Indian Traffic - Identities in Question in Colonial and Post Colonial India

Author: Parama RoyPublisher: Sage PublicationsYear: 1998Language: EnglishPages: 236ISBN/UPC (if available): 817036776X DescriptionThe continual, unpredictable, and often violent 'traffic' between identities in colonial and postcolonial India is the focus of this stimulating and original book.Mimicry has been commonly recognized as an important colonial model of bourgeois / elite subject formation, and Roy examines its place in the exchanges between South Asian and British, Hindu and Muslim, female and male, and subaltern and elite actors.Roy draws on a variety of sources-religious texts, novels, travelogues, colonial archival documents, and films-making her book genuinely interdisciplinary. She explores the ways in which questions of originality and impersonation function, not just for western or westnized subjects, but across a range of identities. For example, Roy considers the Englishman’s fascination with going native, an Irishwoman’s assumption of Hindu feminine celibacy, Gandhi’s