Louis Rousselet’s India andits Native Princes : Travel in Central India and in the Presidencies of Bombay and Bengal (1875) and Rudyard Kipling’s From Sea to Sea; Letters of Travel (1899) : A Postcolonial Comparative study

Abstract

This research paper is a postcolonial comparative study of Louis Rousselet’s India and its Native Princes: Travel in Central India and the presidencies of Bombay and Bengal (1875) and Rudyard Kipling’s From Sea to Sea; Letters of Travel (1899). To achieve our work, we have relied on Edward Said’s Orientalism (1977). We have first studied the similarities of the two writers in their mis/representation and stereotypical description of Indians and the denigration of their culture and religions. The two authors describe India and Indians in the same way. Yet they differ in the celebration of their two respective Empires. After the analysis of Rousselet’s and Kipling’s Works in the light of Said’s Orientalism, we have reached the conclusion that the two authors are Orientalists and stand for a French and British intervention in India. The two authors otherize Indians as well as their culture and support imperialism as a civilizing mission.