Writing Home, Writing Travel: The Poetics and Politics of Dwelling in Bengali Modernity

Comparative Studies in Society and History

Volumn 44, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 293-318

  Mukhopadhyay, Bhaskar ^a  

^a JADAVPUR UNIVERSITY   (India)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 85010139798     PISSN: 00104175     EISSN: 14752999     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0010417502000142     Document Type: Article

References (82)

1. For example, Shibnath Shastri, an eminent Bengali, went to visit Devizes, where for the first time in his life, he heard a skylark singing and “I immediately thought of Shelley.” Shibnath Shastri, Englander Diary, Calcutta: Bengal Publishers, 1957 [1888], p. 102 (all translations from Bengali texts are mine).
2. Josef Borocz, “Travel-Capitalism: The Structure of Europe and the Advent of the Tourist,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 34 (1992), pp. 708–741
3. Simonti Sen, Views on Europe of the Turn of the Century Bengali Travellers 1870–1910, Ph.D. thesis, Department of History, University of Calcutta, 1995.
4. Paul de Man, “Autobiography as De-facement,” in The Rhetoric of Romanticism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1984, p. 69.
5. Mohan Lal, Travel in the Panjab, Afganistan, Turkistan to Balk, Bokhara and Herat; and a visit to Great Britain and Germany, London: H. W. Allen & Co., 1846 (2nd edition).
6. Subodh Chandra Mukerjee, Le Rasa, Paris: Alcan, 1927.
7. Diana L. Eck, “The Imagined Landscape: Patterns in the Construction of Hindu Sacred Geography,” Contributions to Indian Sociology (n.s.) 32, 2 (1998), pp. 165–188
8. Also, P. V. Kane, “Tirthayatra,” in History of Dharmasastra, Vol. IV, Poona: Bhandark-ar Oriental Research Institute, 1953, pp. 552–827.
9. Hans Magnus Enzensberger, “A Theory of Tourism,” trans. G. Gemünden and K. Johnson, New German Critique 68 (Spring-Summer 1996), p. 122.
10. Judith Adler “Origins of Sightseeing,” Annals of Tourism Research 16, 2 (1989), pp. 7–29.
11. Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Madhusudan Rachanavali, Calcutta: Patra's, 1991, p. 385 (original in English).
12. Partha Chatterjee, “Five Hundred Years of Fear and Love,” Economic and Political Weekly, 30 May 1998, p. 1335.
13. Mirza Sheikh Itesamuddin, Shigurf-Namah-I-Velaet or Excellent Intelligence Concerning Europe being the Travels of Mirza Itesamuddin in Great Britain and France, trans. J. E. Alexander, London: Parbury, Allen & Co., 1827.
14. Mirza Abu Taleb Khan, Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan in Asia, Africa and Europe during the Years 1799–1803, Vols. I & II, trans. Charles Stewart, London: Longman & Co., 1814 (2nd edition).
15. Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan in Asia, Africa and Europe during the Years 1799–1803., Vol. II, p. 264 (italics mine).
16. Itesamuddin, Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan in Asia, Africa and Europe during the Years 1799–1803., p. 195.
17. Georges Van Den Abbeele, Travel as Metaphor: From Montaigne to Rousseau, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992, p. 64.
18. Antoinette Burton, “Making a Spectacle of Empire: Indian Travellers in Fin-de-Siècle London,” History Workshop Journal 42 (1996), p. 128.
19. On the aesthetoptics of the flaneur see Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project, Mass. and London: MIT Press, 1995.
20. Nirad C. Chaudhuri, “England,” in The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, Mumbai: Jaico, 1998 [1951], pp. 115–148
21. Michel de Certeau, “Montaigne's ‘Of Cannibals’: The Savage ‘I’,” in Heterolo-gies: Discourses on the Other, trans. Brian Massumi, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986, pp. 67–69.
22. Edward W. Said, Orientalism, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978.
23. Swami Vivekananda, “Paribrajak,” in Swami Vivekanader Bani O Rachana, Vol. VI, Calcutta: Udbodhan Karyalaya, 1962, pp. 88–90.
24. Shastri, Swami Vivekanader Bani O Rachana., p. 10.
25. R. C. Dutt, Three Years in Europe, Calcutta: Bengal Medical Library, 1871, p. 4.
26. Three Years in Europe., emphasis mine.
27. Trailokyonath Mukherjee, A Visit to Europe, Calcutta: Arunodoy Roy, 1902, p. ix.
28. Vivekananda, A Visit to Europe., p. 97.
29. Prafulla Chandra Ray, the Bengali scientist, heaved a sigh of relief when the news of European victory in the battle of Tel-el-Kabir (1882) reached him. See his Autobiography of a Bengali Chemist, Calcutta: Orient Book Company, 1958, p. 42.
30. Chandrasekhar Sen, Tour Round the World, Calcutta: Kshetranath Sen, n.d., p. 11.
31. Jagatmohini Chaudhury, Englade Sat Mas, Calcutta: Deva Press, 1902, p. 33.
32. Marjorie Garber, “” “ (Quotation Marks),” Critical Inquiry 25 (Summer 1999), pp. 653–679
33. Jacques Derrida, “Signature, Event, Context,” in Limited Inc., trans. Samuel Weber and Jeffrey Mehlman, Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1988, p. 12.
34. For example, after a long citation from ‘Arab geography’ connecting ancient India, Aden, and the Ramayana, Trailokyanath made skeptical comments about its historicity. Mukherjee, in Limited Inc., p. xi.
35. It is customary to refer to T. B. Macaulay's infamous “Minute” of 2 February 1835 as the document instrumental in the creation of the Bengali colonial elite. The oft-quoted statement in that “Minute” reads: “We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.” These Westernized natives formed the vanguard in the process of dissemination of ‘modern’ ideas in India. (“Minute on Education,” in, W. Theodore de Barry (ed.), Sources of Indian Tradition, Vol. II, New York: Columbia University Press, 1958, p. 49.)
36. Homi K. Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,” in The Location of Culture, London: Routledge, 1994, pp. 85–87.
37. Mukherjee, The Location of Culture., p. 6.
38. Rabindranath Tagore, “Europe Prabasir Patra,” in Rabindra Rachanabali, Vol. I, Calcutta: Viswabharati, 1995 [1881], p. 803.
39. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, p. 6.
40. Mukherjee, The Nation and Its Fragments., p. 60.
41. Dutt, The Nation and Its Fragments., pp. 14–15.
42. Swami Vivekananda, “Prachya O Paschatya,” in Swami Vivekanander Bani O Rachana, Vol. VI, Calcutta: Udbodhon Karyalaya, 1962, p. 161.
43. Simonti Sen, Swami Vivekanander Bani O Rachana., p. 268.
44. Shastri, Swami Vivekanander Bani O Rachana., p. 134.
45. Tagore, Swami Vivekanander Bani O Rachana., p. 810.
46. Bhudev talks disapprovingly about the shameless Bengali wives who accompany their husbands to parties hosted by their foreign masters where they drink together and indulge in other excesses. Bhudev Mukhopadhyay, Parivarik Prabandha, Calcutta: Kumardev Mukhopadhyay, 1882, p. 38.
47. Anon, Streesiksha, Vol. I, Calcutta: published by the author, 1877, pp. 28–29.
48. Tagore, Streesiksha., p. 828.
49. Krishnakamal Bhattacharya, Rachana-Samgraha, Calcutta: Subarnarekha, 1997, pp. 3–34.
50. Van Den Abbeele, Rachana-Samgraha., p. 95.
51. On allegory, see Fredric Jameson, “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capital,” Social Text 15 (Fall 1986), pp. 65–88.
52. Rabindranath Tagore, Gora, trans. by the author, London: Macmillan, 1924.
53. James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997, p. 6.
54. Durgacharan Ray, Devoganer Marttye Agaman, Calcutta: Dey's, 1984 [1886].
55. Devipada Bhattacharya, Bangla Charit Sahitya, Calcutta: Dey's, 1982.
56. See, for example, Bijoyram Sen, Tirthamangal, Nagendranath Vasu (ed.), Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parisat, 1906
57. and Jadunath Sarbadhikari, Tirthabhraman, Nagendranath Vasu (ed.), Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parisat, 1916. Both of these are travel-diaries of pilgrimage.
58. Stuart Sherman, Telling Time: Clocks, Diaries and English Diurnal Form 1660- 1785, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
59. Raimundo Panikkar, “Time and History in the Tradition of India: Kala and Karma,” in L. Gardet et al. (eds.), Cultures and Time, Paris: UNESCO Press, 1976, pp. 63–88.
60. Also, Thomas R. Trautmann, “Indian Time, European Time,” in D. O. Hughes and Thomas Trautmann (eds.), Time: Histories and Ethnologies, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995, pp. 167–197
61. Hariprabha Takeda, Bangamahilar Japanyatra, Dhaka: Dhaka Uddharashram, 1915.
62. Bangamahilar Japanyatra., p. 23 (emphasis mine).
63. Bangamahilar Japanyatra., p. 25.
64. Bangamahilar Japanyatra., p. 49.
65. Bangamahilar Japanyatra., p. 47.
66. Bangamahilar Japanyatra., p. 57.
67. Shyamlal Mitra, Misharyatri Bangali, Calcutta: Aditya Chattopadhyay, 1884.
68. Mitra, Misharyatri Bangali., p. 38.
69. Misharyatri Bangali., p. 79.
70. Misharyatri Bangali., p. 83.
71. Krishnalal Basak, Bichitra Bhraman, Calcutta: Swaraswati Library, 1921.
72. Bichitra Bhraman., p. 28.
73. Bichitra Bhraman., p. 58.
74. Bichitra Bhraman., p. 85.
75. Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Minority Histories, Subaltern Pasts,” Perspectives [Newsletter of the American Historical Association] (Nov. 1997), p. 38.
76. Etienne Balibar, “Citizen Subject,” in E. Cadava et al. (eds.), Who Comes after the Subject?, trans. J. B. Swenson Jr., London and New York: Routledge, 1991, pp. 33–57.
77. In this respect, Nirad C. Chaudhuri's massively Oedipalized dedication in his Autobiography is telling: “To the memory of the British Empire in India which conferred subjecthood on us but withheld citizenship; to which yet every one of us threw out the challenge “civis brittannicus sum” because all that was good and living within us was made, shaped, and quickened by the same British rule.” (Chaudhuri, Who Comes after the Subject?, dedication, no page number.)
78. Arjun Appadurai, “Life After Primordialism,” in Modernity at Large, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 146.
79. Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Difference-Deferral of (a) Colonial Modernity: Public Debates on Domesticity in British Bengal,” History Workshop 36 (Autumn 1993), pp. 1–34.
80. See George Bataille, “The Notion of Expenditure,” in Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939, trans. Allan Stokel, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985, pp. 116–129
81. Homi K. Bhabha, “The Postmodern and the Postcolonial: The Question of Agency,” in The Location of Culture, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings., pp. 171–197
82. My allusion is to Bhabha's elliptical phrase, “the transnational as the translational,” Visions of Excess: Selected Writings. p. 173.