The Passport and the Mutiny: Between Empire and Nation
Prem Poddar
Institute of Language, Literature and Culture
Aarhus University
(Dinamarca)
'What – besides power and a congealed state of affairs', asks Mehta, 'made an Inuit in the upper reaches of Canada, a gentleman in a borough of London, a Bhil tribesman in the hills of Rajasthan, and a Maori in New Zealand — all subjects of an empress in a small island in the Atlantic Ocean?'
In order to answer Mehta’s question in detail, I argue in my paper that the anti-colonial struggles in the early and middle of the nineteenth century, and in particular events leading up to the Indian Mutiny, hastened the designation of nationality (and ideas about Englishness, Britishness, Indianness) being defined in relation to territory.
I look at how the introduction of the definitive and defining document of modern national identity, the passport, was in part prompted by the arrival of a royal family whose kingdom was annexed. I argue too that our current debates about national identity have yet to transcend the colonial vocabulary and discourses of nationhood prescribed in the nineteenth century, and that re-visiting this earlier moment reveals the fault-lines of our present exchanges.
About Prem Poddar
Author of Violent Civilities, Translating Nations, and editor of A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures.