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

Representation of the East in 18 century western travel narratives was an outcome of a European aesthetic sensibility that thrived on imperial jingoism. The 18 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 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 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.

and colonizers. It also saw the appearance of the utilitarian traveler-a traveller who was a "native" but who managed to circumnavigate in a relatively unconstrained manner constructing an anodyne personae of sorts. It can be inferred that 18 th century Indian travel writings proved that East was no longer to be discredited as "exotic" and "orientalist" or its history be judged as a mere "discourse of curiosity". The West too had its share of mystery that had to be unravelled for the curious visitor from the East. Thus it can be argued that rendering the foreign familiar was an agenda of travel writings by travellers from the East to the West. It has been discerned that most travelogues and travel writers of this period exhibited a certain self-consciousness and sensibility that gave a definitive shape to their encounters in foreign lands. Their negotiations with people, locale, society, customs and language is a mediation between observed sights and felt experiences. The responses elicited by these variables is the "interplay" between the observer and the observed. Representation of the East in 18 th century Western travel narratives was an outcome of a European aesthetic sensibility that thrived on imperial jingoisma compilation of complex and diffused images advertising an Orientalist idea of the East. Indian travel literature to 18 th century Britain "related to human curiosity and to a travel writer's desire to mediate between things foreign and things familiar, to help us understand that world which is other to us" (Blanton,2). Moreover as Casey Blanton posits in Travel Writing: The Self and the World (2002), these travelogues also deal with the "traveler's own philosophical biases and preconceptions and the tests those ideas and prejudices endure as a result of the journey" (p. 5). I'tesamuddin's The Wonders of Vilayet is one such travel-memoir that addresses the politics of representation. Though I'tesamuddin does not qualify as a "colonial subject", his memoir demystifies vilayet in more ways than one. It analyses a variety of tropes from gender, to religion and racism to otherness and identity. Dean Mahomed's The Travels of Dean Mahomed is a fascinating account of an Indian immigrant as an insider and outsider in India, Ireland and England. The book throws open for the wide-eyed Easterner, the world of the West which was as mystifying as a fantasy world. Dean Mahomed's travelogue cum autobiography confidently presents the real India for the West. Both the writers through their writings highlight the concept of "orientalism in reverse". These texts also show how memoirs can be read as counterbalancing textual responses to counteract dominant Western voices. Kipling's palpable politics of empire was challenged through the politics of travel. Both I'tesamuddin and Dean Mahomed can be seen as cultural interlocutors involved in unraveling the West for the East and the East for the West.
The disparity between the power structure of the West and the East is persistent and is visible in their dealings with the English and vice versa. Perhaps the only difference between the two is that one is more Indocentric in his attitude and chooses to come back while the other harbours a more syncretic attitude towards the zeitgeist of the times and decides to stay back. But both can be seen as wielding the power to narrate about their nation at large and society in particular. These writings posed a challenge to the images constructed by West for their consumption and also became powerful modes of resistance to European cultural domination. The writings of I'tesamuddin and Dean Mahomed are, "informed by a clear and direct desire to apprise a certain public of what was experienced during the travels" (Other Routes, Khair, p. 24). Thus these writings are more secular and multicultural in their approach, in the sense they thwart the imperialist agenda of laying claim to a "historically insular all-white England" (Fisher,p. 17). It can be argued that both the narratives mediate a consciousness that monitors the journey, judges, thinks, confesses, changes and even grows. Because both deal with actual, lived experiences and not abstract, yet compelling images of an East that was "oriental", "decadent", and "superstitious" constructed in "pretravel" narratives that seduced the white West populace. For as Edward Said says in Orientalism (2001), "…culture is a concept that includes a refining and elevating element" (p. xiii). Both I'tesamuddin and Dean Mahomed reflect their society's repository of the best knowledge and philosophy which acts as a palliative that neutralizes the capitalist, degenerating and brutalizing side effects of Western modernization. Both successfully paint a very fluid picture of India and Britain, one that is not monolithic and deterministic. In their dealings with the English both come across as politically and intellectually refined. Both basically present a pluralistic vision of themselves, as travellers-Indian, Bengali and Muslim, albeit from the perspective of a disenfranchised minority.
And the reason for this lies in the fact that both use their personal experiences and reflections to extrapolate and put before their readers a factual account of their travel. Their writing is devoid of fantastical descriptions, unreliable data and egotistical narrative style. Michael H Fisher in Counterflows to Colonialism (2004), substantiates this thought by saying that educated Indians who travelled, "…resisted British dominance, pursued their own agendas, and sought to reshape British rule according to their own values, although usually from a position of subordination" (p. 14). Thus being in Britain gave them the power to socialize with the Britons and to address them directly in their own ways and in their own terms. I'tesamuddin is aesthetically aware of the sights and sounds of London-"There is no city on earth as large or beautiful, and it is beyond my powers to describe it fittingly" (p. 55). He goes to appreciate the various landmarks he comes across-"Among them the most imposing is St. Paul's Cathedral. Its splendid design and excellent construction defy description, and must be seen to be appreciated" (p. 57); and no writer (be it precolonial, colonial or postcolonial) can resist overlooking the comparative and associative overtones that illustrate such writings-"The bazaars and streets of London are spacious and well-planned. Examples of such streets can be seen now-a-days in parts of Calcutta" (p. 67).
Dean Mahomed is simply astounded by the range of impressions encountered in Cork, about the Western 'other' unlike the Western epistemology that advertised a heavily exotic, erotic and antiquated image of the East-a polarized geophysical and geopolitical construct that oscillated between Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "…Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! / A savage place! as holy and enchanted…" and Rudyard Kipling's "happy Asiatic disorder".

Method
And the first tenet on which the politics of travel rests is appropriating language. Most Eastern travellers from this time explicitly interpreted the West through their native tongues. The Hindustani dialect served as a tool to destabilize the power structure. They did not use the language of the Center to unriddle its mysteries; rather the use of the marginalized languages gave the traveller a legitimacy and a voice to address and question the discourse of power. The very use of the word vilayet warranted the purpose of the Easterner. Vilayet was the proverbial generic term for a foreign land; especially (a name for) England, Britain, or Europe. Britain was always Vilayat -the metonymic and Indocentric term for the white/foreign "Other" that was more often than not the locus of fancy for the man of East.
By the use of the word vilayet, I'tesamuddin though unconsciously acknowledges Britain as a major or dominant administrative province in the context of the age of high imperialism but also reduces its position as the signifying authority, linguistically. The Wonders of Vilayet shows how the East fought passivity by actively usurping the dominion of language and territory of the whites. Through his profuse use of words in the Hindustani dialect, I'tesamuddin has his own interpretations for words that are foreign to him-the English are firinghees (a term of disparagement akin to the word mlechcha or a debased foreigner). English dancers are beautiful like houris, the police chief is kotwal, performers with antics are habshi, monetary denominations are interpreted as asharfi, English shows and spectacles are tamasha, colleges like Oxford are like a madrassah, a royal court is durbar and a royal meeting is a majlis. It is interesting to note that I'tesamuddin exoticizes the West through language.
It is "discourse of curiosity" in reverse. As Harish Trivedi vindicates, "I'tesamuddin wrote his account of the West in Persian, then the language of the Indian ruling elite, from the perspective not of an immigrant who must adapt to survive but rather of a passing visitor who needs make no concessions whatever" (p. 171). I'tesamuddin's The Wonders of Vilayet serves as a good example of "a product of serious cultural thinking about comparative societies and multiple natures in human nature" (Elizabeth A Bohls, p. xxi), …I merely wish to say that each nation has its own peculiar customs and practices, and so the food of one country will be pleasant to the taste of its natives, but to foreigners it may be unpalatable. We should remember in particular that between your manners and customs and ours there is the difference of East and West (I'tesamuddin, p. 140).
Eighteenth-century travel writing included a lot of impersonal description as well as first-person narration. And I'tesamuddin makes profuse use of the first person to reinforce his stance as a traveller who is certainly not 'the other': The English had never seen an Indian dressed as I was. They considered me a great curiosity and flocked to have a look. The friendliness of the English and, more particularly, the sight of their lovely women dispelled the sorrow of solitude and cheered me greatly. They continued to stare at my clothes and countenance, while I gazed at their astonishing loveliness. How ironic that I, who had gone there to enjoy a spectacle became a spectacle myself. (p. 53) The use of first person gives the narrative veracity, authenticity and a legitimacy that had never characterized earlier travel writings. The confessional tone and the assertiveness of the narrator helps him build a rapport-a connection with the reader. I'tesamuddin is not just a bystander who observes things from the sidelines. He anchors his dealings with the English and the sights and sounds he experiences in the moment. It is a tacit reflection of the ownership of his time in Britain. There is no doubt that he is in possession of his mental acumen and conveys all that he perceives with a certain credibility. In contrast the language of the colonizer is more inclusive and nebulous in nature-"We are faced with a crisis. If you rise to meet it you will help preserve our sovereignty and add to the nation's glory" (p. 108). When Captain Swinton wishes to take Mirza Sheik I'tesamuddin with him on a tour of Europe, he invites him explicitly saying, "I intend to travel, and would like to take you with me. We shall visit the different countries of Europe, where the experience of seeing many curiosities and spectacles will be instructive for us both" (p. 138 The English are grave like the Germans, lovers of show; followed wherever they go by whole troops of servants, who wear their masters' arms in silver fastened to their left arms and are not undeservedly ridiculed for wearing tails hanging down their backs. They excel in dancing and music, for they are active and lively, though of a thicker neck than the French; they cut their hair close on the middle of the head, letting it grow on their side; they are good sailors and better pirates, cunning, treacherous, and thievish; above 300 are said to be hanged annually at London: beheading with them is less infamous than hanging; they give the wall as the place of honour; hawking is the common sport with the gentry (Mancall,p. 390 about the places and cultures he visits. He admires the English for their scientific temper, technological progress, their physical prowess and endurance and feels ashamed and sorrowful of the "…Indian gentry who are engrossed in writing poems in Persian and Hindi in praise of a mistress' face, or of the wine, the goblet, or a bawd" (p. 126). But he rationalises and grasps the fact that intellectual and technical superiority is no match for aesthetic sensibility and nobility, which "is not measured by They are unencumbered by the pseudo trappings of their faith as they are able to discern between the idea of a supreme being and a human missionary. Both challenge the superfluous idea of Islamophobia that was being circulated in the Western world.
I'tesamuddin comes across as an aesthetically informed and cosmopolitan traveller, who is culturally mobile and receptive. The Wonders of Vilayet is replete with snippets of historical anecdotes, advice to the readers on do's and don'ts and is premised upon verifiable facts. I'tesamuddin is an acute observer, a judicious narrator using a sober and unornamented prose style, thereby shaping the global consciousness of the subsequent colonized traveller. The fact that he apprehends the West as a "spectacle" goes on to show that he has successfully and eclectically subverted the West's claims to cultural and political hegemony.

Discussion
Edward W Said in his book Culture and Imperialism (1994)  This advertisement not only made an appeal to elite patrons but it also reflected, "Dean Mahomed's continuing public orientation towards Europeans who had traded or ruled in India…" (p. 258).
It would not be wrong to say that the "politics of location" operates here, where the traveller does not innocuously "discover" a place, but rather constructs through a conscious and concerted effort, what Homi Bhabha states in The Location of Culture (2014), …those moments or processes that are produced in the articulation of cultural differences. These In more ways than one, Dean Mahomed had to manoeuvre himself, within the limits of his environment to recreate himself and define India for the Westerners because the image of India that was prevalent during those days was that of the "exotic" variety. Thus his "particular self-location as an artless Indian writing for a sophisticated European audience" (p. 224), is strategic. He is a "Native" but he is not a Mahomed is the perfect example of one who was not only Indian in blood and colour and English in his taste, but Indian in his thought, morals and intellect. Imperialism didn't erode his identity. Dean Mahomed was envisaged as a modern medical innovator and an initiator of a social fashion that one was supposed to follow while in Brighton. Travels and Dean Mahomed allow us an "access to these transitional years in the history of India, Ireland, and England within the burgeoning British Empire" (p. 323).

Conclusion
Both I'tesamuddin and Dean Mahomed firmly establish themselves as pluralistic travellers in the context of the 18 th century. They are the precursors of the modern day tourists with their detach perspectives who through their travelogues "are engaged in delivering time/space-specific facts and events to audiences in intelligible ways" (Lisle,p. 33). Thus these are travellers for whom "the act of telling their story was as important to the journey as actual participation on it" (Mancall,p. 13). Their travel memoirs are very contemporary in their make-up, because they participate "most profoundly in the wider debates of global politics through its structuring tension between colonial and cosmopolitan visions" (Lisle,p. 5). A certain degree of heterogeneity underlies their writings. As travellers they seize their identity and recognize its power to articulate the idea of the other, in their terms. They are more than just passive onlookers. Their engagement with the Britons is very cognitive in nature. The enchantment, the wonder, the curiosity, of the imperial West is all dissected from a very dialectical perspective. Though there are evidences of palpable anxieties, insecurities, difficulties and ambivalences, the interpretations and representations of the East and West are not too compartmentalized. Their gaze is an enquiring one and offers in the words of Pramod K Nayyar, "a fair measure of textual, epistemological and aesthetic understanding of the 'wonders' of England" (p. 37).
The polarization of the East and the West does not create a rupture in the writing, rather it accentuates the cultural diversity of both. I'tesamuddin and Dean Mahomed prove the ideology of travel as a "means of laying claim to the world, imaginatively in the first instance, but also politically" (Other Routes, Ghosh, ix). Both the travellers navigate the cultural topography of vilayet from two aspectsglobally and locally, quintessentially laying the foundations of the politics of travel, ergo heralding the beginning of new breed of culturally heterogeneous travellers.