Notes on my desk: Reversing the Gaze

Finally found a copy of Rudolph and Rudolph's Reversing the Gaze: Amar Singh's Diary; A Colonial Subject's Narrative of Indian State. Have been wanting and waiting to read this for a long time. The diary of Amar Singh is a rich resource for insights into the life of a minor Rajput prince from . It is a a view allowed by first, Amar Singh's boggling commitment to his diary: he wrote everyday, with the exception of one, from 1889 till his death in 1942 and he writes on everything, from life in the haveli, to his marriage, living in Central India's military headquarters, Mhow, serving in the Imperial Cadet Corps, fighting in China during the fag end of the Boxer rebellion, food, etiquette, a possessive mother and more. Apart from this, he was a keen photographer, allowing a visual and imagined reconstruction of the world he inhabited. Rudolph and Rudolph plodded through 89 leather bound volumes, each with over 800 pages, in a task which took nearly three decades to produce this excellent work. The Rudolph's contribution to this is not only in sustaining their 'enamour', as they like to call it, from the 1950s to the 1990s, but also their admissions of their changing academic inclinations over this long period. When they first began to look at these volumes, they were positivist in their outlook. They 'corrected' facts and lent their voice to Amar Singh in editing his diary. By the 1990s they evolved to granting Amar Singh the right to his voice without intervening. The result is an astonishingly faithful work to the diarist. The Rudolph's intervention is limited to thematically arranging the works and providing back ground notes, which are most helpful and allow it to be an easy read. More on Amar Singh: his stupendous devotion to his diary is accompanied with his need to record almost everything. He makes a list of the books he reads, with his brief notes on them ('very good, very bad, horrible' etc). His location, being betwixted between British and Princely India also facilitates a view modern scholars rarely have access to. As a royal of Kanota, a small kingdom near Jaipur, Amar Singh is one of the many royal princes, figuring out their self and location under British rule. The British indirect rule means that the Indian princely states have a certain autonomy, but they remains subjects nevertheless. Conscious of the hierarchy which he is a part of, Amar Singh hopes for a day when the 'indignity of British rule' will end, but what remains unclear are his own views of the princely states post-Independence. Finally, the book reminds me that the act of writing a diary - intensely private and individualist act, is perhaps a necessary comfort. The sheer volume and traffic of thoughts can only be held confidently in the humble little diary.