indifferentto the
tropicalbeauty,onlysoughtevidenceoflapseofvigilancethat afforded
the prisoners opportunities to mingle and conspire. Surveillance,
accordingto him, was the awarenessof the Other, and a constant
vigilto pre-empt dangerousirruptions.of any kind.
Tegart’sDiary is fascinatingnot onlybecause it retains traces of
the violent history of colonial intervention, but also because it
instantiates the case of travel for a specific purpose within the
imperialistagenda.

ITI
For the purposes of the Empire’sterritorial aggrandizementand
consolidation,colonialismwas a metaphoric and cartographic as
wellas a legalisticenterprise. The occupiedcountry was invariably
“mapped” or spatiallyconceived.
In support of my discoursede voyageI would like to place two
other records of travel in the AndamansalongsideTegart’stext.
One travel account is intended to assist the Empire’s enterprise of

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 TUTUN MUKHERJEE

colonization, and the other —the traveller’s rough, rudimentary

description “charting” unknown lands — is illustrative of the
Orientalist-touristic fascination for the Other. The first record is
that of Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Blair, whose survey of the
Islands is full of information, judgements, evaluations, and opinions.
He writes with the awareness of his report’s relevance to the Imperial
design.He records his findingsthus:
... Itis hardly possible to conceive a more secure and perfect
harbour. It is large enough to contain about fifty sails ...
perfectly sheltered from all winds and sea, and though there
is seven feet rise of tide, there is no stream to incommode
ships under repair. Its situation renders it easy of access in
either Monsoon, and ships may quit it at all seasons, and here
it is proper to observe that the harbours of this island are
better situated ...'®

On the subject of the aborigines, he writes:

In the morningwe ... hada visitfromthe natives;after some

hesitation they came close under the stern; they accepted
someknivesand lookingglasses,but seemedveryindifferent
aboutthem. On showingthem bottlestheyexpressedagreat
desire for them ... They were peaceable but extremely
suspicious... Likethose we haveseen on InterviewIsland,
they were perfectlynaked, their features,colour and hair
resembling those of the natives of Africa ...'”

Blair’sstyle of writingis analyticaland detailed. He includes

especiallycurious featuresof the landscape,as for example,the
“birds’ nest caves”:

... The entrance,whichiswashedbythe tide, is an irregular

aperture, of about six feet wide, and the same height.On
advancingthirtyor fortyfeet,theheightdiminishesto twenty.

4§
 COLONIALISM, SURVEILLANCE AND MEMOIRS OF TRAVEL

Here it is rather dark and very warm, and the top and sides
of the cave are covered with nests; an astonishing number of
birds twittering and on the wing, whisking past the ears and
eyes.This, contrasting with the melancholy noise of the waves
resounding through the gloomy cavern, formed a very
uncommon and interesting scene ght
The noteworthyfeatureabout Blair’sreport isthat the territories
are described as virginland and not as a place with human history.
Often the effectof such descriptionsis to erase, either whollyor in
part, the signsof other livesthat occupied that particular space. As
EllekeBoehmerexplains,whereverthe colonizersestablishedtheir
settlements, “they proclaimed the start of a new history. Other
histories by definitionwere declared to be of lesser significanceor
in certain situations,non existent.”?!
Significantlydifferent from Tegart’sand Blair’stravel reports is
C Boden Kloss’sAndamansandNicobar:TheNarrativeofa Cruisein the
Schooner“Terrapin.” While the first two “reports” conveyinformation,
Kloss’s “narrative” conveysexperience. The main purpose of the
Terrapin crew is ethnographical search, or in other words, the
penetration of the encrypted aboriginesocietyto document native
life and custom before it was touched by ideas of progress, and
therebysupplementthe existingknowledgeabout the “early”stages
of human history. Klossdescribestheir arrivalat Port Blair:

... The wholeplace—in itselfof naturalbeauty—is kept in

most perfectconditionby a practicallyunlimitedsupplyof
convictlabour.
Atfirstsight,it seemedan altogetherdelightfulspot to find
in suchan isolatedcorner of the earth; but its melancholy
aspectisquicklyand forciblybroughthomebyavisitto the
jailandbythe continuouspresenceofthe convicts,whoare
rendered conspicuous by their fetters, or neck-rings,

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 TUTUN MUKHERJEE

supportingthe numbered badgesbywhichthe wearersare

distinguished.”
Kloss’s description of the natives of the Island is openly
ethnocentric:

The first thought that flashed into one’s mind on perceiving

them, with their smallstature, sootyskins,and frizzyhair,was
that here were a number ofjuvenilenegroes (“niggers”); they
are, however, far better looking than that people, and some
of the women might even be called pretty, even when judged
froma Europeanstandpoint.”’
As illustration of the civilizingmission that the Empire has been
pursuing, Kloss describes the architecture of the Chief
Commissioner’s bungalow and the soldiers’ barracks (built in the
Windsor style), as well as the club houses, swimming pools,
badminton, tennis and golf courses, and cricket grounds, built for
the exclusive use of the European officers and their families, as
examplesof the Westerncivilizinginfluencealreadyin place.

IV

Narrativeisintimatelyconnectedwiththe productionofknowledge
and thus also to power and desire. Suchdescriptionsas are cited
from Tegart, Blair and Kloss are integral to travel narratives.
Journeysare undertakenand traveloguesare written. The texts as
vehicles of imperial “authority” symbolizeand in many cases
perform theactof“takingpossession.”Alltravelaccountsduringthe
Rajare noteworthyforthe wayimperialenterpriseisencodedinthe
narratives.
In their production of knowledge,in their strengtheningof the
Empire’sterritorial and economicclaims,in the furtheringof the
ideologicalmission,all the three texts discussedaboveprove this
point. For instance, all three of them carry a lot of landscape

7M
 COLONIALISM, SURVEILLANCE AND MEMOIRS OF TRAVEL

description of the exploratory kind, supportive of the nineteenth

century expansionist strategies. There is much “development
oriented” description of the colonies, perhaps as an attempt to
focus upon the areas “opening up” before European eyes. There is
also the waythe Other is described —collectively,in an inventory of
traits and customs —rather in the manner of a lesson in the
anthropology of the Third World. Stereotypically, all the three
narratives present the Orient as the site of hazard and adventure. It
is in the light of this textuality of the empire that the theoretical
term, colonialist discourse, may be best understood. The analysis
of sucha discourse revealsthe symbolicpractices, including textual
codes and conventions and implied meanings, which are deployed
to secure imperial designs and also to decode the apparently
unintelligible strangeness that the colonizers encounter. Therefore,
underlying the discourse of imperial mastery are other responses
likewonder, bewilderment, fear,that necessitate the constitution of
“systems of cognition” like European names, practices and
architecture as comfortable interpretive screens.”*
However, the three texts are not all of a kind. Clearly,they
exemplifydifferent kinds of authority at work. While for Kloss,
subjectivityand perspectivismare the anchorsof textual authority,
for Tegart and Blair impersonal knowledge and professional
preoccupationsare the governingfactors.While Tegart’sis an in-
depth report of a surveillanceofficer,for Blair,information is the
object, to be carried backto the Empire, becausethat information
has the power to shape the Empire’sexpansionistplans. Kloss’s
experientialnarrativeextendsthe ideologyof the civilizingmission.
It must be acknowledged that colonialism need not simply begin
with the establishment of alien rule and end with the departure of
alien rulers from the colony. Colonialism also connotes a state of
mind or social consciousness that often persists in the political and
socialpracticesof the postcolonialstate. Invariably,the administrative

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 TUTUN MUKHERJEE

grid of the postcolonial state perpetuates the colonial politics of

difference —between the ruler and the ruled. So, modern societies
continue to maintain the institutions of discipline and punishment —
like the prison, the asylum, the hospital, and the school —and
perpetuate the practice of societal segregation of the un/anti-social,
the abnormal, the unhealthy, and the uninitiated. As the French
fableist La Fontaine wrote in 1668, those who seek to remain in
power always arrange matters so as to give their tyranny the
appearance of justice. This viewseems endorsed by Freud’s Civilization
and ItsDiscontentswherein Freud explainsman’s capabilitiesin devising
systems of control and segregation because man’s impulse to cruelty
arises from his instinct for mastery. Indeed, as the present world
order informs us, the nations of the postcolonial and postmodern
world are burdened with greater policing and surveillance systems
than ever before.”
But the Cellular Jail of Andamans was closed after India’s
Independence in 1947 to signifythe end of colonial rule. The Jail
becamea historicallandmark, “hallowed”bythe visitof Netaji Subhas
Bose on 29" December, 1943. The livesof the political prisoners
incarcerated in these islandsbecame immortalized in Indian hearts.
In this timeless limbo were placed men like Sher Khan who killed
Lord Mayo and went to the gallows valiantly after receiving the
Qalma like a true Wahabi, the young freedom fighters who left
their narratives of pain carved on the prison walls, and the
government doctor Dewan Singhwho became the informer for the
Imperial Nippon Army and was later killed by the Japanese.”°The
Andaman Cellular Jail acquired metaphorical force as the Indian
Bastille. Eventuallyit became established as a temple of freedom in
Independent India.
New mappings of history generate new meanings and
configurations of altered significance. Representations and
emblems of history return as commodity.The Andamansand its

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 COLONIALISM, SURVEILLANCE AND MEMOIRS OF TRAVEL

Cellular Jail continue to attract travellers —but of a different kind

now. The island and the prison have undergone the inevitable
commodification to be sold to tourists as relics of history, both
anthropological and cultural. The Andamans is no longer a British
colony; the Andamanese, some of whom claim to be descendants
of the “free convicts” of the Settlement, are citizens of the Indian
Republic. Understandably, there is a penchant for highlighting
the idyllic and the exotic atmosphere of the islands; but the
historical dimension must never be forgotten. So that the metaphor
for the past remains relevant in the present, it is hoped that in the.
postcolonial situation, life in the Andamans will mirror the spirit
of freedom lest it be said that white imperialism wassimplyreplaced
bybrownimperialism.

Notes

l Aleksandr | Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago,1918-1956 (Vols.I-IV),

Translated by Thomas P Whitney, (New York and London: Harper Row
Publishers, 1974), 3.
2 In the Introduction to a group of essays on BritishImperialism:Gold, God, Glory
(New York & London: Holt, Rhinehart, Winston, 1963), Robin W Wicks
Suggests as “a rational theory for irrational drives,” three motivations for
imperialism: a) man’ s greed and search for wealth when economic motivations
dominate him; b) man’s idealism to create a better world expressed through
brave actions and exalted statements; c) man’s quest for power, for personal and
collective glory, by instincts both base and noble.
3 By degrees, the “public school spirit” became one of the most potent of
imperial elixirs. It inculcateda loyaltydevoted to the “White Man’s Burden”
rather than to any particularpracticeof Empire. Illustrativeof such sentiments
was the tremendous popularityof the worksofJohn Buchan,G A Henty, Frank
Richards,RiderHaggard,TerenceRattigan,RudyardKiplingand the travelogues
of the legendaryDavid Livingstone.For insightfuldiscussionson.this subject,
see WalterE Houghton, TheVictorian FrameofMind(New Haven:YaleUniversity
Press, 1959); L D Wurgaft, The Imperial Imagination (Middletown,
Conn.: WesleyanUniversityPress, 1983); Patrick Brantlinger,RuleofDarkness:
BritishLiteratureand Imperialism:1830-1914 (Cornell UniversityPress, 1988);

80
 TUTUN MUKHERJEE

Joseph Bristow,EmpireBoys:Adventures in aMan'sWorld(New York& London:

Harper Collins, 1991).
James Mill’s Historyof BritishIndia (1820) had tremendous influence on
imperialist thinking of the time and shaped its policies. His work marshalled
what he believedto be the usefulfactsto showthe necessityof Britishrule as a
’
remedy for India’s “traditional tyranny and chaos” and to reposition India as an
object of “reform.”
Thomas B Macauleyhas famouslywritten, “Empire is itself the strangest of all
political anomalies.That a handful of adventurers from an island in the Atlantic
should have subjugated a vast country divided from the place of their birth by
half the globe ... are prodigies to which the world has seen nothing similar.” In
G W Young,Speeches,(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1935), 153.
Michel Foucault, Disciplineand Punish:TheBirthof the Prison,English translation
by Alan Sheridan, (London and New York:Vintage, 1979), 24.
Ronald Hyam, Britain’sImperialCentury,1815-1914, (New Yorkand London:
Macmillan. 1993).
Among the young revolutionaries imprisoned for involvement in the 1913
Alipore bomb blast case were two famous brothers, Aurobindo Ghosh and
Barindra Ghosh. This could have inspired the choice of names.
John W Kaye, TheAdministration of the East India Company,(London: Oxford
University Press, 1853), 354-355.
David Arnold, Police Powerand Colonial Rule, Madras 1859-1947, (New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1986), 1-6.
Asquotedin CABayley, Empire
andIntelligence,
(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity
Press, 1996), 364.
Kathleen Tegart, [unpublished manuscript], Memoirof an Indian Policeman
(containing entries from C A Tegart’sDiaries), India Office Library, London,
184.
13 John W Kaye,TheAdministration of the EastIndia Company,354-355.
14 Foucault, Disciplineand Punish:TheBirthof the Prison,25.
15 L P Mathur, Historyofthe Andamanand NicobarIslands, 1756-1966, (New Delhi:
Sterling Publishers, 1968), 68.
Boden C Kloss,Andamansand Nicobars:The Narrativeof a Cruisein the Schooner
“Terrapin,”(New Delhi: Vivek Publishing House, 1971), 193-199.
V D Savarkar,TheStoryofMyTransportation for Life:A Biography
of BlackDaysin
Andamans,Translatedby V N Naik, (Bombay:SadbhaktiPublishers, 1950), 8.
Asquoted in IqbalN Singh, TheAndamanStory,(New Delhi:VikasPublishing
House, 1978), 21-22.
19 IqbalN Singh,TheAndaman Story,26-27.
20 IqbalN Singh,TheAndaman Story,26-27.

81
 COLONIALISM, SURVEILLANCE AND MEMOIRS OF TRAVEL

21 Elleke Boehmer, Colonialand PostcolonialLiterature, (Oxford and New York: Oxford

University Press, 1995), 24. ;
22 Boden C Kloss, Andamans and Nicobars: The Narrative of a Cruise in the Schooner
“Terrapin,” 20-21.
23 Boden C Kloss, Andamans and Nicobars: The Narrative of a Cruise in the Schooner
“Terrapin,” 24,
24 Boden C Kloss, Colonial and Postcolonial Literature, 50.
25 Sigmund Freud, Civilizationand its Discontents,Translated by James Strachey,
(New York:Norton & Co., 196i), 8.
26 The Japaneseimperialdesign made a mockeryof handingover these islandsto
the INA. After suffering severe setbacks in the Second World War, on 13
August 1945, two daysbefore their surrender, the Japanesegunned down 300
villagersat Tarmugu.

References

Arnold, David, PolicePowerand ColonialRule, Madras 1859-1947, (New Delhi:

Oxford University Press, 1986).
Bayley,C M, Empireand Intelligence,
(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,
1996).
Boehmer, Elleke, Colonial and PostcolonialLiterature, (Oxford and New York:
Oxford University Press, 1995).
Brantlinger, Patrick, Ruleof Darkness:BritishLiteratureand Imperialism:1830-
1914, (Cornell University Press, 1988).
Bristow,Joseph, EmpireBoys:Adventures in a Man’sWorld,(New York& London:
Harper Collins, 1991),
Embree, Ainslie, ed, 1857 In India: Mutinyor Warof Independence,(Boston:
Heath Books, 1963).
Freud, Sigmund, Reprint, Civilizationand its Discontents,Translated by James
Strachey,(New York:Norton, 1961).
Foucault, Michel,Discipline
and Punish:TheBirthof thePrison,Englishtranslation
by Alan Sheridan, (London and New York:Vintage Books, 1979).
Hyam, Ronald, Britain'sImperialCentury,1815-1914, (New Yorkand London:
Macmillan, 1993),
Kaye,John W, TheAdministration of the EastIndia Company,(London: Oxford
UniversityPress, 1853).
Kloss, Boden C, Andamansand Nicobars:The Narrativeof a Cruisein the Schooner
“Terrapin,”(New Delhi: Vivek Publishing House, 1971).
Macaulay,T B, “Speechin the Houseof Commons,”2"! Feburary 1835, in G
W Young,ed, Speeches,
(Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1935),

82
 TUTUN MUKHERJEE

Mathur, L P Historyof theAndamanand NicobarIslands, 1756-1966, (New Delhi:

Sterling Publishers, 1968).
Mill, James, Historyof BritishIndia, Vols 1-6, (London: 1820), reprint (New
York: Chelsea House, 1968).
Savarkar,V D, TheStoryofMy Transportationfor Life:ABiographyof BlackDaysin
Andamans,Translatedby VN Naik, (Bombay:Sadbhakti Publishers, 1950).
Singh, Iqbal N, TheAndamanStory,(New Delhi: VikasPublishingHouse, 1978).
Sinha, Bijoy Kumar,Andaman:The Indian Bastille,(Allahabad: Pustak Mahal,
L939}:
Solzhenitsyn,AleksandrI, TheGulagArchipelago,
1918-1 956 (Vols.I-IV),
Translated
byThomas P Whitney,(New Yorkand London: Harper Row Publishers, 1974).
Tegart,Charles,Notesor AndamanEnquiry,Fileno.293 Govtof BengalIntelligence
Branch of the Police Dept, 1913.
20 Tegart, Kathleen, [unpublished manuscript], Memoirof an Indian Policeman
(containing entries from C A Tegart’sDiaries), India Office Library,London.
Zt Wedgewood,J, “Hell on Earth,” Searchlight(6" February 1921): 4, (Originally
published in TheDailyTelegraph,London).
Pi) Wick, Robin, British Imperialism:Gold, God, Glory, (New York & London: Holt,
Rhinehart, Winston, 1963).
23 Wurgaft,LD, TheImperialImagination,(Middletown,Conn.:WesleyanUniversity
Press, 1983).

83
PROPAGANDA AS TRAVELOGUE:
A STUDY OF KATHERINE MAYO’S MOTHER INDIA

MOHAMMED ZAHEER BASHA

n the year 1926, Katherine Mayo (1868-1940), by then a

I journalist and writer of some repute in the USA, visited India for
a few months to “see what a volunteer, unsubsidized, uncommitted
and unattached could observe of common things in human life.”!
Mother India was the result of this journey. The book became a
bestseller in the English-speakingworld and wasseen asan important
critique on Hindu civilizationand Indian political aspirations. In five
parts and over thirty chapters, the author gives an account of her
avowedly disinterested travel in lucid, and sometimes charged,
prose. Beginningwith a lurid description of a ritual animal sacrifice
at the Kalighatin Calcutta she moves on to delineate —and at times
dissect —the gender inequality, child marriage, the caste system,
Hindu and Muslim political concerns, the relevance of Gandhi and
the Congress, the role of Christian missionaries, and of the virtues
and the practical indispensability of the British Raj. A close reading
of the book, however, reveals a very interested outlook, as she tries
 MOHAMMED ZAHEER BASHA

to fit in all information —and quite an amount of misinformation —

into a preconceived structure of beliefs. The irony is that, in the first
chapter entitled “The Argument,” Mayoexpresses her dissatisfaction
over the “hazy notions” that the average American could at best get
from, among other sources, “professional propagandists out of one
camp or another,” as the reason for her decision to travel to India
for a first hand encounter.’
That the book should have elicited strong reactions from
contemporary Indians and from those sympathetic to India was as
much due to its huge success in the West as to the flagrant nature
of —what amounted to —imperialist propaganda in and around the
book.’ We need also to recall that the year in which this book was
published, that is 1927, was the same year in which the Indian
nationalists were agitating against the all-white Simon Commission
to assert the Indians’ right to represent themselves. In that context,
Mayo’s efforts to prove the inability of Indians for self-rule was
seen by a great majority of Indian public men as imperialist
propaganda.
The very title of the book seems to have a tongue-in-cheek
connotation, as C S Ranga lyer observed in his rejoinder, Father
India.* We are aware as to how, to the freedom fighters, India was
a politico-religious mother-image. And the frontline of nationalists,
as we know, was comprised mainly of upper caste Hindus who
were, to the British, dangerouslyarticulate, with the Indian National
Congress as their forum. Mayopresents the retrogressiveorthodoxy
of sections of this group as fullyrepresentative of the society under
her scrutiny. This was seen by several of her Indian critics as
exemplifyingthe imperialist mindset.
Her one and almost only source on Hinduism is Abbe Dubois’
Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, a book notorious for its
interested analysis of Hinduism. The Abbe had escaped the Great
Revolution in France, on his own testimony, owing to his religious

85
 PROPAGANDA AS TRAVELOGUE

and political views. As a proselytizing priest in India, once again on

his own admission, he proved disastrous, and to serve Christianity
in another way, he chose to write the book.’ In his Preface he
writes:

There is one motive,which,aboveallothers, has influenced

my determination [to write the book]. It struck me that a
faithful picture of the wickedness and incongruities of
polytheismandidolatrywouldbyitsveryuglinesshelpgreatly
to set off the beautiesand perfectionsof ChristianityA
Now, no one disinterestedly curious about a religion would have
chosen the Abbe, with his avowed interests, as asource. But Mayo,
obviously,found in him a most convenient source. The fact that the
Abbe retired with a pension from the East India Company for his
“many services rendered in India” must have been a point in favour
to the author, whose pro-imperialist leaningswere well known since
the publication of her book, TheIsleofFear:AnExaminationofAmerica’s
Taskin the Philippines(1925) in which she had argued against any
move by the American government towards granting any measure
of autonomy to the Filipinos.’
Basingher observations on this dubious source, Mayosays,inter
alia, that Indian mothers usually encourage premature sexual
indulgences in their children, that boys were gladly drafted to be
temple prostitutes, that eating dung is all in a day’swork to a Hindu,
that pre-pubertal sex in marriage was considered normal, that
unescorted women in India were almost alwaysraped, that most of
the young widows walked the streets, that the preoccupation with
sex and sexualsymbolspre-empted possibilitiesof constructive and
creative pursuits, et cetera. Much was said in hurt and rage in the
written responses to these contents of the book, many times taking
the form of look-at-your-own-society-before-you-dare-to-speak-
of-us. Considering that the twenties were a turbulent phase in

86
 MOHAMMED ZAHEER BASHA

America,it gaveample opportunities to her Indian critics to return

the compliments. Perhapsanticipatingthis line ofattack, she states
at the end of the very first chapter “The Argument”:

Outsideagenciesworkingforthe moralwelfareofthe Indian

seemoften to haveadopted the methodof encouragingtheir
beneficiary to dwell on his own merits and to harp upon
others’ short-comings, rather than to face his faults and
conquer them.*

The author’s stated concern is, however, belied by the value-

judgemental tone of much of the narrative.
For instance,after givinglurid pictures of a day’shappeningsat
the Kalitemple at Kalighat, she quotes an Englishtheosophist as
saying,“[O]nly the lowest and the most ignorant of Indians are
Kaliworshippers.”Shequotes,“[A]mostlearnedand distinguished
of BangaleeBrahmans”who refutes the theosophist’sobservation
byclaimingthat “hundredsand thousandsof Brahmanseverywhere
worship Kali.””
For Mayo, this statement comes from the horse’s mouth and
helps her reinforcethe stereotypeof the degenerate Hindu Brahmin.
And all this, of course, presumes the “wickedness” of ritualistic
6

worship of the goddess.

The author’s solid belief in the norms of her culture as ideal and
unassailable and her disdain for any variation is unambiguously stated.
Whenever she speaks of religious rituals, gender relations, sexuality
or social organization, what seem like her racial and conservative
attitudes are revealed, in fact, as a standard tool for the justification
of colonial rule. In constructing the other, she can make allegations
which are as follows:

Infact, sofar aretheyfromseeinggoodand evilas weseegoodand

evil,that the mother, high caste or low caste, will practise
upon her children—the girl “to makeher sleepwell,”the boy

87
PROPAGANDA AS TRAVELOGUE

“to makehim manly”—anabusewhichthe boy,at least,isapt

to continue daily for the rest of his life.”(sic)(Emphasis
mine) '°

Not surprisingly,such sections of the book attracted outraged

responses in the rejoinders from several Indian public men. C S
Ranga lyer, for instance, in his FatherIndia, sought to take home
the attack by extensively quoting American sources on teenage
pregnancies in America.'' In the narrative, the “us” and “them”
attitude is there throughout and comes clearly to the surface at
times. Writing of the Hindu attitude towards sex symbols —and by
implication, social attitude towards sexuality —with reference to
the 1923 Genevaconvention on the “suppression of the circulation
of and trafficin obscene publications,” and the modified adaptation
of the same by the Indian Legislature, she observes,

[I]tsunqualifiedenactmentwouldhavewroughthavocwith
the religiousbelongings,the ancienttraditionsand customs
and the priestlyprerogativesdear to the Hindu majority.'?
Here the author’sobviouslydistancingthe “civilized”Westfrom
an Easterncultureshe considersincompatiblewith “decent”laws.
These constructs of “us” and “them” are grounded in a sense of
racialsuperiority,anexampleofwhichisbestseenwhen,journeying
across the north, she comes upon a marching troop of English
soldiersand gushes:“Tramp-tramp-a-marchingdetachmentof the
Second Battalion Royal Fusiliers—open-faced, bright-skinned
Englishlads,smartand keen—an incrediblesightin that setting.”
The racial pride and consciousnessof superiority hardly need
elucidationhere.
In the Indian context, racial prejudice translates itself into
religious prejudice. Speaking of the disdainful attitude of upper caste
Hindus towards Christian converts she says: “But of the converts of

the third generation many persons are found to saythat they are

88
 MOHAMMED ZAHEER BASHA

the hope of India.”"* It is so strongly reminiscent of the view of

Abbe Dubois, her source on Hinduism, who held that the Hindu
can be “saved” only when he gives up his religion and embraces
Christianity. In the colonial context, the people who held the reins
of power obviouslyunderstood the political benefits of conversions
in legitimizingexploitation and knew the valueof men likethe Abbe.
Mayo, however, chose not to probe the issue.
The unkindest cut, however,comes in the form of a frankly
political punch. Here is Mayo, describingthe nature of the East
India Company:
Ahuman enterprise coveringtwo centuries of human progress,
the name of the East India Company was sometimes dimmed
by mistaken judgement or byunfit agents. Some of these were
overbearing, some tactless, some wavering, one or two were
base, and a few succumbed to the temptation of graft. Of
their defects, however, not a little nonsense is spun. '*

This admiration for a “human enterprise covering two centuries

of human progress” and the implied castigation of those who are,
to the author, ungrateful, conveys, in a very unequivocal way, the .
historical nature of her perception and her imperialist attitude.
Mayouses everyconceivableand inconceivablemeansto force
her point through. She twists Tagore’swords to prove him an
apologistfor the institution of child-marriageby selectivelyand
misleadinglyquoting him from his essay “The Indian Ideal of
Marriage.”'° Shegivesthis as his considered opinion on the subject:
For the purpose of marriage, spontaneous love is unreliable;
its proper cultivation should yield the best results ... and the
cultivation should begin before marriage. Therefore, from
the earliest years the husband as an idea is held up before our
girls, in verse and story, through ceremonial and worship.
When at length they get the husband, he is to them not a

89
PROPAGANDA AS TRAVELOGUE

person but a principle,likeloyalty,patriotism,or such other

abstractions. !”

These words of Tagore, it must be noted, were preceded by:

“these must have been the lines of argument, in regard to married
love,pursued in our country.vis
Gandhi is extensively quoted whenever his words are an
articulationof his frank diagnosisof social ills, with Mayo always
remembering to leaveout the part speakingof effort and hope.
This, as a strategy,is no doubt rhetoricallyusefulbut unacceptable
when a work claimsto represent the truth. Gandhi understated it
when he observed in his reaction to the book:

Any person who collects extracts from a reformer’s diary,

tears them from their context and proceeds to condemn, on
the strength of these, the people in whose midst the reformer
had worked, would get no hearing from sane and unbiased
readers. !?

Unfortunately,however,Mayodid get a hearing,a good one at

that, in the English-speaking
world.Sheobviouslyappealedas much
to those who benignlybelievedin the “white man’sburden” as to
those who were lesssophisticatedlyracist.
The author gives an impression of fairplay by writing of her
arguments with Indians. This is, characteristically, only apparent.
She contrives highly insufficient and weak rhetoric for the side
arguing with her, or chooses to put on record only those reactions
that serve the purpose of her rhetoric. For instance, when she
laments the educated Indian youth wasting their time in “idle
talk” and suggests that it would be better if they went to rural
areas to do some constructive work instead, she has one young
political leader, speaking for others as well, saying: “[P]erhaps,
but talk, also is work. Talk is now the only work. Nothing else can
be done till we push the alien out of India.””° She then quotes, on

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 MOHAMMED ZAHEER BASHA

the same page, “an American long resident in India, deeply and
sympathetically interested in the Indian” as saying, “[I]t was a
crime to teach them to be clerks, lawyersand politicianstill they’d
been taught to raise food.”*! On the one hand, the author derides
the proclivity of the Indian for futile talk and concurs with the
viewthat the Englishsystemof education is responsible to a great
extent for the political discontent and on the other, would see no
wrong whatsoever in the waythe Raj had worked/wasworking. At
this point the whole issue of the disaffectiontowards the empire,
supposedlyinduced by Englisheducation, offersitselffor a rational
analysis.However,perhaps with good reason, the author chooses
not to take up the analysis.
Mayo also accuses Indians of being habitual liars. In her own
words:

The Indianmaybe adevoted“seekeraftertruth” in the sense

ofmetaphysicalspeculation;he maybe ofa splendidcandour
indealingwithmostpartsofmostsubjectsofwhichyouspeak
together. And yet he may from time to time embed in the
midst of his frank speech statements easilysusceptibleof
proof and totallyat variancewith facts.”
In her quest to know the truth about liars, Mayo speaks to a
European who has been a resident of India for a long time. She
asks him, “Why do men of high position make falsestatements and
then name in support of documents which, when I dig them out,
either fail to touch the subject at all, or else prove the statements to
be false?”And the European replies: “Because to the Hindu, nothing
is false that he wants to believe. Or all matters being nothingness,
all statements concerning it are lies. Therefore he may blamelessly
choose the lie that serves his purpose ...””’
She goes on to cite further proof of the Indian’sdegenerate
traits:

91
 PROPAGANDA AS TRAVELOGUE

Inertia, helplessness,lackof initiativeand originality,lackof

stayingpowerandofsustainedloyalties,sterilityofenthusiasm,
weakness of life-vigour itself —all are traits that truly
characterisethe Indian not only of today,but of long-past
history.All,furthermore, willcontinue to characterisehim,
inincreasingdegrees,untilheadmitstheircausesandwithhis
own two hands uproots them ... And his arraignments of
outside elements, past, present, or to come, serve only to
deceive his own mind to put off the day of his deliverence.**

In other words, for Indians, blaming the Raj for anything

whatsoever,and seekingpoliticalfreedomamountedto an escapist
indulgence.The untenabilityof thisviewhardlyneedselaboration,
as economiccritiquesof Englishimperialismwere wellknown by
this time.
Many contemporary critics of the book noted, but thought it
wise not to elaborate on Mayo’s soft treading on Muslim toes,
perhapsbecauseof the politicalclimatethen. Sheprojects the upper-
caste Hindu as the cause of all disaffection in the country, what
with his caste-dominatedCongressclaimingto speak for all Indians.
Weare awarehowthe BritishRajwaspatronizingcommunal politics.
Mayo, followingthe lead, gets to work pretty seriously to do her
bit. She uses, among other things, the anti-Brahmin feelingsin the
Madras province, the allegedfaith of the people in the goodness of
Englishofficersover the mainlyupper-caste Indian ones, the words
of an North WestFrontier Province(NWFP) PathanagainstHindus,
to make out a case against her target.
With her sense of racial superiority, Mayo had no more reason
to love the Muslim than she had to love the Hindu. However, that
he is monotheistic unlike the Hindu seems, to her, a point in the
Muslim’s favour. Note, of course, her observation: “Literate or
illiterate, the Mohammedan is a passionate monotheist. ‘There is
but one God.’ His mosques are clear of images. His frequent daily

92
 MOHAMMED ZAHEER BASHA

prayerisofferedstraightto the invisibleOne omnipotent ...””>Asis

obvious,a certain amount of value-judgementregardingreligious
practice is involvedhere.
Mayo exceeds herself in making out a kind oftwo-nation theory
from her “observations.” Towards this end, the representation of
the Muslim is consistent vis-a-vis the Hindu and his concerns (both
of the communal stereotype). She also projects Muslim communalist
concerns as genuine and valid. There is, of course, a build-up in
the rhetoric to make the conclusions reached sound tenable.
For instance, givingdetails of the LegislativeAssembly debates of
1925 on the proposed Age of Consent bill, the author writes, “upon
the unfruitful circlings of the Hindus breaks, once and again, a
voice from the hardy North.”’* And this is the voice of a Muslim
member representing the NWFP whose argument is that since the
government could do little about child-marriages, it would be futile
to seek to enforce a particular age of consent for consummation.
This is placed amidst quotes from the most conservative Hindu
legislators, conveniently ignoring that there were less unreasonable
and even liberal speakers who were trying to get the bill passed.
The way Mayo represents it, the point here seems not so much the
issue being debated as is the —just —cynicism of aMuslim member
over an issue of great concern and even embarrassment to his
Hindu colleagues.
Again,inher accountofthe BombayLegislative Councildiscussion
on a proposed bill to coerce localboards to admit “untouchable”
children into schools,in the midst of cleverstallingtalk by some
orthodox Hindu members, a Muslim legislator from Sind is
approvinglyquotedas “strikingthe practicalnote”whenhe observes
that since the upper-castes were ever so reluctant to treat the
“untouchables”as fellowhuman beings,they would haveno right
to protest if these people turned to Christianity or Islam for
succour.”’ This observation too, no doubt, smacks of cynicism and

3
 PROPAGANDA AS TRAVELOGUE

disdain. Nevertheless, these serve Mayo’s purpose of playing off

one community against the other. The point here is “who is saying
it” rather than what’s being said. In a social context of uncertain
communal relations, Mayo must have realized the effectiveness of
such rhetoric. The chapter “Behind the Veil”is mainly an indictment
of the purdah practising Hindu upper castes. Eventhere, the Muslim
escapes the brunt of the attack though the system was also prevalent
among the Muslims.
On the other hand, there are sections in the book, for example
the chapter “Sons of the Prophet” which gives an image of the
Muslim that is in full conformity both to the self-projection of the
most rabidly communal Muslim and to the impression sought to be
reinforced by his Hindu counterpart. The basic point here serves
Mayo’s purpose of playing off one community against the other
and depicts the utter incompatibility of these two “peoples.” A
number of pages in the same section are devoted to the
representations made byvariousMuslimorganizationsto Montague,
SecretaryofState, in 1917, pleading for the continuanceofthe Raj
citing the fear of Hindu dominance in case the British should decide
to go some day.The author, in consonance with her principles, just
does not try to examine how representative these bodies were. We
know that in the 1936 elections, the Muslim League secured only
4.8% of the total Muslim vote. If the Muslim organizations were
reallyas representative as Mayo made them out to be, 1937 would
have been a different year,
At one point, speakingof the Muslim,she says:
Always an internationalist rather than a nationalist, all over
India the Mohammedan is saying today: “We are foreigners,
conquerors, fighting men. What if our numbers are small! Is
it numbers or men that count? When the British go, weshall
rule India,””8

94
 MOHAMMED ZAHEER BASHA

There is a contradiction in the rhetoric here. If, as she seems to

say, quoting the Muslim representations to Montague, the Muslims
felt insecure about the prospect of the British leaving and the Hindus
taking over, how then could her statement be true? Should not the
Muslims desire the end of the Raj so that they could take over and
“rule the Hindus?” Mayo was, evidently, carried away by the force
of her enthusiasm to prove her “point.”
The author’s warped account of the Moplah uprising in 1921
takes the cake among her travestiesof truth about political conditions
and processes in India. She would have us believe that the Khilafat
agitation to the Moplah meant the overthrow of the Raj and the
establishment ofthe rule ofIslam in India. She givesthe impression
that the Moplah uprising was an anti-Hindu affair from beginning
to end. This fliesin the faceof known facts.Modern history classifies
it as an agrarian unrest that went haywire. The Moplahs, even before
1921, had a history of such unrests on smaller scales. In 1921 also,.
it began as a protest againstthe rock-renting practices of the jenmies,
the mostly upper-class landlords. The Khilafat agitation was allied
to it after the Congress took up the issue. The violence began as the
result of official indiscretion and apathy, and the first targets were
the government buildings, and then the more notorious among the
jenmies and also pro-government Moplahs. And the Englishreprisal
that followed, with its unmatched brutality, finallydrove the unled
Moplahs into a phase of anti-Hindu actions.
Throughsucha lopsidedaccountofthistragicevent,Mayosought
to strengthenthe theoryofcommunalincompatibility. Thisaccount
also serves her to discredit the man, Gandhi, and his principles,
blamingthe violenceon the Khilafatinitiativetakenby him.
The New Statesman,in its review, appreciatively called the book
“One of the most powerful defences of the British Raj that has ever
been written.””” Though highlypartisan, TheNewStatesmanseems to
have reflected the general attitude of most white readers. And if the

95
 PROPAGANDA AS TRAVELOGUE

book turned out to be such a bestseller, it must have been because

of —the racist reasons apart —its racy style and lucid representation,
notwithstanding the dubious basis of its assumptions and observations.
Gandhi, referring to the success of the book, was to observe:
“Though she represents a class of sensational writers in the West, it
is a class that, I flatter myself with the belief, is on the wane.”*”
Obviously, the sensationalist writer is yet to be found dispensable,
especially in the West, and it may be worthwhile to look into Mayo’s
rhetorical devices that made the book so talked about.
We havealreadynoted the tongue-in-cheektone of the book’s
very title. Chapter titling too is no exception, being loaded with
sarcasm. For instance, the chapters dealing with child-marriage
and its consequencesare titled “Earlyto Marry and Earlyto Die,”
“Spadesare Spades,”“The EarthlyGod,” “Wagesof Sin,” and so
on. The chapter dealingwith educated Indians’yearningfor public
officeis called“GiveMe Officeor GiveMe Death.” Of course, the
sarcasmisnot limitedto titlingalone,and isspeciallyusedwhenever
the author thinksshe has an irrefutablepoint. Andwhen she is not
sosure,shetriesto makeup throughemotionallychargednarration.
In her descriptionof the receptiongivento the Princeof Wales
in 1921 in the backgroundof the Congressboycott decision, she
has uncontrollableIndians chanting, “Hail to the Prince! Let me
only see my Prince! Let me only see my Prince just once before I
die,” and “Look!Look!Behold,the Light,the Light!”alongthe way
of the royalmotorcade.*!
The ridicule extends to Indian political and cultural identities
framed as obsessionswith its past “Golden Age” and the tendency
to blame its end on external sources. Thus she observes:

Or again,the accuserfirstpaintsa pictureof an idyllicland,

distinguishedbyscience,philosophyandpastoralgrace,then
suddenlyconfrontshis hearer with the challenge:can you
showme, in allIndia,anyremnantof that life?No? Exactly.

96
 MOHAMMED ZAHEER BASHA

Then, if it exists nowhere, does it not follow that Britain must

havedestroyedit?”
Such accusers, wherever the author found them, help her in
holding up to —what seems deserved —ridicule any critique of the
Raj. One cannot be certain about the authenticity or otherwise of
such encounters but one can see that the effect sought to be
produced fits in into her ideological framework.
Mayo’s own interpretation of the Indian past and present is,
however, different. After giving a brief history of crime that she
believes was perpetrated on India by the Muslim “invaders” and
selfish Hindu chieftains, the author speaks of the “great human
enterprise that the East India Company was” and refers to the year
1858 in these words:

Shabby, threadbare, sick and poor, old Mother India stood at

last on the brink of another world and turned blind eyes
toward the strange new flag above her head. It carried then,
as it carries today, a pledge that is, to her, incredible. How can
she, the victim and slave of all recorded time, either hope or
believe that her latest master brings her the gift of constructive
service,democracyand the wealof the common people???
The Millennium, for India, Mayo seems to be saying, arrived in
that year!
To conclude, one may quote the author at her reasonable best:

Now, in the name of fairplay, it cannot be too strongly

emphasised that this characteristic, this point of view, this
different evaluation, constitutes not necessarily inferiority,
but certainly a difference, like the colour of the skin. Yetas a
difference involved in the heart of human intercourse, it must
constantly be reckoned with and understood; else that
intercoursewilloften and needlesslycrash.*4

97
 PROPAGANDA AS TRAVELOGUE

Even if accepted at face value, it can still be asserted, from what

we have seen so far, that her own attempts at a human intercourse
did crash, and the seeds of the failure must lie in her barely concealed
attitude of racial arrogance and impatience. After all, she came not
to see, but to confirm and damn.

Notes

Katherine Mayo, Mother India, (London: Jonathan Cape, 1927), 20.

Katherine Mayo, Mother India, 20. “What does the average American actually
know about India? That Mr Gandhi lives there; also tigers. His further ideas, if
such he has, resolve themselves into more or less hazy notions more or less
unconsciously absorbed from professional propagandists out of one camp or
another.”
Manoranjan Jha, KatherineMayoand India, (New Delhi: Peoples Publishing
House, 1971) gives documented evidence of government patronage to Mayo
during her research and the propagandistuse of the book later by the media and
the establishment.
CS Rangalyer,FatherIndia,(London:Selwyn& BlountLtd., 1927), “[S]atirically,
the American tourist (Mayo) calls her book MotherIndia, in whose name the
English-hatingNationalist appeals to the masses.”
Abbe Dubois, Letterson thestateofChristianity in India,(London, 1823), in which
he writes of his conviction, after thirty two years of missionary work, that the
conversion of Hindus, with “their deep rooted prejudices of centuries,” was
impossible under the conditions then existing.
Abbe Dubois, page number not available.
In this book, Mayo’sbasicpoint is that, except for the politicians, the Filipinos
were neither interested in, nor ready, for political freedom. Katherine Mayo,
TheIslesof Fear:An ExaminationofAmerica’sTaskin the Philippines,as quoted in
Manoranjan Jha, KatherineMayoand India, (New Delhi: Peoples Publishing
House, 1971).
Katherine Mayo,MotherIndia, 26. 3
KatherineMayo,MotherIndia, 19, Neither the “Englishtheosophist” nor the
“BengaleeBrahman”is named by the author.
10 Katherine Mayo,MotherIndia, 33.
ey C S Rangalyer quotes extensivelyfrom Judge Ben Lindsey’sRevoltofModern
Youth,a deeply concerned social work on sexual promiscuity and teenage
pregnanciesin the USAin the twenties.
CS Ranga lyer, FatherIndia, 32.

98
 MOHAMMED ZAHEER BASHA

13 C S Ranga Iyer, FatherIndia, 67.

14 C S Ranga lyer, FatherIndia, 152.
ies CS Ranga lyer, FatherIndia, 257-58,
16 Rabindranath Tagore, “The Indian Ideal of Marriage,” in Hermann Keyserling,
ed, TheBookofMarriage:ANewInterpretationby 24LeadersofContemporaryThought,
(New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1926).
iw Rabindranath Tagore, “The Indian Ideal of Marriage,” 75.
18 Rabindranath Tagore, “The Indian Ideal of Marriage,” 112-13.
19 Gandhi, YoungIndia, 15" September 1927.
20 Katherine Mayo, MotherIndia, 200.
21 Katherine Mayo, MotherIndia, 200.
22 Katherine Mayo, MotherIndia, 272.
23 Katherine Mayo, MotherIndia, 273.
24 Katherine Mayo, MotherIndia, 24
25 Katherine Mayo, MotherIndia, 290.
26 Katherine Mayo,MotherIndia, 47
27 Katherine Mayo, MotherIndia, 146.
28 Katherine Mayo, MotherIndia, 303-304.
29 TheNewStatesman,16" July 1927.
30 Gandhi, YoungIndia, 15" September 1927.
31 Katherine Mayo, MotherIndia, 199.
32 Katherine Mayo, MotherIndia, 243.
33 Katherine Mayo, MotherIndia, 259.
34 Katherine Mayo, MotherIndia, 274.

References

Mayo, Katherine, MotherIndia, (London: Jonathan Cape, 1927).

Dubois, J A Abbe, HinduManners,Customsand Ceremonies, (Oxford: Clarendon,
1924).
Iyer, C S Ranga, FatherIndia, (London: Selwyn& Blount Ltd., 1927).
Jha, Manoranjan,KatherineMayoand India, (New Delhi: PeoplesPublishing
House, 1971).
Keyserling, Herman, Bookof Marriage:A New Interpretationby 24 Leadersof
ContemporaryThought,(New York:Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1926).
Natarajan, K, MotherIndia:A Rejoinder,(Madras: G A Natesan & Co., 1927).
Chandra, Bipan, et al., India’sStrugglefor Independence,
(Delhi: Penguin Books,
1989).

29
CONSTITUTIVE CONTRADICTIONS:
TRAVEL WRITING AND CONSTRUCTION OF NATIVE
WOMEN IN COLONIAL INDIA

SINDHU MENON

Bothasobjectofcolonialhistoriographyandassubjectofinsurgency,
theideological
constructionskeepthemaledominant.Ifin thecontext
ofcolonialproduction,thesubalternhasnohistoryandcannotspeak,
thesubalternas‘femaleis evenmoredeeplyin shadow.'

| teehas become a commonplaceof

as a convenient postcolonialcriticism
myth the notion todayare
that imperial edifices to

either impermeableor monolithicbynature. The shadesofvariation

foundamongcontemporary representationsclearlyindicatethat we
are not dealingwith a uniform monolithicstructure, but rather with
a collageor jigsawpuzzle,where the faultlinesremainvisibledespite
the surfaceappearanceof a wholeness.This paper arguesthat these
differences, these “inconsistencies”within the colonial paradigm
were not extraneous“mistakes”that weakenedthe structure, There
isevidenceto indicatethat at an ontologicalor epistemologicallevel,
strategictextualdiscoursesthat aim at control cannottotallysucceed
in their projectof glossingoverhistory.There are bound to be, as
 SINDHU MENON

inevitableadjuncts of discursivityitself,lacunaewhere more dialogic

versions of the constituent transactions inscribe themselves.
However,at a pragmaticlevel,the inconsistencieswere actually
“constitutive”elementsof the structure itself.Far from weakening
the workingforceofthe imperialnetwork,theyfurthereditsefficacy
by making it possible to accommodate political and theoretical
positionsof apparentwidedivergencewithoutseemingincongruity.
Thisargumentcanbe illustratedbyexaminingalmostanyparticular
facetofcolonialrepresentation.Asa particularlyproductiveexample,
I haveselectedthe representationof IndianwomeninearlyEuropean
(mainlyBritish)traveltexts.
The situation of the woman in formerly colonizedsocietiesis
doubly complex since her identity has been submerged on two
distinct fronts —that of colonialismbased on race, and that of
patriarchy based on gender. The notion of “double colonisation,
i.e.,thatwomeninformerlycolonisedsocietiesweredoublycolonised
by both imperial and patriarchalideologies”?is significantin this
context.It isalsonecessaryto note that the situationisextracomplex
whenthe representationwascarriedout bythe womenofa colonizing
race, since they were inscribed as “colonizer” by race and as
“colonized”bygender.
For the white woman, the Indian woman isa racial “Other”
(and also a potential sexual rival). But there is also a simultaneous
uneasy identification at the level of gender. The complexities
engendered by this double bind will be considered in the latter part
of this analysis. No precise answers are available for the vexing
question, which of the two, race or gender, should be given
prominence. However, I do attempt to trace out the intricately
entangled strands of this “alliance.” The larger part of the texts
examined here are the productions, therefore, of British women
travellers. Of course, representative texts by British men, as well as
those of a few non-British travellers are examined.

101
 CONSTITUTIVE CONTRADICTIONS

Roy Porter and G S Rousseau, in Exoticismand Enlightenment,

havediscussedthe “exoticizing”process:

Containingan elementof the forbidden,thoughwithout its

correlate, the abominable,the exotic is that realm of the
excluded which is not absolutelyprohibited, but merely
signpostedby danger lights. It has equivalentstatus in the
geoculturalrealmto the daydreamin the psychodynamic.It
is marked by frisson more than fear.’

The representation of Indian women was the primary site of

such a European “exoticizing” of India. In colonialist iconography,
the Indian woman occupied a much more complicated position
than her male counterparts. We have a very powerful discourse
that posits an image of the Oriental woman as the archetypal
Other, alluring and dangerous precisely because of her very
Otherness. At the same time, the persuasive and pervasive notion
of the entire colonial enterprise as a civilizing mission rendered it
imperative that colonized women be also represented as an
oppressed and silenced group who dumbly looked towards the
colonizers for rescue and help. We also have to contend with the
wholesale “feminization” of the colony as such, which created
“feminine men” and in the process rendered the “real” woman’s
situation even more ambivalent. Questions can also be raised about
the presence of a systematic and ordered suppression of native
women’s voices, a project into which the female members of the
ruling race were also co-opted.
Wasthe Indianwomanthe idealsubjectof embodiedfemininity
or the passiveobjectof oppression?In keepingwith their need to
viewcolonialismasa loftyself-sacrificingmission,the malewriters,
evenwhen they confessedon occasionto a physicalattraction for
nativewomen,usuallyfolloweditupwitha qualificationor ambiguous
disclaimer. James Forbes’ comment that “the Hindoo women when

102
 SINDHU MENON

young are delicate and beautiful, sofar as wecan reconcilethe ideaof

beautywith the olivecomplexion”is a useful illustration of this trend
(emphasis mine).* Yetanother type of disclaimer is “to damn with
faintpraise,” as demonstrated by Richard Burton’scomment: “Some
of the [Hindu] women are by no means deficient in personal
charms.”°
However, sexual attraction towards native women was also
combinedwitha fearoftheirunbridledlibidothat seemedto threaten
the colonizer’s defining masculinity.The Nair women of Kerala
were specifically focussed on in this context, since the
Marumakkathayam (matrilineal) system they practised rendered
them seeminglybeyond subjugation.The claimsmade by travellers
regarding the sexual excessesof these women were incredible in
their exaggerations. Varthema claims that all “marriages were
consummated by the age of ten,” and “there were very fewvirgins
6
among either sex at the age of seven or eight.”” Van Linschoten
goes a step further by asserting that Nair girls are not only capable
of sexual activityby the age of seven, but that they are so aggressive
even at that age as to pose actual physicalthreats to men.’ Varthema
also records an instance where a Nair merchant requested
Varthema’sEuropean friend to “deflower” his young bride as it was
an honour for the husband, according to the native customs. The
most telling part of the anecdote is the final sentence, where
Varthema, supposedly speaking for the young bride, says, “[T]ruly
the ladywould havedesired that the first night had lasted a month.”*
The suggestionis that only the truly masculinewhite man can satisfy
the dangerously lasciviousnative woman. The native man isjust not
man enough.
Varthema also comes up with a theory (for which I have not
been able to trace any authentic source) that the Nair women “intend
nothing but their lust, and think that if they die virgins, they shall
never enter into Paradise.”® This must have indeed seemed a

103
CONSTITUTIVE CONTRADICTIONS

frightening inversion of the Christian religion’s emphasis on the

sacred nature of virginity. However, despite this fear of unbridled
native female sexuality,and in spite of the rhetorical disclaimers, a
distinct exotic and erotic attraction towards native women still
contrives to emerge from these accounts.
Indeed, the threat posed by the sexual allure of the native woman
is a constant irritant, which is also a major motivation behind certain
white women travellers’jocular/contemptuous dismissal of even the
possibility of a “successful” miscegenetic relationship. Isabella Fane
comments, in a highly sarcastic tone, which does not quite mask
the anxiety:

Among the presents for the Governor General, there was a

tiger which has been nursed and brought up bya native
woman. Woman and all is presented. As Sir C- has the
reputation of not caring for colour in his little amours, she
maybe acceptable.'”
Male travellersoften give lyricalaccounts of the appearance
and appeal of the Indian women. James Forbes’verdict is that,
on the whole, Indianwomenapproximatefar more closelyto the
ideal conception of femininitythan their British counterparts.
Thoughhe speaksofthe Britishdutyof “liberating”Indianwomen,
Forbesoften gets carried awayby his versionofdocile, malleable
femininityand arguesfor the patriarchalsystem,that the seclusion
of Indianwomenhasmanyadvantagesthat adequatelycompensate
the loss of liberty.The implication is that precisely because of
their secludedlifeand the docilitythat it engenders,Indianwomen
are ideally feminine creatures with whoma liaison would be
enjoyable.
This idea is further developed in references to the “natural” Indian

woman as opposed to the “artificial” European ladies:

You may talk of your French woman’s walk — it may be

104
 SINDHU MENON

pretty —indeed, it is so; but is it natural? She goes pitter-

patting along as though she feared at each step to burst her
shoe. My Indian daughterof nature has no shoe to burst, but
she plants a very pretty bare foot with precision yet lightness,
and floats past, unencumbered with the weighty vase, which
her slenderneck seemsalmosttoo fragileto support."
Of course, such open commendation, patriarchal or otherwise,
was not an officially acceptable viewfor any member of the ruling
race. So, the attraction exercised by the native woman was often
underplayedbyrhetoricalreferencesto their intellectualdeprivation.
Still, despite this anticipatory bail, the undercurrent of attraction
comes through loud and clear. This seems to be the spur behind
the near-totaltendencyamongBritishwomentravelwritersto either
ignore or reduce to slighting references in passing the physical
appearance of the Indian woman. They also emphasize the vast
cultural gulf that shouldprevent Indian women from being suitable
mates for the “civilized”Englishmen.
EmilyEden refers to the extreme “seclusion”of Indian women
only to conclude that they must be boring companions indeed.
Isabella Fane is seriouslyworried that her nephew may grow up
“very black” because he hada native wet nurse. Eliza Fay sets
forth a blanketcondemnationof Indianwomen—in sharp contrast
to their portrayalsas “daughtersof nature” —for using too much
“art” and thereby spoiling even the little beauty they naturally
possess. Interestingly,these same women writers are also fierce
championsfor the “emancipation”of the monolithicconfiguration
of “the Indian woman.” However, the line is firmly drawn at
acceptinga liaison between individualIndian women and White
men. The ambivalentattitude of the colonizingmen towards the
charms of the native women must have helped in the rigid
construction of this notion. Actually,the White women did not
have much to be really anxious about, however erotic an appeal

105
CONSTITUTIVE CONTRADICTIONS

native women may have had —“The lure of female sexuality [was]
never far from the threat of female power.”'*
The notion of emancipating the native woman was fundamental
to the discourse of colonialism as a civilizing mission. The “liberty”
and the “protection” accorded to native women functioned as a
graph for plotting the success or otherwise of this mission. As Gayatri
Spivak points out, the perpetual refrain was that of “white men
saving brown women from brown men.”"* This confers a very limited
subjectivity on the native male as the agent of oppression, but
completely freezes the native woman as the object of both native
oppression and colonizer’s rescue. In the Indian context, the
prohibition of the custom of Sati is the ideal example of the colonial
succor of the colonized woman. Nearly all the travel texts included
in this paper contain at least one detailed reference to Sati, either
an eyewitness report or a secondhand account.
Despite the officialcommitment to abolishingSati, a certain
ambivalencecan be seen, at least in the texts produced by men
travellers.In the first place, the element of the exotic spectacle
involved in Sati seems to have been a severe temptation.

[The crowd] suggested that it was certainly a suttee, or

burning of a Hindoo widow that was about to take place.
Though feeling a great repugnance for painful sights, I
determined to availmyself ofan opportunity
which seldomoffers
itselfto a nativeofEuropeofSEEINGoneof themostremarkable
customsoftheEast.'*
James Forbes includes a long eyewitness account of Sati in which
he finds himself compelled to admire the “heroism” of the Sati. His
only regret is that she “did not have Christian morality to teach her
the futility of such an act.”!” The entire scene is described as a
grand spectacle. As Kate Teltscher points out:
As an erasure of the widow’s sexuality, Sati bears a distant

106
 SINDHU MENON

affinity
totheideallifeofchastity
andfidelity
tothememory
of a deceased husband prescribed for seventeenth century
EnglishWidows.”'®

Hardlysurprising,therefore, that Englishmen,despite the

official attitude of disapproval, had mixed responses to Sati.

The colonizers as a whole did stress the need for abolishing

Sati. But the European men were susceptible to the heroic and
romantic associations of the rite, far more so than the women,
who regarded it totally indignantly and angrily.It is possible that
the implicit suggestionthat the British men were ready on occasion
to glorify Sati was a disconcerting thought, which led the women
writers to take all possible occasions for condemnation. Sati, for
them, was not just an erotic or barbaric practice. It was also a
potential threat.
Emily Eden refers to the Sati committed by two of Ranjit Singh’s
Queens, whom she calls “those poor dear Ranees,” and adds, “they
would have given it up if they had any hope of kind treatment.”"”
Eliza Fay argues with feminist zeal that “this ritual [Sati] is but part
of the schemes of men in most countries to invent a sufficient
number of rules to render the women totally subservient to their
authority.”'*
Butshealsoadds:
I cannot avoid smiling when I hear some gentlemen bring
forward the conduct of the Hindu womenasa test of superior
character. I am well aware that so much are we the slaves of
habit that were it necessary for awoman’s reputation to burn
herself in England, many a one who had accepted a husband
merely for the sake of an establishment ... and rendered his
life uncomfortable to its close, would yet mount the funeral
pyre with all the imaginable decency and die with a heroic
display of fortitude.”

107
CONSTITUTIVE CONTRADICTIONS

The issue of Sati, though most prominent, was not the only issue
in the discourse of savingnativewomen. The susceptibility of Indian
women to “holy Men” —who are uniformly presented as sex-crazed
imposters —the Devadasi system, and the lack of education as well
as the retarding seclusion are also stressed. More than as systems
open to reform, Indian religionsare presented as being ontologically
oppressive and thereby to be eradicated. Sir Thomas Herbert
describes in almost pornographic terms a ceremony where a new
bride is violated by the “bodkin” of an idol.”? In a paradoxical
formulation, it is superstition that is behind these rites, but the
Indian men are not just superstitious; they are positively sadistic.
The voyeurism of the European traveller, however, is coded only in
terms of reformative and intellectual curiosity.
Aprocesswherebythe entire colonywasderogatorilyportrayed
througha wholesalefeminizationcanalsobe noted. The colonizer’s
“masculinity” showed to the best advantage when contrasted/
comparedwith the ascribed“femininity”of the colonized.AsAshis
Nandypoints out,

Colonizationtoo was congruent with the existingWestern

stereotypes and the philosophywhich they represented. It
produced a cultural and socialconsensus in which political
and socio-economicdominance symbolizedthe dominance
of men and masculinityoverwomenand femininity.”
As a perfect illustration of this, James Forbes describes Indian
men as follows:

In India,a peoplepresent themselvesto our eyes,clothed in

linengarmentsand somewhatlowdescending,of a garb and
gesturewe maysaymaidenlyand wellnigh effeminate,of a
countenanceshyand somewhatestranged,yet smilingout a
glazedandsomewhat
bashful
familiarity.”
“Shy,”“bashful”and “maidenly,”and also quite explicitly
108
 SINDHU MENON

“effeminate”—we can easilytrace the progress of feminization

here. é
Rather ironically, female travel writers also resort to such
feminization,reassertingthe idea of inferiorityassociatedwith it.
Eliza Fay refers to lack of physicalstrength in Indian men, who
approximate female status when compared to “masculine”
Englishmen.She quotes a Bengaliservant: “Oh, I no English.I
Bengalman.I no estrong like English;one, two, three Bengalman
cannot do like one Englishman.””It seemsquite possiblethat the
“Bengalman”was usinghis weaknessas an excuse,demonstrating
what Homi Babha has called “canniness.”But we need to place
emphasisnot just on what the Indian said, but alsoon the English
woman’s unquestioning acceptance of it. Obviously,there is a
consensusamong the colonizersthat “Bengalmen”actuallycould
not do what the Englishmandid.
Despite this seeming uniformity in the feminization of India,
we have to keep in mind that diverse effects of this were to be
seen. While the male travellers could establish their superiority,
no such easy reaction was open to the women. As collaborators
in the colonial enterprize, they often had to submerge their own
female identity and join in denouncing the very category of the
feminine.
In one single area, the representation of women, and focussing
basicallyon the binary category of male and female writers, several
diverse trends could be traced within the colonial paradigm. This
could be regarded as a signboard for other areas as well. We would
be quite off track if we saw these diversitiesas somehow weakening
aspects of the imperial edifice. Quite to the contrary, these co-
existing diversities enabled the discourses of patriarchy and
imperialism, Romanticism and rationalism —to mention only a
few —to configure as non-contradictory for the practitioners. It is
possible
inpostcolonial
analysis
todeploy
theseinternal
contradictions

109
CONSTITUTIVE CONTRADICTIONS

forunravellingpurposes.Butit hasto be keptin mindat a prominent

levelthat during the heydayof imperialism,these contradictions
were preciselythe aspects that contributed to the psychological
coherence of the project.

Notes

A preliminary version of the few specific ideas in this essay relating to native-white
women’s relations was included in a paper entitled “Race or Gender?” which has

been submitted for a forthcominganthologyedited by Ms Nirmala Nair.

1 GayatriChakravortySpivak“Canthe SubalternSpeak?”,in BillAshcroft,Gareth
Griffiths,Helen Tiffin,eds, ThePostcolonial
StudiesReader,(London: Routledge,
1995), 24-28.
2 Ashcroft, et al, The PostcolonialStudies Reader, 250.
As quoted in Kate Teltscher,India Inscribed,(Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1997), 8.
4 —James Forbes, Oriental Memoirs:VolsI-IV, (New Delhi: Gian Publishing House,
1988).
5 Richard Burton, Goa and the Blue Mountain, (Delhi; Asian Educational Services,
1991) 107.
6 Ludovico de Varthema, The Travelsof Ludovicode Varthema,(London: Hakluyt
Society, 1863), 90.
7 John Huighen VanLinschoten,Discourses of Voyagesintothe Eastand WestIndies,
(London: Hakluyt Society, 1867), 209.
8 Ludovico de Varthema, The Travelsof Ludovicode Varthema, 203.
9 Ludovico de Varthema, The Travelsof Ludovicode Varthema,135.
10 Isabella Fane, Miss Fane in India, (Gloucestershire: Allan Sattin, 1985), 48.
11 Peter Mundy, The Travelsof PeterMundyin Asiaand Europe, (London: The
Hakluyt Society,1919), 42.
12 Kate Teltscher, India Inscribed, 45.
13. GayatriChakravortySpivak,“Can the Subaltern Speak?”, 295.
14 Thomas Twining,Travelsin India, (London: Osgood, 1893), 465, original
emphasisonly on “seeing.”
15 James Forbes, Oriental Memoirs, 321.
16 Kate Teltscher, India Inscribed, 51.
17 EmilyEden, UptheCountry,(London:Oxford UniversityPress, 1930), 309-310.
18 Eliza Fay,OrientalLettersfrom India, 1779-1819, (London: Hogarth Press,
1986), 203.

110
 SINDHU MENON

19 Eliza Fay,OrientalLettersfromIndia, 1779-1819, 203.

20 Thomas Herbert, A Relation of Some YearesTravaile 1638, (London: Hutton,
1938), 41.
21 Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy,(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), 4.
22 James Forbes, OrientalMemoirs,55.
23 Eliza Fay,OrientalLettersfromIndia, 1779-1819, 177-178.

References

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin, eds, The PostcolonialStudies Reader,
(London: Routledge, 1995).
Burton, Richard, Goa and the BlueMountain, (Delhi: Asian Educational Services,
1991).
Eden, Emily,Up the Country,(London: Oxford UniversityPress, 1930).
Fane, Isabella, Miss Fane in India, (Gloucestershire: Allan Sattin, 1985).
Fay, Eliza, OrientalLettersfromIndia, 1779-1819, (London: Hogarth Press,
1986).
Forbes, James, Oriental Memoirs (4 volumes), (New Delhi: Gian Publishing
House, 1988).
Herbert, Thomas, A Relationof SomeYearesTravaile,(London: Hutton, 1638).
Mundy,Peter, TheTravels
ofPeterMundyin Asiaand Europe, (London:The Hakluyt
Society, 1919).
Nandy,Ashis,TheIntimateEnemy,(Delhi: Oxford UniversityPress, 1989).
Spivak,GayatriChakravorty,“Canthe SubalternSpeak?”,in Ashcroftet al, 24-
28, 1995.
11 Teltscher, Kate, India Inscribed,(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997).
12 Twining, Thomas, Travelsin India, (London: Osgood, 1893).
13 VanLinschoten, John Huighen, Discourses of Voyages
into the Eastand WestIndies,
(London: Hakluyt Society, 1867).
Varthema,Ludovicode, The Travelsof Ludovico
de Varthema,(London: Hakluyt
Society, 1863).

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TOURING AESTHETICS:

THE COLONIAL RHETORIC OF TRAVEL BROCHURES

TODAY

PRAMOD K NAYAR

his paper exploresthe rhetoric of tourist brochures issuedby

Ocean oftourismrun bythestateorcentralgovernment(s)
inIndia.' It treatsthe brochuresasa sub-genreoftravelwriting,and
adopts a “literary” approach, locatingcertain figures of speech
(tropes) in them. These figuresof speech, I shall demonstrate,
presenta colonialimageofthe Indianlandscape.Whileimperialism
and colonialismwere indisputablylarger political“projects,” my
readingof tourist brochures exploresthe puzzlingpersistence of
colonialrhetoricinpost-Independencebrochures.Thesebrochures
demonstrate extraordinary rhetorical similarity with the
advertisementsfor the EmpireMarketingBoard,the P&Oluxury
cruisesand ImperialRailwaysof the colonialperiod. I use the term
“colonial”fullyawareofthe ironyofitsconjunction—in thisessay—
with underfinanced,poorly organizedand frequentlyindifferent
government-sponsoredtourism.
Travel brochures, which constitute a major component of the
 PRAMOD K NAYAR

state government’spublicitymachine, are a peculiar genre. They

are, on the one hand, straight-forward advertorials.On the other
they are fantasy-likedepictions of the state. They combine both
the jingle of the advertisement and the rhetoric of government-
sponsored programmes. In this essaymy focusison the rhetorical
dimension of this amorphous genre. | assume here that travel
brochures, like travelguides, are an integralconstituent of travel/
tourism and must be seen as travel-writing.They writea travelthat
is yet to take place.
Most tourist brochures are dominated bya “visualistideology.”
By this I mean that the tourist is directed, first and foremost, to
see.While the experience of travel to and in a new place surely
includes the entire ranges of senses, it is the visualelement that is
constantly emphasizedin both the brochures and in the traveller’s
own attitude, which is characterized by the very commonplace
statement, “seeing new places.” This visualismmay be discussed
at two levels.One, the “aestheticizationof the landscape” (a term
used by Mary LouisePratt) by castingit as a“scene” or a painting.
Rivers and topographical features, fauna and flora and such are
portrayed mostly as “pictures.” I provide a brief list of commonly
used terms that describe the landscape —scenery, kaleidoscope,
sight, picturesque, breathtaking views, profiles, et cetera. The
terms denote a freezing,in spatio-temporal terms, of the landscape
(the word “scene” is, after all, derived from “skene,” suggestinga
tent or stage where a spectacle or event is to be presented and
therefore perceived visually).These brochures describe and set
out the scene of the natural landscape, the plant and animal life,
the antiquities dotting the land, and the pleasures to be obtained
from traversing this space/stage. The brochures undertake an
aestheticizationwhichis a carefullyselectedand ordered “version”
of the landscapewhich describesthe beautiesand attractions alone.
This aestheticizationthus placesthe landscape into a frame, with

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well-defined boundaries. It therefore restricts the expanse,

awesome size, or overwhelming topoi into something more
controllable. Thus, the awe-inspiring, even frightening, hills, rivers,
forests and wild beasts seem pleasant (because controlled) when
thus viewed.
The second level is the status of the watcher. The tourist is the
watcher who scans the landscape. The scanning confers a nearly
panoptical power upon the watcher. S/he watches, controls, and
interprets the passive, viewed landscape. This Foucauldian gaze
inextricably links sight with power. Aswe shall see, this predication
of viewer and viewed renders the landscape passive, to be
conquered. I would like to suggest here that even if the tourist is
a sympathetic, awe-struck viewer of the landscape, s/he is projected
as a conqueror by the very act of seeing. Located within the site
of a vehicle, a watchtower or within the safety of a group, the
viewer casts himself or herself not only in the role of a viewer but
also as the interpreter of what s/he sees. Thus, the viewing of a
ruin is to participate in an awareness ofhistory, of aesthetics, and
the “human condition.” The landscape, which lies ready to be
interpreted is open to any kind of reading, depending upon the
epistemological, ideological, political and cultural strategies and
tools the viewer brings with her/him. The gaze is thus never an
objective one, it is always interpretative. And interpretation is an
act of power since it bestows a certain status upon the viewer/
interpreter. For instance, to read a ruin or landscape as “exotic”
is to automatically summon up a range of ideas and ideologies of
the irreducible otherness of the object, of the thrill of the new
and strange, and of the incomprehensibility of the object (all
elements of the exotic). The exotic is so precisely because of its
difference from the familiar. To render a place “exotic” is to confer
upon it the status and character of difference —an interpretative
act of power.

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 PRAMOD K NAYAR

While watching,the other sensesmayalso be “indulged,”even

resultingin synaesthesia.Samplesof this other-sensoryrhetoric in
brochures usuallyinclude the following—breathing in clean air,
inhalingfragrances,hearingmusic of the tribal/rural musiciansor
women’sanklets, or the taste of good food. Yet,in terms of sheer
number, the visual images exceed any other-sensory ones. The
visualizationofthe landscapeleadsto numerous“acts”on the tourist’s
part. Mystification,exoticization,conquest,acquisition,exploration
and study,escape,dislocation,and affirmationof self-identitynow
occur. The exoticizationof the landscapeblends the bizarre, the
strangewith the familiar.Examplesinclude—the car in the jungle,
the forest vaguelyfamiliar through repeated movie footage, the
anticipated danger of the wild, and others. Termsused frequently
to create this sense of strangenessinclude —mysterious,magical,
exotic, new, unfold, undiscovered. Most brochures market the
landscapeof the tourist site under these exoticizinglabels.Thus, a
seductionthroughman’slovefor the strangeand newissuccessfully
“produced.” The tourist is seduced into viewingthe exotic. As I
havealreadypointed out, the appealof the exotichasto be achieved
through an emphasis of difference. The tourist —or potential
tourist —isdrawnto the landwiththe attractionofseeingsomething
different from the usual. Travelis primarilyan exploration of the
different and the new.The exoticizationof the landscapein these
brochures playsupon man’sneed for newness.
The mysterious landscape,havingbeen viewed, must now be
“explored.” “Explore” is a favouriteword in tourist brochures,
occurring twice in a smallOrissa Tourismhandout, and thrice in
one from KarnatakaTourism.The landscapetransformsthe tourist
into a Cortez (one recallsKeats’Cortez who used his “eagleeyes”
in “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.” Keats’poem is
probably the finest “theoretical” study of a travel guide!) This
exploration and “discovery”(of the landscape)is a premeditated

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surprise,a surpriseanticipatedon leavinghome, “the ultimatekind

ofseizurebyelsewhere.”*One leaveshomepreciselyto be surprised,
or “awakened,”as numerous brochures frequently describe the
experience,before recommendingthe same.
Exploration and discovery is co-terminous with study. The
landscape is (i) viewed from afar —as brochure pictures, guide
books, or windowsof cars (Bartkowski’s“protected voyeurism”);
(ii) approached, and therefore viewedfrom closer proximity; (iii)
explored and studied carefully;(iv) interpreted, experienced and
stored awayas a restorativememory for future bad times when
merelyrecallingthe holidayacts as a stimulus.
The touriststudiesthe landscape’sphysicalfeatures,its particular-
peculiar characteristics, and collects information of, say,rainfall,
history,products, et cetera. S/heisthus voyeur-scientist-interpreter.
Most tourist brochures thus offerglimpses“into” the tourist site in
the form of brief introductory and informativedescriptions. These
usually include —exact location from nearest airport or railway
station, height abovesea level,the legend and history, topography,
specificpoints of interest (and danger,as we shallsee later), and so
on. “Spectacularsunsets from the top of the hill,” and the exact
species of lions in the Gir Forest are two random samples I shall
mention here. These descriptions form both the pretext and pre-
text of the tourist’ssighting/readingof the elsewhere.Referencesto
past glories, the local ruler’s attitudes, the cultural richness are
pretext-ual inspirationfor the tourist to transform her/himself into
scientist,seeker,interpreter.
The landscape is thus a subject to be studied. Yet,it is also a
source of pleasure. The tourist is an Epicurean pleasure-seeker,
even if it is the pleasure of knowledge. In such images, I find a
startlingprofusionof Freudian“ingestionimages,”to coin a phrase.
These images, as the phrase suggests,objectify the landscape as
passive,ediblethingsawaitingingestionby the viewer.I list here a

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few such images frequently found in brochures —breathe in,

savour,take in, imbibe, inhale. The landscapeis thus internalized
into the body of the tourist. This trope suggestsa blurring of the
subject-object predication. The tourist both surrenders to the
seduction of the landscape, and takes the landscape into her/
himself.The space/textof the land is recoded, and hence decoded
by effacing its specificity.This de-scription is achieved through
“ingestion” into the body/text of the tourist. The body of the
tourist becomes a new topos where the landscape finds another
ontology,or existence. This kind of “ontopology,”to borrow a
Derridean portmanteau term, with its psychoanalyticimagery,is
itselfextremelyfascinatingfor the problematicof “identity” (man
and land, man and animal, native and outsider-tourist). The
studied, ingested landscape is also conquered in the course of
exploration and seduction. Hills “waitingto be climbed,” “caves
askingto be explored,” “floraand faunawaitingto be discovered”
(actualdescriptionsin the brochures)are alltropes in the imperial/
colonial mode.
Images of colonial “activity” are also simultaneous with the
feminization of the landscape. The sexist, androcentric rhetoric
abounds in images of a female, passive, prone landscape with the
masculine, tourist-conquistador penetrating the interior. This
imagery and rhetoric can provide interesting studies in reading the
sexist rhetoric embedded in tourist brochures.
This “conquest” is also fraught with danger. Like colonial
adventures of the past (and, no doubt, of the present, albeit in
different“periodcostumes!”),the touristheadinginto the landscape
is also aware of impendingdanger. Brochuresoffer the danger of
the unknownasa temptation.Adventuretourismisa majorindustry
today.The traveller’sseductionoccursby the offerof both aweand
wonder, beauty and terror. The brochures offer a new, strange
world wherein the tourist faces danger and benefits from it.

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Here, two parallels are striking. One, of the genre of adventure

fiction that entices the would-be colonialwith “dreams of adventure”
into committing “deeds of empire,” to borrow Martin Green’s
famous phrase. Two,the Wordsworthian sublime of awe and wonder
closely parallels the fetish and phobia exhibited by the Westerner
towards the natives (Homi K Bhabha’s formulation). The parallels,
I argue, must be noted since adventure fiction and Western
approaches to the natives seem to share a similar colonial rhetoric
with tourist brochures. Here, the tourist is both awed and attracted
by the new land, topography, and native. Paradoxically, it is this
awareness of danger that seduces the tourist into leaving the safety
of her/his home.
This “dangerous” other world is the one we ought to seek. Thus,
the brochures suggest a “leaving behind” (a pet phrase in such
brochures) of the “mundane” for the “extraordinary” (also a
frequently used descriptive) Other. The tourist is turned into a near-
fugitive,seeking to escape. The Other world offers opportunities —
and we shall examine the notion of choices so often advertized —
that this world does not. These are opportunities valued for their
rarity —of danger, great natural beauty, strange sights, and in today’s
high pollution environment, “clean” air. Once again, I drawa parallel
here with the earlyBritisharrivalsin the East.These were Englishmen
who saw the East as a chance to escape boredom, failure and poverty
in England. India and the East offered an opportunity to secure
wealth and adventure, prestige and identity. The tourist is thus such
a “seeker” too, like the Western adventurers of yore.
The opportunities offered are those of appropriation and
acquisition.Varioustypesof thisacquisitionpattern maybe sketched —

(i) | Acquiringrare bargains,through shopping.The tourist is a

businessmanwhoseekspleasureand paysfor the same,while
alwaysseekinga gooddeal.The brochuresfrequentlysuggest
that the pleasures accrued from travel and, of course,

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spendingtime in the marketplace,are worth more than what

the tourist actuallypays;
(ii) | Museum/artcentretourism,whichmakesthetourista“cultural
traveller”; ’
(iii) Acquisition of knowledge, where the tourist purchases
photographs,indigenousproducts,historiestogaininformation
about a new place/culture;
(iv) In recent times, tourist brochures advocate travel to acquire
health. The hotels and holiday homes advertized, if of an elite,
expensive class, frequently provide gymnasia, swimming,
yoga, meditation, and health spa facilitiesto the tourist. Travel,
which removes the individual from his usual stress-inducing
environment, thus provides a new lease of life;
(v) ‘Travelas a means of self-discovery.The tourist who takes
decisions, “roughing it” in the woods, partakes of a new
“community” (fellow travellers) or embraces solitude
temporarily,and discoversher/himself. Thus, the acquisition
ofa senseof self-identity,and of one’sown native,regionaland
cultural difference (from the Other) results from travel.

One therefore acquires a senseofidentity and cultural heritage,

knowledge, health and wealth. Cultural travel is amajor component
of tourist brochures. The acquisition of culture —itself reflectiveof
the Western ideology of acquisition, as James Clifford (1988) has
demonstrated —occurs through the individual’stransplantation into
a “contact zone.” “Contact zones,” as Mary Louise Pratt defines
them, are “social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash and
grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of
domination and subordination.”* A “transculturation” occurs in
this contact zone. Brochures advertise museums, art centres and
ethnic-indigenous handicraft “villages”where objects and artefacts
of another culture may be acquired. The tourist-businessman (even
the “family-tourist,”
travellingwiththeentirefamily)purchasesrelics,

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TOURING AESTHETICS

or such ethnic cultural objects, and learns about them in such

contact zones. However, the relationship is more of trade here, and
less violent than Pratt suggests. The monetization of culture, its
packaging and marketing, modify relations into economic terms —
tourist as buyer, native as seller.
A certain erasure or segregation of native cultures at certain
specific places of the tourist visit may also occur. The creation of
handicraft villages,transplanted “cultural markets” and exhibitions
produce a dislocation of the native from her/his land. This parallel
“travel”of displacement is an interesting phenomenon attributable
at least partly to tourism. This segregatory tendency of
contemporary tourism is an exoticization and a circumscription.
The native culture separated from its point of origin has an exotic
flavour for two reasons. (i) The difference from the rest of the
tourist’s itinerary is underlined in these “pockets.” (ii) Separated
from the original “setting” creates an aura of mystery around the
cultural artefact or artisan as Susan Stewart has argued in On
Longing.’It limitsthe intrusion of the nativeculture by transplanting
it into more controlled surroundings, and thereby is “organized”
native culture. The tourist, passing through such organized native
sites gets a synoptic view of indigenous cultures without actual
immersion in them.
A certain “massdiscoveryof the countryside” occurs, especially
with the increasing mobility of the tourist.° The native cultural
“zone” is transformed into a contact zone of/for discovery by the
tourist seeker. The contemporary traveller does not, evidently,
exhibit the colonial justifications for travel—imperial knowledge-
gathering or exploitation of resources, to mention just two. The
contact zone here is the result of several political and cultural
factors, such as migration. The intensity of interaction within the
contact zone is also different in degree from the colonial period.
The duration of the contact, the monetary transactions, the

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emphasis on pleasure are all factors that distinguish contemporary

travel from colonial travel. I would, however, like to suggest that
the exoticization ofnative cultures in the form oftourist exhibition
sites, for instance, reinstates the asymmetrical nature of contact
zone interaction that Pratt describes. The purchasing power of
the tourist-consumer, the museological mode of exhibiting cultures,
and the state’s active intervention in the actual “presentation” of
itself within the brochures are all locutions of power in the social
space of tourism.
This “contact zone” need not only be at the “cultural” level, as
Pratt suggests. One can see a transculturation in the emphasis ona
shift to “nature,” advocated by most tourist brochures. These
brochures suggest a return to the wilds that is supposedly a different
“culture.” One leaves the safety of the home, car, city for the “wild
expanses,’> as the Uttar Pradesh Tourism brochure describes it.
They tempt the tourist with a pre-civilizedworld where one can be
“true.” The Orissa Tourism brochure actually uses the word
“uncage,” a literal and metaphoric representation of the movement
from home-culture-artificialto the outside-natural-true. Once more,
the nature/culture division is emphasized.
If tourism is a return to the wilds, it is also a pilgrimageto the
past. It is a paradoxicalfeature of the brochures that, on the one
hand, they recommenda return to the jungle, and on the other,
suggest a crusade-like return to one’s cultural roots. Travel for
cultural aims, as mentioned above, to acquire a heritage. Most
brochures hence specifyancient glories, especiallywealth, ethnic
art (the repeatedly advertized “handmade”), and indigenous
traditions. A certain pan-national movement is recommended, if
one goes by the brochures. This is to facilitategreater knowledgeof
our country and an acquisitionof pride in its heritage.’
And finally,a brief look at the packagingof pleasureand desire
in these brochures. The tourist is today projected more as

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consumer than producer. From a producer in this world, last of

an assembly line of many such, s/he becomes a purveyor-
connoisseur-consumer on these travels. This consumer role has
numerous facets, all associated with travel. I shall quickly mention
a few, since a detailed analysis is not within the scope of this
paper.
Tourismis a questionofstyle today.It has a certain “signvalue”
in its consumption.The need for touring/relaxationisconstructed
when the brochures create new types of perceived use values, or
whatJean Baudrillard(1985) terms “signvalue.”The commodity-
object may be culture, history, health and all the acquisitive
possibilitiesdiscussedabove. Far more than exchangeor use, the
tourist consumer (now reduced to an appendage to the
commodity-objectexactlywhen, paradoxically,s/he is advertized
as “Maharajah”by the advertisers) involvesin “a sacrificiallogic
of consumption, gift, expenditure, potlatch.” Thus, the images-
meaningsoverlap,and stylizationof the tourist consumer occurs
in the courseofher/histravelsand acquisition(throughthe “culture
industry?” Perhaps.)
The question of clientele is also relevant here. Tourism’s targets
range across age, gender and class. Variation in the “elite tourism”
rhetoric occurs to suit, say, the upper class clientele who can afford
“star hotel” luxuries. Economy tourism frequently advertises its
prices, while the first type almost never does. The packaging of the
culture at the contact zone is also obviously different to cater to the
changed clientele.
The rhetoric of tourist brochures thus market aesthetics, culture,
health, and creates a certain “acquisitiveness” in the traveller. The
parallels with colonial rhetoric, the tropes, and the marketing of
sign values are all integral to these brochures. Surely,the brochures
are as literary as travel memoirs and fiction? An interesting
comparison may be found in TheOxfordBookof TravelVerse.From

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lesser known figures like Thomas Hood to celebrities like

Coleridge, poets have used similar rhetoric in their travel poems.
In the above collection, nearly 85-90% of the verse is filled with
images of acquisition, the dual emotions of awe and wonder,
ingestion, adventure, conquest and others that we located in tourist
brochures.
The tourist brochures create both a “shikari” (hunter) and an
aesthete in its tourist. One might even saythat aestheticshas really
travelled far today.The continuing persistence of colonialrhetoric
ingovernmentissuedtouristbrochuresisan interestingphenomenon.
Perhaps the colonialismover the land has changed in terms of the
nature of colonialsbut not in the approaches.Astudyof this rhetoric
should, I can speculate,be incorporatedinto a studyof the sociology
of leisure and recreation in contemporary India.

Notes

1 Some clarification and elaboration is in order here. | have made use of

brochures issued by the Departments of Tourism from the following states —
Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka, The argument
is “distilled” from these samples. Variations exist, and in a few cases,
contradict my study. However, the overall veracity of this set of arguments
stands. Occasionally, advertisements in newspapers and magazines have also
been used. Admittedly, the purposes of travel are different today. The white
traveller in India frequently had an imperial purpose —gathering knowledge
about the East for a Western audience. Here tourism served the purpose of
appropriation, as seen in travelogues right from Edward Terry and John
Ovington in the seventeenth century. Then there were travellers such as
Fanny Parkes who sought the exotic and the picturesque curiosities of the
Orient. While a hierarchy of travellers and travel-writing —and their
corresponding differentiated mechanisms of appropriation —is perhaps in
order here, my reading is based on the assumption that the encoding of
colonial themes in contemporary tourist brochures suggests the persistence
of the appropriative tendency of tourism in general. A fuller study of these
brochures requires the explication of several other issues and themes. Some
of them are: the role of multinational corporations and business houses in

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tourism, the marketing of ethnicity in tourism, the exoticization of native/

indigenous populations, the actual composition of travellers (their class
backgrounds, for instance), and finally,the ecological impact of travel. All of
these, I suggest, would constitute a study of the sociology of leisure in
contemporary India. These are, however, excluded from the ambit of the
present essay,which focusses only on the rhetorical features of contemporary
tourist brochures.
Mary Louise Pratt’s reading of imperial travel analyzesthe rhetoric of the visual.
Pratt argues that a relation of masterypredicated between the seer and the seen
inform imperial travel narratives. Pratt, describing such a traveller writes: “what
Burton sees is all there is, and that the landscape was intended to be viewed
from where he has emerged upon it.” Mary Louise Pratt, ImperialEyes:Travel
Writingand Transculturation,(New York: Routledge, 1992), 204-5.
Frances Bartkowski, Travellers,Immigrants,Inmates: Studiesin Estrangement,
(Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press, 1995), 21-34.
Mary Louise Pratt, JmperialEyes,4.
SusanStewart, OnLonging:NarrativesoftheMiniature,theGigantic,theSouvenir,the
Collection,(Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993).
For a discussionof this theme, especiallywith regard to rural England in the
earlypart of this century,see AlanTomlinsonand Helen Walker,“Holidaysfor
All:PopularMovements,CollectiveLeisureand the PleasureIndustry,” in Alan
Tomlinson,ed,Consumption, IdentityandStyle:Marketing,
MeaningsandthePackaging
ofPleasure,(London and New York:Routledge, 1990).
It mightbe interestingto studythe rhetoricof these brochureswith their pan-
Indianand simultaneouslyfirmly“local”recommendationsin connection with
the nationalist discourses of contemporary India.

References

Bartkowski, Frances, Travellers,Immigrants,Inmates:Studiesin Estrangement,

(Minneapolis:Universityof Minnesota Press, 1995).
Baudrillard, Jean, “The Ecstasyof Communication,” in Hal Foster, ed, Postmodern
Culture, (London: Pluto, 1985)..
Clifford,James, ThePredicament
ofCulture:Twentieth
CenturyEthnography,
Literature
and Art, (Cambridge,Massachusetts:Harvard UniversityPress, 1988).
Crossley-Holland,Kevin,ed, TheOxfordBookofTravelVerse,(Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1986).
Foster, Hal, ed, PostmodernCulture, (London: Pluto, 1985).
Keats,John, “On FirstLookinginto Chapman’sHomer,”PoeticalWorks,Edited
by H W Garrod,(London:Oxford UniversityPress, 1976).

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 PRAMOD K NAYAR

Pratt, Mary Louise, ImperialEyes:TravelWritingand Transculturation,(New York:

Routledge, 1992).
Stewart, Susan, On Longing:NarrativesoftheMiniature,the Gigantic,the Souvenir,the
Collection,(Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993).
Tomlinson, Alan, ed, Consumption, Identityand Style:Marketing,Meaningsand the
Packagingof Pleasure,(London and New York:Routledge, 1990).
10 Tomlinson,Alan, and Walker,Helen, “Holidays for All: Popular Movements,
CollectiveLeisureand the Pleasure Industry,” in Tomlinson, 1990.

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EMPIRE WRITES BACK?
KANNADA TRAVEL FICTION AND NATIONALIST DISCOURSE

V B THARAKESHWAR

n this essay I attempt to explore the process of the formation of

i nationalist identity through travel as witnessed in the Kannada
travelogues and fiction where travel is a major component of the
narrative. In the first section, placing them in the context of
colonialism and nationalism in India, I try to explain how translation
and travel play a major role in constructing new subjectivities. This
leads us to the question of the construction of the “self” and the
“other” during the colonial cultural transactions. In the second
section, I look at some Kannada travel writings to see how the
nationalist “self” and its “other” get constructed in it. In the third
section, I look at the formation of a Kannada nationalist identity, not
in terms ofa pan-nationalist framework, but through more localized
concerns to locate how the Kannada nationalist “self” defines itself
by constructing non-colonial “others.” I also argue for looking at
Kannada travel writings emerging from journeys other than to the
West.
 V B THARAKESHWAR

Travelwriting is amajor genre in the Orientalist discourse, where

Western anthropologists, historians, sociologistsand administrators
of colonial India who travelled to the colonies have “written down”
the native culture to produce an Orientalist discourse.' They
translated native culture in such a way as to recast it as an “other”
which in turn would help them in constructing their own “self.”Said,
in Orientalism,exposes powerfully the complicity of the colonial
discourse with colonial rule and the nexus between knowledge and
power.’ Travel writings that are part of the Orientalist discourse
participate in the production of “self” and “other” by translating
existingpower relations between the colonizer and the colonized into
discourse, and also sustain them by reproducing itself.
There are several studies on travel writing that are part of the
colonial/orientalistdiscourse.The relation between translation,travel
and intercultural contacts have been already highlighted by several
studies such as ImperialEyes:TravelWritingand Transculturation (1992)
by Mary Louise Pratt, and the relationship between colonialismand
colonial travelwriting in WomenTravellersin ColonialIndia:ThePowerof
the FemaleGaze (1998) by Indira Ghose. Similarly several studies
also focus on the mobile theorists and how the location of it affects
their theory such as Traveling
Theories,Traveling
Theorists(1989), edited
by James Clifford and Vivek Dhareshwar, “The Third World
Academicin Other Places;or, the PostcolonialIntellectual Revisited”
(1997) by Rajeshwari Sundar Rajan and “The Postcolonial Aura:
Third World Criticism in the Ageof Global Capitalism” (1994) by
Arif Dirlik. But there are only a few studies that focus on the
nationalist discourse, or travel writings that form part of such a
discourse such as: a study of the reversal of the gaze by Indian
travellers to England can be found in “MakingSpectacle of Empire:
Indian Travellers in Fin-de-Siecle London”(1996) by Antoinette
Burton. Looking at the traveloguein Kannadaas well as at a text in

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which travel is amajor component of the narrative, this paper is an

attempt at analyzing the construction of a national identity through
the description of the experience of travel, both real and fictionalized.
Beforegoinginto the particularitiesof the traveloguein Kannada,
I briefly sum up some of the features of the nationalist discourse.
One of the pioneering studies in this area is Partha Chatterjee’s
Nationalistthoughtand ColonialWorld:A Derivative Discourse?(1986).
Chatterjee studies cultural nationalismand traces the development
of nationalist thought in India. He says that there is a seeming
contradiction in Indian nationalism. Accordingto him nationalism
“produceda discourse in which even as it challenged the colonial
claim to political domination, it also accepted the very intellectual
premise of “modernity” on which colonialdomination wasbased”?
He employsthe categories“thematic” and “problematic” to explain
thisseemingcontradictionin nationalistthought. He tries to separate
the claimsofan ideology,i.e., itsidentificationof historicalpossibilities
and the practical or programmatic forms of its realization, from its
justificatory structures, i.e., the nature of the evidence it presents
in support of those claims, the rules of inference it relies on to
logically relate a statement of the evidence to a structure of
arguments, the set of epistemologicalprinciples, and finallythe set
of ethical principles it appealsto in order to assert that those claims
are morallyjustified.
He calls the former part as the problematic and the latter part
its thematic.
The thematic, in other words, refers to an epistemological as
well as ethical systemwhich providesa framework of elements and
rules for establishingrelations between elements; the problematic,
on the other hand, consistsof concrete statements about possibilities
justified by reference to the thematic.
His contention is that the problematic in nationalist thought is
exactlythe reverseof that of Orientalism.That is to say,the “object”

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in nationalistthoughtisstillthe Oriental,whoretainsthe essentialist

character depicted in Orientalistdiscourse.Onlyhe is not passive,
non-participating.He is seen to possessa “subjectivity”which he
canhimself“make.”In otherwords,whilehisrelationshipto himself
and to others is “posed, understood and defined” by others, i.e.,
by an objectivescientificconsciousness,by Knowledge,by Reason,
thoserelationshipsarenot actedbyothers.Hissubjectivity, he thinks,
is active,autonomousand sovereign."
Chatterjee is trying to show that at the level of thematic the
nationalistthought is adopting the same essentialistconceptions of
“the East”and “the West,”the “typologycreated bya transcendent
studying subject, and hence the same ‘objectifying’procedures of
knowledgeconstructed in the post-Enlightenment age of western
science.” His central concern is to explore the “relation between
the content of nationalistdiscourse and the kind of politics which
nationalism conducts.” He says that

It ispart ofthe ideologicalcontentofnationalism,whichtakes

as its adversary a contrary discourse —the discourse of
colonialism.Pittingitselfagainstthe realityofcolonialrule —
which appears before it as an existent, almost palpable,
historicaltruth —nationalismseeksto assertthe feasibilityof
entirely politicalpossibilities.These are its politicalclaims
whichcolonialistdiscoursehaughtilydenies.°
Thus both colonial discourse and the national discourse share a
similar epistemology of the post-Enlightenment world (the
thematic), but the arguments, which are derived from it, are
different, as the politics of both the discourses are different. One
seeks to produce a problematic that justifies its colonial rule; the
other produces a problematic that questions the colonial rule. Further
Chatterjee tells us that the relation between nationalist discourse
and the forms of modern Western thought is not a simple relation

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of correspondence, or even of derivation. First of all, nationalist

thought is selectiveabout what it takesfrom Western thought. He
assertsthat it is indeed deliberatelyand necessarilyselective,as its
politics is to oppose the colonial rule and reject the immediate
political implicationsof colonial thought so that it can argue in
favourof politicalpossibilitieswhichcolonialistthought refusesto
admit. Chatterjee’shypothesisis that a nationalistdiscourse is “a
differentdiscourse,yet one that is dominated by another (colonial
discourse).”
In a metaphorical way I call this a translation of colonial discourse
into nationalist discourse by the upper caste English educated elite
of the colonial period, where the translated discourse appears to be
similar but also different from the colonial discourse as the
knowledge and power relationship it seeks to establish is different
from the latter.° Here translation points to the role of the upper
caste English educated elite in translating the colonial discourse
into a nationalist discourse to produce a subjectivity called Nationalist.
In this process of translation of colonial discourse into nationalist
discourse the subjectivity of the upper caste English educated elite
gets transformed (translated) into a nationalist elite, i.e., the
translator gets translated in the process of translation.’
Another crucial point made by Chatterjee concerns the division
bynationalistdiscourseofcultureinto spiritualand materialdomains,
to challengethe claimsof superiority by the colonialculture. Such
a division enabled Indian nationalists to claim that the East was
superior to the Westin the spiritualdomain, though the West may
be superior in the material. This material/spiritualdichotomy was
further carried to another form —the outer and the inner, which
applied to the matter of concrete day-to-day living in terms of
home and the world. For the nationalists, the home, with its
representativebeingthe woman, wasto remain uncontaminated by
the profanityof the material world.

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The “woman question” wasa central issueduring the earlypart

of cultural nationalism,Toreframe it, in Sangariand Vaid’swords,
Womanwasa siteon whichthe oppositionto colonialismwascarried
out by the nationalistelite during the colonialperiod.’ One must
read the Kannadatravelwritingsin the backgroundof these frames
in order to comprehend howa nationalist self gets constructed
using woman asa site, excluding the non-upper castes from this
nationalistconstruction of the self.
Travelwriting of the nationalist ilk is anti-colonial, though it is
not anti-modernity; it accepts the superiority of the West in the
material domain, and tries to achieve it by modernizing itself or
appropriating it and claimingit as its own. An analysisof the travel
writings on England by Indian writers reveals this phenomenon.
Antoinette Burton showshow these travelwritingstry to write back
to the Empire, usingthe Cityof Londonasa site to do so.” Providing
historical evidenceof how imperial power could be interrogated by
“natives”in the “mother cityof the kingdomand the Empire” itself,
she narrates how the native traveller did not simply return the gaze,

butdemonstratedhowreadilyavailableitsdisciplinaryregimes
wereforcontestandrefiguration—especiallybyIndianmen,
whosepretensionsto nationhoodand its culturalcorollary,
Victorianmasculinity,were under scrutinyat this particular
historicaljuncture.”'°
My own study henceforth evinces and extends Burton’s thesis as it
looks at the colony writing back to the master to empower itselfand
to claim a kind of collective identity, and probes the nature of the
nationalist self formed at the crossroads of upper caste and male
identities. I also argue at the end for interrogating nationalist
discourse not in the binary frame of colonial/national but in amore
complex matrix of selfand other bylookingat travelwriting to places
other than the West.

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II
The genre of travel writing as it exists today is itself a new genre in
the Kannada literary tradition. It is an instance of appropriation/
translation of a genre from the colonizer’s culture by the colonized
culture to match up to the culture of the colonizer and fill a lacuna
that it perceives when it sees itselfin the eyes of an Orientalist. In that
sense Kannada travel writing has been appropriated from the
Empire, and deployed to construct self that is anti-colonial and yet
modern.

Though many had travelled out of Karnataka in the nineteenth

century itself,we hardlyfind anyonewritingabout it. Till the 1960s,
it is England and other European nations that attracted more
Kannadigastowardsit. In princelyMysoreboth the KingKrishnaraja
Odeyar and the Diwan, Vishweswaraiahad travelled extensivelyin
Englandand Europe.These travelshad helped them to build princely
India as a model state in India. As a consequence of their visit, we
findthem takingup manydevelopmentalactivitiesin princelyMysore,
including state-driven industrialization and a move towards
democratization of administrative structures. Shivaram Karanth’s
Apoorva Faschima (Unique Europe),DinakarDesai’sNaKandaPaduvana
(The WestI Saw),KaraveeraAndaneppaKulakarni’sEuropeKandada
Pravasa(Travelto European Continent) in 1929, Ra Si’sKoravanjiya
FaduvanYatre(Koravanji’sTravelto West),Gokak’sSamudradacheyinda
(From the Other Side of the Sea) are some of the travelogues that
show that it is Europe and England that beckoned Kannadigas. In
the postcolonial period we witness a shift towards America from
Europe. Some of these traveloguesare B G L Swamy’sAmerikadalli
Naanu (Me in America), Dr Krishnanada Kamat’sNagnuAmericage
Hogidde (Even I had Gone to America), Gorur Ramaswamy
Iyengar’sAmericadalliGoruru(Goruru in America), ANMoorty Rao’s
AparaVayaskana AmericaYaatre(The Tour of an Old man in America),
Prabhushankar’s AmericadalliNaanu, Shanti (Me and Shanti in

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America), Nadig Krishnamurhty’sSaagaradaache(Beyond the Sea)

et cetera. However, from the 1950s, Russia appears more
consistently in travel writings, since many of those who travelled
were famous writers such as De Javaregowda’sVideshadalli Naalku
Vaara(Four Weeksin a ForeignLand),SrirangaRaju’sSovietDinachari
(SovietDairy), BiligiriRamachandraRaya’sNaanuKandaRussia(The
RussiaI Saw),BasavarajaKattimani’sNaanuKandaRussia(The Russia
I Saw), G S Shivarudrappa’sMascowdalli IppatteraduDina (Twenty
Two days in Moscow) et cetera. Thus in the colonial era, it was
England and other European countries that attracted Kannadigas,
in the post-colonial era it is Americaand Russia,though in terms of
numbers, it iscertainlyAmericanow that dominatesthe scene (based
on the survey done by Vidyashankar,1991).
The focus of this paper, however, is mainly on Kannada travel
writings on England, from the nineteenth century to the middle of
the twentieth, which I eventually link up with the formation of a
pan-Indian nationalist identity and also a Kannada nationalist identity,
to point out the double national identities that were present in the
Kannada context of the time.
The firsttranslationfromEnglishto Kannadathatcanbe considered
a travel narrative is John Bunyan’sPilgrim’sProgress,translated by
G Wieglein 1847.The firstnoveltranslatedfromEnglishintoKannada
by KrishnaswamyIyengarisRobinson Crusoe. Wedo not havesufficient
data to analyzethe receptionof thesetranslationsduringthat period.
We can safelyarguethat in this sense,traveland colonialismthrough
translation mark the birth of modern Kannadaliterature. Though
people went to England and other places from Karnataka in the
nineteenthcentury itself,we had to waittill 1936to get a full-fledged
travelwritingin the form ofa diary.VKGokak,a wellknownscholar
and a Gyanpeethawardwinner,givesus travelwritingin the form of
a diary written during his stay in London, where he had gone for
highereducation.It istitledSamudradaacheyinda (Fromthe Other Side

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of the Ocean). But as a theme, travellingto England appears in Kannada

novels much earlier.
There are references to crossing the ocean and to its consequences
on our society,which broaden into a discussion on the consequences
of modernity. The writers believethat crossing the ocean is prohibited
for a Hindu. Thus, the first Kannada social novel, Indira Bayi,written
by a Saraswat Brahmin called Gulvadi Venkat Rao, has a detailed
discussion of travelling to England and its consequences. This novel
is part of social reform novels that sprang up around this period in
various languages of India at the turn of the nineteenth century.'!
The narrative revolvesaround Bhaskara Raya, a young Saraswat
Brahmin, who has finished his BAexamination with distinction. He
has been awarded a scholarship by the Government of India to go
to England to do his CS. He takes this news to Kamalapura when
he visits his mother and his guardian, sponsoring his studies. When
he breaks the news to his mother, she is worried because crossing
the ocean goes against their religion. She is also worried that in
foreign countries he may have to eat food cooked by Mlecchas
(outsiders, or non-Hindus; even non-Brahmins come under this
category). To that, Bhaskara Raya assures her that Amrita Raya,
his guardian, is willingto send a Brahmin cook with him to England.
His mother is also worried about the availability of water
uncontaminated by the touch of mlecchas. To this Bhaskara Raya’s
response is: “Where is the water which is not touched by the
mlecchas? The Brahmins never dig the well, it is only others who
dig the well and Brahmins use that water.” When his mother says,
“What if they touch it? And how can we clean it by putting in
shuddodhaka (cow dung),” Bhaskara Raya replies, “OK. Let me
carry a glass of shuddodhaka from here to London.” She then
warns him that the elders of the community would throw him out
of the caste if he went to England. Bhaskara Raya assures her again
by sayingthat they would not resort to banishment,as more and

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more people would be going to England, and if they throw all of

them out of the caste, no one would be left in that caste.'”
In the above discussion between Bhaskara Raya and his mother
we see how pragmatism, traditional belief and reason work together.
Bhaskara’s mother is worried about the consequences of travel
across sea and the non-availability of the food cooked by a Brahmin
in the journey. A Brahmin cook has to be sent to overcome this
hurdle. Then she is also worried about the water, which should not
be contaminated by the mleccha. Then Bhaskara employs reason
to convince her that no water is clean, because the well is itself dug
by non-Brahmins. So there is no point in worrying about the
“contaminated” water. Again a pragmatic solution crops up, that of
carrying shuddodhaka, sprinkling a few drops of which on polluted
things/food would make it usable for a Brahmin. It is not only a
modern rationale and pragmatic that is deployed here to negotiate
the challenges that modernity has put before Bhaskara. It is not
just the story of Bhaskara but also the plight of the English educated
upper caste in general. Bhaskara is not alone in his negotiations
with modernity and tradition.
Beforegoingto London,BhaskaraRayainvitesallthe graduates
of Kamalapurato dinner. After dinner, they start discussingthe
sea voyage of Bhaskara Raya and its consequences. They talk
about the socialostracismand boycottingthat the casteinstitution
likeMattasmight imposeon him. They alsotalkabout how these
thingswillhelp in speedingup the reforms in Hindu religion.To
take up proper measures in this regard, they plan to meet at
Jubilee Town Hall on the coming Sunday.Thus it is a collective
fight that the Englisheducated upper caste wagesover the non-
Englisheducated“traditional”upper castepeopleand institutions.
The lure of material wealth and prestige offered by English
education and the trip to Englandis on the one hand, and the
non-material benefits on the other. It would be interesting to ask

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why the upper caste institutions are against sea voyage. They are
so deeply immersed in the discourse of modernity and rationality
that they are also worried about the speed of social reforms in
Hindu religion and society (read upper caste), and hence the
anxiety about the smallest hint of transformation. The answer
could be found in the latter part of the novel when Bhaskara
returns from England.
After coming back from England, Bhaskara Raya marries a
widow, Indirabai, from whose name the novel takes its title. The
caste institution excommunicates the family members who were
involvedin this blasphemous marriage and others who supported it
get partial excommunication. This points out to the fact that if a
journey to a far off land is taken up, then new ideas enter into
“our” culture and it will disturb the “equilibrium” (read hierarchy)
that “our” culture has achieved. The potentiality of the journey is
to bring in new ideas to push culture and the power relations that
sustain it to a new “equilibrium” of those power relations. Here
modernity, the journey to England, social reform in Hinduism, get
linked with each other. Though English education is considered
responsible for modern reasoning and a critique of “tradition” in
the novel, the tension between “tradition” and “modernity” gets
played out in the context of a journey. Thus women (albeit an
upper caste woman) becomes the site to foreground the point of
intersection of two different cultures.
However, at the end of the novel, there is an indication that
more and more people havegone to Englandand returned home,
and that the caste institution itself has adapted to the changing
circumstances by coming up with rituals to purify the foreign-
returned Brahmins in order to accept them again into the caste
fold. Thus, in the first Kannada social novel itself, a journey to
Englandis linkedwith modernity,It showshow a caste identitygets
modernized through travelin order to facethe challengesposed by

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the colonial culture and the question of women becomes prominent

in such an intercultural encounter.

At this point, let me bring in Sir M Vishweswaraiah, who is

consideredto be the architectof modern Mysore.SirMVishweswaraiah
was the Diwan of Mysore in the early part of the twentieth century
and resigned from his post, protesting againstthe decisionof the king
to implement the Miller’s Committee Report, which had
recommended reservation of jobs for backward classes in
administration. He represents the moment of arrival of nationalism
and modernization of the nation in the history of nationalism in
Karnataka. He established many industries in princely Mysore and
was the brain behind constructing a dam across the river Cauvery.
He also established many public institutions in princely Mysore. He
had the dream of makingprincelyMysorea modern state. He wanted
the Mysorestate to havea port of its own for export and import, and
so he requested the Madras presidency to allocate some land for it
along the western coast. But the colonial state, after the fallof Tipu
Sultan,whilereturning the conquered territory to the Odeyardynasty,
kept the coastal region in its hands, ensuring that Mysorewould not
develop into an independent state by denying the same to them.
Sir M Vishweswaraiahalsoplayeda major role in establishingthe
KannadaSahityaParishat,to developmodern literature in Kannada.
He had travelledextensivelytoJapan,Italy,England,America,Canada,
Swedenand Russia.RajaSevaPrasaktaSri MG Rangaiahrecallsthat
then, for many youngsters of Mysore, Sir M Vishweswaraiahwas a
model to be emulated. In SirM Vishweswaraiah’s opinion, education
in Englandand travelsto other countries broadened the perspective
of the people and made them progressive.'’ As he had travelled
extensivelyto many Europeancountries, he had seen manycountries
that were smallerthan Mysorebut scientificallyadvancedand modern.
He wanted to develop princely Mysore into a modern nation with
scientific advancement and industrialization. Raja Sevasakta

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Sri D C Subbarayappa recollects an incident in this regard —

Sir M Vishweswaraiah advisingHis Highnessthe Maharajaof Mysore
to goona trip to Westerncountrieswhichwouldhelp in planningthe
progressof the province,and encouraginghim to send the Prince of
the Mysoreprovincefor such trips.'*
Thus, travel to the West is perceived as a major means of
modernizing the province of the East. Sir M Vishweswaraiahhas
written about the planned development of a nation through five
yearplansin the 1920sitself,that ismuch beforeNehru implemented
the same for the sovereignIndian nation-state later in the 1950s,
and almost around the same time as it was implemented by Stalin
in erstwhile USSR. The first Diwan of Mysore, Sri Rangacharlu,
was of the opinion that it was essential to borrow new elements
from another culture to modernize the country. He encouraged his
subordinates to undertake foreigntrips, and when they came back,
offeredthem goodpositionsin the Stateadministration.'>He himself
had facedrestrictionsfrom his castewhen he undertook a seavoyage
from Madras to Calcutta, though he never cared for those
restrictions.’ Thus under the leadership of the benevolent King
and Diwans who were for democratization of the state and for
industrial development of the province Mysore made big strides
and their action and thinking influenced the people of Mysore. The
abovedescription of Diwan Rangacharluis by DV Gundappa, who
is awell-known litterateur in Kannada and who also activelytook
part in the politics of the day. His was a prominent voice in the
publicsphere of princelyMysoreduring the firsthalfof the twentieth
century when he became one of the earliest to speak for a
responsible government in Mysore.
Nationalist discourse perceived a kind of lacuna in the Indian
culture, in its being “traditional” and not yet “modern,” and tried
to fill it up/appropriate it through opening its doors to new ideas.
The new ideascame either through travelto European countries or

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through translations directly from Englishor via translations from

Banglaand Marathi.Butinterestingly,in alltheseculturaltransactions
the question of women’s position becomes important. In other
words, women become the site on which these transactions take
place.Asdiscussedearlier,IndiraBayi,the first Kannadasocialnovel
deals with a widow’sremarriage. BhaskaraRayawho comes back
from Englandmarries a widow.Thisquestiongetsrepeated in other
socialnovelslikeKerooruVasudevacharya’s Indira(1908) and Bolara
Baburaya’sVagdevi (1905). The nationalists,as Chatterjeesays,were
interested only in redefiningthe notion of woman so that she can
be under new patriarchy that was coming up in the context of
modernity. Socialreform was a means through which they tried to
redefine women. They resolvedthe question of women by making
a distinction between material and spiritual aspects of culture and
through associationsmade women the custodian of protecting the
“spiritual” aspect of Indian culture as they were eager to catch up
with the technologicalaspect of modernity to outdo the colonial
master. This aspect of the nationalist discourse, that of making
women the custodiansof Indian culture becomes clearer when we
look at the first full-fledgedtraveloguein Kannada.
Samudradaacheyinda is a traveloguein the form of a diary,written
by V K Gokak during his sojourn to England for higher studies,
where he stayed for nearlytwo years. The cultural encounter with
the West begins and gets a sharp rejection as soon as Gokak, or
broadly speaking,the upper caste, middle class,English-educated,
gets onto the ship. The upper caste, upper/middle class men are
astonishedto see a white woman travellingalone.Theyare shocked
and scandalizedseeingWestern women and the way they dress on
the deck, and dub their costume “obscene” and “vulgar,”bringing
in the rhetoric of “we” and “them” to explain these differences.
Indian women who don such clothes are dubbed as Westernized.
On reachingEngland,thus, womenbecomethe convenientsite on

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which native men construct categories of “us” and “them.”

On the third dayof hisjourney on the ship, Gokakwrites:

The behaviour of Englishwomen on the ship draws our
attention. [Followingmen] thesewomen are readyto travel
evento the North Pole.Theycan swim,jump, laugh,smoke
like men. Sometimesthey dress like men, too! This is not
civilization. “The Empire” has created this new model."”

For Gokak, to know that women can do all that men can is
shocking. The erosion of gender differences is not a matter of
celebration, but something that has to be denounced. He
unhesitatingly states that the erosion of gender differences is not
natural to his part of civilization, but a new model created by the
Empire. Here, the Western woman, who dresses like men and
does all that they can do, gets represented as the Empire that has to
be condemned.
Gokak condemns the English tradition, in which both men and
women dance together. He says, “I don’t know whether it is good
for them or not, but I am sure that it is not good for our people.”'’
In another incident, in a party thrown by a boy who has passed
the examination to the Indian Civil Services, a Hindu woman
dances. Gokak comments, “[T]here is no need to express our
happiness by dancing like them.”!? At one point, Gokak recounts
a debate at Oxford union over the motion that the House would
support a measure under which a separation —whether voluntary
or judicial —should mature into divorce at the end of three years
on the petition of either spouse. In the course of this debate, a
woman addresses the President as “Madam President,” because
male members of the union invited to the Ladies’ Association
meeting, addressed their President as “Mr President, Sir.”
Incidentally, the woman also speaks for divorce. Now let us look
at the way Gokak describes her:

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This girl is reformist, what we call as “Gandu Rami” [i.e., a

Kannada word equivalent to tomboy] ... Her dress has
reached the height ofa joke. We already know that the English
dress is half-naked. But her dress was sky naked ... Her lips
had the red colour of a chilly. A queer person. Even the
clouded moon won’t be as faded as her face! This animal
stoodup andspokebelligerently.”°
Here, the Westgets associatedwith divorce and the Indian woman
dressed in Western clothes calledgandu rami, a queer and an animal
with the above features. She becomes the symbol of colonialism, so
that the nationalists can carry their agenda of opposing the West by
constructing the other in a negativeway to define itself positively.It
is not only that the woman is used asa site to carry out the Indian
man’s opposition to colonialism, but the nationalist self that they
construct through their cultural transactions categorically excludes
women totally. The way the nationalists had resolved the question
of women was by redefining women; if women don’t fit into their
definition of Indian women they would denounce it as’Western
immediately.They wouldn’t endorse the woman who isnot amenable
for control by the new patriarchy that has emerged in the context
of modernity and nationalism.
Apart from this, Western women are generallyrepresented as of
immoral character, being ever ready to seduce men at any time,
and to squeeze Indian men of their last penny.Indian men come to
Englandto study,but white women enslavethem with their seductive
charm, makingthe Indianmen forgettheir purposeand their country.
Gokak quotes a lot of instances to prove his theory of Western
women and Indian men.”!While talking about an opera on Savitri
_and describing the Western woman who had acted as Savitri, he
says:“She had wrapped herself in a blue sari like the present Hindu
girl but the pallu had come passingon the head. And her movement
and gestures were betraying Western woman’s manliness.””? Thus,

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EMPIRE WRITES BACK?

the Western woman becomes the epitome of manliness, representing

the West as man, and Indian woman of streetva, of womanliness
representing Indian culture.
Other than women’s bodies there are other sites of cultural
encounter as well where the making of the nationalist “self” and its
“other” is sharply staged. Food is one such cultural marker that
can easilybe mobilized for constructs of “self” and “other.” In the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries —for that matter, even to
this day —as soon as the upper caste men enter the ship, the first
thing they notice is the huge preparation of non-vegetarian food.
They pick upon it to write in their diary or autobiography or in
their letters to relatives, recounting how they struggled against it
and finallyobtained vegetarianfood. Non-vegetarianismgets equated
with Western materialism and violence, while vegetarianism gets
constructed as the authentic Indian food, standing for non-violence,
and consequently the site on which the Indian self must be
constructed and staged. The debate between Bhaskara Raya and
his mother in Indira Bayi over food is one such instance. This
construction of the Indian self,thus, excludes the majority of people
in India who eat meat, and the nature of the Indian nationalist self
constructed by these upper caste men is such that it excludes the
majority of the non-Brahmin castes from its discourse.

Ill
The travelwritingsand framesof analysisso faremployedto discuss
the constructionofthe nationalistidentityin Kannadaduringthe late
nineteenthandearlytwentiethcenturiesareusefulinunderstandinga
pan-IndiannationalistdiscourseascharacterizedbyParthaChatterjee.
However,beinglimitedto themamountsto turninga blindeyeto the
differencesand tensions that exist between Kannada nationalist
discourseand the Indiannationalistdiscourse,and obviouslycannot
account for the way in which these tensions were resolved or still live

WAS}
 V B THARAKESHWAR

in a kind of tension. It also overlooks the relationship between a

language-based Kannada nationalist movement and a caste-based
backward classmovement in the context of Mysore province in the
earlydecades of this century. The earlypart of the twentieth century
saw the emergence of Kannada through the efforts of Christian
missionaries.There was also the attempt, on the part of the colonial
administrationand nativescholarstowardsmakingKannadaamenable
to functionin the rolesthat modernity expected of it.Atthe same time
there wasa parallel consciousnessthat was emerging in the form of
biggercasteidentitiesand classidentitiesbasedon castes.Forexample,
various castes of Veerashaiva,came together to forma bigger caste
identity called Lingayatand formed an association to promote the
interest of the members of that community in education and other
related fieldsthat were emergingin the context ofmodernity.Similarly
Lingayats,Okkaligas(the two major land holding dominant castes of
Karnataka), Kuruba and Muslim form an alliance to demand fair
representation of their community members in administration and
other state-owned enterprises. This alliance popularly known as
backward class movement was successful in getting community
representation in the administrationin 1918with the implementation
of the recommendations ofMiller’sCommittee bythe King.Laterthis
movement/allianceformed a politicaloutfit to contest electionsto the
localbodies. This alliancehad formeda politicalcommunity that was
strivingfor an egalitariansocietywithin princelyMysorethat certainly
would havehindered/affected the formation of an imaginedpolitical
community called India. This political outfit looked at the Indian
NationalCongressasan organofthe Brahminlobbytill 1938.Tillthen
the Indian National Congress had only a nominal presence in the
princely Mysoreregion. We find little representation or discussionof
the Backward Class movement in Kannada literary writings, which
were almost entirely dominated by the upper castes.
Before 1956, Karnatakadid not existpolitically.Till it actually

143
 EMPIRE WRITES BACK?

became an independent state, it wasconstructed as a cultural entity

with a glorious past. It all started around the turn of the nineteenth
century. The regionsnow under the State of Karnatakawere earlier
mainlyunder the control of variousregimes. The Mysoreprovince
was under the Maharajaof Mysore;Mangalore, Coorg and Bellary
were under the Madras Presidency; Bidar, Gulbarga and Raichur
(Hyderabad-Karnatakaregion)were under the Nizamof Hyderabad;
Belgaum,Dharwar and Karwarwere under the BombayPresidency.
In addition, there were many independent smallprovinces between
these regions. Unless we take into account the differences among
these regions in our analysisof early twentieth century discourse
such as Indian nationalist, Kannada nationalist and colonial
discourses, we would not be able to reflect on the relationship
between a pan-Indian nationalistidentity and a Kannadanationalist
identity vis-a-vis other identities that were based on caste, but
struggled to eradicate the inequalitythat existed between them.
To account for these issues, it is not enough to look at travel
writings of Europe by Indians. If we limit ourselves only to this
body of work, we willbe ignoringthe complex matrix in which the
Indian nationalistidentityand the Kannadanationalistidentity were
embedded. For that, we have to look into other travel writings by
Kannadigas,i.e., other than on Europe, because those travels also
shaped the subjectivities of Kannada people during that period.
Here I give an instance to show the necessity of evolving new
theoretical and conceptual categories to study such a complex
phenomenon. It would help place the early twentieth century
discourses not in the binary matrix ofthe Empire and writing back
to the Empire, but in a complex matrix that would help us to
understand some of the present dayproblems in its historicalnature.
Apart from travellingto Western countries, Kannadigashavealso
travelledto East Asiancountries like Japan. Sir M Vishweswaraiah
visitedJapan thrice. We can say that the influence of Japan is felt

144
 V B THARAKESHWAR

more on the modernity project of Mysore as envisaged by

Sir M Vishweswaraiahthan that of England.Duringthe colonialperiod,
the Kannadigasof Mangaloreand Mysoreregion went to Madras for
higher studies, while the people from North Canara and North
Karnatakaprovincemovedtowards Bombayand Pune. The influence
of the reformist movement, the Justice movement and the Dravidian
movement can be seen in Mysore and Mangalore regions, while in
the North Karnataka regions, it was more ofa revivalistnationalist
attitude due to their closeproximityto Pune and Tilak.Thus, journeys
to destinationsacrosscontinentsaffectedtheir subjectivitiesin different
ways.An example of the emergence of Kannada nationalist identity
can be seen in the account provided by AluraVenkatRao.
Alura Venkat Rao, who is supposed to be one of the early voices
in Kannada nationalist movement, belongs to North Karnataka. He
studied in Bombay and Pune. In Pune, he was in association with
Savarkar, who later spearheaded the Hindu revivalist, anti-Muslim
movement.”? He was also a close associate of Tilak, who linked
Ganesh festivals with the anti-colonial nationalist movement. He
writesin hisautobiographyaboutthe formationof Kannadaidentity:
When we were in college(around 1900),we neverthought
of Karnatakaas havinga separate identity.It wasjust a part
ofMaharashtrainthe politicalmovement.Our studentsnever
had the concept of Karnatakain their mind. Not only just
this, but there wasnot much interactionbetweenDharwad,
Bijapur and Belgaumdistricts, and Karawarawas almost a
non-entity for us. Few individualswere working here and
there, but they never knew each other sufficiently.The
students, who had come to Pune, without beingawareof it,
slowlystarted developinga kind of “ie” feelingwith each
other. Marathipeopleusedto callus “Kannadiappaa.”They
had no intention of teasingus but theywere discriminating
against us. It served the cause of unity among Kannadigas.

145
 EMPIRE WRITES BACK?

Naturally Kannadigas started having their own mess clubs for

food. But still we were not able to get rid of our infatuation
for Marathi. The Brahmins were more close to Marathi

peoplethanto Lingayats,”*
This clearlyshowsthat the formation of aKannadaunity in North
Karnatakahas much to do with the discriminatory attitude practiced
by the Marathipeople in Pune. It cannot be simplydescribed as anti-
colonialin nature, and travellingto Pune is undoubtedly the cause of
the formation of such an identity.The relation between Brahmins
who identified themselveswith the Marathi people rather than with
the KannadaLingayatsadds a differentperspectiveto the whole issue.
Thus we need to come out of the binaryof colonizerand the colonized
to understand the construction of different subjectivitiesand take
cognizanceof the multiple “others” a single “self” might have had
during the colonialperiod. For such an endeavourwe need to look at
not only the writings on travel to Europe but also within India and
also within what was emerging as Karnataka.

Notes

I For a fuller argument, see TalalAsad, “The Concept of Cultural Translation in

British SocialAnthropology,”in James Clifford, ed, WritingCulture:Politicsand
Poeticsof ColonialAnthropology,
(New Delhi: Oxford UniversityPress, 1989).
2 EdwardSaid,Orientalism, (London:Penguin,1978).On the relationshipbetween
British literature and imperialism see Patrick Brantlinger, Ruleof Darkness:
BritishLiterature
andImperialism,1830-1914, (Ithaca,London:Cornell University
Press, 1988).
3 ParthaChatterjee,NationalistThoughtandtheColonialWorld:ADerivative Discourse?
(London: Zed Books, 1986), 30.
4 ParthaChatterjee,NationalistThoughtandtheColonialWorld:ADerivative Discourse?
38.
5 ParthaChatterjee,NationalistThoughtandtheColonialWorld:ADerivative Discourse?
40.
6 On colonialism and translation, see Cohn, Bernard S, “The Command of
Languageand the Languageof Command,” in Ranjit Guha, ed, SubalternStudies

146
 V B THARAKESHWAR

IV: Writingson SouthAsianHistoryand Society,(New Delhi: Oxford University

Press, 1985); Tejaswini Niranjana, Siting Translation:History,Post-Structuralism
and the ColonialContext,(Berkeley:Universityof California:Press, 1992).
I am gratefulfor this phrase to a lawyer,who, in a workshopon “Translating
Translation:Theory, Practiceand Context” organizedby Anveshi,at Central
Instituteof Englishand ForeignLanguages,Hyderabad,inJanuary1998,narrated
his experienceof translatinga bookon a famouscriminalcasein the West.
Kumkum Sangari,and Sudesh Vaid,eds, RecastingWomen:Essaysin Colonial
History,(New Delhi: Kalifor Women, 1989), 10.
Antoinette Burton, “Makinga Spectacleof Empire: IndianTravellersin Fin-de-
Siécle London,” HistoryWorkshop Journal, 42, 126-146, 128, 1996. Here, it is
apt to briefly touch upon the genre of autobiography in English written by
Indians. Bolanath Chandra’s TheTravels of a Hindooto VariousPartsof Bengaland
UpperIndia is supposed to be the early travel writing by an Indian in English.
Chattrapati Rajaram, the Maharaja of Kolhapur’sdiary of his brief sojourn in
Europe appeared under the title Diaryofthe LateRajahofKolhapurin 1832. R C
Dutt’s ThreeYearsin Europe,BehramjiMalabari’sTheIndianEyeon EnglishLifeor
Ramblesofa PilgrimReformer,P CMazoomdar’sSketches of aTourRoundthe World,
BhagvatSinh Jee, the Thakur of Gondal’sJournal of a Visitto Englandin 1883,
Sambhu Chandra Mukherji’sTravelsand Voyages betweenCalcuttaand Independent
Tipperah,G Paramswarn Pillai’sLondonand ParisThroughIndian Spectacles,and
T RamakrishnaPillai’sMyVisitto the Westare some of the texts that belong to this
genrethat cameout in the nineteenthandearlytwentiethcenturies.See MK Naik,
A Historyof IndianEnglishLiterature,(New Delhi: SahityaAcademy,1982).
Antoinette Burton, “Makinga Spectacleof Empire: Indian Travellersin Fin-de-
Siécle London,” 126-146.
Gulvadi Venkat Rao, Indira BayiAthavaSaddharmaVijaya,(Manipala: Gulvadi
VenkatRao Smaraka Kendra, 1989).
Gulvadi Venkat Rao, Indira BayiAthavaSaddharma Vijaya,106-113. All translations
from Kannada, unless otherwise mentioned, are mine.
MG Rangaiah, “Shri VishweswaraiahnavaraSallakshitaAdhikara Nirvahana,” in
Masti Venkatesh Iyengar, ed, Sir M Vishweswaraiah,
(Bangalore: Nava Jeevana
KaaryalayaTrust, 1990), 65-66.
D C Subbarayappa,“Shri VishweswaraiahnavaraBali KelasaMadiddara Savi
Nenapu” (Kannada—“SweetMemoriesof Workingwith ShriVishweswaraiah”),
in Masti VenkateshIyengar,ed, SirM Vishweswaraiah,
(Bangalore:NavaJeevana
KaaryalayaTrust, 1990), 74.
15 D V Gundappa,“DiwanRangacharlu,”in HM Nayak,ed, D VG KrithiShreni,
Vol.4,(Kannada—Complete Works
ofD VGundappa),(Bangalore:Department of
Kannadaand Culture, Governmentof Karnataka,1994).
16 D V Gundappa,“DiwanRangacharlu,”
25-26.

147
 EMPIRE WRITES BACK?

17 V K Gokak, “Samudradaacheyinda,” (“From the Other Side of the Ocean”),

PravasaStudies, (Bangalore: IBH Prakashana, 1988), 11.
18 VK Gokak,“Samudradaacheyinda,” 16-17
19 V K Gokak,“Samudradaacheyinda,”31, emphasismine.
20 VK Gokak,“Samudradaacheyinda,”81, emphasismine.
21 VK Gokak, “Samudradaacheyinda,” 87-88, 108-109, 114, 168-173, 210.
22 VK Gokak,“Samudradaacheyinda,” 156.
23 Alura VenkataRao, NannaJeevanaSmrithigalu,(Kannada—Memoirsof MyLife),
(Dhaarawada:ManoharaGrantha Male, 1974), 54.
24 Alura Venkata Rao, Nanna Jeevana Smrithigalu, 67-68.

References

1 Asad, Talal,“The Concept of Cultural Translation in British SocialAnthropology”,

in Clifford, 1989.
2 Bhabha,Homi K,LocationofCulture,(London:Routledge,1994).
3) Brantlinger, Patrick, Ruleof Darkness:BritishLiteratureand Imperialism,1830-
1914, (Ithaca, London: Cornell UniversityPress, 1988).
4 Burton, Antoinette, “Making a Spectacleof Empire: Indian Travellersin Fin-
de-Siécle London.” HistoryWorkshop Journal 42:126-146, 1986.
5 Chatterjee,Partha,NationalistThoughtandtheColonialWorld: ADerivative
Discourse?,
(London: Zed Books, 1986).
6 Chatterjee, Partha, “Nationalist Resolution of the Woman’s Question,” 1986,
in Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, eds.
7 Clifford,James,ed, Writing
Culture:Politics
andPoetics
ofColonialAnthropology,(New
Delhi: Oxford UniversityPress, 1989).
8 Clifford,James and VivekDhareshwar,eds, Travelling Theories,Travelling
Theorists,
VolumeFive of the Inscriptions,(Santa Cruz: Group for the Critical Study of
_ Colonial Discourse and the Centre for Cultural Studies, UCSC, 1989).
9 Cohn, BernardS,“TheCommandof Languageand the LanguageofCommand”,
1985, in Ranjit Guha, SubalternStudies,IV.
10 Dirlik, Arif, “The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of
Global Capitalism,”CriticalInquiry20: 328-356, 1994,
11 Ghose, Indira, The Powerof the FemaleGaze: WomenTravellersin Colonial India,
(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998).
12. Gokak, V K, Samudradaacheyinda, (“From the Other Side of the Ocean”),
PravasaStudies,(Bangalore:IBH Prakashana,1988),
13 Guha, Ranjit, ed, SubalternStudiesIV:Writings
on SouthAsianHistoryand Society,
(New Delhi: Oxford UniversityPress, 1985),
14 Gundappa,
D V,“DiwanRangacharlu”
1994,inNayak.

148
 V B THARAKESHWAR

Iyengar,Masti Venkatesh,ed, Sir M Vishweswaraiah, (Bangalore:Nava Jeevana

KaaryalayaTrust, 1990).
Naik, M K,A Historyof IndianEnglishLiterature,(New Delhi: SahityaAcademy,
1982).
Nayak, H M, ed, DV G KrithiShreni,Vol.4, CompleteWorksof DVGundappa,
(Bangalore:Department of Kannadaand Culture, Government of Karnataka,
1994),
Niranjana, Tejaswini,SitingTranslation:History,Post-Structuralism
and the Colonial
Context,(Berkeley:Universityof California Press, 1992).
Pratt, Mary Louise, /mperialEyes:TravelWritingand Transculturation,
(London and
New York: Routledge, 1992).
20 Rangaiah, M G, “Shri VishweswaraiahnavaraSallakshitaAdhikara Nirvahana”,
in Iyengar.
21 Rao, Gulvadi Venkat, Indira BayiAthavaSaddharmaVijaya,(Manipala: Gulvadi
Venkat Rao Smaraka Kendra, 1989).
Z2 Said, Edward, Orientalism,(London: Penguin, 1978).
23 Sangari, Kumkum and Sudesh Vaid, eds, RecastingWomen:Essaysin Colonial
History,(New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989).
24 Subbarayappa, D C, “Shri VishweswaraiahnavaraBali Kelasa Madiddara Savi
Nenapu,” in Iyengar.
25 Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari, “The Third World Academic in Other Places; or, the
Postcolonial Intellectual Revisted”, Critical Inquiry 23:596-616, 1997,
26 Tharakeshwar, V B, “Self-Translation: Politics of Colonial and Post-Colonial
Cultural Transactions”, paper presented at the Seminar on EnglishLiteratureand
Indian Literature:Receptionand Resistanceat the University of Delhi in November
1997.
PLY Tharakeshwar,V B, “TranslatingColonialDiscourse:Power/Resistancein the
NationalistContext”,paperpresentedat the Workshopon TranslatingTranslation:
Theory,Practiceand Context,organized by Anveshiat CIEFL, Hyderabad, in
January 1998.
28 Tharakeshwar, V B, “TranslatingTragedy:Colonialism, Nationalism and BM
Srikantia”,Paperpresented at the annual IACLALSConferenceat M S$University
of Baroda on Journeysand Destinationsin February 1998.
29 Venkata Rao, Alura, NannaJeevanaSmrithigalu,(Dhaarawada: Manohara Grantha
Male, 1974).
30 Vidyashankar,S, Pravasodhyama
HaaguKannadadalli
PravasaSahitya,(Bangalore:
Sneha Prakashana,1991).

149
HYDERABAD THROUGH FOREIGN EYES

NARENDRA LUTHER

uhammad Quli Qutb Shah(1580-1611) wasthe fifth and the

Nie celebrated ruler of the Qutb Shahidynastyof Golconda.
On an auspicious day,according to Ferishta, “when the Moon was
in the constellation of Leo, and Jupiter in its own mansion,” the
Sultan issued a decree that a new city be built outside the fort. It
should be “unequalledin the world and a replicaof paradise itself”
holds that the injunction to replicate paradise was taken literallyby
MirMomin,the prime ministerofthe sultanatewho wasalsodirector
of the project. Accordingly,the plan of the city,which was ready in
1591, incorporated many of the features of the mythical Islamic
heaven.Areading,amongstothers, of Suras47,14; 56; 28; 7,47; and
55 of the Quran givesa complete description of the Islamicheaven.
In the plan of the city,accordingto the German scholar,Jan Pieper,
the followingfeatures went to make the city “a replica of heaven”:
Orientation of the city based on the Kiblah direction of the
central mosque on the upper floor of Charminar.
 NARENDRA LUTHER

A fountain in the centre of the four arches located about 76

meters north of Charminar. From this fountain named Char-
su-ka Houz (fountain of four directions) radiated four channels
in the four cardinal directions. This feature symbolized the
fountain in the Quranic heaven from which flow four canals
of pure water, pure milk, pure honey, and pure wine (Quran:
47,14). Adefunct fountain called Gulzar Houz still exists at the

same place.
Again,there are two mythicaltrees in heaven—Sidrand Talh.
They don’t exist on Earth. The impressivefountain had two
types of trees —cocoanut, and betel nut palm to symbolize
the two mythical trees (Quran, 56,28).
There are four arches at a distance of 76 meters north of
Charminar. Two of these — the northern and southern —
represented the wall which, according to the Quran (7, 47)
encloses the abode of the blessed. They had royal guards
corresponding to the fierce Quranic “Men of the Wall.” The
other two — eastern and western arches stood for the
Quranic pleasures. The enormous gold curtains on the
western arch flowing in the air and the shehnai players on the
eastern arch filling the air with the “nasal” sounds of the
instrument, are taken as the evocation of Sura 55 of the
Quran.

Finally,in the Islamicheaven,there is not one garden,but

many.”
As a matter of fact, the word for heaven in Arabic —jannat —also
means garden. Paradise is also called the Garden of Eden. That
explained the abundance of gardens and greenery in the new city.
About three-square kilometres of habitation was surrounded by
twentythreesquarekilometres
ofgreeneryandgardens.

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 HYDERABAD THROUGH FOREIGN EYES

As a prince, Muhammad Quli had fallen in love with a Hindu

girl, Bhagmati.So when the city was ready,he dedicated it to his
ladylove and called it Bhagnagar after her name. In 1596, the
customary chronogram was drawn up. It was FarkhundaBuniyad.
That yielded the year of the establishment of the city.The Persian
title meant “the cityof fortune,” which is incidentallyconnoted by
“Bhagnagar”also.The name seems to havechanged to Hyderabad
sometime in the seventeenthcentury,though, aswillbe noted from
the accountsthat follow,it continued to be used extensivelytill late
nineteenth century.
The citywas an emporium for diamonds mined in the Kulur mines
in the interior. With the ports of Masulipatnam on the eastern coast,
and Goa on the west under it, the capital city became an important
centre for international trade. The Dutch, the Portuguese, the French
and the British were all trying to establish their foothold on the
southern coast of India controlled by the Sultan of Golconda. The
Qutb Shahi dynasty acknowledged the overlordship of the Shah of
Persia (modern Iran) which at that time was acknowledged as the
font of knowledge and culture in the East. The Persians dominated
the court and the administration of Golconda. There was thus not
only a large presence of foreigners in the city, but also a constant
traffic of visitors of all types —traders, missionaries, tourists, scholars
and adventurers. Ferishta considered it bigger and better than Agra
and Lahore —the great cities of the Mughals. While Indians visited
the city routinely, a good number of foreigners visited it since its
inception and some of them haveleft detailed, interesting and authentic
accounts of their visits. This essay shall look in some detail at these
accounts since they are comparative, and bring experiences of other
world cities to bear upon their view of Hyderabad.

Seventeenth
toEighteenthCenturies
Thespateofvisitorstothecitybeganintheseventeenth
century.

152
 NARENDRA LUTHER

They came from Iran, England,France,Holland,and Italy.They

come from differentbackgrounds,had variedcallings,and diverse
interests.
The first to write about the citywasMuhammad Qasim, popularly
known as Ferishta. He was born at Astarabad, modern Iran. In
1589, aged seventeen, he proceeded to Bijapur and became a
military captain under Ibrahim Adil Shah II.
His aim was to write a history of the conquests of Islam in India,
and his patron gave him the necessary support for that purpose.
He claims that he consulted thirty four books and other sources for
completing his work.
He never visited Hyderabad. The city was less than twenty years
old when he wrote about it:

As the air of Golconda had become impure and unhealthy,

MuhammadQulibuilta magnificentcityat a distanceofeight
miles,whichhe calledBhagnagar,after hisfavouritemistress;
but this city has since received the name of Hyderabad,
although one part of it still retains the former name of
Bhagnagar.It is ten milesin circumference;and its principal
streets, contrary to the other towns in India, are wide and
clean; its air is healthy,and running streams are conveyed
through someof the principalmarkets,on eachsideofwhich
rows of trees are planted, affording a pleasing shade and
sight, and the shops are all of solid masonry. The King’s
palace is described as the most beautiful and extensive in
India.’

Next was an Englishman called William Methwold. He came to

India in 1616 asa factor in the East India Company and was posted
at Masulipatnam on the East Coast from 1618-1622. When he
made his many visits to Hyderabad, he was in his mid-twenties, and

the city was around thirty. See how he bears out its freshness:

h53
 HYDERABAD THROUGH FOREIGN EYES

A city for sweetnesse of ayre, conveniencie of Water, and

fertilityof soyleisaccounted the best situated in India, not to
speak of the King’s Palace, which for bignesse and
sumptuousnesse, in the judgment of such as have travelled
India, exceedeth all belonging to the Mogull or any other
Prince: it being twelve miles in circumference built all of
stone, and within, the most eminent palacesgarnished with
massie gold in such things as we commonly use iron, as in
barres ofwindows,Lolts,and such like,and in allother points
fitted to the majestyof so great a King,who in elephants and
jewels is accounted one of the richest Princes of India.‘

The Englishmanwas followedby a number of Frenchmen —

Tavernier,Thevenot, and the Abbe Carre —and by an Italian,
Manucci.Of these, the firsttwowrote at considerablelengthabout
Hyderabad.
Jean Baptiste Tavernier, born in 1605 in Paris, was a dealer in
diamonds, although he posed as a gentleman-trader and not a
merchant. He visited Golconda twice by different routes, once in
1648 and again in 1652. According to Dr V Ball who translated
Tavernier’s “Travels” into English, he was the “most renowned”
traveller of the seevnteenth century.”
He had an acutesenseof observation.He wasalsoverysystematic
in his approach and kept a good record of the roads by which he
travelled,the mode of transport, the citiesthroughwhich he passed,
and the formalitiesthat he had to undergo:

Bhagnagaris the name of the capital town of this kingdom,

but it iscommonlycalledGOLCONDAfrom the name of the
fortress, which is only 2 coss distant from it, and is the
residence of the King ...
...The neighbouringcountryisa flatplain,and nearthe town
you see numerous rocks as at FONTAINEBLEAU.A large

154
 NARENDRA LUTHER

river bathes a wall of the town on the southwest side, and

flows into the Gulf of Bengal close to MASULIPATNAM. You
cross it at BHAGNAGAR bya grand stone bridge, which is
scarcely less beautiful than the PONT NEUF at Paris. The
town is nearly the size of ORLEANS, well built and well
opened out, and there are many fine large streets in it ...
There are beautiful gardens, and such large trees, that it is a
matter for astonishment how these arches are able to carry
such a weight; and one may say in general terms that this
house has all the appearances of a royal mansion ...

In the first place, when a stranger presents himself at the

gates, they search him carefully to see if he has any salt or
tobacco, because these yield the principal revenue of the
King.
There are so many public women in the town, the suburbs
and in the fortress which is like another town, that it is
estimated that there are generally more than 20,000 entered
in the Darogha’s register, without which it is not allowed to
any woman to ply this trade ...

In the cool of the eveningyou see them before the doors of

their houses, which are for the most part small huts, and
when the night comes they placeat the doors a candle or a
lightedlampfor a signal.It isthen, also,that the shopswhere
theyselltari are opened. Kingderivesfrom the taxwhichhe
places on this tari a very considerable revenue, and it is
principallyon this account that they allowso many public
women, because they are the cause of the consumption of
much tari, thosewhosellit havingfor thisreasontheir shops
intheirneighbourhood.°
Jean Baptiste Thevenot, born in 1633, visited Golconda during

bes
 HYDERABAD THROUGH FOREIGN EYES

1665-66. He measured the distances between the landmarks of the

city and described the difficulties he had to undergo during his
travels and stay here. Sayshe:
The capital city of this Kingdom is called Bagnagar, the Persians
call it Aider-abad, it is ... situated Latitude of seventeen
Degrees ten Minutes; in a very long plain, hemmed in with
little Hills, some Cosses Distant from the Town which makes
the Air of that Place very wholesome, besides that, the
Countrey of Golconda lies very high. The Houses of the
Suburbs, where we arrived, are only built of Earth and
thatched with Straw, they are so low and ill contrived, that
they can be reckoned no more than Huts. We went from one
end to the other of that suburbs which is very long and stopt
near the Bridge, which is at the farthest end of it. There we
stayed for a note from Cotuals House to enter the Town,
because of the Merchants Goods of the Caravan which were
to be carried to the CotualsHouse to be searched. Buta Persian
named Ak-Nazar, a favourite of the Kings, who knew the chief
of the Caravan, became informed of its arrival, sent
immediately a Man with orders, to let us enter with all the
Goods, and so we past the Bridge, which is only three Arches
over. It is about three Fathom broad and is paved with large
flat Stones ... At the end of the Bridge, we found the Gates
of the City, which are no more but Barriers: Being entered,
we marched a quarter of an hour through a long Street with
Houses on both sides, but as low as those of Suburbs, and
built of the same materials, though they have very lovely
Gardens.

We went to a Caravanseray called Nimet-ulla,which has its

entry from the same Street. Everyonetook his lodgingthere,
andI hired two little Chambers, at two RoupiesaMonth. The

156
 NARENDRA LUTHER

town makesa kind of Cross, much longer than broad, and

extendsina straightline,fromthe Bridgeto the fourTowers;
but beyond these Towersthe street is no longer streight. 1
measuredthe lengthof the Town... found that BAGNAGAR
wasfivethousandsixhundredandfiftypacesinlength,to wit,
two thousand four hundred and fiftyfrom the bridgeto the
Towers.

That which is called the four Towers, is a square building, of

which each face is ten Fathom broad, and about seven high ...

Besidesthe IndianMerchants that are at Bagnagar,there are

many Persiansand Armenians,... There are many Franks also
in the Kingdomebut most of them are Portuguese, who have
fled thither for Crimes they havecommitted. However,the
English and Dutch have lately settled there; the last make
great profits. They establisheda Factory there ... where they
buy up for the Company, many Chitesand other Cloaths,
which they vent elsewhere in the Indies.They bring from
Masulipatanupon Oxen the Goods which they know to be of
readiest sale in Bagnagar,and other Townsof the Kingdom,
asCloves,Pepper,Cinnamon, Silver,Copper,Tin and Lead ai

He endorsed Tavernier’sobservationabout the abundanceof

publicwomenand addedhis observationabout the libertyenjoyed
by women:
The common Peoplegivetheir Wivesgreat Liberty:When a
Man is to be Married, the Father and Mother of his Bride
make him promise that he will not take it ill that his Wife go
and walk through the Town, or visit her Neighbours, nay and
drink Tary, a drink that the Indians of GOLCONDA are
extremelyfondof.*
The Abbe Carre, born about 1639, visited Golconda in 1673.

La?
HYDERABAD THROUGH FOREIGN EYES

He talks of the two towns of Golconda and Bhagnagar. He recorded

in his journal:

It is a very spacious town, situated in a flat country, watered

by a fine river. It is full of strangers and merchants that trade
is carried on by foreigners and others without any or
particular business. There is such a concourse of every kind
of people, merchandise and riches, that the place seems to
be the centre of all trade in the East.’

The Italian Niccolao Manucci ran awayfrom Venicein 1653 at

the age of fourteen. Starting as an artilleryman with the Mughal
Emperor Shah Jahan’s son, Dara Shikoh, and later Jai Singh, he
became a physician and joined Shah Alam when the latter was
appointed governor of the Deccan in 1678.'° He later joined the
last sultan of Golconda, TanaShah, and was pursued by Shah Alam
for desertion. His escape and pursuit by Shah Alam reads like a
thriller. His account is noteworthy because of his description of
how he was helped by fellowChristiansand Europeans in his flight
and how he masqueraded successfullyas a physician. He described
the story himself:
Nor must I omit to mention how some Christians in the
service of the Gulkandah King aware that I was seeking to
escape from Shah Alam, came out to meet me and escort me,
so as to take my side in case any of the Gulkandah troops

attempted to interferewith me.

.. Thus the king heard of my arrival. As his European
physician, a Frenchman named Monsieur Destremon, was
dead, the king sent for me to his presence. There, after some
conversation, he directed me to go and bleed a woman in his
harem, much cherished by him, because she knew where the
treasures of the King of Gulkandah Cotobxa (Qutb Shah)

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 NARENDRA LUTHER

were concealed. She was a Georgian and so extremely stout,

and the fat covered the veins so much, that blood could not
be drawn from her except from the capillary veins ...'!

He did sucha good job of it that the Sultan, Abdullah Qutb Shah
alsowanted the same treatment for himself. However,he suspected
that Manucci might be Shah Alam’sagent and so might harm him.
When the Sultan was pressurized to surrender Manucci to Shah
Alam, a deal was worked out between the two.

The information reached me when I was at cards, and

suppressing my tribulation, I went on for some time with
the game. I then went out and betook myself to the house
of the Dutch envoy, who was then Lorenco Pit, and begged
his assistance in this delicate situation. After that I sent for
the Father Vicar of Gulkandah, named Frey Francisco, of
the order of St Augustin and most earnestly entreated him
to see Rustam Rao and procure leave to remove to
Machhlipatnam a brother of his called Ausgustinho, who
had fallen ill."

The late SirJadunath Sarkar,the famoushistorian, has published

two accounts by two French officersabout Hyderabadin the middle
of the seventeenth century.
Accordingto the unpublishedaccount of one officerin 1750,
The city is large and beautiful ... This city is very unclean
within; summer and winter alike it is always full of mud.
When it rains the roads are covered ankle-deep with water.
The inhabitants are Musalmans and Hindus: there are some
white like the Europeans; they are very affable and most
courteous ... There are in this city many other houses which
are very old; that in which Mons. De Bussy (French General)
resides is very much out of order ... next we pass over a bridge

LoD
 HYDERABAD THROUGH FOREIGN EYES

which isvery beautiful for these countries. It is tolerably long

and wide, paved with free stone, and has some thirty arches.
When one is outside the city,one may say that there are here
nothing but groves ... and were it not for the walls the gate
and the bridge —one might take the city for a tope ... There
are many superb buildings with beautiful gardens outside the
city; but they are extremely distant ... The gates (of the city)
as of the fort are closed about 7 0”clock in the evening and
are not opened till 9 0’ clock in the morning or still later, and
that too not without the order of the governor."

Sarkar then quotes from the manuscript of Comte. L.-L. Dolisy

De Modave. Except the main road leading to Char Kaman, he found
the

... other roads of the city are small and very dirty. However,
here are on all sides beautiful houses with gardens and
fountains; but nearly all of them are deserted ... I have not
seen the city where the manners and customs of the capital
of the [Mughal] Empire are more carefully followed than in
this one ...

If one were to judge its population from the incredible crowds

which ceaselesslyfillallthe length of the main road, one would
come to the conclusion that this city contains an enormous
number of inhabitants. I have been assured that this number
reaches 500,000 persons; but after examining the point
carefullyI am of the opinion there is only half [that number].

The city of Hyderabadis joined to a large suburb, which

standson theoppositesideofthe river,bya largestonebridge
that passesin India for a veryfinebridge.The name of the
suburb is Aurangabad,but it is commonlydesignatedthe
Karvan...

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 NARENDRA LUTHER

The country around Hyderabadis a vast plain of which the

surfaceissownwithhillocks,sufficientlyhighandallcomposed
either of bed rock or of loose boulders of a monstrous
thickness... However, this very plain presents enough of
verdure,and herewe findanairoffreshness whichone would
not havenaturallyexpected ...
We find here more Arabs and doctors [i.e., “ulama,”
theologians] than in any other city of India without excepting
Delhi even.'*

Sarkar then quotes the account from the itinerary of Lieutenant

Colonel John Upton in April 1977.

The city, in general, is on the decline, except the Chawk,or

Grand Bazar, which is full with very good shops and houses;
there are sixteen other bazars, or markets, in the city; and it
is said, that there were fifty two in the reign of Tana Shah."

The reasonfor the “decline”referred to abovewasthat after the

Mughalconquest of Hyderabadin 1687, the cityhad ceasedto be
the capital.The capitalof the Deccanprovinceof the Mughalswas
Aurangabad.Becauseof that, most of the high officialsand nobles
had also shifted there leadingto a comparativeneglectof the city.
However,the Nizam liked to stayat Hyderabadpartly to be away
from the Marathas, and partly to be “more in the centre of his
dominions,and more convenientfor sendingtroops to keepoffhis
most restlessand troublesomeneighbour,Hyder Ali.”'*
It will be of interest to narrate here an incident, which occurred
in 1798. It shows how the Residency was built, and also the Nizam’s
ignorance of the elementary principles of scale.
Since 1779, the British had stationed a Resident at Hyderabad.
In the beginning, the role of the Resident was ambassadorial, but
as British influence increased, the Resident became more powerful.

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 HYDERABAD THROUGH FOREIGN EYES

CaptainJames Kirkpatrick(Residentfrom 1798 to 1805), in keeping

with the expanding and crucial role of the Englishagent, decided to
build an official residence for himself. He sounded out the Prime
Minister, who secured the Nizam’s approval to the proposal in
principle. When the plan was presented to the Nizam, he took one
look at it and threw it awayin horror. Crestfallen, Kirkpatrick asked
the Prime Minister the reason for this summary rejection. He simply
laughed. “Resident Bahadur,” he chided, “you made the plan on
the paper so big that it seemed equal to the size of His Highness’s
dominions. How could he agree to part with that?”!”
Next time the Resident submitted the same proposal on a piece
of paper the size of a visitingcard. The Nizam readily agreed and
Kirkpatrickthen took up the project of building the Residency.The
structure was so grand that while visitingthe city in 1817, Sir John
Malcolm called it a “palace” and in a letter to LadyClive (wife of
the Governor of Madras) remarked that “it is only surpassed in
splendour and magnitude by the Government House in Calcutta.
That in Madras cannot be compared to it.”!8

Nineteenth
Century
Duringthe middleAges,highwayrobberyin Indiawasrampant.
One of the later forms it wasto assume,waswhat has been called
Thugee.Accordingto MeadowsTaylor,“the word Thug means a
deceiver,fromthe HindeewordThunga,to deceive.”'?He attributed
it to thedivisionofIndiaintonumerouskingdomsand principalities,
andthe absenceofroads,and inconsequence,ofpublicconveyance.
Thugswerethieveswhotooktravellinggroupsintoconfidence,then
murderedthembythrottlingthemwiththeir handkerchiefs,buried
their bodiesand looted their belongings.In manycases,the local
chiefscolludedwith them. Its practitionerswere both Hindus and
Muslims.Interestingly,bothworshippedgoddessBhavaniandsought
her blessingsboth before and after the heinousact.

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 NARENDRA LUTHER

Till 1811 the British authorities in India did not know about
the prevalence of Thugee. In that year, following the
disappearance of many army men during their official
journeys, the commander-in-chief issued an order warning
the soldiers against thugs. In 1812, the first assault on thugs
was made followingupon the murder of Lieutenant Monsell.
Many thugs were killed.”

Lord William Bentinck, Governor General of India (1828-35)

launched a vigorous,systematicand longdrawn-out campaignagainst
Thugee in 1830. Colonel Sleeman was put in charge of the
operations. During 1831 to 1837, Taylorsays,on the testimony of
Captain Reynolds, that a total number of 412 thugs were hanged,
1059 transported to Penang et cetera, 87 given life sentence, 483
made approvers, and many given various terms of imprisonment.
He puts the total number of cases dealt with at 3266.”!
Taylorwrote his novelConfessions of aThugbased upon the story
of one of the.convictedthugs,AmeerAli.In the introduction to the
book, Taylorclaimsthat the story describedby him
Is, alas; almost all true. What there is of fiction has been
supplied only to connect the events, and make the adventures
of Ameer Ali as interesting as the nature of his horrible
professionwouldpermit me.”
However, we will do well to remember that Taylor himself was
an Assistant Resident at Hyderabad. It is very likely, therefore, that
the descriptions of some of the sites and incidents of Hyderabad in
the book are based upon his observations.
AmeerAli’sdescription of the Husain SagarLakeseemsentirely
credible, particularly if he had not seen any sea:

We stood for a long time gazing upon the beautiful prospect,

so new to usall, and wondering whether the sea, of which we
had heard so much, could be anything like what was before

163
 HYDERABAD THROUGH FOREIGN EYES

us. WhenI sawit first, me thought I could havefallendown

and worshipped it. It appeared so illimitable, its edge
touching as it were the heavens, and spread out into an
expanse,which the utmost stretch of my imaginationcould
not compass.”?
He was swept off his feet when he had the first glimpse of the
city from the vantage point of Naubat Pahad, which is now occupied
by the VenkateswaraTemple:

Hyderabad... the firstcityof the Dukhun, justlycelebrated

throughout the countries I had passed ... its white terraced
housesgleamingbrightlyin the sunlightfrom amidst what
seemed to me at the distancealmost a forest of trees. The
CharMinarand MeccaMasjidroseproudlyfrom the masses
of buildingsby which they were surrounded; and here and
thereawhitedome,withitsbrightgiltspire,markedthe tomb
of some favouriteor holy saint, while smaller mosques, |
might sayin hundreds, were known by their slender white
minarets ...

The city seemed to be of immense extent; but I thought from

the number of trees that it was composed principally of
gardens and enclosures, and was much surprised afterwards,
whenI entered it, to find its streets so filled with houses, and
thewholesothicklypeopled.
It was altogether a most lovely scene: the freshness of the
morning, the pureness of the air, and the glittering effects of
the city and its buildings caused an impression that can never
be effected from my memory ...

To see this alone is worth a journey from Delhi.”*

He was one of the few to have visited the Qutb Shahi tombs.

Theywere “dark and gloomyand filledwith bats and wild pigeons

164
 NARENDRA LUTHER

whosecooingre-echoedwithinthe loftydomes—and otherswhose

wide archesadmitted the lightof the day,and were more cheerful
in appearance.””*
The followinginterestingaccountsbya militaryofficer,Captain
R F Burton, and his wife were carried by the Timesof India in its
issuesof 11 March and 29" March 1876.
First, the issueof 11" March—
A Ride through Hyderabad
We have just returned from our first survey of the “Lion

City.””¢
The country about Hyderabad in the Dekhan is very
picturesque.Nowheremore decidedcontrastsof sun-burnt
granite and syenite in bristling ridges, solitary boulders,
loggan-stones,weathered into likenessof man and beast,
castellatedrockspiledasbythe handsofart; in ruddyfallows,
in little green paddy fields,in skyblue distances,in golden
stubbles almost pulverised by burning sun and deficient
showers, in glorious “topes” of mangoes, tamarinds and
shadywild figs...
Here we haveour firstviewof the city,whose crumbling towers
and ramparts, abutting upon the right bank of the RiverValley,
contrast queerly with the prim Gothic battlements of the
North-Eastern or Palace Gate; its neighbour is the Delhi or
Water Gate, where elephants are taken down to bathe ...

There isno pavementexcept in patches ofblackbasalt,which

reminded my wife of the SalahiyyahCausewayat Damascus,
and in places the originalgranite still outcrops in uninjured
boulders.

Clerical and civilian garb; of dark Portuguese and sallow

Eurasians; of Parsees whose hats look like chimney pots

165
 HYDERABAD THROUGH FOREIGN EYES

blown backwards by a gale of wind; of Banyas with beaked

turbans red and gold; of Marathas, whose head gear assumes
the dimensions of tea tables; and of Moslems clad in
costumes almost as numerous as the individuals that wear
them. Here the chief foreign items are dark, wiry Arabs from
Hazramautor the Persian Gulf; sturdy Sulaymanis or Afghans,
and large limbed Zanzibarian Sidis (Wasawahili), sometimes
pur sang, oftener mixed with Asiatic blood; the Wahabis
conceal their tenets ...2”

On 29 March 1876:

... The vulgarof Hyderabad,unlike most Moslemcities in

India,are lessfondofkiteflyingand ofpigeon-tumblingthan
of cock-fighting,while the latter is ignored by the higher
classes... Here there are fiveor sixcockpits,especiallythat of
kachi-Ghora (Kachiguda),where mains are fought every
Sunday.Thebird islarge,oftenweighing5 to 5%seers(10 to
11Ibs.),equalling,in fact,a smallturkey;it isone of the best
in India;the price reachesRs200. Youcannot depend upon
your friendto send or to sellyou an Asilor thoroughbred ...
the birds are trained,physickedand sweatedwith more care
than Spaniardsor Mexicanscanbestowupon them, and they
areheatedwithMasala(spices),whosepreparationisa secret,
that they will fly at man or beast ... The experienced
“Murghbaz”(cock-fighter)willhavedozensof these articles,
showingeveryvarietylength,weightand angle.”®
The thug and the army officer also took note, inter alia, of a
very picturesque geophysical feature of Hyderabad —its two and a
half billion year old gneissic rocks.
Before closing the century, it may be worth looking at the
observation of two more visitors. That is because they give us a
different perspective —on the social life of the city.

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 NARENDRA LUTHER

In 1876, ValC Prinsep, the British painter, was commissioned

to paint a picture for the Government of India, as a present for
Queen Victoria on the assumption of the title of Empress of India.
The subject was the Imperial Assemblage of Delhi. He took the
opportunity to visita number of important cities of India, including
Hyderabad. The Nizam of Hyderabad at that time was Mir Mehboob
Ali Khan, a boy of about eleven. During his visit, he kept a journal,
which was published as a book: ImperialIndia —AnArtist'sJournals.
He noticed that

Etiquette is very strict here. The amount of bowing and

salaaming at the Minister’s (Sir Salar Jung I) is most
embarrassing. A younger brother is not allowed to sit in the
presence of his elder, and salaamsto the ground on coming
to the room. I have been told that whena boy is born, eight
wet nurses are chosen for him, and generally succeed in
killinghim with over-nourishment, asmight be expected. The
late Nizam died ina singularand most depressing way.He had
a disease, not dangerous of itself, but one which rendered a
slight operation necessary: but he funked. He had all the
people of the city who were afflicted with the same disease
brought to him and operated on in his presence; yet he could
not make up his mind, and at last mortification set in, and he
died miserably.
This story of the etiquette of the Nizam’s Court will, I hope,
prove interesting. When the Nizam was paying a visit to
Golconda, he, boy-like, ran into Sir Salar Jung’s room and
found the Minister taking siesta.The Minister had taken offhis
girdle! Now to be in the Nizam’s company without a girdle
is a heinous offence, and the Minister at once handed over to
the little Nizam fifteen gold mohurs.The next morning he sent
him 1,500 rupees to complete the fine! What do you think

167
 HYDERABAD THROUGH FOREIGN EYES

theycallthisgirdle,whichisgenerallyagoldenkindofsword-
belt?Buggelas(ActuallyBugloos),whichtheysayisan English
word, Can it be derivedfrom “buckles”?
The Hyderabadists(Sic) are, like the natives,mad on the
subject of glass chandeliers.They have them even in the
mosques,and when they are tied in muslin bags they have
anythingbuta religiouslook,but ratherasthe familywereout
of town.”?

Apart from the host of commoners, some members of the

European royaltyalsovisited Hyderabad. Prince Albert Victor came
in 1893, while the future KingGeorge V came with his wife in 1905
when he was Prince of Wales. In 1893, came the Archduke Franz
Ferdinand, heir apparent to the throne of Austria. He kept a diary
of his journey. In that he gives authentic information about
Hyderabad and Nizam VI. He was taken for shikar outside the city.
On return, it was proposed that he and the Nizam have a shooting
match. They were to shoot clay balls placed on the neck of several
bottles placed at a distance of thirty steps, and bottles and coins
flung into the air.

We had to shoot the clay balls without hitting the bottles.

The Nizam shot first and missed four clay balls; I followed,
and hit three out of four, whereupon the Nizam and his
retinue burst into an applause ... Then came the most
difficult part, that is the shooting of rupees thrown into the
air. Each marksman had eight shots. The Nizam hit one,
and I was lucky to hit three, though I had no experience of
that earlier. The Nizam was very sporting and showed his
appreciation although it was the first time that he had been
beaten at the game. I must admit that deep inside I felt as
proud as lion,”

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 NARENDRA LUTHER

The Archduke also visited the famous palace of AsmanJah, the

Prime Minister (1884-94). In the courtyard there were fivechained
tiger cubs. Asman Jah had shot the mother the previous year and
brought the cubs home. They playedlikekittens. “Theywere tame so
that one couldfondlethem. Tomydelightthe PrimeMinisterpresented
two of them to me, which I hope will reach Viennasafely.”*'
The translator of the diary, Mrs Elizabeth Al-Himrani checked
the records of the Vienna Zoo and found that two cubs had indeed
been donated to it in 1893.

Twentieth
Century
There are other accounts in the twentieth century during the
first half of which Hyderabad was called “a bride amongst the cities”
by Urdu writers and poets from the north. It had been rebuilt after
the Great Floods of 1908 on the basis of the plans prepared by
Visveswarayya.
J P LGwynn, an ICS officer who served in the old Madras (now
Tamil Nadu) state, and later in Andhra Pradesh, visited Hyderabad
in 1943. He recalled “the quiet and peaceful atmosphere of the old
city of Hyderabad, so different from the hustle and bustle of today.
I have a distinct impression that gentlemen walking about in their
everyday costume wore sword belts with swords dangling from
them.”*»”He contrasted the difference in the architecture of
Hyderabad
andSecunderabad.
I will not discussSecunderabad’sarchitecture in detail. It
became the largest military cantonment in India with its
buildingconformingto the all-Indiatypedesignsdrawn up
intheperiodswhenthosebuildingswereerected.Collectively,
they(thecantonmentarchitectureofSecunderabad)represent
quite well the character of those times (when they were
constructed),but individually—takeSecunderabadClub,for
example—they are utilitarianand featureless.A point to be

169
 HYDERABAD THROUGH FOREIGN EYES

mentioned here is the notable contrast in appearance between

the streets of Secunderabad and Hyderabad ... Basically the
reason for the contrast is that residences built in Secunderabad
were of the bungalow type, while in Hyderabad they were of
the urban house type. The very visible sign ofthe contrast is
that Secunderabad houses have front verandas while those of
Hyderabad do not.*?

PhilipMasonof the ICS, retiring prematurely and on his wayto

Englandin 1947, stopped for a while in Hyderabad at the request
of PrincessDurreshahwar. His autobiographicalA ShaftofSunlight
(1978) shows how impressed —and confused —he was by the
cosmopolitancharacterof the city.His surprise is indeed surprising
sincehe had served in the present state of Uttar Pradesh for a long
time. He attendeda birthday party in Hyderabad:
“Whois that littleboy?”I askedmynearestneighbourand
shetoldmea nameI haveforgotten,butaname unmistakably
Hindu, some Ram Swarup, or Jag Deo.
“But he is wearing the wrong sort of hat!” I exclaimed in
astonishment. He waswearinga Turkish fez,like an involuted
red pot with a black silk tassel, which in Northern India was
always the sign of aMuslim. “Oh, in Hyderabad we do not
care for things like that!” said my neighbour gaily.“It is one
of the nice things here that we are so delightfully
cosmopolitan.”*4
AlanChampbellJohnson, in hisMissionwithMountbatten(1952)
givesa fleetingglimpseof his flyingvisitto Hyderabad in 1947. He
describeshismeetingwithNizamVII,hispersonality,and hisdrawing
room. Harriet Ronken Lynton (with Mohini Rajan) wrote about
the Hyderabadof the SixthNizam(d. 1911).Their book, TheDays
oftheBelovedpublishedin 1974,givesa chattyaccountof a fascinating

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 NARENDRA LUTHER

period in which the ruler went round the city incognito at night,
and made generous gifts impulsively.Professor Karen Leonard
formerlyof the Universityof California,LosAngeleshasa fascination
for Hyderabad and has made many trips to the city. Her Social
Historyof an Indian Caste:TheKayasths(1978) and her numerous
articles published in leadingjournals givea fascinatingaccount of
many aspects of Hyderabad, includingthe “composite” character
of the administration of Hyderabad under the Asaf Jahs. The
Australian author, Ian Austin, has recounted many stories and
legends in his book, TheCityofLegends,based on oral testimony.
The most recent to join the procession is William Dalrymple.
He has written about Hyderabad with much the same enchantment
as is found in the narration of earlier chroniclers. Though his focus
is the romance of James Achilles Kirkpatrick, the British Resident
in Hyderabad from 1798 to 1805, and Khairunissa, he gives
interesting details about the city from the time that it was founded,
citing many of his remote predecessors approvingly.His book, White
Mughals is marked by references to primary sources and adds to
the corpus of important literature about the city.
It is noteworthy that all these chroniclers testified to the original
name of the city, Bhagnagar —its detailed town planning, its
architecture, its grandeur, its greenery, good climate, large size and
the cosmopolitan character of the population. Visitorafter visitor has
referred to the gardens not only in the city, but also in individual
houses in the city.Rafi-ud-Din Shiraziin his Tazkirat-ulMuluksaid in
1608 that “both bazaarsand houses are so fullof trees that the whole
citylooks like one garden.”**Ameer Alimore than two hundred years
later also spoke likewise.Tavernier,Thevenot and Abbe Carre spelt
the name of the city as “Bagnagar.”That led one modern historian,
late Professor Haroon Khan Sherwani to claim, in another context,
that Tavernier did so because the city was full of gardens (Bagh in
Urdu).?! Ferishta and Methwold declared that in its grandeur it was

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 HYDERABAD THROUGH FOREIGN EYES

better eventhan the great Mughalcities.Tavernierfound it the sizeof

Orleans in France, “well built and well opened out.”**The French
travellerspraised the PuranaPull—the bridge constructed by Ibrahim
QuliQutb Shahin 1578,and the onlyone in existencetillthe nineteenth
century —and it was compared by Tavernier to the new bridge in
Paris.An anonymous French officervisitingit in 1750 found it “very
beautifulfor thesecountries.”*”Of course,whilethe mainthoroughfare
was good, some chroniclers have drawn our attention to the dirty
and unpaved streets. Nawab Sarvar-ul-Mulk, in his autobiography
confirmed in that the street leadingto the royal stables was so filthy
that, it wasknown as “Muthri Galli”(the Urinating lane). The efforts
of SalarJung in the second part of the nineteenth century to improve
the sanitation were thwarted by his rivals by leading Nizam V to
believethat SalarJung was trying to do that to facilitatethe entry of
the Britishinto the city.**
Another thread that runs through the chronicle is that Golconda/
Bhagnagar/Hyderabad was an important commercial centre. In 1673
Abbe Carre found there “such a concourse of every kind of people,
merchandize and riches, that the place seems to be the centre of all
trade in the East.”*> In a commercial centre, the coexistence of
people of different nationalities is inevitable. We find that certified
by practically all the visitors. Abbe Carre recorded in his diary on
14" March 1673, that due to his recent illness at Bijapur, he stayed
with a Portuguese priest —who was a vicar of the Golconda Mission
and whose house and church were in the suburb called Millipore.”
We have seen above the reference made by Niccolao Manucci to
the many Christians who were in the service of the Sultan of Golconda.
Readers will note that he got the job of a French physician of the
Sultan who had died. He was able to escape from Golconda due to
the influence of the Dutch envoy and the Father Vicar of Golconda.
All these elements go into the making of a cosmopolitan city.

One of the characteristics of a cosmopolitan city is the presence

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 NARENDRA LUTHER

of women of pleasure. Tavernier estimated their number at 20,000

and Thevenot seemed to concur without quoting a definite number.
From the sources available, one might infer that prostitution had
been in existence for some time, and had its own well-entrenched
mechanisms. Also, the large consumption of Tary (Toddy,or country
liquor), added significantly to the revenues of the state, a nexus
which is very familiar even today.
However, no other foreign chronicler supports Thevenot’s
observationthatwomenenjoyedgreatliberty.Thereislittlehistorical
or sociologicalevidenceto warrantthisconclusion,and it ispossible
that his viewof the situationwas based solelyon the behaviourof
the publicwomen he encountered.
In somecommentsmadebyforeignobservers,wefindinteresting
socialcomments.The acquisitionof Residencyland by the Nizam,
the strict court etiquette, and the extravagantlifestyleof the Nizams
also emerge from some of the later chronicles of visitors. That
providesa totallydifferentviewof the city.
Hyderabadcontinuesto be visitedby foreigners.Someof them
take notes and even write articles about it in papers back home.
Lately,televisiondocumentariesby foreignchannelsseem to have
overtakenaccounts in blackand white. We can only hope that the
authors of traveloguesand memoirs will not cease to record their
impressionsfor futuregenerationsin the oldtrusted and longlasting
medium of print.

Notes

1 Mohd Kasim Ferishta, Historyof the Riseof the MohammedanPowerin India (Till
1612), Vol. 111,Translated by John Briggs,(London: Longman, Rees, Orme,
Brown & Green, 1829), 1908, Volume II, 173.
2 Jan Pieper, Hyderabad:A QuranicParadisein Architectural
Metaphorsin A Peruccioli,
ed, (Genzano de Roma: Environmental Design, The Journal of the Islamic
Environmental Design Research Centre, January 1983), 46-51.
3. Ferishta,Translatedby John Briggs, 1829, VolIII, 335.

173
 HYDERABAD THROUGH FOREIGN EYES

4 As quoted in W M Moreland, Relationsof Golconda in the EarlySeventeenth

Century (AD 1608-1622), (London: HakluytSociety,931), 23.
5 V Ball, Travelsin India by Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, William Brooke, Reprint ed,
(Atlantic: 1889), 1.
Ball, Travelsin India, 152-158.
7 Mons de Thevenot, The Travelsinto the Levant. Vol.III, Translated by A Lovell,
(London: H Paul, 1687), 94-97.
Thevenot, The Travelsinto the Levant,94.
Abbe, Carre, The TravelsofAbbeCarrein India in the NewEast 1672-74,Vols I & Ve
1674, (Delhi: Asian Educational Services), 329.
10 NiccolaoManucci,StoriaDoMogor,1705,TranslatedbyWilliam Irvine, (London:
John Murray, 1913), v-vi.
11 Niccolao Manucci, Storia Do Mogor, 192.
12. Niccolao Manucci, StoriaDo Mogor,195.
13 SirJadunath Sarkar,“Haidarabad and Golconda in 1750 as seen through French
Eyes,” Islamic Culture, Vol. X, April 1936, 234-47,
14 Sir Jadunath Sarkar,“Haidarabad and Golconda in 1750 as seen through French
Eyes,” 523-26.
15 Sir Jadunath Sarkar, “Old Hyderabad,” IslamicCulture,VolX, 1937, 527.
16. SirJadunath Sarkar,“Old Hyderabad,”526-27
17 John WilliamKaye,LifeandCorrespondence
ofMajor—General
John Malcolm,(Smith
Elder & Co; 1856), 100-101,
18 HG Briggs, The Nizam—His Historyand Relationswith the BritishGovernment,
(Bernard Quatrich, 1861), 100.
19 Philip MeadowsTaylor,Confessionsof a Thug,(London: 1839), Reprint, (New
Delhi: Asia EducationalServices, 1988), 3.
20 Philip MeadowsTaylor,Confessionsofa Thug,12.
21 PhilipMeadowsTaylor,Confessions ofa Thug,17-18,
22 PhilipMeadowsTaylor,Confessions ofa Thug,102.
23 PhilipMeadowsTaylor,Confessions ofa Thug,102.
24 PhilipMeadowsTaylor,Confessions ofa Thug,102-105.
25 PhilipMeadowsTaylor,Confessions ofa Thug,149.
26 Literaltranslationof Hyderabad—HyderbeingAliwhois referredto asthe Lion
of Islam.
27 HyderabadAffairsII, 335-339.
28 HyderabadAffairsII, 345.
29 ValC Prinsep,ImperialIndia—AnAntist’s
Journals,(ChapmanAnd Hall,undated.),
316-317.
30 Archduke FranzFerdinand,MyJourneyAroundthe World,(Vienna: Franz Ferdinand
Museum 1895), Translated by Elizabeth Al-Himrani, (Vienna: 1996), 20.
31 Archduke Franz Ferdinand, MyJourneyAroundthe World,20.

174
 NARENDRA LUTHER

32 J P L Gwynn, “Conservation of Historical Monuments in Hyderabad,” in

Hyderabad—400 —Sagaof a City,ed, K S S Seshan, (Hyderabad: Associationof
British Council Scholars, 1993), 4-5.
33 J P L Gwynn,“Conservationof HistoricalMonuments in Hyderabad,”4-5.
34 Philip Mason,AShaftofLight:Memoirsofa Varied Life,(Vikas,1978) Pageno. not
available.
35 Rafi-ud-Din Shirazi, Tazkirat-ul-Muluk,
Ms. Fol. 61 b. State Central Library,
1608, as quoted in H K Sherwani, Muhammad-QuliQutb Shah —Founderof
Hyderabad,(City: Asia Publishing House, 1967)
36 Jean Baptiste Tavernier, The Six Voyages,Vol.I (1676), Translated by V Ball,
(London: Macmillan & Co., 1889), 123.
37 Sir Jadunath Sarkar, “Haidarabad and Golconda in 1750 as Seen Through
French Eyes,” 241. °
38 Nawab Bahadur Sarvar-ul-Mulk, My Life,Translated by Nawab Jiwan YarJung
Bahadur, (London: Arthur H Stockwell, 1932), 91-92.
39 Abbe Carre, The TravelsofAbbe Carre in India in the New East 1672-74, Vol. 11, 329.

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‘7S
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11 Johnson, AlanChampbell,MissionwithMountbatten,(London: Robert Hale, 1952).

12 Kaye, John William, Lifeand Correspondence of Major —GeneralJohn Malcolm,
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1 Bouma, Jana A, and Dora-Dhoore Ramirez. “Reflections
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181
 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Mohammed Zaheer Basha is a Lecturerin the EnglishStudies

DepartmentofGulbargaUniversity,Gulbarga,India.TravelWriting
andCriticalTheoryare areasofhisspecialinterest.He is currently
workingon his PhDon KatherineMayo’sworkson India.
Narendra Luther is a former ChiefSecretaryof Andhra Pradesh,
India. He is an acknowledgedexpert on the history and culture of
Hyderabad. He has written extensivelyon this subject and is the
author of thirteen books includingHyderabad- Memoirsofa City,a
novel, Beyondthe Full Circle,and a pictorial, Rockitecture
of Andhra
Pradesh.Twobooks, TheNocturnalCourt,and Princeof Photographers
are under print. He has won severalawards for his work in Urdu.
Someof his books and articles havebeen translated into a number
of Indian and foreign languages. He has also produced many
acclaimeddocumentariesincludingIndia’sfirstfull-lengthanimation
film on the love story of the founder of Hyderabad. His
documentary has won two “Golden Aster” awards at the Japan
 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

InternationalFestivalin 1999.He writesa regularcolumnforleading

nationalnewspapers.
Pallavi Pandit Laisram taught Rhetoric and Composition and
BusinessCommunicationat PennsylvaniaState Universitybetween
1984 and 1990. Later she taught spoken and written English to
native and non-native speakers of the language at Montgomery
College,Maryland, USA.At present she is an editor at the ICFAI
Center for Management Research (ICMR), the research wing of
the Institute for Chartered FinancialAnalystsof India. At ICMR
she reviewscase studies and textbooks developedfor national and
international audiences.She.iscurrently preparing an anthologyon
business communication.

Pramod K Nayar, a VisitingSmutsFellowin CommonwealthStudies,

UniversityofCambridge,2000-2001,isa lecturerin the Department
of Englishat the Universityof Hyderabad, India. He is currently
working on a project on BritishTravelWriting and India, 1600-
1800. He reviewsforStudiesin TravelWriting,Jouvert,CultureMachine,
E-Green,Philosophyin Reviewand other international journals.
Sachidananda Mohanty is a Professor of English at the University of
Hyderabad, India. He wasa BritishCouncilScholarin UK, 1990, Fulbright
Post-DoctoralFellowat Texasand Yale, 1990-91 and SalzburgFellow,Austria,
1996. He received the KathaAwardfor outstanding translation in 1992
and 1994, the KathaBritishCouncilTranslationPrize,1994 and the University
Grants Commission’s CareerAward, 1994-97. He was a SeniorAcademic
Fellowat the AmericanStudiesResearchCentre(ASRC),Hyderabad, 1999,
and Fellow,CambridgeSeminaron the ContemporaryBritishWriter,1999. He
has nine books to his credit including an edited work on the Indo-US
Cultural Exchange, 1950-97 for the US EducationalFoundationin India
(USEFI). His essays and articles have appeared in some of the leading
journals and forums in the country. He hasa forthcoming book entitled
Lost Tradition:EarlyWomen’sWritingin Orissa, 1998-1950.

183
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Sindhu Menon received her PhD from the University of

Hyderabad, India. A major section of her thesis deals with travel
documents,especiallywith thoseproduced byearlyBritishwomen
travellersto India.Currentlysheisa lecturer in Englishat Bangalore
University,India,and hasbeen involvedin researchprojectsdealing
with empire and travel writing.
Susan Bassnett is Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Warwick
and Professor in the Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural
Studies, which she founded in the 1980s. She is the author of over
twenty books and her TranslationStudies, (3rd ed. 2002) has become
the most important textbook around the world in the expanding
field of Translation Studies. Recent books include Studying British
Cultures:An Introduction (1997), Constructing Cultures (1998) written
with André Lefevere and PostcolonialTranslation with Harish Trivedi
(1999). She writes columns for several national newspapers and
her collection of poems and translations, Exchanging Lives,came out
in 2002.

V B Tharakeshwar isa lecturer in the Department of Translations,

Kannada University, Hampi, India. He has worked on issues of
colonialism and nationalism in the context of colonial Karnataka
and Kannada literature. He is currently working on a project
Colonialismand Translationin Kannada and is also coordinating a
national levelgroup project on Rethinkingthe “Crisis”in EnglishStudies.
He translates between Kannadaand Englishand has published several
articles on the above issues.

Tutun Mukherjee isa Professorof Englishat OsmaniaUniversity,

Hyderabad, India. Her areas of specializationinclude: Literary
CriticismandCriticalTheory,TranslationStudies,Women’sWriting,
DramaandFilmStudies.Her publicationsincludetwentyninepapers
published in journals and anthologies including the following:
I ARichards
andNewCriticism,(1990);TheChicago Critics:
AnEvaluation,

184
 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

(1992); Translator,
Mindscape: ShortStoriesofPremendraMitra,(2000).
She has a forthcoming book: GirishKarnad’sPlays:Performance and
CriticalPerspectives
and is currently preparing an anthologyof plays
written by women.
William Dalrymple wrote the highlyacclaimedbestsellerInXanadu
when he was twenty two, which won him the 1990 Yorkshire PostBest
First WorkAwardanda ScottishArts CouncilSpringBookAward.His
second book, Cityof Djinns,won the 1994 ThomasCookTravelBook
Awardand the SundayTimesYoungBritishWriterofthe YearAward.From
theHolyMountain,his acclaimed study of the demise of Christianity
in its Middle Eastern homeland, was awarded the ScottishArtsCouncil
AutumnBookAwardfor 1997. In 2002 he was awarded the Mungo
Park Medal by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society for his
“outstanding contribution to travel literature.” He wrote and
presented the television series Stonesof the Raj and IndianJourneys,
which won the GriersonAwardfor BestDocumentary Seriesat BAFTA
in 2002. His Radio4 series on the history of British spirituality and
mysticism, TheLongSearch,recently won the 2002 SandfordStMartin
Prizefor Religious Broadcasting. He now divides his time between
London and Delhi.

185
 ABOUT KATHA

Katha,a registerednonprofit organizationset up in September 1989,worksin

the areasofeducation,publishingandcommunitydevelopmentandendeavours
to spreadthejoy ofreading,knowingandlivingamongstadultsandchildren.Our
main objectiveis to enhance the pleasures of reading for children and
adults, forexperiencedreadersaswellasforthosewhoarejust beginningto read.
Our attemptis alsoto stimulatean interest in lifelonglearningthat willhelp the
childgrowintoaconfident,self-reliant,responsibleandresponsiveadult,asalso
to helpbreakdowngender,culturalandsocialstereotypes,encourageand foster
excellence,applaudqualityliteratureandtranslationsinandbetweenthe various
Indian languagesand work towards community revitalizationand economic
resurgence.The twowingsof KathaareKatha Vilasam and Kalpavriksham.
KATHAVILASAM,,the StoryResearchand ResourceCentre, wasset up to
foster and applaud qualityIndian literature and take these to a wider audience
throughqualitytranslationsand relatedactivitieslikeKatha Books, Academic
Publishing, theKatha Awards forfiction,translationandediting,Kathakaar —
the Centre forChildren’sLiterature,Katha Barani—the TranslationResource
Centre, the Katha Translation Exchange Programme, Translation
Contests. Kanchi —the Katha National Institute of Translation promotes
translation through Katha Academic Centres in various Indian universities,
Faculty Enhancement Programmes through Workshops, seminars and
discussions,Sishya —KathaClubs in colleges,Storytellers Unlimited —the
artand craft ofstorytellingand KathaRasa— performances,art fusionand other
events at the Katha Centre.
KALPAVRIKSHAM,,the Centre for Sustainable Learning, was set up to
foster qualityeducation that is relevantand fun for children from nonliterate
families,and to promote community revitalizationand economic resurgence
work. These goals crystallized in the development of the following areas of
activities.Katha Khazana whichincludesKatha Student Support Centre,
Katha Public School, Katha School of Entrepreneurship, KITES —the
Katha Information Technologyand eCommerce School, Iccha Ghar —The
Intel Computer Clubhouse @ Katha, Hamara Gaonand The Mandals —
Maa, Bapu, Balika,Balakand Danadini, Shakti Khazana was set up for skills
upgradation and income generation activitiescomprising the KhazanaCoop.
Kalpana Vilasam isthe cellfor regularresearchand development ofteaching/
learning materials, curricula, syllabi,content comprising Teacher Training,
TaQeEd —The Teachers Alliance for Quality eEducation. Tamasha’s
World! comprises Tamasha! the Children’s magazine, Dhammakdhum!
www.tamasha.org and ANU —Animals, Nature and YOU!
The Empire has had its mechanisms of perpetuating itself, of
ensuring its stabilityand growth. And in the context of a colonial set
up, travel is one of them. Travelhas been a mode of assessment of
territory, of knowledge gathering, and of putting a discursive
system into place. This volume, edited and introduced by
Sachidananda Mohanty, brings to you the range of hidden
discourses that constituted the classificatory grids of the project of
colonialism.

Mohammed Zaheer Basha: Propagandaas Travelogue:

A Studyof KatherineMayo’sMotherIndia
Narendra Luther: HyderabadThrough Foreign Eyes
Pallavi Pandit Laisram: HajjiBaba:IdeologicalBasisof the PersianPicaro
PramodK Nayar:Touring
Aesthetics:
TheColonialRhetoricofTravel
Brochures
Today
Sindhu Menon: Constitutive Contradictions: Travel Writing and
Construction of Native Women in Colonial India

Susan Bassnett: The Empire, TravelWriting, and British Studies

V B Tharakeshwar: Empire Writes Back? Kannada Travel Fiction and
Nationalist Discourse

Tutun Mukherjee: Colonialism, Surveillanceand Memoirs of Travel:

Tegart’sDiaries and the Andaman CellularJail
William Dalrymple: Porous Boundariesand Cultural Crossover:
FannyParkesand “Going Native”

ab ISBN81-87649-36-
4 §
Ss
i.
CoverDesign:
GeetaDharmarajan 5
Cover
Painting:
Sheikh
MuhammadAmir 2
AKathaNonFiction/Travel lg
Rs250 we