Like her predecessors, Hamilton‟s work is concerned with the peculiarities of Britons, but more than those previous works, as I have suggested, it engages with the twin objectives of getting to know both Britain and India.
The juxtaposition of the three Hindus‟ letters, of the Rajah‟s earlier remarks and his later observations, and of the fictional letters and the scholarly
17 This reference appeared in Hamilton‟s letter to her friend Mrs. Gregory.
“Dissertation,” serves to complicate Hamilton‟s presentation of Hindus and Britons and at times make her satire rather slippery.
The Rajah comes to a better understanding of Britons through his acquaintance with Percy and Captain Grey, whom he meets in India, and Dr.
Severan, the Ardents, and the Denbeighs in England. In particular, by putting together Sheermaal‟s information about English boarding schools, Dr.
Severan‟s explanation of women‟s education, and his own conversations with Miss Ardent and Lady Grey, the Rajah acknowledges the excellence of Christian precepts as well as the universal potential for both vice and virtue.
Before leaving England, the Rajah writes to Maandaara, remarking that “to extend our knowledge of the world, is but to become acquainted with new modes of pride, vanity, and folly,” and that “in Europe, as in Asia, an affected singularity often passes for superior wisdom; bold assertion for truth; and sickly fastidiousness for true delicacy of sentiment.” His journey makes him realize that “the passions of men are everywhere the same.” In addition, he notes that “notwithstanding the progress of [radical] philosophy, and the report of Sheermaal, […] Christianity is not yet entirely extinct; but that, like Virtue and Wisdom, it has still some adherents, in the retired scenes of life”
(Hamilton 306-07).
As the Rajah concludes his trip, he remains optimistic about the value of cross-cultural communication. Nevertheless, he also mentions to Maandaara “the complaisance of the people of England” who put “such faith […] in the assertions of philosophers!” (Hamilton 307). Hamilton‟s work implies that Britons have to reform themselves before they criticize Hindus, for in comparison with the notable moral apathy in Britain, Hindu society at least appears to be “true to its own values” (Perkins and Russell 22). While her work takes British dominion over India for granted, it subscribes to what Perkins and Russell refer as a particular “version of colonialism which will work only if the English practice the Christian tolerance and mercy they preach, something which the novel implies is not by any means certain to happen” (Perkins and Russell 29). Furthermore, Hamilton‟s discussion of womanhood via a multitude of British and Hindu viewpoints appears to suggest that the current defects in women‟s “decorative” education and the limited as well as limiting outlook on women‟s vocation are in more urgent need of remedy, whether in Britain or India.
Hamilton‟s Hindoo Rajah is unique in its inclusion of a scholarly
“Dissertation” and footnotes, the pairing of the Rajah with other Hindu informants, and the specific double contexts of Britain and India. As the reviews of her work showed, ethnographic details were increasingly seen as a requisite for literature dealing with the Orient, and the apparent fictionality of the Oriental traveler appeared increasingly outmoded. Although the Rajah appears to be an open-minded albeit naïve traveler, and although even Maandaara and Sheermaal sometimes get things right, Hamilton‟s work also at times illustrates the cultural stagnation of contemporary India and the defects of Hinduism concerning women‟s education. As “Anglicist” and utilitarian approaches to colonial administration gained momentum in the early nineteenth century (Macfie 50-58), the idea of an intelligent Hindu‟s enlightened vision of “the passions of men [being] everywhere the same” gradually lost any critical purchase it might once have offered. By remodelling the antiquated mechanism of the pseudo-Oriental letters in imagining India and Britain via the inflecting lens of fictional Hindus, Hamilton‟s work offers a vision of intercultural understanding and transnational universality while it embodies and contributes to the shifting tides of British Orientalism.
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