Reconfiguring Colonial Subjects as Informed Travellers: Cross-Cultural Encounters and Representation of Australia in Two Indian Travel Narratives of late Nineteenth Century

Abstract

In recent times, an urgency is felt within the postcolonial scholarship as well as in the area of cultural studies to address the diverse ramifications of colonial history and ideology beyond the narratives of colonial encounters between Great Britain and its colonies so that hitherto unfamiliar patterns of cross-cultural and intersubjective relationships can be explored between such colonial cousins as Australia and India. This paper presents a case for two early travel narratives by Indian travellers – Nunda Lall Doss and Hajee Sullaiman Shah Mahomed – about Australia. I have examined how these travellers have represented the Australian landscapes and urban centres. They worked largely within the framework of colonial travel writing about Australia and described the continent in terms of wide, empty spaces, opulence of natural resources, dwindling indigenous population and spectacular urbanization and modernization under colonial rule; yet their accounts are not without complexity. These accounts present their writers casting themselves as imperial subjects beyond the colonial stereotypes and trying to carve their distinct identity as Indian travellers abroad. In this way they emerged as informed travellers with their critical judgements vis-à-vis the naïve and the passive tourists struck by awe and wonder at every spectacle witnessed. More remarkably, their critique of British imperialism and white Australian policies regarding immigration and “race” helps us to understand the late nineteenth century pro-Federalist discourse of Australianness in its racist and ethnonationalist contexts.