Book contents
- England Re-Oriented
- Critical Perspectives on Empire
- England Re-Oriented
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Transliteration
- Introduction
- 1 The British Raj’s Mimic Men
- 2 A Bluestocking Romance
- 3 The Theater of Imperial Sovereignty
- 4 Loving Strangers in Ireland
- 5 Heavenly Bodies in Motion
- 6 Dreaming with Fairyland
- 7 The Making of a Mohamedan Gentleman
- Epilogue
- Book part
- Select Bibliography
- Index
7 - The Making of a Mohamedan Gentleman
Lutfullah Khan, the Indian Mutiny, and Victorian Newsprint
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 November 2020
- England Re-Oriented
- Critical Perspectives on Empire
- England Re-Oriented
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Transliteration
- Introduction
- 1 The British Raj’s Mimic Men
- 2 A Bluestocking Romance
- 3 The Theater of Imperial Sovereignty
- 4 Loving Strangers in Ireland
- 5 Heavenly Bodies in Motion
- 6 Dreaming with Fairyland
- 7 The Making of a Mohamedan Gentleman
- Epilogue
- Book part
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The seventh chapter argues that Lutfullah Khan’s critical views on empire went viral after he left Britain in 1844, as he garnered positive reviews in London magazines commenting on the 1857 Indian mutiny. Published in June of that year and edited by his friend and former employer, Captain Edward Backhouse Eastwick, Autobiography of Lutfullah, a Mohamedan Gentleman encodes the two men’s divergent politics: a Company conservative who campaigned against Crown rule in India and a munshi patriot perceived by the Victorian press as opposing a belligerent Company. By integrating picaresque fictions on Indian thugs, the memoir enabled periodical readers to imagine retrospectively the transition from a Mughal Empire under the Company’s inept custodianship to direct rule under Victoria. Her 1858 proclamation that the feelings of the natives of India were to be henceforth respected was felt by Lutfullah’s readers before these feelings congealed into a new ruling ideology. Autobiography shows that the nation state’s attempt to repair its intimate relationship with Asian subjects was mediated by those subjects’ struggle to claim a stake in the national body.
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- England Re-OrientedHow Central and South Asian Travelers Imagined the West, 1750–1857, pp. 254 - 293Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020