Seguridad y privacidad

The next author‟s travel account, The Travels of Dean Mahomet An Eighteenth- Century Journey Through India, was first published in 1794 and is actually set in India. An appropriate place to begin any analysis of Indian writers who travelled to the West is their place in the colonial structure that they had left behind, but also how and why it had propelled them towards the imperial centre. Sake Dean Mahomed actually wrote his travelogue in Cork in 1784 when he had eventually reached Ireland with his patron Captain Godfrey Evan Baker. Mahomed‟s friendship with the Protestant Anglo-Irishman, Evan Baker, was instrumental in his decision to migrate to Britain. Evan Baker was Mahomed‟s commanding officer in the East India Company‟s Bengal Army. After the death of his father, Mahomed came to view Evan Baker as both his best friend and a parental figure. As a result of the closeness of their relationship, and Evan Baker‟s exalted status within the British army, Mahomed was able to immigrate to the heart of the Empire upon Baker‟s retirement. Evan Baker‟s father, also called Godfrey Baker, was a wealthy merchant from Cork who had both the influence within the army, and the wealth to sponsor Mahomed‟s journey to Britain and Ireland. The Bakers were an established Protestant landholding family, one of the most significant in Southeast Ireland. The senior Baker was elected, at various times, to the office of Burgess, Mayor, Sheriff, and Water Bailiff in Cork. This relatively elite patronage was denied to most Indian travellers to Britain; it also directly facilitated Mahomed‟s other motivation to travel, which was the desire for economic and social betterment.99

Throughout his life, Mahomed became skilled at adapting to his shifting surroundings; he recognised and embraced the possibilities of travel, and the

subsequent opportunities which the modernising world could present to him. The fact that he converted to Christianity, married an Irish wife, and indulged in British social mores such as drinking alcohol, demonstrated his ability to assimilate within British culture. It is my hypothesis that his account demonstrates a pre-colonial Britain that was constituted by „Orientals‟ such as him to a far greater degree than has previously been acknowledged. Not only was he able to assimilate within British culture, he was also able to create his own version of Britain, a social formation that contributed to the development of British society as ethnically mixed. This section will try to demonstrate the variety of tools and means that Mahomed was able to use in order to construct his mobile identity and also his contribution to the colonial modernities of both India and Britain.

I will be locating Mahomed‟s project within what James Clifford has termed the dynamics of dwelling/travelling where „the representational challenge is seen to be the portrayal and understanding of local/global historical encounters, co- productions, dominations and resistances, [where also] one needs to focus on hybrid, cosmopolitan experiences as much as on rooted, native ones.‟ (Clifford, Routes, 24)

The Travels of Dean Mahomet cannot be confined within one particular form: it can be described in various terms as part memoir, autobiography and conventional travelogue. I will also investigate his life in London as an entrepreneur and businessman who utilised his exotic background for material gain and finally his time in Brighton, where he pioneered the use of „shampooing‟ and wrote his second English text in defence of his „Oriental‟ art. The following section will first place Dean Mahomed within the class, race and religious parameters of Indian society at the interstices between the rise and fall of two great empires, the Mughal Empire and the British Raj.

Dean Mahomed was born in Patna in the Province of Bihar in Eastern India in 1759, into a family who had a long tradition of service within the Mughal imperial court. However, during this period the various regional seats of power governed by Muslim leaders, such as the Nawab of Bengal, suffered political decline. As a consequence, Muslim families of the service elite, like Mahomed‟s, decided to affiliate themselves with the rapidly expanding (British) East India Company‟s armies and administration. As a consequence of this shift, Mahomed‟s father and older brother enrolled for service within the Bengal army of the East India Company. Mahomed was born into and subject to these competing allegiances, as the Indian political system engaged in a power struggle that rendered loyalties and affiliations highly complex and malleable. Michael H. Fisher states that the Bengal army as an entity was emblematic of these greater political machinations, because „the complex entity known as the Bengal army arose directly out of the conflicts between the English company and the Nawabs of Bengal.‟100

Thus, Mahomed was born into a highly contested cultural world where identity was subject to hybridised political systems that required of him to be mobile and dexterous in his identity formations. It also demonstrates what Bhabha has called the „ambivalence and antagonism of the desire of the other … [from which] we can avoid the increasingly facile adoption of the notion of a homogenized other … [that underpins] oppositional politics of the margins and minorities.‟101 Fisher states:

Throughout the period of Dean Mahomed‟s Travels, the boundaries of the Bengal army remained ill defined. Sepoys and Indian officers moved relatively easily from one army to another, including into or out of the company‟s army and that of its opponents of the day. (Fisher, First Indian Author, 125)

Shifting cultural designs were not just indicative of the militaries in India at the time but also the country as a whole. Social dexterity proved crucial to Mahomed‟s future ability to place himself in a variety of social positions in Ireland and Britain, because he already had to negotiate for himself an identity within the contested field of Indian social politics. This establishes in Mahomed‟s text, the axiomatic link between Orientalism as a discursive site on both sides of the global divide; he de- centres oppositional identity politics at the margins and the imperial centre.

Mahomed‟s travelogue can be seen as an attempt by a „subaltern‟ subject to co-opt himself into the Orientalist project; both the form and content of the work were reminiscent of British representations of India (the Orientalist travelogue). The text takes the shape of the generic epistolary form, with Mahomed writing to a fictionalised friend or patron he addresses as Sir. Fisher states that „the epistolary style enabled an author to write more intimately and confidently, to notionally address an (unnamed) friend, rather than a faceless world of unknown readers.‟ (Fisher, First Indian Author, 222) As a consequence of this generic convention, the imaginative geography of the text locates Mahomed as writing back from India to the West. This dynamic establishes two key points, the first being his ability to use European forms and language, and the second being that by implication he must have been writing for a European audience. The Travels take the shape of a memoir as opposed to an autobiography, because Mahomed did not explicitly examine his „inner self and, indeed, made his own life only a relatively minor theme … he described the outer world of the events, customs and natural features he encountered. His apparent goals were to provide his readers with pleasure and edification.‟ (Fisher, First Indian Author, 223) Dean Mahomed writes the Orient for the West in

much the same way many British Orientalists such as Reginald Heber and Francis Buchanan were doing at the time and in the future.

Reginald Heber was born in Cheshire, England, on April 21, 1783 to scholarly and middle class parents. In 1800 he enrolled at Oxford University where he won praise for his scholarship and literary ability. After completing his studies in 1804, he took a long tour of Europe before being ordained to the Anglican Church in 1807. Consequently, he was awarded a D.D. degree from the University of Oxford in 1823. In the same year, he was the first Anglican Bishop to be sent to India. Once in India, his missionary work included baptising converts (he baptized the first convert in East India), consecrating churches, and establishing schools. Heber strongly supported the civilising credentials of Christianity and British colonialism, and laboured tirelessly for its spread throughout India. He sermonised, particularly, against the caste system. His time in India lasted only three years due to the intense work schedule, and high humidity; he returned to Britain where he died suddenly at the age of 43, on April 3, 1826. Heber was a prolific writer who made frequent contributions to magazines of his poems, hymns and essays. However, he was most distinguished by his sermons, biographies, and Indian travel writing.

In his travelogue, Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, Heber uses Orientalist romantic imagery to describe the spectacle he encounters on his approach to India, by ship. „Everybody on board was touched and awed by the glory of the scene, and many observed that such a spectacle alone was worth the whole voyage from England.‟ (Heber, Narrative of a Journey, Vol 1, 15) Expressions of awe and wonder permeate his text once he lands on the shores of India. „This evening we had a most beautiful sunset - the most remarkable

recollected by any of the officers or passengers, and I think the most magnificent spectacle I ever saw.‟ (Heber, Narrative of a Journey, Vol 1, 15) Heber employs heightened sensations in which to render intelligible the Oriental Indian scene. On seeing the Himalayan Mountains, he declares: „I felt intense delight and awe in looking on them [mountains].‟ (Heber, Narrative of a Journey, Vol 1, 249) The reader is also reminded of the foreignness and distinction of the scene which is being described: „I greatly regretted I had no means of drawing a scene so beautiful and interesting.‟ (Heber, Narrative of a Journey, Vol 1, 25) Mahomed can be viewed to appropriate Heber‟s sense of awe and curiosity in letter eight: „the riches and luxury of the East, are displayed with fascinating charms.‟ (Mahomed, The Travels, 52)

As the narrative develops, Heber begins to betray the Christian civilising desire of his missionary role in India. He views superstitious Hindu religious practices as foolish and a symbol of retrogression: „The amiable manners and countenances of the people, contrasted with the symbols of their foolish and polluted idolatry.‟ (Heber, Narrative of a Journey, Vol 1, 25) This attack upon religious and cultural decay results in the native inhabitant being described in regressive and savage terms: „There are among the Hindoos very frequent instances of murder, but of a more cowardly and pre-meditated kind. They are cases chiefly of women murdered from jealousy.‟ (Heber, Narrative of a Journey, Vol 1, 33) Native Hindus are portrayed as uncivilised and brutal in their dealings with women; Indian patriarchy is over sexualised and needs reformation: „Mr Hawtayne officiates here; he can boast the honour of having converted a Hindoo of decent acquirements and respectable caste, who was baptised a few days ago.‟ (Heber, Narrative of a Journey, Vol 1, 37) Throughout Heber‟s travelogue, the Indian scene is described as beautiful

and beguiling; however, its native peoples are variously described in a state of savagery and in need of civilising.

Mahomed blurs Heber‟s distinction between Western „civility‟ and Eastern „savagery‟ by commenting on his encounters with the various warring tribes of India. He places himself within the myopia of the „civilising‟ gaze and against the savagery which he lucidly describes. When detailing one such encounter in letter nine, Mahomed employs textbook Orientalist imagery: „a gang of those licentious savages rushed with violence on them, inhumanly butchered seven or eight of our people, and carried off three elephants, and as many camels, with several horses and bullocks.‟ (Mahomed, The Travels, 55) Mahomed also identifies himself with the superiority of Western modernity, and its incumbent technological superiority in the face of backward Oriental resistance. A battle is described where „some of the savages fell on the plain, others were wounded; and the greater part of them, after feeble resistance with their bows, arrows, and swords, g[ave] way to our superior courage and discipline.‟ (Mahomed, The Travels, 55-56) Throughout these passages, Mahomed‟s use of the first person plural „our‟ indicates that he was intimately aware of the market he was writing for, and his epistemologies are shaped accordingly. Symbolically, Mahomed is even compelled to give the exact coordinates of places in relation to Britain:

Calcutta is a very flourishing city, and the presidency of the English Company in Bengal. It is situate on the most Westerly branch of the less Ganges in 87 deg. east lon. and 22, 45 north lat.; 130 miles north east of Balisore, and 40 south of hugely. (Mahomed, The Travels, 57)

As a traveller, Mahomed also voyages imaginatively through English literature. His use of English literary allusions demonstrates the extent of his reading and awareness of literary tastes in Britain, attributes that emphasise his position as a

writer. Tabish Khair has argued that „Dean Mahomed might have had social prestige in mind as the language of the text shows he was a man of literary interests.‟ (Khair,

Other Routes, 203) The richness of his language is displayed in the passage that describes with wonder and awe his entrance into Dhaka: „there are many fine seats on each side of the river, with a continued variety of beautiful improvements, striking landscapes, and sublime scenes of rural imagery, which at once astonish and delight the enraptured view.‟ (Mahomed, The Travels, 124) The language and tone used in this passage is strongly indicative of the romantic and picturesque movements prevalent in British travel literature and poetry at the time.

He also conveys his awareness of how the Orient was imaginatively depicted within British literature. His deployment of a passage from Paradise Lost (1667) when musing on the significance of the fig tree for Indian (Hindu/Muslim) rituals, demonstrates both his consciousness of the way the Orient had been created within the British mind, and his ability to appropriate and subvert those conventions:

The fig-tree, not that kind for fruit reknown‟d; But such as this day to Indians known

In Malabar, or Decan, spreads her arms,

Branching so broad and long, that in the ground The bending twigs take root; and daughters grow (Mahomed, Fisher, First Indian Author, 82)

He employs this allusion for two effects, the first to demonstrate his worthiness as a writer for a British market who needed to believe in the value and efficacy of his reports, and secondly as a reference point for his portrayal of the Orient; with his account positioned as a reworking of prior depictions that are now being rendered with more intimacy and clarity.

Mahomed also goes into intimate details of the cities he visits, offering both English and Indian pronunciations of the districts within Calcutta:

The principal streets are the Choluk, where an endless variety of all sorts of goods are sold; the china bazaar where every kind of china is exposed to sale; the Lalbazar, Thurumthulla [Dharamtala], Chouringee [Chowringee] ... where European gentlemen of every description, mostly reside. The greatest concourse of English, French, Dutch, Armenians, Abyssinians, and Jews, assemble here; besides merchants manufacturers, and tradesmen, from the most remote parts of India. (Mahomed, First Indian Author, 37)

In offering these insights however, he begins to demonstrate the subtle differences between his project and that of the traditional Western imperialist. He describes the city as full of verve and richness: it is portrayed as a great centre of economic activity, inherently diverse, a melting pot, and crucially a world where Europeans are classified and differentiated. This proto-multiculturalism exhibited in Calcutta undercuts Western conceptions of the modern diverse city as being a Western construct. This paradigm has been identified by Tony Ballantyne, who has called for a wider recognition for sub-imperial centres such as Calcutta to be viewed as being at the centre of influence and circulation for regions such as South East Asia, thus disturbing the linear delineation of power from centre to colony. He states that „it is possible to envisage that certain locations, individuals or institutions in the supposed periphery might in fact be the centre of intricate networks themselves.‟102

In reference to this idiom, I would like to make the claim for Mahomed himself: he writes in English but is at the centre of his own creations, he decides what to circulate, what is deemed relevant to report and what judgements to offer, all of which is enveloped in a mobile subjectivity that static conceptions of coloniser and colonised cannot account for. Ballantyne analogously postulates that such an endeavour:

Moves beyond a literary focus on the static text to focus on imperial systems of circulation, recovering the transmission of ideas, information and identities across the Empire. Such an approach allows us to recontextualize prominent imperial concerns that would otherwise appear marginal. (Ballantyne,

Orientalism and Race, 16)

Mahomed can be viewed as one such writer whose travels within India and Britain exemplify the manner in which this transmission of ideas became subsumed within dominant structures of knowledge (Orientalism). It also signifies their need to be reappraised within their mobile and temporal locations. Where I would differ slightly from Ballantyne is the need to locate Mahomed, and travellers like him, within a local British perspective, where their effects on British culture and society can be extricated from a purely imperial framework: where they are defined purely as Indians, migrants, natives or subalterns.

Mahomed‟s motivation for choosing a European form was also shaped canonically, as earlier Indian travel writing (which Tabish Khair has demonstrated in his edited anthology Other Routes) had already begun to be airbrushed from history by Orientalist historians, scientists and cartographers.103 Thus, Mahomed‟s employment of the epistolary form was both a conscious choice with reference to his targeted audience, but also, a pragmatic decision based on the literary tools available to him. Mary Louise Pratt has termed this dynamic of selective appropriation as auto-ethnography; she states that „if ethnographic texts are a means by which Europeans represent to themselves their (usually subjugated) others, auto- ethnographic texts are those the others construct in response to or in dialogue with those metropolitan representations.‟ (Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 7) Pratt would dispute the autonomy of Mahomed‟s text as she argues that „auto-ethnographic texts are not, then, what are thought of as “authentic” or autochthonous forms of self- representation. Rather auto-ethnography involves partial collaboration with and

appropriation of the idioms of the conqueror.‟ (Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 7) However, I would argue that Mahomed‟s text displays much of the criteria that Pratt sets out.

I will aim to demonstrate through detailed analysis of his travel text that he is