Resisting re-orientalism in representation: Aman Sethi writes of Delhi

Abstract

In the (re)presentation of India by Indian authors writing in English there is an overlooked, long-standing tradition of sterling commentaries produced by social analysts. In the best of that tradition which blurs the divide between the literary and journalistic, Aman Sethi, in A Free Man (2012), crosses significant class boundaries to represent Delhi with disconcerting rawness through stories of its itinerant labourers. This article investigates whether Sethi’s innovative methods of data collection and modes of representation used to deconstruct the alterity of subaltern representation are able to resist re-orientalism and address the crisis of authenticity in Indian writing in English (IWE); or whether re-orientalism is inexorably reiterated as a result of the distance and difference in positionality between author and subject. Focusing on representation via the form of non-fiction narrative, it discusses the extent to which form and authorial intention to avoid strategic exoticism and staged marginality can circumvent the pitfalls of re-orientalism when representing the subaltern.

Keywords:

• Aman Sethi
• Delhi
• re-orientalism
• authenticity
• representation

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Alex Tickell and Ruvani Ranasinha as editors of this Special Issue, and Aman Sethi for his time and correspondence.

Notes

1. “Mumbai/Bombay” is used, to reference both the preferences of the authors cited and common contemporary usage.

2. Born in Mumbai in 1983, Sethi attended Sardar Patel Vidyalaya and St Stephen’s College (in Delhi). He studied journalism in Chennai, at the Asian College of Journalism, as well as at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is a correspondent for The Hindu and from 2012, while researching and writing A Free Man, was based in Addis Ababa as The Hindu’s African correspondent. He is also an associate editor with the Hindustan Times in Delhi.

3. Sethi’s depiction of Delhi through the eyes of itinerants and working classes is unusual but not unique: Akash Kapur’s (2012) almost contemporaneous India Becoming: A Portrait of Life in Modern India, for example, also draws on stories from a wide range of Indians, from those in urban settings (IT workers, consultants, call centre workers, scavengers) to those in the rural context (landlords, farmers, cow brokers).

4. Funded by an Independent Fellows Grant from SARAI, Centre for the Study of Developing Society.

5. For example, Sethi asks his sister to buy underwear and supplies for Satish in a TB hospital, and he asks his banker friend Prithvi to pass Ashraf the 5000 rupees Aman is giving Ashraf to start his vegetable business on his discharge from hospital.

6. His examples are Faleiro (2011), Giridharadas (2011) and Kapur (2012).