Author: Rafiq Ahmad
E-mail:
Department: Assistant Professor, Travel & Tourism Management
Institution: Amar Singh College, University of Kashmir
Title: Orientalist Imaginaries of Travels in Kashmir Western Representations of the People and Place
Abstract:
Moving beyond discussions in tourism literature on questions of authenticity, post-colonialism and narratives of self, this article aims to regenerate the importance of studying tourism imaginaries through the prism of Orientalism. Defining Orientalism as the western representation of the ‘orient’ institutionalized by west, based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction constructed between the west and the ‘other’, this article discusses the (re)production and (re)consumption of western imaginaries of peoples, places and travels in Kashmir.
Employing Foucault’s notion of Discourse, the article uses diverse range of media representations of travels in Kashmir, including travelogues, photographs, paintings, postcards, tourism brochures, along with ethnographic interviews to examine how and what images about Kashmir and its people have arisen historically alongside the narratives about its people. The article through a critical analysis of the representations of oriental tourism in Kashmir focuses on three basic issues:
How and why the tourism imaginaries of Kashmir from eighteenth century to the present have remained essentially frozen in time even when Kashmir has actually moved from an exotic past to the contemporary present. The article highlights the ways in which Kashmir was narrativized and imaged by European travellers in eighteenth and nineteenth century, and how contemporary tourists continue to seek the same exotic, primitive ‘otherness’ in Kashmir.
How and why tourism practitioners collaboratively strive to (re)produce and (re)invent the Orientalist imagination of Kashmir as ‘Paradise on Earth’. The article explores the dynamic of such a ‘tourismification’ and its impact on Kashmiri identity. By looking at it not necessarily as a transformation within the ‘primitive’ society, but as a reflexive image of how westerners view themselves against the ‘exotic’ orient, the article uncovers the ontological underpinnings and the impact on subjectivities of traveller and the traveled.
The article further shows how in the present scenario of a political unrest in Kashmir image-making (re)produces imaginaries of a timeless fabled Kashmir to serve the same historical purpose, that of dominating the people through discourse and (re)integration of identities.
Author Bio:
Rafiq Ahmad is Assistant Professor of Tourism Management at Amar Singh College, Kashmir University, Srinagar, India. With a Ph.D in Management, his work includes development of the sociology of taste and power relations in tourism within the framework of Bourdieu's sociology. He is also interested in issues related to community tourism and Orientalist tourism.