Ambivalent Representation of India and its Politics in Hodges’s Travels in India (original) (raw)

Contemporary Research: An Interdisciplinary Academic Journal

This paper analyzes ambivalent representation of India in William Hodges' Travels in India. The exploration of politics behind such representation can be interesting area to investigate. The writer has tried to portray the contradiction between ruins, antiquity, and depopulated habitation on the one hand; and modification, cultivation, and populated habitation, on the other. The horrendous act of sati has been depicted in a smart way as Hodges does not criticize Hindu tradition of self-immolation of wives for the death of their husbands; while the same custom was declared illegal and punishable later by English rulers in India during colonial time. Similarly, Hindu art and architecture has not been observed with the spectacle of Greek art which was considered model worldwide; rather it has been depicted as superb and guided by climate, culture, and geography of its own. Promod K. Nayar's notion of imperial sublime, Saree Makdisi's Romantic imperialism, and Julie Reiser&#...