Counterflows to Colonialism
Indian Travellers and Settlers in Britain 1600-1857
Michael H Fisher
Permanent Black
2004
Pages: 487
Price: Rs 795
ISBN 81-7824-077-7
Long before the Kumars had moved into No. 42 or Bombay Dreams wowed West End, an Armenian lady from the Mughal court of Jehangir in Agra married William Hawkins, an English representative of the East India Company in 1609. Two years later, they set sail towards Britain. Unfortunately, Mariam was widowed before she reached her husband’s land. But in between Hawkins’ death and Mariam’s arrival, she became romantically involved with Gabriel Towerson, another Englishman travelling on the ship. In London, the two married and lived happily ever after — or, at least, till Towerson returned with Mariam to India in 1617, after which their marriage went to pieces.
What is revealing is that in her three years in London, an Indian married (twice) to an Englishman — something that in later centuries may have been considered ‘inter-racial’ — did not evoke any adverse comments. In fact, like Mariam, there were many other Indians who noiselessly fitted into the cubbyholes of class and gender of British — marrying Britons, keeping English servants, going to church. Like the Cambridge-educated Guy Perron in Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet three centuries later, who feels a great affinity with the Indian Hari Kumar, who went to the same public school as he did, pre-Company and Company Raj Britain was class driven in its interactions with Indians.
Counterflows to Colonialism traces Indian responses to Britain and the interactions of Indians with Britons in the latter’s ‘natural habitat’ from 1600 to the year of the Sepoy Mutiny, a pivotal point in the history of two cultures looking at each other. The book is also about two other aspects of this gradually one-sided cross-cultural exchange. Apart from providing rich streams of narratives on the first Indian travellers to Britain and the ‘first NRIs’, it also explores a much neglected part of British history — the existence of a multicultural Britain that wasn’t just a pluralising gesture of what a country should be, but what a country was. Fisher also charts how self-perception changed for Indians as the mirrors available for viewing oneself overwhelmingly started carrying the ‘Made in England’ tag.
{{/usCountry}}Counterflows to Colonialism traces Indian responses to Britain and the interactions of Indians with Britons in the latter’s ‘natural habitat’ from 1600 to the year of the Sepoy Mutiny, a pivotal point in the history of two cultures looking at each other. The book is also about two other aspects of this gradually one-sided cross-cultural exchange. Apart from providing rich streams of narratives on the first Indian travellers to Britain and the ‘first NRIs’, it also explores a much neglected part of British history — the existence of a multicultural Britain that wasn’t just a pluralising gesture of what a country should be, but what a country was. Fisher also charts how self-perception changed for Indians as the mirrors available for viewing oneself overwhelmingly started carrying the ‘Made in England’ tag.
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