Colonised Gaze? Guidebooks and Journeying in Colonial India

Abstract

This article analyses Bengali- and Hindi-language travelogues written by Indian railway travellers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While the authors of these texts were influenced by the literary and interpretative sensibilities of European guidebooks of the period, especially English-language railway guides to India, they did not uncritically adopt their colonial discourses. Rather, Indian authors created a distinct narrative, rejecting or appropriating European ideas with discretion, primarily to suit their specific vision of India. I argue that in their writings, Indian authors, like their European counterparts, participated in a process of creating ‘others’, which had fundamental implications for the imagining of colonial Indian society.