Abstract
This paper looks at the formation of colonial print publics in Punjab, the gendered subjectivities that emerged in this new discursive space, and middle-class women’s deployment of print to articulate the self. This will be done through a close reading of one of the first novels in English, Cosmopolitan Hinduani, which was published in Lahore, Punjab, by a woman in 1902. The essay examines the narrator’s notion of a gendered cosmopolitanism and the subject position that it affords, her attempt at going beyond the fault lines of religion to articulate a liberal and modern political subject, while reworking the cosmopolitan/local binary. How does her insertion of herself as a gendered subject in the provincial, national, cosmopolitan imaginary reflect in the author’s choice of language and genre? My attempt will be to see the novel and its author as part of a literary culture in which she made certain choices about the form, language, content, and audience.
Works Cited
Anagol, Padma (2005). The Emergence of Feminism in India, 1850–1920. Burlington: Ashgate.Search in Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.Search in Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi (1996). “Unsatisfied: Notes on Vernacular Cosmopolitanism.” L. Garcia-Moreno and P.C. Pfeiffer, eds. Text and Nation: Cross-Disciplinary Essays on Cultural and National Identities. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 191–207.Search in Google Scholar
Bhandari, Vivek (2007). “Print and the Emergence of Multiple Publics in Nineteenth Century Punjab.” Sabrina Alcorn Baron, Eric N. Lindquist, and Eleanor F. Shevlin, eds. Agents of Change: Print Culture Studies after Elizabeth L. Eisenstein. Massachusetts, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 268–286.Search in Google Scholar
Bhambra, Gurminder K. (2011). “Cosmopolitanism and Postcolonial Critique.” Rovisco, Maria and Magdalena Nowicka, eds. The Ashgate Research Companion to Cosmopolitanism. Famham: Ashgate, 313–328.Search in Google Scholar
Brinda, Maharani of Kapurthala (1954). Maharani: The Story of an Indian Princess. New York, NY: Henry Holt.Search in Google Scholar
Burton, Antoinette, ed. (2006). Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History. Durham and London: Duke University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Burton, Antoinette (2007). “Archive Stories: Gender in the Making of Imperial and Colonial Histories.” Phillipa Levine, ed. Gender and Empire. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 281–294.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199249503.003.0013Search in Google Scholar
Chattopadhyay, Bankim (1992 [1885]). Kamalakanta: A Collection of Satirical Essays and Reflections. Trans. Monish Ranjan Chatterjee. Calcutta: Rupa and Company.Search in Google Scholar
Devi, Sunity (1929). Autobiography of an Indian Princess. London: John Murray.Search in Google Scholar
Devika, J. (2007). En-gendering Individuals: The Language of Re-forming in Twentieth Century Keralam. New Delhi: Orient Longman.Search in Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Trans. Thomas Burger. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Hardevi (1888). London Yatra. Lahore: Oriental Press.Search in Google Scholar
Jones, Kenneth (1976). Arya Dharma. New Delhi: Manohar.Search in Google Scholar
Kaviraj, Sudipta (1995). The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Kumar, Radha (1993). The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women’s Rights and Feminism in India, 1800–1990. New Delhi: Zubaan.Search in Google Scholar
Levine, Phillipa, ed. (2007). Gender and Empire. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199249503.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Malhotra, Anshu (2002). Gender, Caste, and Religious Identities: Restructuring Class in Colonial Punjab. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Malhotra, Anshu (2013). “Miracles for the Marginal? Gender and Agency in a Nineteenth Century Autobiographical Fragment.” Journal of Women’s History 25.2, 15–35.10.1353/jowh.2013.0017Search in Google Scholar
Pollock, Sheldon (2000). “Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in History.” Public Culture 12.3, 591–625.10.1215/08992363-12-3-591Search in Google Scholar
Pollock, Sheldon, H. K. Bhabha, C. A. Breckenridge, and D. Chakrabarty (2000). “Cosmopolitanism.” Public Culture 12.3, 577–589.10.1215/08992363-12-3-577Search in Google Scholar
Ram, Jhinda (1893). My Trip to Europe. Lahore: Mufid-I-Am Press.Search in Google Scholar
Rhodes, Jacqueline (2005). Radical Feminism, Writing, and Critical Agency: From Manifesto to Modern. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Search in Google Scholar
Rovisco, Maria and Magdelena Nowicka, eds. (2011). The Ashgate Research Companion to Cosmopolitanism. Famham: Ashgate.Search in Google Scholar
Rudolph, Susanne, Lloyd Rudolph, and Mohan Singh Kanota (2002). Reversing the Gaze: Amar Singh’s Diary: A Colonial Subject’s Narrative of Imperial India. Boulder, CO: Westview.Search in Google Scholar
Sarkar, Tanika (2012). “Wicked Widows: Law and Faith in Nineteenth-Century Public Sphere Debates.” Charu Gupta, ed. Gendering Colonial India: Reforms, Print, Caste and Communalism. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 82–108.Search in Google Scholar
Singh, Jagatjit (2005 [1903]). My Travels in China, Japan and Java. London: Kegan Paul.Search in Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri (1985). “The Rani of Sirmur: An Essay in Reading the Archives.” History and Theory 24, 247–272.10.2307/2505169Search in Google Scholar
Tahl Ram, Susila (1902). Cosmopolitan Hinduani: Depicting Muhammadan and Hindu Life and Thought in Story Form. Lahore: The Civil and Military Gazette Press.Search in Google Scholar
Talpade-Mohanty, Chandra (2003). Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Durham and London: Duke University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Wilson, Kathleen (2007). “Empire, Gender, and Modernity in the Eighteenth Century.” Philipa Levine, ed. Gender and Empire. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 14–45.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199249503.003.0002Search in Google Scholar
©2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
