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No Man’s Land: Reading Travel Accounts In Pilgrimage Sites in Shanku Maharaj’s Bigalito Karuna Jahnabi Jamuna

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Smitasri Joy Sarma

Research Scholar, Tezpur University, Assam. Email: smitasrijoy05@gmail.com

Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.07

Abstract

India is the land of 330 million deities, where religious establishments serve as landmarks for postal addresses, where people unite and divide on the pretext of religion, where every milestone involves religious ceremonies, where every birth, marriage or death undergoes holy rituals, or as Bengal endorses the nation’s spirit as “Baro Mashe Tero Parbon” (13 festivals in 12 months). Though the nation speaks of religious diversities, India in the common psyche upholds Hinduism and its practices. In the Western literary bank, India is marked with sacred heritage that draws people to stimulate their spiritual, pursuing solace and the surreal. The legend of Shravan Kumar echoes the existing and common affair of pilgrimages in India that today proves as commercial, in fact as a lucrative sector. This paper endeavors to explore an Indian travel narrative in a pilgrim site through a close textual analysis of Khagendra Narayan Dutta Baruah’s Assamese translation of Shanku Maharaj’s Bigalito Karuna Jahnabi Jamuna (1962), originally written in Bengali in 1959. The text, though woven as a travelogue in a pilgrim site ventures to celebrate the humane, along with the divine. It evokes the reiterated statement of the journey as primal to the destination. The voice while capturing the ethos of India with all its nuances simultaneously dismantles and in fact challenges the conventional and romanticized vista of travelling, particularly in precarious sites. In India, treading the holy spaces despite usually accompanying itineraries can unravel into adventure as the lines blur between such accounts and otherwise.

Keywords: travel, pilgrim, pilgrimage, journey, nature

 

Bengali Hindu pilgrims and travellers to the Himalayas from the late 19th to the late 20th century

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Nilanjana Sikdar Datta

Former Associate Professor of Sanskrit, Dumdum Motijheel College, Kolkata. Email: nil_sd54@hotmail.com

Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.06

Abstract

Bengali travel narratives have a rich repertoire of works that focus on travel as pilgrimage undertaken to the Himalayas, especially to the famous holy shrines of Kedarnath and Badrinath and to Kailasa and Manas Sarovar. This paper focuses on the changing nature of Himalayan pilgrimage down the centuries. The first part discusses two lesser known pilgrimages to the Himalayas where two monks of the Ramakrishna Mission order, namely Swami Akhandananda and Swami Apurvananda undertake their journey in 1887 and 1939 respectively. Their travelogues were published many years later by Udbodhan Karyalaya, the official mouthpiece of the Mission. In both the narratives we get details of the travails of travelling in those times with very little financial security and material comfort. The second part of the paper discusses issues raised by Umaprasad Mukhopadhyay in his travelogue Pancha Kedar where he tells us how, with changing times, the manner of travelling to the same holy places have undergone remarkable changes. The discussion then focuses upon another observation by the famous writer Narayan Sanyal who in his book Pather Mahaprasthan laments the demise of the original trekking routes of the pilgrims. In 1986, Saroj Kumar Bandyopadhyay visited Kailasa and Manas Sarovar and his narrative describing his month long package trip vouches for the changes that both the pilgrim and the pilgrimage had undergone to the same places almost half a century later.

Keywords: pilgrimage, Himalayas, trek routes, multifarious observations, Kailasa, Kedarnath

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Beyond the Boundaries of Kochi: a Study of Raja Veera Keralavarma’s Travel Narrative to Kashi

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Niveditha Kalarikkal

Centre for Comparative Literature and Translation Studies, Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar. kunjikavu@gmail.com

Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.05

Abstract

Pilgrim narratives constitute a significant number of travel narratives which appeared in Sanskrit, English and various Indian bhashas in the 18th and 19th centuries. Raja Veera Kerala Varma IV, who ruled the erstwhile princely state of Kochi (Cochin) in South Western India, wrote an account of his pilgrimage to Kashi (Benares) during the years 1852-53. This travelogue in English was later translated into Malayalam by M. Raman Namboothiri and was published as Kochirajavinte Kashiyatra (The Cochin Raja’s travel to Kashi) in 2013. The ‘travel notes of the Raja of Kochi’ which was available in the form of his personal journal describes his meetings with many British officials and common people on the way, in addition to sketching the varied geographies and religious places that he visited during the 220 days long pilgrimage. The Raja who started his pilgrimage from Trippunithura was accompanied by a royal retinue which included his tour manager, a white medical doctor named Bingle and a few other servants. Veera Kerala Varma, later referred to as the ‘Maharaja who passed away in Kashi’ had an untimely death due to smallpox and his travel narrative reached Kochi along with his physical remains. This paper attempts to do a close reading of the travelogue to reveal the inquisitiveness of a Raja who had close associations with the British administrators, as one who attempted to step out of the boundaries of his kingdom with an ethnographic intent. The description of people and their cultural practices that were different from his own ‘country’ can also throw light on how a member of the 19th C English educated Indian elites looked upon newly evolving territorial identities, scientific advancements and public institutions that were being established through colonization.

Keywords: pilgrim narrative, cultural boundaries, writing home, territorial identities, colonialism and technology, modern self

First Travel Narrative in Telugu: A Study of Yenugula Veeraswamaiyya’s Kasi Yatra Charitra

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M. G. Prasuna

Associate Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, ORCID: 0000-0001-5034-0992. Email: prasuna@hyderabad.bits-pilani.ac.in

Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.04

Abstract

Yenugula Veeraswamaiyya’s Kasi Yatra Charitra(1838) is considered the first book written in the genre of travel writing in Telugu. A seminal work, it faithfully reflects and records the social, religious, political and economic life of people in those times, along with aspects of tradition and culture. A well-recognised scholar of his times, Veeraswamaiyya embarked on his journey to Kasi (Varanasi) in May 1830 from Chennapatnam (Chennai). He travelled for 15 months and 15 days and returned to Chennapatnam on September 3rd, 1831. He wrote about his experiences of travelling through Tirupati, Kadapa, Kurnool, Hyderabad, Nagpur, Jabalpur and Allahabad to reach Kasi. On his return journey, he travelled across Patna, Gaya, Calcutta, Puri, Ganjam, Simhachalam, Machilipatnam and Nellore, and finally reached Chennapatnam. His journey was unique because he took along with him, nearly 100 people consisting of his family, friends and servants. A travel of this scale needed meticulous planning. It could have been extremely challenging and adventurous to travel through unknown territories. These journeys had to be made by walking on foot and sometimes in a palanquin, carried by servants.  According to Hindu belief, Kasi is the place where one attains moksha or liberation, and freedom from the cycle of death and rebirth. Hence, it is considered an important spiritual destination. This work is a storehouse of information and reflects the author’s keen observation. This paper will explore the historical, cultural, social, economic and religious significance of Veeraswamaiyya’s Kasi Yatra Charitra.

Keywords: Travel writing, Kasi yatra, pilgrimage, Telugu

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Travelling another Country: An Exploration into Travel Writings by Bhojpuri Speakers of India

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Jullie Rani

Centre for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 110067. Email: jullie.jnu@gmail.com

Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.03

Abstract

Travel writings by Bhojpuri speakers of India define stories of pain and separation, survival of lives in difficult situations and the aspect of being together as a group.  In the nineteenth century, Bhojpuri speakers from India were sent to countries such as Mauritius, Fiji, Trinidad, Surinam, and Guyana to work at sugar plantations under a five year agreement during the British rule. These Bhojpuri plantation workers were called girmitiya. In this context, this paper seeks to address issues of Bhojpuri diaspora, defining newer discussions towards political, social and economic and cultural spheres of their lives in another country, through an analysis of travel literature written by them.  Ample travel literature has been written by Bhojpuri speakers who went and settled in the respective countries to which they were sent, also called Bhojpuri diaspora. The aspect which makes this work different is that this paper specifically analyzes works of travel to another country written by Indian Bhojpuri speakers and not literature written by Bhojpuri diaspora.  The literary works analyzed here are written originally in Hindi and Bhojpuri namely– Fiji mein Kabir Panth ka Udbhav aur Vikas (Development of Kabir’s stories in Fiji) by Dr Kamta Kamlesh, Pravasi Bhojpuri ka Antardwand (Dilemma of the Bhojpuri diaspora) by Rasik Bihari Ojha, Pravasi Bhartiya kaha aur kitne (Number and location of the Indian diaspora) by Dr Prakash Chandra Jain and Bhojpuri kshetra ki jatiya pehchaan (Caste identity of Bhojpuri region) by Dr Shri Vilas Tiwary.

Keywords: Travel Literature, Pre-Independent Period, Indian Diaspora, Bhojpuri Speakers.

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Generic Shifts in Women’s Travel Writing between Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Bengal

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Shrutakirti Dutta

PhD Scholar, Department of English, Jadavpur University, West Bengal, India. Orcid: 0000-0002-6781-9307. Email: shrutakirtidutta.93@gmail.com

Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.02

Abstract

Women’s travel writing in Bengal proliferated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century through the popular form of serialized publications in journals such as Bharati (1877), Dasi (1892), Prabasi (1901), among others. However, to perceive this rich output of travel literature as a single, homogenous genre would be fallacious. Travel writing in this time undergoes several generic modifications as it journeys through the turn of the century. Through my paper I would like to trace these shifts within Bengali women’s travel narrative using the stretch of aryavarta as the anchoring landscape. From Prasannamae Debi in 1888 to Nanibala Ghosh in 1933, these travellers from Bengal travel to the north and north-west regions of India, mapping the same landscape but within diverse narrative frameworks, and in so doing, dramatically (and one could argue deliberately) alter the land they wish to represent. Their subjective position as women writers further inform and complicate their work, as do the contemporary political framework of the time they respectively inhabit. What the reader is left with can conservatively be termed travel writing, but can equally and with ease inhabit the roles of memoir, political writing, ethnographical study, among others.

Keywords: Travel Writing, Colonial Bengal, Women’s History, Hindu Revivalism, Aryavarta

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Emergence of Secular Travel in Bengali Cultural Universe: Some Passing Thoughts

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Simonti Sen

Professor of History & Director in the Directorate of State Archives, West Bengal. Email: sensimonti@gmail.com

Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.01

Abstract

This paper by no means presumes to provide a comprehensive analysis of the genesis and ramifications of Bengali travel consciousness either in thematic or chronological terms. It only seeks to highlight certain key aspects of Bengali ‘secular travel’ culture as it germinated in the colonial period. The term Bengali specifically implies the world of Hindu bhadralok and bhadramahila from where emerged the earliest writers of ‘secular’ travel accounts. This is of particular interest because travel, apart from pilgrimage, had no sanction within the traditional Brahamanical orthodoxy. The same cannot be said of the Islamic paedia, which was favourably inclined towards travel. Yet in the colonial period Bengali Muslims did not, in general, produce travel narratives of the ‘secular modern’ variety. One outstanding exception will be considered in this article. Travel among Bengalis took different forms. While there grew a tradition of travel within the country and producing books on them from the early eighteenth century, books on journeys to Europe and different eastern countries received the attention of publishers towards the end of nineteenth and early twentieth century. All these narratives are replete with binaries, such as we/they, home/ world and similar other usual tropes of articulation of ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’. The essay will end with a brief discussion of Deshe Bideshe (account of Kabul from 1927 to early 1929) by Syed Mujtaba Ali, which was quite exceptional in terms of both content and mode of ‘telling’.

Keywords: secular travel, Bengali society, colonial period, binaries of vision, Hindu bhadralok

Editorial Introduction: India and Travel Narratives

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Somdatta Mandal

Former Professor of English, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. Email: somdattam@gmail.com

Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.00

Travelogues belong to an interdisciplinary realm where discourses like literature, history, politics, anthropology, geography, economics, ethnography and even linguistics cross one another thus turning it into a proper subject of cultural/intercultural studies. It can be used as a site for raising questions, not only of ideology but of subjectivity as well, as the travelling subject is as important in a travelogue as the country travelled to. Traditionally an identity-building enterprise, travel writing is particularly interesting, since the persona of the traveller tends to rest on a cluster of oppositional concepts such as home-away, centre-periphery, near-distant, etc. Travel writing is also the art of discovering the magic of ordinary persons, places and things. You can discover magic only if you can look beyond reality to the reality behind everything. The famous travel writers Hugh and Colleen Gantzer believe that seldom travel builds bridges between people and times and civilizations. But that they believe, is what travel is really all about. The urge to travel was built in our genes, driven by the magic of curiosity.

Though earlier not recognized as a canonical subject for writing research papers, in the last three decades, the protean and hybrid genre of travel writing have been accepted as one of the most interesting areas in transnational and cross-cultural research. The deluge of new publications related to this genre proves the enormous possibilities through which travel writing can be studied.  The nature of the writing includes several forms, namely letters, diaries, autobiographies or oral records but it is too complex and too varied to be subjected to any neat classification.

Indian travel writing is considered to be the product of the colonial encounter. It proliferated in the nineteenth century and borrowed the genre from English travel writing but with time a great deal else is yet to be discovered. One can trace the elements of travel writing to pre-colonial times as well. Elements of the travelogue exist in the fictional accounts of the digvijayas in the epics, the safarnamas, tirthya-mahatyas or devotional accounts of the pilgrimages undertaken by saints, religious heads and poets, and in the lyrical reminiscences of a homesick lover like the Yaksha in Kalidasa’s Meghdoot. Questions are often raised about the specific nature of Indian travel narratives. So when the call for papers for the special issue of this journal was announced, we made it clear that we would like to focus on the travel writings by Indians and thus hide the problems of definition. The travel writing could be within India or the journey undertaken maybe to anywhere in the world and can be written in either English or any regional language. The study can be on individual texts, overviews, and any other aspect of Indian travel narratives that can yield rare theoretical insights into the construction of culture, language, ideology and subjectivity. Also the time frame of the study was not defined and the sole criterion was that the writer must be Indian. When we received an unprecedented number of abstracts we were overwhelmed with the choice and range of topics proposed and it was quite difficult to make the final selection. So one criterion for selection was to choose lesser known and regional texts, many of them written in the bhasha languages. The other was to focus on texts and issues that were more contemporary, ranging from train travels, texts written for children, travel blogs, and even cinematic narrations.

As the final contents list will show, the diversity of subjects is really mind-boggling. Divided into seven sections, the papers prove once again the protean nature of Indian travel narratives. The ‘General Overviews’ section contains three articles, two of which focus on Bengali secular travel culture and texts penned by women. The third article talks about the Bjojpuri speakers who went as girmitiyas to work in various British plantations in different colonies around the world. Six articles comprise the second section entitled ‘Pilgrimages.’ These include nineteenth century travels of Hindus to the holy city of Benaras as well as to various places in the Himalayas, including Kedarnath, Badrinath, Kailash and Mansarovar. The hajj pilgrimage to Mecca and the tourist potentials of the recently inaugurated corridor for Sikh pilgrims to visit Kartarpur Sahib in Pakistan have also been addressed in two different articles. Tibet and mountaineering issues have been discussed in three articles of the third section through various perspectives. One paper focuses on the transformative agency of the Nanda Devi on Bill Aitken, another analyses two literary texts by Vikram Seth and Nabaneeta Dev Sen that narrate their sojourns in Tibet. The continuous exchange of scholars and scholarly texts between India and Tibet over the centuries is the subject of another essay. Apart from documenting their journeys, we are told how the scholars initiated huge influx of literary texts between these two ancient countries, including the birth of Buddhist literature in Tibet.

The North East has always been a neglected domain geographically, politically and literarily for the average pan-Indian public residing in the plains. Five very interesting articles on the Northeast give us an overview of travel narratives in Assamese literature from the 18th century onwards to the recently written Nandita Haksar’s Across the Chicken Neck: Travels in Northeast India (2013) which shows how Haksar seeks to ‘unmap’ the Northeast by writing her experiences with the people and places of Northeast India. The fifth section is titled ‘Travelling West.’ Six articles discuss travels to Victorian England, Afghanistan, Russia and several places in Africa from different perspectives.  While two of them discuss individual texts in details, others focus on different reasons for each person travelling to the west, be it for religion, education, business, politics, wanderlust, or otherwise. The sixth section is the longest and comprises of eleven articles that analyze individual travel texts in details and from different points of view. Some of the texts are old and quite canonical whereas others are very recent, written in this twenty-first century. The last two articles of this section offer interesting study of one author, Shivya Nath and complement each other in a particular way. While one article discusses her 2018 text The Shooting Star: A Girl, Her Backpack and the World as a journey of exploration and reconstruction of the feminine self,  the other analyses the blogspots the author maintains under the same title. It shows how travel narratives are also changing their nature in this age of technological advancement and instant communication.

In a sense of yoking heterogeneous elements together, the last miscellaneous section comprising six articles is in a way the most interesting. Very few people were aware of Solon Karthak’s Nepali travelogues till he was recently awarded the Sahitya Akademi prize for 2019 (in February this year) for an anthology of travel narratives he published way back in 2013.  Also many readers don’t know much about Bhakti Mathur’s illustrated Amma, Take Me To… series for children or considered narrations of journeying through Indian trains to be part of travel texts worthy of study. Studying film texts by theorizing the experience of travel in a Malayalam film, North 24 Kaatham by Anil Radhakrishnan or studying the Goopy Bagha trilogy of children’s films made by Satyajit Ray and his son Sandip Ray, from the postcolonial queer dimension just proves once again how studying Indian travel narratives know no bounds.

A final note is necessary before concluding this introduction. The contributors for this collection comprise of senior academicians as well as young research scholars in the field. So, one should not expect the standard of all the articles to be the same. But I earnestly hope that everyone will enjoy reading them as much as I have enjoyed editing them and ruminate on how ‘India and Travel Narratives’ can be read and analyzed from multifarious and endless perspectives.

3 June, 2020

Haikus from Online Workshops of the Alexandria University

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By Sally Abed et al

An unusual context

“With classes moving online back in March, I started teaching the Travel Literature course and the Eighteenth-Century Literature course on Zoom. In all the classes I teach at Alexandria University in Egypt, I usually take the students on exhibition and museum tours in Alexandria to help them connect their studies to the surrounding culture. In addition, we used to have in-class workshops on different themes. The absence of such options due to the pandemic pushed me to think differently, and so inspired by Professor Albrecht Classen’s daily haikus, I decided to conduct haiku writing workshops with the students in both classes via Zoom. The activity was an extracurricular one whose aim was to break the monotony of the self-quarantine and the stressful situation of moving classes online. The students were understandably anxious about their classes, the pandemic and the exams. The workshop was a break away from all that and provided the students with a creative space of their own. During the workshops, I explained what haikus are, provided them with the necessary background, and showed them examples of haikus written by Ezra Pound, as well as other poets. Then I asked them to write their haikus accompanied with an image or a photo and I also participated in the activity. At the end of the Zoom workshops in both classes, the students read out their haikus to each other and commented on them. These are their own words, spontaneously written and unedited. Overall, it was an exiting and rewarding experience for everyone in class that they enjoyed thoroughly.” –Sally Abed

Sally Abed teaches at the English department in Alexandria University, Egypt. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature with focus on medieval travel literature from the University of Utah. She publishes and writes on travel literature and women’s studies, among other topics. 

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

Haikus by Sally Abed

Scheherazade,
pray tell us a bedtime tale
of new life and hope.

Midas touch again
All worthless empty riches
Stillness everywhere

Perfect spider web
Ensnares the soul in silence
A flutter of wings

I spread my wings wide
And dived into a rainbow
Of thousand colors

I miss the sea much
It visits me in my dreams
Fresh spray on my face

Smiles hide behind masks
Eyes peep suspiciously now
I can’t sneeze in peace!

Haiku by Rana Tarek

A gilded snuff box
In a gentleman’s soft hands
Bourgeois decadence

Rana Tarek (Teaching Assistant for the 18th Century Literature class at Alexandria University and an MA candidate at the English department)

Haikus by students

By Rodaina Ahmed

The Nightingale dies
Leaving a red rose behind
I’m alone again

By Marawan Mohamed

A crow circles high
A soulless vessel moving
The sound of black cries

By Ziad Othman

Life is light and dark
Conflicted, Man, Eternally
At which side he lies.

By Yara Saad

The glow is so bright
From her soul even at night
Yet, life made her blind

By Mohamed Hatem

A thought so Obscene
It suffocates my gasping brain
Like college work in Quarantine

By Bassant Ahmed

A bright beam of hope
is what we pray for non-stop,
After grief broke our all

By Habeba Ibrahim

And in the kind light,
See Her wrinkled veiny hands,
A landscape of time.

A silvery lake,
The jungle’s heart beats with each
Breeze, and a lone howl.

By Mohamed Sayed

Literature connects
Art is not separated,
Museums welcome me.

By Mariem Mohamed

Talking with my dad
Always makes me feel okay
Despite a bad day

By Mohamed Ibrahim

Everyone got home-stuck
As a tiny virus spreads
Showing man’s weakness

By Mona Allam

A narrow street.
Bumps and holes filled the ground,
Yet she finds home.

By Hana Ihab & Jailan Helmy

My cat is staring
His eyes sparkle at the food
He, a cute demon

By Maryam Mostafa

Deep and mysterious
A walk in a dead forest
yet not all alone

By Heba Mohamed

Walking in the rain,
A tall man drowned in sadness
Only him feels it.

By Salma Hadhood

The dear self of mine
A trip; she deserves it
Overwhelming life.

Published on June 2, 2020. © Authors

Book Review: The Silent Witness (2019) by Anuradha

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Publisher: Jaico Publishing House (January 1, 2019)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 9387944611

ISBN-13: 978-9387944619

Reviewed by

Maya Vinai

Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, BITS-Pilani (Hyderabad Campus). Email: mayavinai@hyderabad.bits-pilani.ac.in

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.21

Narratives on territorial conquest, occupation and settlement have dominated postcolonial studies for decades. There has been a considerable dearth of fictional accounts surrounding the European invasion of port cities via the sea routes and subsequent trade monopoly over the spices. The Indian Ocean has been the vortex of political activities and cross-cultural links. The ports along the Malabar coastline was of great interest to not just for one; but three competing super-powers namely the Portuguese, the Dutch and British. The trade links commenced with the onslaught of Greek traders who came to ports like Muzhiri or Mucheripatanam (Malabar) and Pum Puhar (Madurai) during 2nd century AD. Experts on Mediterranean maritime history like Vincent A. Smith points out as to how ports like Pum Puhar had the good fortune to attract traders across the globe as they were rich in three precious commodities “Pepper, pearls and beryl” (Smith 400) In fact, historical accounts of Warmington point out as to how there was a drain of Roman wealth as “Romans showed a taste for excessive decoration of fingers and by the use of gems to cover conches, garlands, armour etc. The practice of collecting gems became common during the 1st century AD and Saurus, Julius Caesar, and Marcellus were all collectors of precious stones. (131) However, the last of the European traders who came since 1498, the Portuguese, Dutch and British had imperialistic designs apart from sheer mercenary motives.

The Silent Witness (2019) by Anuradha, (translated from Malayalam by Nirmala Aravind) is a historic novel which explores the descent of Portuguese and Dutch suzerainty in the princely states of Kochi (central part of Kerala). She traverses backwards in time; to explain how these princely states became a pawn to the imperial project, due to their internal dissensions thereby paving way to an easy colonization by Portuguese and Dutch from the 15th to 18th C. In addition, the novel also highlights the ‘cosmopolitanism’ and ‘shared culture’ which emerged as a result of these trade and colonial interventions. All the historic events of the novel are juxtaposed around the plot to; both ‘hold and foil’ the forthcoming coronation of Kerala Varma as the ruler of Kochi. Running parallel to the plot is; the love interest of Veera Kerala Varma (Kerala Varma’s younger brother) and the niece of rival kingdom’s (Chempakassery) chieftain, Unnimaya.

The novel subtly hints to its audience as to how the Dutch were much better and more popular than the Portuguese. Novelist Anuradha charts out reasons for the latter’s unpopularity; like introduction of opium to masses whose “inordinate consumption” (13) destroyed public health and drained resources. She also directs the reader’s attention to the terror Portuguese ships triggered in the Indian Ocean by their canon-loaded caramel ships, and the restrictions imposed on ships which did not have a Portuguese trade permit or cartazas to ply the Indian Ocean. The novel is equally blatant about the Portuguese forcible conversions and exclusion of the Syrian Christians and their entry to places like Fort Emanuel or Fort Kochi. Nevertheless, many of the historic incidents especially that which deals with the Portuguese has been ardently dealt in Malayalam films like Urumi, Pazhazhi Raja and in briefer versions in few novels like N.S Madhavan’s book Litanies of Dutch Battery and Johny Miranda’s Requiem for the Living.

However, the most refreshing aspect of Anuradha’s novel remains her representation of Dutch in Kerala. Very few novelists have covered the socio-political implications of the Dutch regime and the coalition of three rulers of Kerala namely the Zamorins (Samoothiris) of Calicut, the Cochin kings and the Queen of Kollam to oust the Portuguese from power. Towards the concluding part, the novel also highlights the peaceful reign of Veera Kerala Varma under the Dutch over lordship. The novel insinuates the readers to analyse the reason why Kerala became a hotspot for violence and terror and susceptible to the hegemony of foreign invaders.

The novelist has engaged in a meticulous research of the 15 to 17th century and notably included most of the major events that occurred during the period. Anuradha  has recreated or fictionalized real historic characters like Itty Achutan Vaidyan of the Kollad family who influenced the Dutch Governor, Van Rheede, with his knowledge of medicinal plants. As the plot progresses the audience is introduced to Itty Achutan’s treatment of Van Rheede’s painful boil on his foot with courtyard herbs like neem leaves, raw turmeric horanthus (186). The successful treatment led to the compilation of Horticus Malabaricus or “The Garden of Malabar” which was considered one of the most important treatise on the medicinal plants of Malabar. In addition, the religious tolerance of the Dutch is highlighted repeatedly in the book by contrasting it with the ‘forcible conversion of natives’ policy adopted by the Portuguese making most of the indigenous natives turn indignantly against the Portuguese rule. Although the book casts the Dutch regime as more benevolent as compared to the Portuguese, a closer look of the sub-text reveal at times; the tyranny and bloodshed  Dutch inflicted on the Portuguese women and children while conquering Fort Emanuel popularly known as the jewel of Dutch throne.

Temples and temple festivals are sites of faith and power dynamics and cultural transactions in Kerala society. The novelist has truthfully invoked famous and leading temples of Kerala like the Guruvayoor temple, Vaddakanathan temple, the Poornathrayesha temple, Ambalapuzha temple, adding to the authencity of the cultural setting of the novel and drawing attention to pivotal role temples played in the lives of royal families. However, the novelist has left out inclusion of a few important temple events like the attack on the famous Guruvayoor temple by the Dutch and razing of the flagstaff which could have further enhanced the authenticity of the novel. In addition, the novel also has a few historic flaws like attributing Zamorin Manavedan’s uncle as the composer of Krishnagiti (the text of dance form Krishnattam). Krishnagiti was actually composed by Prince Manaveda who became the Zamorin in 1665. ( Bush 21). Another flaw that can be discerned is the representation of the Vadekkara Palace, the palace of Cochin kings for ages; as the palace of Zamorin Manavedan where he has a clandestine meeting with Kerala Varma.

Running parallel to the political anxieties of the protagonist Kerala Varma and his brother Veera Kerala Varma is the story concerning the closest ally of the Kochi princes, known as the Ali Marrakar. Ali Marrakar and his pirate troops on sea called Marrakar pada supported and defended Kochi at the time of crisis. The other close allies of Samoothiri and Cochin kings like Mangath Achan, Paliyath Achan find a place in the narrative. The book also draws the attention of the readers to the fact that in many princely states it was the Queen who took care of the administrative affairs of the kingdom. For example, the Queen of Kollam not only entertained her guests at the Puthukulangara Palace but also initiated political discussions. This delineates the power and agency woman had to take decisions and also efficiently execute the same.

The overall novelty of theme in English fiction makes it an excellent read for both book lovers and students of literature and history. In fact, the dual focus on colonial interventions in port cities and the resistance put up by the local rulers against the Portuguese makes it a an important text for postcolonial analysis as well.

Works Cited

Bush, Martha et al. 2015. The Royal Temple Theatre of Krishnattam. DK Printworld, New Delhi

Madhavan N. S. 2010. Litanies of Dutch Battery. (Trans. Rajesh Rajamohan). Penguin, New Delhi

Warmington, E.H. 1928. The Commerce between the Roman Empire and India (2nd edition) CUP, Cambridge

Smith, V. A. 1924. Early History of India. (4th edition),  OUP, London

 

Dr. Maya Vinai has been working as Assistant Professor at BITS-Pilani (Hyderabad Campus) since 2012. Her research interests include Temple Art Forms in South India, Representation of Matrilineal Communities in Literature, Food and Culture in South Asian Literature, and the impact of Dutch and Portuguese Colonialism in South India.  Her critical works have been featured in several national and international journals like South Asian Review, Asiatic- IIUM, Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies on Humanities and IUP Journal of English Studies. She has also authored a book titled Interrogating Caste and Gender in Anita Nair’s Fiction.

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