Reversing The Gaze: Amar Singh's Diary, A Colonial Subject's Narrative Of Imperial India

Amar Singh, a Rajput nobleman and officer in the Indian Army, kept a diary for 44 years from 1898, when he was twenty, until his death in 1942. In it he writes about the Jodhpur court, the Imperial Cadet Corps, and the British Expeditionary Force in China during the Boxer rebellion. A century before hybridity, he constructs a hybrid self, an Edwardian officer cum gentleman and a martial Rajput cum manor lord. With the diary acting as alter ego and best friend, Amar Singh resists becoming “a coolie for the raj” when he finds the British to be racist masters as well as friends. He writes and reads extensively “to keep himself amused,” he says, and to avoid the boredom of princedom and raj philistinism. Here the authors focus on the first eight years of Amar Singh's diary (1898-1905), offering a rare and intimate glimpse into British colonialism from the point of view of a colonial subject. Illustrated with fifty photographs and facsimiles from Amar Singh's readings.