Re-oriented Britain : how British Asian travellers and settlers have utilised and reversed Orientalist discourse 1770-2010

• Main Author: Gill, Jagvinder
• Published: University of Warwick 2010
• Subjects: 800; DS Asia
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.537268

Beginning with Edward Said's seminal text, I will question the assumption of Orientalism as a universal and didactic discourse that was conducted exclusively from the West to and for the East. Said's overarching condemnation of Orientalism as an exclusively Western hegemonic structure overlooks the paradigm that Indians were not just collaborative producers of the Orientalist text but selective readers as well. I will argue that the contribution made by the influx of colonised people from the periphery to the colonial centre from the eighteenth century onwards has historically been overlooked. Indian Orientalisms developed along their own particular axes by both utilising and reversing Orientalisms. Through this discursive utilisation, Indians were able to formulate responses to the dominant ideologies of Orientalism and as a consequence created new forms of discourse, both literary and historical. My thesis aims to illustrate that Indians, both in the colony and the metropole, were active and not passive agents in their negotiations of colonial as well as post-colonial space. This legacy needs to be recognised, as it continues to resonate and pose questions in contemporary times where the success of multicultural states in an increasingly globalised world is of paramount importance. Generically, I have adopted non-fiction as the best form in which to convey these hidden histories. Autobiographies, diaries, letters, memoirs and travelogues establish the fluidity and imaginative endeavour that existed between the colony and the metropole. These historical documents illuminate a deeply contested colonial and post-colonial world, where colony became home and home could become the colony. Ultimately, this project aims to identify the Orient within Britain itself and also argue that Indian travellers and settlers have engaged in similar "Orientalising" projects to render Britain intelligible for the Oriental mind, in ways that deconstruct the conventional Orientalist power relations associated with not only the high colonial period but also the pre and post colonial eras.