Parsi Poetics, Politics, and Mediation in Behramji Malabari’s The Indian Muse in English Garb (1876)

Abstract

The poetics and politics of Behramji Malabari’s The Indian Muse in English Garb (1876) are isomorphic with the relative positioning of Bombay Parsis vis-à-vis British colonizers, for Parsis at once forged strong cultural and political alliances of mutual benefit with the British and resisted assimilation to maintain Parsi identity and investments. Parsis thus mediated between colonial subjection and Parsi agency and resistance. The same can be said of Malabari’s anglophone volume, which opens addressing Empress Victoria as ‘Thou great and Heav’n directed Sovereign!’ (Malabari, 1876, p. 1) and subsequently praises British missionaries who brought Christianity to India. But into seeming subordination Malabari weaves an intricate web of dissent and resistance to colonial rule through both paratextual footnotes and overt resistance (as in ‘A Protest’), sometimes in staunch adherence to Zoroastrianism and refusal of Christianity, and sometimes through adopting English poetic forms to critique English policies and poetics obliquely.