Análisis y discusión de los resultados

The primary concern of this chapter is to demonstrate that immigration movements into Britain such as the Windrush generation of the 1950s and the large influx of labour from the Indian subcontinent in the decades following it were by no means the genesis of Britain‟s inception as a culturally diverse society. The travels of ayahs, Lascars, servants and princes „stretches back to the founding of the East India Company in 1600.‟79

When investigating the various tactics and manoeuvres colonised people had available to them we are able to see that the dynamics of Orientalism were far from the monologue that has been historically presented, by both critics like Said and also Orientalists themselves. These scholars have given far too little attention to the presence and contribution of early Indian settlers in Britain; travellers who escape the ontological and teleological definitions generally associated with subcontinental peoples‟ entry into and influence upon Britain. This raises the question that if Orientalism as a very structure rests upon basic dialogical distinctions between colony/metropole, coloniser/colonised and ultimately Orient/Occident, how are these definitions able to be defended against a process which demonstrates that such pure definitions can be viewed as overly simplistic? I would contest that such distinctions disallow the idea that British society and its cultural modernity were intrinsically constituted by a multitude of influences and contestations from Indian settlers and travellers who have „been travelling to or settling in Britain since the early 1600s,‟ a legacy Michael H. Fisher has termed „Counterflows to Colonialism.‟80

The work of Rozina Vizram, Michael H. Fisher and Shompa Lahiri has been invaluable in unlocking the possibilities of what I have labelled reverse Orientalism. This term is offered as a definition for a process where Indian writers have utilised the tropes of classic Orientalism to create immigrant spaces within Britain. It is for this reason that I have not labelled it Occidentalism, as that indicates that such a process would have to be an identical twin of the colonial project. Such a conception could not sustain itself in macro terms politically, militaristically or economically, as India never invaded Britain, appropriated and exported its material wealth or installed itself as the „Indian Monarchy‟ in the way Britain was able to identify itself as the British Raj. This project aims to identify the Orient within Britain itself and also argue that Indian travellers and settlers engaged in similar „Orientalising‟ projects to render Britain intelligible for the Indian mind, in ways that deconstructed the normal power relations associated with not only the high colonial period but also the pre- and post-colonial eras. Michael H. Fisher argues that such a contra flow of knowledges can be traced back to the beginning of the seventeenth century when Anglocentric depictions of the Orient were beginning to be accumulated and disseminated by the rapidly expanding print media in Britain. However, a process „less noticed by historians, [was that] Indian travellers and settlers in Britain also contributed incrementally to this body of knowledge about themselves and their homelands.‟ (Fisher, Counterflows, 5)

This chapter will outline a process where colonialism was not a simple and uncontested set of relations, there were contrasts as well as correlatives in the way Britons and Indians came to view each other and define themselves. In the present chapter I will argue that these representations were constantly being remoulded and recapitulated over time:

Colonialism was not hegemonic or dichotomous between colonizer and colonized. Rather, there were multiple sites of contestation and cooperation as well as inconsistencies and contradictions among both Britons and Indians. Further patterns of exchange and knowledge production were asymmetrical and occurred differently in Britain and India, and shifted over time. (Fisher,

Counterflows, 13)

Thus, my primary objective is to demonstrate how early travellers to Britain both contested and moulded their identities as Indians but also contested them as Britons, within Britain nearly two centuries before terms such as British Asian became generally received. To do this, I am going to analyse specifically the travel writings of four Indian writers who differ relatively in terms of their class, religion and outlook. By adopting this approach, I will be building on the studies of Rozina Vizram (who adopts a historical approach) and Michael H. Fisher (who combines both a historical and literary focus) in their appraisal of these early Indian immigrants and their co-histories of India and Britain.

I will concentrate my analysis on four main writers: Mirza Sheikh I'tesamuddin, Sake Dean Mahomed, Mirza Abu Taleb Khan and Behramji Malabari, all of whom wrote on various topics concerning Britain‟s relationship with India in Britain and the subcontinent itself. I will also analyse the interrelated development of colonialism and how identities on both sides were shaped by these engagements in complex ways, and how these micro fashionings mirrored the moulding of British- Indian relations and ultimately of British society in macro terms. The use of the travelogue was an especially effective medium in which to navigate these dialogical flows of colonialism and the subsequent development of modernity. James Clifford has argued for travel to be viewed as constitutive of cultural formations and practices, not merely as a signifier for simple transfer or extension; an awareness where „cultural centres, discrete regions and territories, do not exist prior to contacts,

but are sustained through them, appropriating and disciplining the restless movements of people and things.‟ (Clifford, Routes, 3) In the following section, I will explore how these writers were able to appropriate the very terms and parameters of Western modernity, selectively deploying and contesting its epistemologies. The Indian travelogues and their incumbent ethnographic and anthropological designs contrast with European Orientalist portrayals of Indians at the time, and also counter-historicise the hitherto neglected presence of Indians in the metropole:

These Indian travel narratives must be understood in their own terms, not merely as “other” to, or imitative of, European ones. The production and consumption of these earliest Indian travel narratives about Europe thus reveal some of the complex ways that specific groups in Indian society engaged with early modernity.81

The following section will first examine the British travel narrative as a genre and its use as a conduit of colonial knowledge for British writers who circulated „Oriental‟ knowledges within Britain. Subsequently, however, I will showcase how writers such as Mirza Sheikh I'tesamuddin, Dean Mahomed, Mirza Abu Taleb Khan and Behramji Malabari were able to reverse the Orientalists‟ nexus of knowledge/power whilst adopting similar forms.