“This is a Civilized Nation, and a Man From the East Has No Right to Criticize It”
Indian Visitors at the 1893 Columbian Exposition
in Journeys
Author:
Anupama Arora
Anupama Arora
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This article examines the travel narratives of three Indian visitors to the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Occupying a precarious space between spectacle and spectator at the World's Fair, these visitors returned the ethnographic gaze and instead offered cultural self-representation that co-existed with and contested the prevalent perceptions of India (and other non-Western peoples). In the process, their narratives both questioned the civilized/primitive dichotomy as well as disrupted the grand official narrative of Anglo-Saxon supremacy and progress celebrated at the exposition.