Abstract
Literary narratives authored by Britons who had experience of living in the subcontinent are a revealing historical source in that they explore what it was like to come into contact with an alien culture and live in a foreign land away from one’s home. Since these authors lived in colonial India, their narratives reveal to a greater extent, than the other narratives discussed, the shifting power dynamic between colonizer and the indigenous inhabitants. The narratives of Anglo-Indian men and women, however, illuminate upon differing facets of life in India. On the one hand, poetry authored by East India Company (EIC) men illuminate the anxieties of a British colonial official or soldier working in the contact zone. They further reveal the discursive strategies that the company deployed to justify colonial rule. On the other hand, plays and novels authored by women who had lived in India as the daughters or wives of company men shed light upon the social world of the Anglo-Indian community and the manner in which domestic private lives were fashioned within the colonial periphery.
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Notes
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© 2012 Ashok Malhotra
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Malhotra, A. (2012). Exile, Ethnography, and Anglo-Indian Life within the Subcontinent. In: Making British Indian Fictions. Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137011541_7
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