Unearthing Pilgrimage Nationalism: A Reading of Hymavathabhuvil CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION-Routes of Travel: The Discourse of Travel The spirit of travel has

lived on down the ages. In recorded history, there have been instances where by one is able to know that man has been travelling throughout the ages. Stories of sailors trapped alone, under the unpredictable traps destiny had in store for them, in islands and unknown lands, always marvelled the reading minds. There has been a written record or one of such tales from the early Egyptian Empire, which proves the significance and relevance of undertaking analyses and studies on travel writing. If for early (pre historic) human beings travelling was a means for survival in the acute weather conditions and food shortages, for the people, later in the course of human evolution, it became a socio-political as well as cultural need. However, this need often mutated a propagandist pollination of cultural and social elements, for political purposes. The stories about journeys are ample in epics as well as in religious texts. In the Bible, there are instances and references for journeys undertaken by people. The Book of Exodus narrates such a tale of adventure and 'divine'

mission, of Mosses. The Indian epic Ramayana is nothing but the 'Ayanam' or 'the travel of Rama', the prince of a mighty kingdom. According to Peter Hulme the latest significant shift in travel writing can be dated to the late 1970's and associated with a trio of books, the best known of which is Bruce Chatwins', In Patagonia' (1977). This book appeared a just year before Edward Said's Orientalism, which is the canonized text of analysis regarding the post colonial studies(qtd.in Hulme,Youngs,2002). "One of the most persistent observation regarding travel writings, is its absorption of differing narrative styles, and genre, the manner in which it effortlessly shape-shifts and blends any number of imaginative encounters, and its potential for interaction with a broad range of historical periods, disciplines and perspectives" (qtd. in Glennhooper p.3). According to Raban (1987) "Travel writing accommodates the private diary, the essay, the short story, the prose, poem, the rough note and polished table talk with indiscriminate hospitality...." (qtd. in Clark p.1). As mentioned earlier, travel narratives often predominate the voices of the referent, with its, often

conspicuous, colour of the home culture. This arrests the question of reliability on the narrator. Present day analyses of travel writing are significantly influenced by Foucauldian perspectives as well as postcolonial arguments put forward by Edward Said in his book Orientalism. The concept of Apodemic Literature (Ars Apodemia-Art of travelling) concerns itself with travel writings. The expounder of this concept was an Austrian critic named Justin Stagl. Stagl defines Apodimic Literature as works in which the central concern is providing systematic rules useful for travel and observation. Apodemic literature "Is a literature, which is written and consumed with the precise intention- on both parts-of affecting behavior"(qtd. in Jack,Phipps.p79). Travel writing, being a socio cultural endeavor, foregrounds the religious undertone in being a narrative of the journey that was in part adventure, or travel, in part spiritual salvation and part of the gains brought back were indulgences remissions of the temporal punishment for sin. That is why Wolfgang Neuber called travel literature as 'Devotional literature'(qtd. in Martels).

Travel narratives in India can roughly be put into two groups; one dealing with the foreign countries, particularly England; the other about our own country, and mostly deals with Himalaya and Kashmir (Sisir Kumar Das) during the 19th century onwards, we can find travel narratives which concentrate more and more on Hindu religious centers , in almost all the regional languages. This was developed as part of the National freedom Struggle, in which certain places and certain stories are selected to construct a homogenous Indian nation. This project tries to analyze M.P. Veerendrakumar's Hymavathabhuvil (2008) as a representative text which presents this aspect of Indian nationalism. The term 'Pilgrimage Nationalism' is used in the project to refer to the practice of visiting places of national importance (Delhi, Meerut, Jalian Valla Baugh) in the similar fashion of pilgrimages. This can also mean the practice of considering religious pilgrim centers as the soul of nation. In India, Hindu religious centers get unusual importance in the public sphere. Most of the contemporary travel narratives valorize Hindu religious centers and triy to construct an India based on Vedic Dharma. Through these narratives they argue that Indian nationalism and Indian Freedom Struggle

are originally with a Hindu base and that the historians have neglected this aspect of freedom struggle. Before analyzing the arguments of Hindu nationalists, the very concept of nationalism should be understood and how the Euro-centric notion of nationalism becomes the defining feature of Hindu nationalism. The Politics of Nationalism The Age of nationalism in the modern sense of the word is a recent phenomenon. Some historians argue that the age of nationalism developed in the 18th century in the West, and emerged at a later period as a universal political concept. According to Kohn, it was only between 1815and1920, that the political map of Europe was redrawn, while the political map of Asia and Africa changed between 1945 and 1965 (Kohn 1968). Before this period nationalism with its present implication did not exist; there were citystates, tribal groups and dynastic states and empires (Phadnis.Ganguli,2001). The study of the development of nationalism is one of the most controversial subjects in different disciplines like Anthropology, Political Science, Cultural studies etc.. Most of the contemporary critics agree on one ground, that is, nation is simply a construction.

Ernest Barker defined a nation as "a body of men, inhabiting a definite territory, who normally are drawn from different races, but posses a common stock of thought and feeling acquired and transmitted during the course of a common history; who on the whole and in the main, though more in the past than in the present, include in that common sock a common religious belief, who generally and as a rule use a common language as the vehicle of their thoughts and feelings; and who, besides common thoughts and feelings, also cherish a common will, and accordingly form or tend to form, a separate state for the expression and realization of that will".(Phadnis,Ganguli,2001) But one of the basic requirements for identifying and ethnic group as a nation is the desire of its members to become a politically autonomous entity. The development of an ethnic group in to a nation will be a collective desire which is the result of some political threat or a fear of losing the values or belief system that the ethnic group holds for years. Marx and Engels engaged with the issue of nationalism in the middle decades of the 19th century, in other words, during the period in which the bourgeois revolution was being completed across Western Europe, North America, and Japan. They argued that the working class should support national movements and the formation of new nation-states where they

would hasten the development of capitalism, and consequently the experience of working class, and where they would weaken the great reactionary powers of Europe, the most powerful of which was absolutist Russia. Even though Marx and Engels discuss the issue of nation-building from the beginning of Marxist movement itself, Marxist analysis of nation never was a serious issue. The first serious attempt to study the formation of nation-states was done by Benedict Anderson. In his book Imagined Communities (1983) he argued that nationalism is "a radically changed form of consciousness". "It is imagined because the members of the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their community". ( Davidson,2007) Different writers including Otto Bauer (in The National Question and Social Democracy, 1906) and Anderson himself have studied the role of capitalism in the development of national consciousness. Anderson, while developing his idea of 'Print Capitalism' says that it "gave a new fixity to language which in the long run helped to build that image of antiquity so central to the subjective idea of the nation". And they created "language of power", with certain dialects plying a dominant part in communication through printing.

They were "largely un-self conscious process resulting from explosive interaction between capitalism, technology and human linguistic diversity". Anderson identified three main kinds of nationalism, arising in successive waves; they are 'Creole Nationalism', 'Language Nationalism' and 'Official Nationalism'. Creole Nationalism is associated with the revolt of the American Colonies, Language Nationalism with Western Europe, Official Nationalism with Central and Eastern Europe and Asian- African anticolonial movements(Davidson,2007). In his book Nationalism,(1960) Kedourie emphasized the fluid character of national identity, which rendered national self determination "a principle of disorder". Eric Hobsbawn also discusses the emergence of national consciousness in the similar way as that of Anderson. He talks abut 'Invented Traditions' by which he mean a set of practices, normally govern by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by reputation, which automatically implies continuity with past. In fact, where possible, they normally attempt established continuity with a suitable historic past. However, in so far as there in such reference to a historic past, the peculiarity of 'invented' traditions is that the continuity with it is largely

fictitious. In short, they are responses to novel situations which take the form of reference to old situations, or which establish their own past by quasiobligatory repetition. Hobs Bawn argued that all invented traditions use references to the past not only for the cementation of group cohesion but also for the legitimation of action, and that historians in the present should become much more aware of such political uses of their work in the public sphere. From the abovementioned arguments, we can sum up the points like this: i.e., nation is not a god- given or sacred idea, but simply a social construct, and every society tried to build up an image of nation based on the dominant cultural practices existing in that society. In India the dominant religious group is Hindus, and Hindu ideologues argue that India is a Hindu nation and all other groups including Muslims, Christians, Dalits should accept Hindu values, in order to be 'Indians'. The major arguments of Hindu nationalism can be analysed as follows Hindu Nationalism Nationalism in India emerged under colonial conditions; conditions that put Indian civilization itself on trial as the principal impediment to modernity

and self rule. A key component of colonial Indian elite configurations of primordial nationalism was Aryanism, which in the Indian context represented the synthesis of several intellectual strands arising from British and Germen Orientalism, and from process of upper cast, religious, regional and vernacular elite consolidation in colonial India. India was consigned to an otherworldly and decidedly pre-modern position, and has pointed out moments when reactions to colonial and orientalist characterization lead to other versions of Hinduism as the indigenous cultural repository of identity and value. This process too lead to a variety of allegations on Islam, as foreign invador and a colonizing power that had subdued a Hindu nation and prepared the way for British colonial rule(Dirks,p.255). The 19th century gave rise to a variety of what are often called 'Neo-Hindu' strands.But the focus on a strictly 'religious reformation' elided a grandeur process and the thinking ability of nationalism for some was primarily figured from with in a new Hindu religious and ethicized framework such that, by the turn of the century, nationalism and Hinduism can be spoken of as synonymous, even by tendencies that was seemingly opposed to sectarian communalism and Hindu majoritarianism(Bhatt,p.16). It was not just the idea of a majority that was new but also the use of a

single term "Hindu", to designate a population that ranged so widely in belief, practice, identity and recognition. "Hindu" began as a general designation for the people of a place, but little by little it was affiliated to normative conditions that were oppositional (to Muslims or Christians), exclusive (of trebles or untouchables), and confessional (in the sense of a world religion)(Dirks,p.255). New voices emerged as representatives of socio-political constituencies that saw the Hindu whole as hierarchical, oppressive, and graded the precipitate of a politics of exclusion that endangered groups "within" as much as out side." The constitution of minorities in colonial India served both to justify the colonial state, which legitimized itself in part through its claim to offer protection to minority groups that were seen as endangered, and fashion the majority as homogenous group. In so far as many of these currents had apparently European origins, or were influenced by Western Intellectual discourses, Nationalism in colonial India can be conceived as ' derivative discourses' (P. Chaterjee 1986), or as 'Catacheness' (Spivak 1993), as an example of 'Hybridity' (Bhabha 1994), and indeed were 'invented traditions' (Hobsbawn 1983)"(qtd. in Bhatt,p.8).

The rise of a distinctive Hindu Nationalist ideology and political movement with a coherent ideology of Hindu exclusivity, supremacy and nationhood is usually traced in historical scholarship to the troubled and violent period from 1919 to the mid 1920's. It was indeed in 1923 that V D Savarkar's founding statement on Hindu identity, "Hindutva-Who is a Hindu? "was published. In 1924 Swami Shraddhananda published his Hindu SangadhanSaviour of the Dying Race. During this period the new militant Hindu group RSS formed. The tangible relation ship between Hinduism and Indian nationalism, articulated primarily through a civilization and cultural discourse of archaic Vedism supplemented by a politicization of devotionalism, had been politically and discursively established in the later decades of the 19th century. The reform leaders like Lala Lajpat Rai, Bipin Chandrapal, and Bal Gangadhara Tilak started politicization of religious dogmas. Bipin Chandra pal's 1901 essay 'Reform on "National lines"' explicitly advocated "the thought structure of the Aryan fellowship as key components that distinguished nationality in India (and ancient Greece) from other nationalisms"(Bhatt,p.41). Lala Lajpath Rai declared that "the Hindus are a nation in themselves, because they represent a civilization all their own" (1899). Dayananda Sarswathi believed that the Aryans were the

original inhabitance of the world, living first in Tibet and then after separating from the ignoble, unvirtuous, lowly and ignorant dasyas, moving to uninhabited India or Aryavarta. Aurobindo developed his concept of 'dharmic nationalism' based on Aryan or Vedic ideas. The Gandhian era witnessed a serious development of Hinduisation of politics. Religious reform coupled with political action was one of the most important tactics used by Gandhi. Indian National Congress and Mahatma Gandhi directly involved in Hindu reform movements. In other words; the secular politics of Indian Freedom Struggle became more and more Hinduised and 'Hindu' issues like Vaikkom Satyagraha became 'national' issues. E.V.Ramaswami Naikkar criticized this change of Congress politics. Earlier he supported Congress and was a staunch supporter of Gandhi. After Vaikkom Satyagraha he declared "no Gandhi, no Congress, and no religion" (Dirks,2008) as his motto and became a prominent leader in Tamil Nadu. Not only Gandhi, but even the patrician social democrat, Jawaharlal Nehru used religious symbols and categories to garner support. In his Discovery of India (1946), despite his English education and his modernist and internationalist

sympathies, Nehru struggled with sentimental images of blood-line, landscape and nurture to express his feelings for India, its history and people. Post-independent India also concentrated more and more on Hinduisation of politics. Indira Gandhi became a symbol of Bharat Mata. The extremist religious parties gained control. The Bhartiya Janata Party was formally launched in February 1980, after split of the Janata Party on the RSS issue. BJP is a reincarnation of the Jana Sangh, the Hindu Nationalist Party founded by Shyama Prasad Mukherjee in 1951. The party adopted four fundamentals: one country, one nation, one culture and a rule of law that would determine its future course of action. Secularism, for the Jana Sangh, was simply a disguised policy of Muslim appeasement. The ideological background of BJP is very much influenced by the early Hindu Renaissance of 19th century (from Tilak to Aurobindo). In 1998 BJP declared that "our nationalist vision is not nearly bound by the geographical or political identity of Bharath but to refer by our timeless cultural heritage. This cultural heritage, which is central to all region, religion, and languages, is a civalisational identity and constitute the cultural nationalism of India which is the

core of Hindhutva. This we believe is the identity of our ancient nation 'Bharatha Varsha' the evolution of Hindutva in politics is the antidote to the creation of vote banks and appeasement of sectional interest"(Bhatt,p.149). Recently, the involvement of BJP leaders like L.K Advani in the abolition of Babari Masjid proved in the enquiries of judicial commission. The Supreme Court of India emphasized the difficulty of defining the terms Hindu, Hindutva and Hinduism, in 1995. But even now political parties and organizations use these terms for political games. BJP and its sub organizations like RSS emphasized the need for strong Hindu nation. The ideological background of these organizations was given by people like Shyamaprasad Mukherjee, K B. Hedgewar, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya and M S. Golwalkar. They used the writings of V D. Savarkar, Swami Dayananda Saraswathi, Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo to form theoretical background for their movement. Earlier congress party and other secular movements supported these people to gain political power. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru inducted Shyamaprasad Mukharjee - godfather of modern Hidutva and Hindu nationalism-in the Interim Central Government as a

Minister for Industry and Supply. He resigned from his office on April 6th 1950, as reaction against the Indo-Pak mutual agreement. M S. Golwalkar, the Extremist Hindu Militant leader accepted ideas even from German Nazism. His works We or Our Nationhood Defined(1938), and Bunch of thoughts (collection of his articles) ( 1966) clearly shows his extremist ideas. At one point of time he declared, "To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic Races-the Jews. Race pride at his highest has been manifested here-Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by", and "ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu nation has been gallantly fighting on to take these despoilers. The Race spirit has been awaking"(Wikipedia.org). These militant leaders criticize both Muslims and Christians as intruders in the land of Hindus. Arun Shourie, a contemporary RSS thinker, in two recent books displaces the authentic identity of Indian Christians who have chosen not to belong to the hierarchcal Brahmanical

Hinduism, and disparages the movement of Ambedkarism, which consciously unites Dalits to stand against the Hindu nationalist conception of a 'free India'. Abhas Chatergee, in his The Concept of Hindu Nation (1995) discussed the notion of a Hindu Rashtra. V. Sundaram in his review of this book titled 'Cry for a Hindu Nation' says that, "those who say that we have to establish a Hindu nation, use wrong words, the correct and exact word ought to be-The Hindu Nation Has to Gain Its Independence". This dangerous idea shows that the present day Indian politic, history, literatureand all other facets of life are contaminated greatly. Travel Writings in India As mentioned earlier Indian travel writings concentrate more and more on spiritual centers. The earliest works includes Kasi Yathra Caritha (Telugu) in 1838, Himalayanopravas (1929) by Kaka Kalekar. Rabindra Nath Tagore dominated the Bangali travel narratives too. His Japan Yathri(1919) and Parasye (1936) narrates travel experience in Persia,and Rastyar Cithi (1930)is about Russian experience. Tibbat Me Sava Baras (1933) is a Hindi travelogue by Rahul Sankrityayan. Early Malayalam Travel Narratives were secular in nature which includes Varthamanappusthakam by P. Thoma

Kathanar, Bilathi Visesam (1916) by K P. Keshavamenon, Bhupradaksina Vrthantam (1938) by N J. Nayar, Jnana Kanda (on Europe) by Kuttan Nayar (1936). The communist movement also strengthened the genre. AKG's travel account on Russia, Nan Oru Lokam Kandu (1954), K M. Panikkar's Apalkaramaya Yathra (1944) on Europe and his Rantu Cainayil (1956), Caina Munnottu by Joseph Mundassery are earliest examples of Secular Malayalam travel narratives. But one writer who is famous especially for his travel accounts is S K. Pottakkatt and regarded as Ibnu Buttutta or Marko Polo of India. His travel account consists of roughly 2700 pages. The dominant nature of Malayalam travel writing is not secularism, but religious ideas. The progressive movements and secular thoughts do not affect the religious aspect of travel narratives in Kerala. The Sandesa Kavyas are some of the earliest imaginative literature in which we can find lovers sending messengers for their wish fulfillment. But the first travel narrative in Malayalam is Dharmarajavinte Rameswarayatra (author unknown). This followed a series of travel narratives which includes Kasiyatra Vivaranam (Vykkom Pachu Moottatu), Rameswarayatra (Venmani Achan), Kasiyatra (Paliyath Cheriya Kunhunni), Kashi Yatra Rappotta(Kottayattu Govinda Menon), Oru Theertha Yatra(Tharavath Ammalu Amma), Kailasayatra,

Himagiriviharam (Thapovana Swami), the list goes on. From these examples we can see that the genre called travel narrative is dominated by pilgrims and religious centers. The contemporary travel narratives too reflect these devotional elements. Indian writers modeled their travel narratives on Western ideologies. For them, as mentioned earlier, travel narrative means Devotional Literature. The second chapter of this dissertation focusses on the travel narratives on India, written by of Western authors. This study clearly shows the idea that the image of India as essentially spiritual and Hindu, came from the Western writers. Their idea of India was full of contradictions; exotic but spiritual, mysterious but enchanting. This binary, which Indian writers wanted to destroy, became the very base of our own writers. Even now, for our travel writers India is essentially spiritual. After the liberalization policies of the government during 1990s, there is a widespread demand for travel narratives based on spiritual centers. There are travel narratives, travel sites, blogs and other internet resources which club travel writing with tourism. Writings of this kind include Nasik Kumbha Mela: A Spiritual Sojourn by Govind Swarup

(2003), Kumbha City Prayag (S.K.Dubey 2001), and Gateway to the Gods: Haridwar, Rishikesh, Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath, Badrinath (Rita and Rupindra Khllar-2004) etc. Hymavathabhuvil comes in the same category of these religious travel narratives. The main chapter, of the project discusses the text Hymavathabhuvil written by M.P. Virendrakumar, the socialist veteran from Kerala. Hymavathabhuvil attempts the symmetrical representation of India, which is akin to the cultural identity of Hinduism. This symmetry realizes itself into a geopolitical identity of India, which is essentially hinduized. This can be treated as an attempt to justify the terminological identity of 'Sanatana Dharma', attributed to the Indian tradition. The pretext of diversity, in the sociopolitical-cultural space of the country, is thus transmutated in to homogeneity: which stresses on Hindutva as a socio-political-cultural neuron, which stimulates and runs the whole nation. This dissertation does not aim at a critique of the wider concept of nationalism. However, it observes and analyses the homogeneity of identity attributed to the concept of nationalism: the projection of Hinduist identity to India; within the purview of Hymavathabhuvil.

CHAPTER 2 Demystifying the Image of India: A Post-colonial Reading of the Travel Narratives about India by the Western Authors "[T]here is nothing more consistent than a racist humanism since the European has only been able to become a man through creating slaves and monsters". Jean Paul Sartre (1967)(qtd. in Clark) One of the most persistent observations regarding travel writing is its absorption of differing narrative styles and genres, the manner in which it effortlessly shape-shifts and blends any number of imaginative encounters, and its potential for interaction with a broad range of historical periods, disciplines and perspectives. The description of people, their nature, customs, religion, forms of government, and language is so embedded in the travel writing produced in Europe after the 16th century, that one assumes ethnography to be essential to the genre(Youngs,Hooper,p.242). As travel itself has changed- physically as well as in terms of its perception- so too has travel writing altered, reflecting the shifting aesthetic and cultural fashions of the days as well as the power inequalities that lie between East and West, the history of empire, and the gendered spaces of home and abroad.

The 1978 publication of Palestinian critic Edward Said's starkly titled Orientalism- almost contemporaneous with Arab Anthropologist Talal Assad's edited volume Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter and American feminist philosophers Sandra Harding's' and Helen Longino's first papers on 'stand point epistemology'- initiated for the English speaking public an epistemological shift that would transform the study of culture and cultures. Said had been reading Foucault, and found in the concept of 'discourse' a magic key to the problem of Western imperial domination of 'the East'(Youngs,Hooper,p.265). There are two dimensions intrinsic to post-colonial theory. The first, as a colonial discourse analysis, examines European culture and literature for how the West produces representations of its others, against which and through which it defines itself. The second examines the ways in which the contradictions and inconsistencies of colonial discourse produce a locus of instability from which the central epistemological, ontological and legislative terms of the West can be challenged. Travel writing has been identified by many of its more discerning critics as a mode of colonial discourse that reinforces European norms. In her study

Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (1992), Mary Louise Pratt demonstrates how travel narratives have helped, directly or indirectly, to produce "'the rest of the world' for European readerships at different points in Europe's expansionist trajectory". (p .5). Pratt considers travel narrative as a "contact zone" by which she means "the space of colonial encounters, the space in which people geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relation, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical in equality and interactable conflict"(p6). She developed the term "anti -conquest" to refer to "the strategies of representation where by European bourgeois subject seek to secure their innocence in the same moment as they assert European hegemony In

travel exploration writings these strategies of innocence are contributed in relation to older imperial rhetoric of conquest associated with the absolutist era"(p7). David Spurr, identifies travel writing as one of those "discourses of colonialism" by which "one culture comes to interpret, to represent, and finally to dominate another". Ali Behdad sees his study of 19th century European travel writing as contributing to what Homi Bhabha calls

"mediation". Inderpal Grewal traces the multiple discourses of travel in 'Euro-imperial' visions of 'home' and 'harem'-"spatial constructions", as she calls them, that "metaphorically and metonymically construct home and away or empire and nation at various sites in the colonial period through gendered bodies"(Glage,2000 p.37). The post-colonial is both an index of anti-colonial resistance and a codeword for the neo-colonial process by which cultural othernesses assimilated, reproduced, and consumed. Historically, travel writing has capitalized on exotic perceptions of cultural differences: it has made a virtue of, and a profit from, the strangeness of foreign places and cultures, delivering up to its mostly white metropolitan reading public what Paul Fussel calls "the exotic anomalies, wonders, and scandals ( ) which their own place or time cannot entirely supply". Clearly, travel writing at its worst has helped support an imperialist perception by which the exciting 'otherness' of foreign, for the most part non-European peoples and places is pressed into the service of rejuvenating a humdrum domestic culture. Nelson Graburn argued that the modern experience of travel "has antecedents and

equivalence in other seeming the more purposeful institution such as medieval student travel, the Crusades, and European and Asian pilgrimage circuits"(Glage,p.38). The description of peoples in their variety was one of the most valued parts of the narratives of travel that proliferated after the Renaissance, both for the entertainment value of the depiction of curious behavior, and for the philosophical issues which this evidence for variety raised about the existence, or not, of universal human traits. The European ethnographic impulse was the product of a unique combination of colonial expansion and intellectual transformation. On the back of the growth of travel writing both ethnography and ethnology, were, in fact, crucial to the Enlightenment project of a world-historical science of mankind. Much of the theoretically informed writing on travel and travel writing has had to do with imperial periods of later 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, in which the geographical surveying of the globe as well as the anthropological investigation of its non-metropolitan or 'city less' (aporoi) peoples produced so much knowledge in the service of so much desire for power and wealth. Historians and historicist literary critics like Francis

Jennings and Michael Nerlich, and historical anthropologists and ethno historians like James Axtenn and Marshall Sahlins studied the travel writings of this period(Youngs,Hooper,p.209). For all its claims to precision and unprejudiced observation, the naturalist science of the 18th century was often conditioned by ideological debates in which scientific and philosophical pretensions seemed to work against commonsense, so that native people may emerge as care free noble savages or childish, sexually weak American Indians, often un recognizable to more experienced observers. The emergence of 'scientific ethnology' under the impact of evolutionary theories in the 19th century did not seem to help either. For a naturalist like Alfred Russell Wallace, who to his credit spend 8 years in the Malay islands attempting to classify natives (along side plants and animals) by learning languages and direct observation, there was no doubt that a very interventionist colonial paternalism was the only means by which the various 'raises of savages', by themselves uninterested in progress, could be prompted to cover the necessary states between 'barbarism and civilization'(Youngs,Hooper.P.250). One of the most striking sub-genres of the early modern periods were sets of instructions for travelers to record

what they saw in a methodological fashion, through a number of 'heads' which could vary in emphasis but which tended to reflect those same categories already present in the most systematic travel narratives of the period. It was up to individual observers to bring their own education, experience, and intelligence to their ethnographic practices. The problem here is less any lack of desire for scientific objectivity than the difficulty and some times reluctance of many travelers to engage with native languages, belief systems, and literary traditions. Europeans living abroad as Europeans especially is in dominant position in relation to natives, were unlikely to become great cultural decoders unless motivated by a particular scientific passion. Post war travel writing has undoubtedly become more sensitized to ethnic stereo typing and cultural condescension: structurally and generically, however, it refuses to religious its basic prerogatives. The certifiably post modern strategies-duplication of quest, self mockery, and melancholic under tones-cannot detract from a kind of constitutive affiliation. The invented past through which the writer project his or her identity remains collective, formed by political and historical sedimentation. Travel paradoxically

foregrounds condition: part of the fascination of the form is its pre inscription of role, its accuracy as reflector of cultural status (or lack of it). Travel writing and India Elizabeth Bruce Elton Smith's work The East India Sketch (1832) opens up with the question-'How to write about India?' The conventions for representing India are already fixed, the genres well- worn, and the land over-described. India is a land of Arabian Nights exoticism, a county unchanged for 3000 years or a site to be mined for statistical information. It is an unchanging land where the customs of biblical times persisted, where diabolical idols were worshipped, where men were effeminate and widows followed the rite of Sati, sacrificing themselves on their husband's funeral pyres. Indian military incompetence, the deficiencies of government an inherent submissiveness of Hindus etc were the major themes in early travel narratives. This includes Jemima Kindersley's Letters (1777), William Hodges' Travels in India (1793), and James Mill's History of British India (1817).

Early English descriptions of Indian landscape are infused with aesthetics and the colonial ideology. Ideas of what was 'sublime' helped travelers articulate specific colonial themes. The aesthetics of the sublime, common to the 18th century Europe, embodied terror and vastness, darkness and obscurity, danger and challenge. The English traveller negotiates the threatening India's landscape of desolation, characterized by emptiness, vastness of ruins, absence of markers, roads or cultivation, or excessive natural phenomena in 'three moments', according to Promod K Nayar, "(A) the moment of self preservation in the face of threat from the landscape, when the traveler describes the threatening landscape. This 'negative sublime', where the landscape is devoid of markers or directions. The desolation frightens because there is no discernable meaning; (B) the moment of affirmation, of the 'Hermeneutic sublime' (Weiskel), where the attribution of meaning to the desolation by the English traveler asserts individual agency. (C) Finally, through acts of self affirmation, the traveler moves from solitude to society from threaten to the safe. The narrative concludes with the traveler in a state of relative safety, in a 'locus amoenus' or a 'landscape of amenity' (Andrews 1999). Colonial ideology becomes more pronounced in (B) and (C) when English man and woman

suggest affirmative action or a transformation of the landscape, and desolation is treated as a sources/site for 'improvement'. It is in this shift from (A) to (C) that colonial ideology permeates landscape description"(Pramod.K.Nayar,web) The English experience of India in the 1757-1820 period was not exactly one of comfort, stability, or safety. The English faced several wars, charges of corruption, and infighting at the East India House(London), mounting debts, and parliamentary investigations. Numerous English soldiers died in battles or suffered imprisonment across India. The India affairs were described as 'embarrassed' (Critical Review, 35, 1773) though it remained a 'precarious possession' (The Times, Feb.25, 1755). In 18th century travelogues, sublime and beautiful landscape are suggested by a set of opposites: barren/cultivated, uninhabited/populated, uncontrolled/regulated, poverty-stricken/prosperous, unsafe/safe, these opposites are also temporarily categorized, where the sublime features of barrenness and emptiness are associated with an Indian past. Safety and prosperity are associated with English activities in the present, while being directed towards the future.

George Forster opens his A Journey from Bengal to England (1798) thus: "the English should no longer accounts themselves sojourners in this country; they are now, virtually its lords paramount, and their policy should not be that of a day; but considering the opulence and wealth of the subject as closely tending to enrich the common state, they should, at large support his wants, and encourage his labour" (chapt; 1:3). Forster then envisages England's role in India: "as the welfare of the British dominion in India ultimately depends on the prosperity of Bengal, no labour should be thought irksome, no rational plan left untried, which may improve its revenue, or encourage its past"(p.8). Here we can see that the English started considering India as a "possession". Bernier's text, Travels in the Mughal Empire: A.D.1656-1708 was a primary source for certain European writers from Montesquieu to Marx for their representation and characterization of oriental despotism. The distinctive features of oriental despotism in their eyes were absolutist and tyrannical monarchs who ruled over polities that lacked a hereditary nobility and private property in land. The Mughal Empire of the 17th and 18th centuries was characterized by a devolutionary distribution of authority among multiple lesser sovereignties, by a complex hierarchy of land tenure and

appropriation of product, by a developed system of commerce and by a tolerance and coexistence of pluralistic sub-cultures. The current trend in theorizing about post-colonial societies is not the representation of precolonial societies at the time of contact as oriental despotism was a protocolonial and colonial construction which served as a reason and justification for political intervention, conquest and exploitation. Travel writing under the Raj inevitably reflected the prejudices and social, cultural, and racial arrogance that typified the common mentality of the imperialist. Sir Richard Francis Burton's travel book Goa, and the Blue Mountains(1851), draws a fine picture of the Portuguese city of Goa, with its narrow streets and numerous churches, as well as Ootacamund(Ooty), the British hill station, in the Nilgiri mountains in South India. Burton delineates the local character of the Goans and the social mores of the British forever partying in Ooty. His irresistible appetite for erotic adventure took him to the village of Seroda and there is a suggestion that this marked the beginning of Goa's current reputation for a sex-sea-sand-and-drug culture. Flowers and Elephants (Constance Sitwell, 1927) depicting the fantastical East of the rajahs, Rishis, and rituals formed a staple of the travel writing of

British woman during the empire. In a breathless survey of Indians and India she" envied them their beautiful tradition of clothes that goes on century after century unchanged". The Magic Mountains (Kennedy, 1996) analyses the hill stations as a special sphere of British bourgeois life. In The Gorgeous East: One Man's India (1965), Rupert Croft Cook notes how upon his arrival he "instantly took a new view of life and my whole conception of the earth and its races was given a fresh perspective ....I loved India at sight and was passionately anxious about it". Before he slept on that very first night he" knew that this, and no other, was the 'other country', the alter terra which exist for every traveler". Tim Pigott Smith's Out of India (1986) was inspired by his initial contact with the subcontinent when filming 'The Jewel of the Crown'in 1982, and is an anthology conceived "to lead you through a series of impressions and feelings". The project was fuelled by Pigott Smith's "own sense of intrigue", and the tone is nostalgic for the bygone days of British rule: "those centuries are still there, the attitudes trapped in time, the actions held in space, a part of India-Not forgotten-Not judged- Just there Still there".

The American writers Mitchell and Goshal, in their 20th Century India (1944) introduced "a mysterious country of yogis (yogez) and snake charmers ", to the American reading public. Lisa Hobbs, India, India (1967) reflected the then contemporary perception of the importance of Western aid and primarily American aid:"what will happen when the Americans can no longer feed India". Buddhist and Hindu temple architecture are high on many visitors' lists, reflecting a trend of the 1960's and 70's, epitomized by Beatles' tour of India (Snyder, 1972). Religion has always played an important role in the Indian travel experience. It is apparent to even the most cursory observer that spirituality is interwoven in the woof of Indian culture and civilization. Paul Brunton's A Search in Secret India (1934), and Norman Lewis' A Goddess in the Stones (1991) reflect Indian spirituality.

CHAPTER 3 Beyond the Saffron Horizon: A Scaffolding of the Pretext Travel narratives as a well established literary genre was developed in Europe as part of colonialism. As discussed in the first chapter, colonial Europe constructed the 'other' as exotic dangerous east, as part of colonial expansion. The idea of an India which is the center of spirituality also developed during this period, by the European historians. As the European historians argued, before the coming of the westerners, India does not have a history at all, except the highly imaginative literature in the form of epics, puranas etc and also the well developed Sanskrit literature of Kalidasa and Bhasa. The idea of a mystic India later developed as an idea of a well formed spiritual greatness of India. The project does not try to argue that the whole Vedas and Upanishads were developed by westerners, instant the modern idea of Vedas and Upanishads were greatly influenced by western thinking. The idea that India was the cradle of all civilizations(can be seen in the works of Voltaire, Herder, Kant, Frederich Schlegel among many others) or the original home land of humanity (in the works of Schlegel, Schelling, even Hegel), that Hinduism represents humanity's primal philosophy (in

Herder, Schlegel), or that Hinduism offered redemption for contemporary humanity(in Schopenhauer), even that 'humanism' itself could be conceived as resulting from Hindu values (in Herder), as well as the associated ideas that privileged a transcendental cultural epistemology of a 'national soul' above any determination of the state(variously Herder, Fichte, Renan among others) were widely disseminated in Europe. During the independence struggle the notion of 'greatness' became more popular, as a resistance to 'white man's burden'. In virtuality every high cultural system, be it the Indic, the Islamic, the SinoJapanese, or the Judeo-Christian, the literary tradition has, though in vastly different forms and guises, developed in intimate-indeed, often intertwiningrelation to religious thought, practice, institution and symbolism. Scholars have frequently suggested that certain genres of literature, notably poetry and drama may have arisen directly from religious rituals. Some times in a particular culture, as in the case of ancient India, literature may be the principal record of a religious tradition. To students of the Indian tradition, it is entirely appropriate, indeed even common place, to assert that religion provided both form and substance for virtually all of its classical literary culture. So invisible are the two phenomena that the authors of a modern

introduction to Indian literature feel compelled to state that "until relatively modern times in India-meaning by India the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent-it is sometimes difficult to distinguish literature from religious documentation. This is not because there has been an imposition of a system of religious values on the society; it is rather because religion in India is so interwoven with every facet of life, including many forms of literature that it becomes indistinguishable". (Anthony C. Young) In Hymavathabhuvil, we can find out the close connection between religious ideas and literature. As Z. R. W. M. von Martels noted, travel narratives or an ideal travel narrative is expected to provide both instruction and moral improvement. Modern travel narratives also give such a vast religious education. M.P.Virendrakumar, author of Hymavathabhuvil says that the origin of Indian civilization can be traced in the banks of rivers like Ganga, Yamuna, Bhagiradhi, etc.(Introduction xi). Through this text Virendrakumar articulates the universalized concept of nation as expounded by the religious majority; i.e. the Hindus. The nationalist icons are culled out from the pantheon of the 'cultured' or from the tradition of the majority. The popular motives of the Indian nation, for instance, are invariably invoked from the classical art or the texts of the upper caste religion. Such an identity excludes

the cultural practices of the marginalized. An exclusivist view of cultural identity is thus fore grounded, which, given the immense variety in cultural practices in India, leads to a disjunction between the national and the popular. Moreover, whichever form the exclusion takes- class, caste, or religion-tends to violate the culture of other sections of society, leading to cultural oppression and denial. This is particularly true of the ongoing attempt to construct a national identity based on Hindu religious cultural past. The emergence of communalism as an ideology of political mobilization, the concept of nation and nationalism had become matters of contention. This meaning is being reordered and their character is redefined, thereby raising the question about the relationship between the cultural past and the national identity. The era of enlightenment, the coming of modernity and the early phase of national liberation struggle had witnessed a critical introspection about the relationship. Both individuals and society were then engaged in identifying the cultural location; it is largely recognized within the context of the plural and composite cultural legacy. The quest then was to create a nation out of the diverse groups owing allegiance to different racial, linguistic and religious affiliations. It is undeniable that the identity of the

nation cannot be divorced from its cultural past, but given the internal cultural differentiation and the convergence of various cultural streams in Indian society the cultural path is not monochromatic in its make up. Fernard Braudel, while discussing this issue says that "a nation can have its being only at the price of being for ever in search of itself, forever transforming itself in the direction of its logical development, always measuring itself against others and identifying itself with the best, the most essential part of its being; a nation will consequently recognized itself in certain stalk images, in certain passwords known to the initiated( weather the later are the elite on a mass of people, which is not always the case); it will recognize itself in a thousand touchstones, beliefs, ways of speech, excuses, in an unbounded sub conscious, in the following together of many obscure currents, in a shared ideology, shared myths, shared fantasies. And any national identity necessarily implies a degree of national unity, of which it is in some sense the reflection, the transposition, and the condition". ( qtd. in K.N.Panikkar)

"The 'nation ever in search of itself' - Braudel suggests, is bound up with a variety of factors, which contribute to the making of its identity. It is a complex process in which the conception of the people about themselves and their environment, the organization of their social life and the constitution of their ideological world are important ingredients. In other words, how people perceive themselves as belonging to an identifiable entity, in relation to others, possessing certain essential qualities and recognizable through widely shared images. Such a perception of the nation is intrinsically linked with historical experience, changing over a period of time according to the realities of social existence. The formation of national identity is therefore a process by which the people come to share, imagine, and believe in certain common interests and traits. The nation is not born, it evolves"(K.N.Panikkar). The knowledge of the territory constituting India as a nation has involved over a period of time. This evolution can be understood in two ways. First, the different stages through which the subcontinent was identified as a territorial unit, as spelt out in different texts, produced by elite groups or individuals. Second, is a more difficult and demanding effort: mapping the

understanding of the variety of people who inhabited different parts of India. The earliest expression of the knowledge of the territory of the sub continent can be traced to the Vedic period. On the basis of the geographical information available in the Rig Veda it is reasonable to assume that the Aryans did not know the country beyond the Vindhya Range and the Narmada. The concept of Arya Varta was confined to the territory between the Himalayas and the Vindyas. The Southern part of the sub continent came into reckoning only during the later Vedic period. The Kishkindha kanda in Ramayana contains a fairly broad conception of India as a whole, setting it off from the surrounding countries. This detailed information is significant enough, but more important is the conception of the sub continent as a geographical unit, by envisioning it as an equilateral triangle divided into four smaller equal triangles, the apex of which is Kanyakumari and the base formed by the line of the Himalaya Mountains. The knowledge of the sub continent as a territorial unit does not seem to be part of the Tamil consciousness before the seventh century. If that is so, the territory of the sub continent entered the historical consciousness of the people at different points of time and there fore not a part of uniform national memory.

Whether the national is popular, to borrow a terminology from Antonio Gramsci, would depend the nature of identity of a nation. Generally the nation is the preserve of the dominant and therefore identified with the culture of the dominant. Thus the culture of the dominant caste or religion becomes the marker of national identity. Anti-casteism was an important agenda of almost all reformers, even if compromises were not unusual in actual practices. This transformation within social movements facilitated the construction of homogenous communities, attempting in the process to erase the internal cultural differences within the community. The nationalist view of communal ideologues is remarkably similar to that of the colonial in their conception of the composition of Indian society. They make a distinction between those who were 'born from the womb and those who were adopted', suggesting two categories of citizens on the basis of birth. Among the Hindus it can be traced to a search for shared intellectual and cultural sources through philosophical 'conquest' as in the case of Adi Shankara's 'Digvijaya'. The significance of Sankara's 'Conquest' was not limited to sectarian triumph of or the establishment of monism as a superior system, but of providing a common point of reference

and intellectual rationale for forging a Hindu identity. Hymavathabhuvil presents a detailed summary of the achievements of Sri Sankara (p631). In these pages the author outshines even the Hindu fundamentalists. For elaborating and disseminating the religious ideas,the social elites give maximum emotional support, through popularizing religious institutions and pilgrim centers. The contemporary religious resurgence as we see in this travelogue, is continuation of the Neo- Hinduism (in the 19th century)-religious revival and consolidation by privileging the hegemonic texts of the Hindus and thus constructing a common cultural and intellectual heritage. The contemporary religious resurgence not only draws up on this past, but also seeks to resurrect institutions and cultural practices from the past. In the process a highly differentiated 'community' is being turned into a homogenous entity. Virendra Kumar views the entire Himalayan region through the eyes of upper cast Aryans. This is exemplified in several passages of the work. Along with the cultural nationalists, he also argues that the origin of the Indian civilization can be traced in the banks of rivers like Ganga, Yamuna etc. (introduction XI). The author, while recreating the tales from epics and

puranas, never attempts a critical study of it, instead he presents those stories as if they are scientific facts. This effect is achieved by mixing facts with fiction and thus transforming fictitious elements into facts. In the same pages we can find out epics and facts from history. For example, while describing the Kurukshetra War, he shows us a banyan tree which is as old as that period and says that the tree witnessed the war (p12). And then he quotes the writers and leaders like Bal Gangadhara Tilak (p.12). All the writers and historians quoted in this work are extremist religious leaders and Hindutva politicians. Bal Gangadhara Tilak started politicizing Ganapati Utsav and thus destroyed the secular nature of Independence Struggle. The author quotes Atal Bihari Vajpayee, V. D. Savarkar, M. G. S. Narayan, etc. and presents them with a positive flavor. There is always a comparison between the East and the West. West was considered as the epitome of materialism and the East as that of spirituality (for example The Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech of Rabindranath Tagore). This binary was started during the 19th century by the Neo-Hindu philosophers like Swami Vivekananda, Tagore etc. In the present day also, travelogues, films, and fiction celebrate this ideology of the right wing Hindu nationalists. While discussing the construction of Swami Narayan

Akshardham Temple, the author presents a young man, who participates in the construction work by resigning his job in a multi-national company (p.180). Mahesh Yogi's international fame and the subsequent visit of the music band Beatles are highlighted in the work to present India as the spiritual centre of the world. Contrary to the contemporary controversies related to the god-men, the author presents some god-men with a positive image. While discussing the environmental issues, the author plays the same card. Religious pollution has been changed into a religious issue (p65). There are apparent differences between each and every race in India. All the different races process their own cultural practices and conventions. But the Hindu nationalists argue that the whole Indian tradition is born in the banks of river Sindhu and all of us share a common cultural past. But historians like Mortimer Wheeler give us a different picture. In his opinion Aryans were a nomadic tribe and they destroyed Indus Valley Civilization. (chowk.com ) Edwin Brayant, in his Indo- Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History, (2005) presents both arguments. In order to defeat the Dravidians, Aryans employed different tactics, including a clever strategy of assimilation. They present a view that all Indians are from one single father. The story of Vararuchi is a best example for this strategy.

While discussing Har-Ki-Pauri, Virendrakumar gives as a detailed picture of the family tree of Vararuchi. Vararuchi, Vikramadithya, Bhatti and Bharthruhari were the sons of Govind Swami, a brahmin(p92). His four children represent four castes (Varnas), which is from one single father, a Brahmin. Vararuchi has twelve children, ad each of themis brought up by twelve different castes (p112). This is a story of assimilation of different castes into one single unit and at the same time, of the Aryan invasion. Vararuchi's twelve children's were from Kerala (p118). The story of the 'Parayi Petta Panthiru Kulam' is the story of whole India, according to the author. Here, the centre of Indian civilization is again attributed to north India, to a Brahmin. Another irony is that, while discussing the mythical, probably imaginative account of the story of Vararuchi, he brings in the academic discipline of science too. This is for arguing that the puranas are really scientific facts. This idea of scientific accuracy of puranas was questioned by theoreticians like Meera Nanda in her works, Prophets Facing Backward: Post modern Critique of Science and the Hindu Nationalism in India (2004), The God-Market (2010). Here in the case of Vararuchi, the author himself says that Vararuchi is a contemporary of King Vikrmaditya, from centuries back. But when the work provides proof to say that the son of

Vararuchi, Rachakan was a scholar named Prabhakara Mithra and pictures Vallon as Thiru Valluvar; and Naranathu Bhranthan as scholar of astronomy named Haridathan (p124-135); the author is actually giving scientific colouring to the myths.. The author presents an interesting story of Kankhal. The myth associated with the temple of Kankhal is that of Dhakshayagam (p165). The same Yaga is believed to have happened in Kottiyoor temple in Kerala. Eventhough he mentions Kottiyoor (p175), he does not give enough reason for this fact. Instead he considers this as an example of the homogenous nature of India. But there is an argument among the people of Kerala that Kottiyoor was a Buddhist Temple and Aryans destroyed it. The Aryans have replaced this narrative history with the story of Dakshayaga. At near by places of Kottiyoor, especially in Mananthavadi, we can find similar Jain and Buddhist Monks, even now. I have earlier mentioned the Sankara DigVijaya, which isa perfect example of driving out the Buddhist from India. Another example of the strategy of assimilation of dominant Hindu values in nation building can be seen in the description of Bharat Matha Temple (p161). The temple has six storeys and each one designates the different

'Bhavas' of the goddess and the great personages in the Indian independence struggle. In the first floor, we can find the idols of Buddha, Mahaveera, Guru Nanak, Kabeer Das, Tulsi Das, Meera and Sankaracharya. In the second floor, there is Maharana Prathap, Shivaji, Guru Govind Singh, Sardar Bhagath Singh; in the third floor, that is the Sati Temple, there are idols of Sita, Savithri, Lakshmi Bhai; in the forth Nava Durga, Jagadamba, Meenakshi; in the fifth, that is Vishnu temple, there is Radha-Krishna, Sita-Rama, Lakshmi-Narayan, and Badhari Nath; in the last floor that is Siva Temple, we can find Nataraja, Ardha-Narishwara, and Uma-Maheswar. This is built by Maharaja Ranjit Singh. This is a typical example of the Hindutva nature of Indian freedom struggle. The processes of selection and exclusion have larger dimensions. One important thing to be noted is that in the first floor we can see both Sri Sankara and Sri Buddha. Sri Buddha revolted against Brahminic religion and Sri Sankara reestablished it. This is the strategy of assimilation that seems to accept the differences, but at the same time destroys the other. Through out the narrative Virendrakumar presents information regarding the inter-related nature of Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism. This should be understood in the larger context of history. That is, even though Jainism and Buddhism

came into being as a reaction against Brahminic religion, Buddhism and Jainism became prominent religions in India due to the conflict between Kshathriyas and Brahmins. Buddhism became a major religion when Emperor Asoka adopted it as the official religion of his kingdom. In other words, even though these religions have conflicting ideas, the worshipers remain of one class, that is the upper class. The Bharat Matha Temple is the best example to analyze the Indian freedom struggle. The controversies that have arised in different parts of India with reference to the national song 'Vande Matharam' may be cited in this context. This also shows the fact that the prominent feeling among nationalists is that of Hindutva and not secularism. The autobiographical elements in travel writing are crucial point in almost all the travel narratives. Travel narratives use the elements of autobiography, memoirs and even journalism. But in traditional devotional travel narratives, autobiographical elements are never highlighted. Even if it is highlighted, it is for giving an added colour to the religious nature of travel. While discussing the sacred nature of Yamunotri, Virendrakumar gives an example of the impact of Yamunotri on pilgrims. He cites the case of Sreedharan

Nair, one of the companions of the author, who was an atheist till the day. From that day he visits Yamunotri Sreedharan Nair moves from 'physics to metaphysics' (p261) and even writes a poem on Krishna. On another occasion the author criticizes globalization and fast food culture of travelers who visit Hrishikesh, and impact of tourism on pilgrim centers (p183). He laments that, this resulted in the loss of the sacred nature of the place. He himself is a tourist but always tries to distinguish himself from others. At one point of travel, a saint criticizes them for the destruction they cause (p299); and the authoragees with him and criticizes the other travelers. Conclusion The dominant ideologiy which forms the national consciousness of India is Hinduism. This dissertation argues that travel narratives especially Hymavathabhuvil not only reflects this dominant ideology but becomes a tool to construct such a national consciousness. Earnest Barker, among other theorists observed that a common history, common religious beliefs, common languages etc. are some of the characteristics of a nation. The western educated leaders of India, whether it is Gandhi or Nehru, tried to construct an India based on Euro centric ideas. They failed to realize the fact

that the Euro-centric concept of nation is unsuitable for India, since India is constituted of multiple languages, races and religious groups. Modern thinkers like Anderson realized the constructiveness of nation, but even now our national leaders consider nation as something sacred. As Gandhi argued for a national language that is Hindi, modern Hindu ideologues argue for a national religion that is Hinduism. The Euro centric idea of god, nation, and religion always focuses on the principle of oneness . Sri Sankara also emphasizes the oneness of god. But for the postmodern critics plurality is the defining idea behind every thing. This plurality is what constitutes India and not homogenetic. While analyzing Hymavathabhuvil, this dissertation tries to argue that, the underlying features of this text, and most of the present travel narratives, is the Hindu nationalist ideology. In the post-globalised world, travel narratives become another tool of the Hindu nationalists in emphasizing their ideology. The term 'Pilgrimage Nationalism', as used in this dissertation, is centered on the fact that pilgrim centers of particular religious groups becomes places of national importance. One similar term, 'pilgrimage tourism', is developed in the the discipline of tourism studies also. Pilgrimage tourism refers to tourist

policy which concentrates on pilgrim centers. Travel and tourism are related subjects, in the sense that, the development of one leads to the development of the other. Recent resurgence of travel literature is associated with the marketization of religious centers. The first title of Hymavathabhuvil was 'Thalarunna Thazhvarakalum Varal unna Nadhikalum'; the present title is suggested by Sukumar Azhikode. The meaning of 'Hymavathabhuvil' can be roughly translated as 'in the land of Lord Himavan'. This shows that the religious colouring of the title was a conscious effort on the part of the author. . Recently the 21st edition of Hymavathabhuvil has been published in Kerala. One of the reasons for the popularity of the work is that the author is a famous personality; Virendrakumar is a socialist veteran, Managing Director of Mathrubhumi Ltd., Chairman of Press Trust of India,and Environmentalist . But the most important reason behind the success of Hymavathabhuvil may be because he successfully understood the market value of travel literature. Or may be because, Mathrubhoomi Daily from its beginning to the present, supported the nationalist movement in India.

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