A GLIMPSE INTO AFGHANISTAN THROUGH SYED MUJTABA ALI'S 'DESHE BIDESHE': AN INDIAN VOYAGER'S INSIGHTFUL LENS (original) (raw)

THE IMPACT OF SYED MUJTABA ALI'S TRAVELS ON INTERNATIONALISM IN LITERATURE

ELSEVIER , 2023

Prize in 2018 and exhibited at the Tate Britain gallery in London. He presented three works, including a feature film about a stranded traveler in Athens, a documentary about the Non-Aligned Movement during the 1970s, and a concertina book called "Volume Eleven (Flaw in the Algorithm of Cosmopolitanism). Mohaiemen referenced three essays written by Syed Mujtaba Ali, discussing Hitler and Germany. Ali's works and travels provide valuable insights into literary cosmopolitanisms and transnational alliances, particularly in the context of fascism and Cold War dynamics. His extensive collection of literary works showcases his remarkable productivity and high regard. Deshe Bideshe, published in 1949, is a Bengali travelogue that chronicles Mujtaba Ali's journey to Afghanistan from 1927 to 1929. The narrative explores the cultural and political history of Afghanistan and its connection to the Indian subcontinent, focusing on the three Anglo-Afghan wars fought by Britain. Ali's international perspective is closely connected to historical events, political dynamics, and the concept of nationhood. Mujtaba Ali's writings and reminiscences served as valuable resources for Bengali readers throughout the 1950s and beyond, expressing interwar cosmopolitanism and serving as platforms for political commentary and social critique. His writings present a distinct perspective on the world and India's position within it, highlighting the concept of 'Greater India' that captivated Orientalists. Mujtaba Ali critiques 'Greater India' intellectuals, highlighting the historical, political, and economic foundations of India's regional identity. His expertise in philology and literature made him well-suited to assume the role of a cultural envoy on behalf of a recently emancipated secular state, highlighting the need for fostering Asian and African solidarities as a means of countering both Eastern and Western power blocs.

"Borders made in Great Britain": in conversation with Reza Amirkhani about his Afghanistan travelogue, Janistan, Kabulistan

Studies in Travel Writing, 2019

Reza Amirkhani is a prominent Iranian novelist, travel writer, and cultural critic. He has won many literary awards in Iran and some of his works have been bestsellers. In this interview, Amirkhani discusses his journey to Afghanistan, which he undertook after the 2009 Iranian presidential election, and published as Janistan, Kabulistan in 2010. The travelogue begins with an account of the writer’s ascent to Iran’s Mount Damavand to escape politics, only to find that the political is inescapable, and closes with a discussion of elections in Iraq and Lebanon. Between the book’s prelude and epilogue, in his signature style, Amirkhani weaves a narrative of his journey, which is interlaced with social, political, and cultural commentary on different aspects of Afghan (and sometimes Iranian) society. Drawing on a rich culture and history, Amirkhani offers insights into a country that is often represented stereotypically and produces a narrative that challenges much of the conventional wisdom on Afghanistan.

The Politics of Travel: The Travel Memoirs of Mirza Sheikh I’tesamuddin and Sake Dean Mahomed

Studies in English Language Teaching, 2020

Representation of the East in 18 th century western travel narratives was an outcome of a European aesthetic sensibility that thrived on imperial jingoism. The 18 th century Indian travel writings proved that East could not be discredited as "exotic" and "orientalist" or its history be judged as a "discourse of curiosity". The West had its share of mystery that had to be unravelled for the curious visitor from the East. Dean Mahomed's The Travels of Dean Mahomed is a fascinating travelogue cum autobiography of an Indian immigrant as an insider and outsider in India, Ireland and England. I'tesamuddin's The Wonders of Vilayet is a travel-memoir that addresses the politics of representation. These 18 th century travelographies demystify "vilayet" in more ways than one. They analyse the West from a variety of tropes from gender, to religion and racism to otherness and identity. This paper attempts a comparative analyses of the two texts from the point of view of 18 th century travel writing and representations through the idea of journey. It seeks to highlight the concept of "orientalism in reverse" and show how memoirs can be read as counterbalancing textual responses to counteract dominant western voices.

Introduction – Means, Modes and Motivations: Further Reflections on Writing Histories of Afghanistan

2021

The idea to publish the Roundtable papers here in Afghanistan was Dr. Nile Green's, and I am grateful to him for that suggestion and more importantly for his many valuable contributions to the field of Afghanistan Studies. 1 Dr. Green has organized many conferences and events on Afghanistan (and other topics!) leading to a number of publications including a set of Roundtable papers in 2013. Collectively, those essays drew attention to issues of enduring historiographical relevance for Afghanistan including the methodological challenges of integrating source languages and genres across multiple eras; the importance of various forms of travel and mobility; the need to account for sub-national groups, transnational

A Non-Orientalist Representation of Pakistan in Contemporary Western Travelogues

GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies

Travel writings by Western visitors of the Orient have often been rebuffed for disseminating a stereotypical discourse on the people and the culture of the East. The rationale for the collective dismissal of such narratives, however, is built upon a limited canon whose myopic perspective creates a monolithic Orient. It is argued that since this dominant discourse leaves nearly no room for non-conformism, it has conveniently overlooked a large body of travel writings of western writers that adopt a non-Orientalist approach to appreciate cultural differences. To pursue this argument, the present study aims to explore Jürgen Wasim Frembgen's At the Shrine of the Red Sufi: Five Days & Nights on Pilgrimage in Pakistan (2011) to examine how the autobiographical narrator's travel accounts present an alternative narrative about the East that subverts prevailing discourses on travelogues as apparatuses to reinforce colonial/Western norms. To achieve this goal, the study benefits from Debbie Lisle's (2006) theories on the cosmopolitan vision of a travel writer as well as Edward Said's (1978) theory of Orientalism. Frembgen's cosmopolitan vision throughout the narrative neutralizes negative perceptions about Muslim communities in Pakistan as uncultivated and declining by offering a counter view of the country that underscores its vibrant and positively transformative qualities. The celebration of Eastern culture and religion in Frembgen's travel writing indicates the need for the re-examination of the Orientalist thought that has, wittingly or unwittingly, dismissed a significant segment of western works about the east in order to legitimize its theoretical and hypothetical cases.

Afghanistan in Ink Literature between Diaspora and Nation

Iranian Studies, 2020

A photograph of Afghan president Dr. Ashraf Ghani onboard a flight back to Afghanistan was recently tweeted by his spokesperson. Surely, a rather quotidian occurrence in our digital age. Yet, it is the book that Dr. Ghani—an ethnic Pashtun, married to a Lebanese Christian, educated mainly outside of Afghanistan, and until recently residing in the West—was engrossed in that is of interest. Ghani, seated on a flight back to Afghanistan, was intensely focused on Tarikh-e Baihaqi, the eleventh century historical work on the Ghaznavid empire, that also serves as one of the most celebrated works of classical Persian prose. This certainly confounds a common accusation against Ghani in some Persian-speaking circles in Afghanistan that he is a Pashtun nationalist intent on disarming the literary and cultural milieu of Persian in Afghanistan. It also presents another point for consideration: Afghans, however much removed from the physical space of Afghanistan, are committed to a literary past, often engaged, and deployed in creative ways in the present.