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The Story of our Experiments with London: The Victorian City in Indian Imagination (1870-1900)

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Arup K. Chatterjee

Associate Professor, OP Jindal Global University, ORCID: 0000-0001-8880-7762. Email: arupkchatterjee@jgu.edu.in

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.19

 Abstract

This paper argues for a hermeneutic shift in interpreting accounts of Victorian London in Indian travelogues written between 1870 and 1900, taking the founding of the Indian National Congress (1885) and the climate of anticolonial agitation as a political fulcrum for a new aesthetic drive in the ways in which the imperial capital was imagined as a new psychogeography by its colonial subjects. Drawing on travelogues by Pothum Ragaviah, Trailokyanath Mukharji, Behramji Malabari, Lala Baijnath, T.B. Pandian and G.P. Pillai, I outline how London was reinvented in the Indian imagination as a typographical experiment in pictograms and audiograms. The urban, domestic and atmospheric phenomena of the metropolis was recreated as archetypes in the colonized mind of the reader back home, as a new model of modernity, a new way of typographic expertise over the imperial capital, and a therapeutic means of overcoming the ongoing traumas of colonization. Pictograms of its intimate domestic quarters and atmospheric nuances or audiograms of its majestic choirs and ambient traffic noise, London’s phenomenology was brought alive in the Indian consciousness through these travelogues, which besides playing a literary role also politically empowered the colonized imagination for the wish-fulfilment of an autonomous geography. Seen in the light of the great morphological transformations in places like East Ham, Wembley, Southall or Brick Lane—those parts of present-day London with heavy concentrations of South Asians—late Victorian Indian accounts of the city and their typographical experiments were the early “ethno-scapes” and “kaleido-scapes” for the colonized imagination to inhabit the imperial capital in a psychogeographical capacity, much before South Asian immigrations since the 1950s.

Keywords: Victorian London; Gandhi; Ragaviah; Malabari; Mukharji; Baijnath; Pandian; Pillai

Writing Northeast: Nandita Haksar’s Across the Chicken Neck

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Rosy Chamling

Department of English, Sikkim University. Email: rosychamling@gamil.com

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.18

Abstract

Traditionally travel literature has been a genre known for boosting colonial expansionist projects and the construction of the European ‘Other’. Travel writing as an imperialist discourse serving to connect with the ideological apparatus of the European nation-state has been explored in Mary Louise Pratt’s Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturalism (1992). But contemporary travel literature is more subject-oriented, focussing on both the place and the people therein and the politics involved in the formation of their identity. It assumes the form of a cultural critique, called the ‘countertravel’ writing. Countertravel writing, then, aims not to delight the readers in its presentation of the exotic ‘Other’ but rather serves to transport the complacent reader causing the “unmapping” of “mapped” worldviews. (Richard Phillip, 1997). Within this paradigm of the ‘countertravel’ narrative, my engagement with Nandita Haksar’s Across the Chicken Neck: Travels in Northeast India (2013) will be to show how Haksar seeks to ‘unmap’ the Northeast by writing her experiences with the people and places of Northeast India. Travelling through the ‘chicken neck’ which is a narrow strip of land connecting the Northeast with the rest of India; this paper will show how the apparently homogeneous Northeast has a diversity of stories and histories to tell. Burdened with histories of secessionism and insurgencies, Haksar’s exploration exposes how these histories are subsumed by the larger national narrative.

Keywords : Northeast, Countertravel Writing, History, Identity.

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A Critical Review of the First Travelogue written in an Indian language on Assam Udaseen Satyashrabar Asam Bhraman by Ramkumar Bidyaratna

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Bibha Devi

Assistant Professor, Department of English, Indreswar Sarma Academy Degree College, JibanPhukan Nagar, Dibrugarh, Assam. ORCID: 0000-0003-0591-8737. Email: bibhadevi@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.17

Abstract

Travel narratives usually provide ethnographic information about a place and its inhabitants. The travelogue written in 1881 by Ramkumar Bidyaratna gives an excellent ethnographic account of contemporary Assam and Assamese society of the nineteenth century. The travelogue, which was originally written in Bengali, was translated into Assamese by Munin Sarma in 2014.  The book is significant for its prudent comments on various socio-cultural aspects of the Assamese society like – condition of Assamese women, widow remarriage, commerce, religion, etc. As stated in the translated version, Bidyaratna’s travelogue was probably the first travelogue on Assam written in an Indian language. There was an aim behind Bidyaratna’s travel to Assam. From his experiences from his travel to places outside Bengal he had developed a belief that unless one gets associated with another culture, it is natural to have a wrong notion about that culture. His aim was to eradicate misunderstandings between the Assamese and the Bengalis. In this present study, the Assamese version of the travelogue has been used to explore and interpret the socio-cultural milieu of Assam as represented in the narrative. This paper critically reviews the book, firstly, to explore the way ethnographic  information about Assam has been represented in it; and, secondly, to generate an understanding of the progressive thinking of the writer as evident from it.

Keywords: Travelogue, ethnography, Assam, culture, Assamese

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

The Self and the Other in Jnanadabhiram Barua’s Bilator Sithi (Letters from Abroad)

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Nandini Kalita

Doctoral Fellow and Teaching Assistant, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Email: nandinik970@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.16

Abstract

Jnanadabhiram Barua’s Bilator Sithi (Letters from Abroad), a travel narrative in Assamese depicts the author’s life in England at the beginning of the twentieth century. It consists of a series of letters where Barua attempts to understand the specificities of a culture that appears foreign to him. The narrative highlights the complex negotiations that the author has to make as a colonized subject in the colonizer’s land. I want to look at how these negotiations were shaped by the dominant discourse of imperial superiority. What are its implications on the subject’s sense of the self? What does encountering foreignness entail in this particular context? Travel writing has often been associated with the expansion of European imperialism. I plan to examine if this genre undergoes a change of perspective in the hands of a subject of European imperialism. How does the relationship between the self and the other play out in this text? Who is the other in Barua’s narrative? I want to probe deeper into how the construction of the other in this case is influenced by the popular notions about Assamese identity.

Keywords: Travel Writing, Self and Other, Identity, Colonialism, Recognition, Modernity

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Looking In (/): A Case Study of Northeast with Special Reference to Tripura Buranji (1724)

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Bhaskar Jyoti Gogoi

Ph.D Research Scholar, English & Foreign Language University, Shillong Campus, Meghalaya. bhaskargogoi@hotmail.co.in

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.15

 Abstract

In the context of Assam, travel writing is an area which offers immense possibilities. Particularly, the pre-colonial period of Assam contains various neglected travelogues like the anonymous Loss of Ter Schelling (1682), Bartholomew Plaisted’s Journals (1767), James Renell’s Bengal Atlas (1779) and his Journals (1764-67) as well as John Peter Wade’s An Account of Assam (1800). These travelogues not only are precious testimonials to the political, social and economic demographics of the period but also offer valuable insight into early Anglo-Assamese relations. Even travel narratives written in the vernacular provide critical insights about various ethnic communities residing in Northeast India. The improvement of communication networks in the seventeenth century, like trade routes and river passageways, facilitated the greater movement of travellers to and from the Northeast in various garbs like that of the explorers, invaders, missionaries etc. A pioneer amongst travel texts in Assamese is Tripura Buranji (1724), written jointly by Ratna Kandali Sarma and Arjundas Bairagi, the two Assamese envoys of King Rudra Simha (1696-1714) who were sent to the court of Ratnamanikya, the King of Tripura in 1714 to seek assistance for the proposed invasion of Bengal. Owing to this event, there were various correspondences and envoys being sent to and fro from the Ahom court to the King of Tripura. The two envoys mentioned here undertook the journey to Tripura on foot accompanied by escorts through Cachar and the foothills of Lushai Hills (present day Mizoram) to the capital of Ratnamanikya. The most striking fact about the travelogue is that its authors supplemented their account of the diplomatic missions, either on their own accord or on the instructions of their Government, by their observations on the resources, topography, customs and history of the country which they visited and of the territories which they had passed. Such a compilation was expected to extend the bounds of knowledge of their countrymen and facilitate the prosecution of similar missions in future. It also marks the importance of the realization of such archiving and documentation of travel as early as the eighteenth century. This paper offers introspection into this medieval narrative and presents a comparative viewpoint with Bartholomew Plaisted’s Journals (1767), written around the same time period. This would offer us a comparative viewpoint vis-à-vis the insider and the outsider’s narration of/about the Northeast.

Keywords: Assamese travel, eighteenth century, Tripura, diplomatic mission

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Travelling Identities, Bodies and the Poetics of Difference: Travel Writing in Assamese Literature

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Shibashish Purkayastha

PhD Research Scholar, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati. ORCID: 0000-0002-1630-0038. Email: shibashish.purkayastha@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.14

Abstract

The purpose of this article shall be to trace a historical trajectory of the development of travel writing as a distinct genre in Assamese literature. In Assam, the germ of travel writing dates back to the nineteenth century in which European travellers wrote extensively on their visits to North East India, which were exotic accounts of their encounters with an alien culture. The first Assamese travelogue was Jnanadabhiram Barua’s BilatarSithi which was serialized in the Assamese monthly Banhi in 1909 which, for the first time, narrativized a non-westerners account of his travels to the United Kingdom in a series of letters. However, the genre of travel writing in Assam seemed to attain its growth and maturity in the days following Independence. In the late 1980s, the travel writer, as a move away from merely offering descriptive sketches eulogizing their travels, started looking back into the nuances of the self as a site of imaginative and critical reflections. The onus of this article shall be to trace the growth and development of travel writing in Assamese literature and shall then move on to reviewing some of the important travel narratives of Assamese literature which seem to problematize our understandings of the nation, identity, body and the gaze. Additionally, it shall also examine whether these travel narratives attempt to expand the discursive and generic boundaries of the form of postcolonial travel writing. Through close readings of select travel narratives, I argue that they posit a poetics of difference by attempting to engage in a dialogue between their encounters with foreign cultures vis-à-vis, the nuances of everyday material realities of the life of the traveller.

Keywords: agency, travel, history, identity, body, empathy

The Ascent Within: Transformative Agency of the Nanda Devi in Bill Aitken’s The Nanda Devi Affair

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Arup Pal

Assistant Professor, Department of English, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. ORCID: 0000-0001-9906-6007  Email: arup.listens@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.13

Abstract                                         

The Himalayas, it is commonly agreed, stupefy the traveler first by the immensity of the unknown and then elevate his journey by offering an almost unclimbable challenge—the imaginative recording of what is seen and felt. Overwhelmed by the accounts of numerous narratives, Bill Aitken, a Scottish-born-Indian in the early 1960s, travelled from Calcutta (now Kolkata) to the Nanda Devi, once considered the highest Indian peak. He narrated his experiences in The Nanda Devi Affair (1994). In this journey, the text suggests, the climber’s inbuilt intensity of life—from sheer physical pleasures to calm resignation—is tested. This study intends to explore how the altitude’s transformative vigor allows the travelling subject to participate in “an interaction of the human and natural” (Bainbridge, 2016, p. 628), thereby offering a space in which the self-before-the-journey (pre-climb episteme) and the self-endowed with physical actuality negotiate a new understanding. The study offers an introspection on how the Nanda Devi helps the travelling identity realize a psychic evolution from the mere sensual excitement of a lured mountaineer to, what Aitken notes, “the elusive understanding of slippery psychic subtleties” (2004, p.189), thereby questioning and purifying the preconceived ideas of the traveler to achieve a sense of selfhood.

Keywords: The Nanda Devi, Mountain literature, Bill Aitken, The Himalayas, Interactive space

Problematizing the Metaphor of Travel: A Study of the Journeys of Humans and Texts from India to Tibet

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Priyanka Chakraborty

Research Scholar, Department of English, Banaras Hindu University. ORCID: 0000-0003-2175-2239. Email-c.priyanka113@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.12

Abstract

Myths and legends travel just like humans to distant lands under different circumstances. One among the two most popular etiological myths of Tibet tells that the earliest settlers on the Tibetan plateau were refugees who escaped the conflicts described in the Indian epic Mahabharata. This serves as the first legend establishing the Indian connection with Tibet. Such journeys of humans, ideas and texts always stimulated imagination in human beings. The narratives of journeys woven with the author’s imaginations and experiences, gave us travelogues. An ancient genre of literature, travelogues serve as the base for various fictional and non-fictional works. Travelogues inquired the unknown, making us aware of the existence of diversified cultural extremities present in this planet and thereby playing a crucial role in cultural exchanges. However, very interestingly texts also embark on journeys along with humans; and create neo-textual sites for future discourse. In this paper the focus is on the exchanges between India and Tibet. Beginning from the first Indian Scholar Santarakshita, followed by Padmasambhava, Atisha et al to 20th century Rahul Sanskritiyan, there has been continuous movement of scholars to and fro Tibet. Apart from documenting their journeys, they initiated huge influx of literary texts between these two ancient countries. As a result of which Tibet became the store-house of ancient Nalanda Tradition while it faced destruction in India. So, the paper firstly seeks out to discuss the influences of Indian scholars and texts in Tibetan culture from ancient times. Secondly, it tries to chart out the representation of Tibet in the writings of these scholars and trace the birth of Buddhist literature in Tibet. Thirdly, since travelogues also supported cartographic purposes, they portrayed both the cultural and geo-political zones, it looks into the interpretation and misinterpretation of culture channelized through these documents.  Lastly, it attempts to problematize the various versions of documents written regarding such people and their journeys to understand the nature of perceptions and experiences.

Keywords: journey, texts, religion, tradition, culture, Tibet

Travel through Remote Terrains: Tibet in Focus

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Kiron Susan Joseph Sebastine

MPhil Research Scholar, Dept. of English and Languages, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham. ORCID: 0000-0002-0621-0303.Email: kiron.susan@gmail.com.

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.11

Abstract

As Ramana Maharshi a twentieth century mystic reflects, travel is not just physical journey from one place to another but also subliminal from one thought to another. The outer journey implies meaning only when it is accompanied by an inner journey. Travel writing incorporates everyday explorations along with cultural mappings, musings and meditations on the encounters experienced in the course of the travel. Travelling solo on an impulse; out of the natural curiosity that life brings, is the delight of living the journey. This paper does a comparative analysis of Nabaneeta Dev Sen’s On A Truck Alone, To McMahon (2018) and Vikram Seth’s From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet (1990). Both the authors journey through remote territories and terrains while maintaining their focus towards the Roof of The World, Tibet. While the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution in China occupies the centre stage in Seth’s travelogue, the soreness of the Indo China War shrouds a permeable veil in Sen’s work. The paper further explores the thin line between pleasure and adventure keeping in mind the gender binaries in travel writing. The human imagination is a no-man’s land that encounters the prickles of political hostilities and the precarious suspicions of the state machinery. The human dimensions of the territorial borders annihilate the joys of travel as an experiment in freedom. Travel acknowledges the constant fluidity of the cognitive entities, the rejection of the familiar and the embrace of the unfamiliar.

Keywords: Travel writing, Subliminal, Cultural mappings, Self-writing, Freedom

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Akka Mahadevi Caves: Lingayat memory & poetic space

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Neeti Singh

Associate Professor, Department of English, the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara. Email: neeti.singh-eng@msubaroda.ac.in

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.10

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to map the tourist-pilgrim’s journey and experience of the Akka Mahadevi caves in a manner where the material experience of the entire yatra (journey) subtly combines with the travel-narratives and spiritual persona of the 12th century Lingayat Virashaiva woman-saint-poet, in such a way as to create a complete and deeply enriching experience for the 21st century traveller. The journey to Akka Mahadevi Caves on the banks of River Krishna takes less than five hours of road-travel from Hyderabad, and the highway weaves through miles of farmland and forest area.  Akka Mahadevi it is said was initiated to Shiva bhakti by a travelling sadhu when she was merely ten years of age; following a life ridden with challenges she fled from her marital home and was accepted into the Lingayat fold headed by Allama Prabhu and Bassavana. In the last phase of her ascetic life she left Kalyana city and moved to a forest where she devoted herself solely to the worship of Lord Shiva (Cenna Mallikarjuna) in a cave in the Srisailam-Nallamal forest on the banks of River Krishna across the temple town of Srisailam, Kurnool district. The essay weaves with actual travel, Akka’s poetry (her vacanas) and lifeline and concludes with an analysis of the complex, radical challenges that fashioned the life and struggles of women ascetics like Mahadevi in an era that was primal and patriarchal. A reflection of the same is apparent in the semiotics of Mahadevi Akka’s poetry. Such active-travel that fuses present with past, has the potential to yoke the travelling subject to a higher collective experience and memory.

Keywords: Pilgrimage, Lingayat, Virashaiva, Saguna Bhakti, Spiritual tourism.

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