The Justification

Tania De Lira-Miranda

Though he is not European and is actually of Indian nationality, Dean Mahomet seems to have taken to some European ideals more specifically the literature and art. But knowing how the British treat India, one has to question if, in his travel account, Sake Dean Mahomet’s imitation of European literary and artistic conventions reproduces racial-ethnic stereotypes that justify British colonial violence. From reading his letters and analyzing them, I think that he does make racial-ethnic stereotypes in order to prop up the British and their rule. 

There are various examples in the letters where he seems to make questionable remarks. In letter XXII, he describes the Mogul and his guards with stereotypes. The former makes “[extravagent] order” that are “submissively obeyed.” He “dreams away life, drowned in the enjoyment of dissolute pleasures.” The Omrahs are “extremely tyrannical,” and so on. These are stereotypes that portray the Mogul in a bad way. He seems to say that the Mogul is a bad leader as he is not worried about his country and seems to only care about continuing his hedonistic ways. He is also saying that the Mogul is so bad at ruling that other people have to lead instead, implying that the Mogul is only a figurehead. Instead, the actual ruling is done by the Viziers and the Omrahs but they also don’t a good job. The Viziers “rather promote their view” and they appoint their own successors, continuing a cycle of bad ruling but that doesn’t mean that the Omrahs are any better in Dean Mahomet’s eyes. To him, the Omrahs “sooner or later by their implicy, precipitate the ruin of the entire empire.”

By trying to discredit the current government, he is trying to show how being under British rule would be better as they will be better than the current government. He is trying to justify British colonial violence through stereotypes.

The Submissive Dancing Girl Motif in Conflict with British Hegemonic Stereotype

An actual dancing girl

I really enjoyed reading Jose Lopez’s blog post, and wanted to comment on how Sake Dean Mahomet doesn’t similarly do the same with the individuals, or those outside of power; thus complicating the story further. In class, we had discussed a section where Mahomet describes the lives of Muslims, and even determined from this his own position as a Bengali Muslim working for the East India Company. Within his travel account, or travelogue, Mahomet instead imitates Orientalist literary passages to subvert British colonial violence when focusing on the peaceful, seemingly mild moments within his own travels: opulent imagery, thorough description, and implicit light-heartedness in many passages choose to go against the violent and antagonistic Muslim/Hindu relationships purported by the British.

A common trend within “Oriental” works, according to Said, involves one’s submission to being an “Oriental figure” unwillingly, as one could be “place[d] by an average nineteenth-century European, but also because it could be–that is, submitted to being–made Oriental,” determining that a lack of consent was found in, for instance, “Flaubert’s encounter within an Egyptian courtesan” establishing this trope (Said 5). 

Said (5) 

Mahomet “takes breaks” in between discussing wars and murders throughout his travelogues by humanizing the people that are involved within the text, and adds context to the women within “Orientalist” travelogues. The gender imbalance seems inherent within a “Dean Mahomet” epistolary novel rather than a “dancing girl” (70) epistolary, and similar to British “Orientalist” travelogues, but Mahomet speaks for these women, and does so from an more ‘insider’s perspective’ (whatever that indicates for you is probably intentional — how exactly does he know about these dancing girls, their matrons, and their “occupying the handsomest houses in the towns or cities” (70-71)) rather than as a lusting British traveler. When he implies his own experiences with watching these women through a “public” and “private” (71) setting, stating that “all these love-scenes, they perform, in gestures, air, and steps, with a well-adapted expression,” he does this through an objective, traveler’s perspective rather than utilizing a first person perspective and forcing a singular European male gaze upon the women. This is furthered with the lack of sexualized depiction, and Mahomet’s focusing on the world outside of the dancing women: the content of his work slides around their own actions, “these creatures” (his words not mine, 71) are “recruited out of the people of all casts and denominations, though not without a peculiar attention to beauty or agreeableness; yet even the knowledge of their being so common, is with many totally forgotten in the ravishing display of their national and acquired charms” (71). He continues objectifying them in the manner the British do, in many ways, describing them as “creatures” and focusing on their “bodies,” but adds details and descriptions that reinforce British opulence and British views of the sublime. This passage from Pramod K. Nayar’s work describes British desires for opulence (if y’all really want to read it):

Pramod K. Nayar: The Imperial Sublime: English Travel Writing and India, 1750-1820 (61), https://www.jstor.org/stable/40339521?seq=5#metadata_info_tab_contents

Within this, he critiques the mannerisms and dress of these women in a comparison to European prostitutes, through using the aforementioned “rhetoric of inflation” in describing their mannerisms in a form of opulent diction that mimics British intrigue and sexualization of Indian women. Mahomet places these women on a pedestal and asserting their superiority to “Western women” by describing the “gross impudence which characterises the European prostitutes; [the Indian women’s *(unsure if Muslim and/or Hindu)] style of seduction being all softness and gentleness…there are some of theme, even amidst their vices and depravity whose minds are finely impressed with generous sentiments” (72). Not only this, but he does in a way critique the women and men who engage in these activities as a whole: by indicating these women as engaging in “vices and depravity” yet still having minds “finely impressed with generous sentiments,” he doesn’t exactly discuss the men who involve themselves in such business as well, and doesn’t offer the men, British or Indian, a meaning behind their own engagement with “vices and depravity” (72). Although I would love to analyze the main passage that ends his epistolary within Letter XV further, he gives women “of the country” (72) a backhanded compliment in many ways, as he ends with the moralistic statement, “even the human heart plunged in crimes and immorality, may sometimes be roused from its torpor by the voice of humanity” (73) and criticizing European prostitutes (72) (so how does he know about all of this in the first place :)?).

Mahomet’s mentioning of Omrahs in many ways justifies British colonialism and imperialism, but it does call into question how hegemonic this perspective reigns throughout the work with Mahomet’s notable tangents; in many ways, he subverts a travelogue by utilizing tropes within the travelogue, and when doing so, makes a light of these topics and normalizes them. In this, I’m on the fence based on Lopez’s argument and my own findings due to how conflicting Mahomet is as a writer.

Samantha Shapiro

A Familiar Landscape

Despite being from very different parts of the world, the Indian landscapes Dean Mahomet describes and those painted by William Daniell are not very different, with both of them choosing to use the colonial lens in their interpretations. One of Daniell’s paintings, Palace of Nawaub Suja Dowla, at Lucnow, serves as an example of this. In the foreground of this painting can be seen some boats and people along a river, with tents on either side of the river. Above the river and up on a hill is a walled city. This city, Lucknow, is described by Daniell as “flourishing and beautiful.” This choice to focus on the architecture of the leadership is likely to better relate India to the leadership of the British empire, who are familiar with palaces and grand buildings. 

Dean Mahomet, when writing about India and his life there, tends to focus on the same types of things. On page 37 he speaks of Europeans being entertained in magnificent palaces, where balls and dinners are taking place. This is right at home for the types of people that would be reading Mahomet’s accounts. In addition to this, he writes about the pompous attitudes his father displayed as a Mahometan, as well as how the people of India are immature compared to the Europeans. Mahomet knows the ideas the British have about the people of India: the meanness of the Muslims and the naïve nature of the Hindus. While Mahomet may or may not believe these things about his home, he is certainly using them to appeal to the British and better his own position.

Adam Collins-Morales

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Tania De Lira-Miranda

Compared to when The Travels of Dean Mahomet was published, traveling to other countries has become an easy feat for people to do right now. We have various forms of transportation – trains, planes, cars, etc. – that make traveling easy and quick. While when the novel was published, they only had boats and traveling in them took a long time and was very dangerous. It’s why very few people at that time traveled long distances and why the majority of people had to rely on people’s writing and art in order to experience new places. It was why paintings like Thomas and William Daniell were popular. They let people see South Asia without actually having been there. It’s why from reading Dean Mahomet’s letters I-XI, I believe that the painting titled Coaduwar Gaut is the most suitable for understanding Mahomet’s description of South Asian landscapes.

In his first letter, Mahomet describes India as having some striking scenes. “Generous soils crowned with various plenty…mines of gold and diamonds” (34) The description almost seems like it is a paradise. The view seems to be beautiful and leaves people wanting to discover more. The painting helps show this as without looking further into it, the scene is beautiful. Nature is all around the people and it is simply amazing. To be surrounded by nature and having a great view of the sky is people’s dream. The painting just helps highlight what Mahomet is trying to say about India; it’s beautiful.

But it wasn’t just this first letter that the picture fits the description of India. As one continues to read the novel, one can see the deeper meaning the painting also holds. In the third letter, Mahomet describes the places where the English soldiers live. He describes how “the Colonel and Major had larger and more commodious bangaloes, than the other Officers, with adjacent out-houses, and stables.” (40) Here we can see the description of English colonialization. How the English are coming to India and beginning to occupy land that is not theirs. From looking at the painting, we can see that there are two different styles of houses as the Daniells were setting camp at Kotdwara. So we can see people staring at the house of the bottom, being curious about the new people here. This is how colonialization starts, people slowly set up before they kick out the natives and take over.

So the painting shows both sides. The beauty that is India but also the beginning of the English taking over.

The Indian as Narrator Increases Authority by Superficially Distancing Texts from a Eurocentric Framework

The native Indian as narrator in texts referencing colonialism, on the surface, provides a nonbiased and non-orientalist take on British involvement in India and the cultures of both areas; however, the authority afforded through this seemingly unbiased lens can still perpetuate an imperialist agenda.

Hamilton translates her ideas through an Indian narrator in Letters of a Hindoo Rajah, thereby using natives as a mouthpieces for her claims regarding Evangelism and feminism. Since the text was published anonymously, readers disassociated the text from her gender and religious background, perpetuating an unprejudiced view. Thus, her use of satire from the perspective of characters like Zaarmila effectively pointed to elements of British society that she found problematic, such as disparities in the English education system, without alluding to her personal stake in the issues at hand. Through this translation of ideas and content to a different speaker, the biases Hamilton herself holds do not affect the readers understanding of the text and its political nature, effectively increasing the authority of the text. The use of an ‘innocent native’ as narrator in conjunction with her frequent use of hyperbole and satire allow readers to make assumptions about the state of England without either Hamilton or her narrators explicitly citing or supporting these assumptions.

Conversely, Sake Dean Mahomet’s text frames colonial practices in India through the eyes of an imperialist sympathizer, who is simultaneously a native of India. England and its streak of colonial violence, at the surface, are absolved of guilt through the apologetic lens of Dean Mahomet. However, Dean Mahomet (as a speaker) operates under his own agenda, and his opportunism regarding moving up the ranks of the colonial army and acquiring wealth are obtusely referenced throughout the text. Dean Mahomet operates concretely in an orientalist framework, and frequently mentions the picturesque and antiquated qualities of the East, inadvertently framing India as ‘exotic’ and ‘other’ while simultaneously representing it.  However, his status as a native Indian elevates his authority and clouds the otherwise overt imperialistic notions of England and the EIC as a whole.