Voiceless India

By the late 19th and early 20th century ethnographies and anthropological studies became an important
tool in understanding societies, and having comparative analysis of different cultures (at very extreme it
was used to justify social Darwinism and racist ideologies). This particular ethnographical study of a
remote village by Gertrude Emerson is much more than an outsider’s gaze of the region but rather a
more empathetic (though not unbiased) account not only because the gaze sometimes blurs to a sense
of belongingness or to the fact that at different conjunctures she choose to uphold the traditional way
of living but also because unlike many other ethnographies the colonial objective of demarcation of
colonial knowledge into useful sociological categories is lesser manifested as compared to that of
different colonial ethnographies and Katherine mayo’s infamous “mother India” which published almost
at the same time as this. But the preceding statement doesn’t mean that the colonial gaze or the sense
of an outsider or what timothy Mitchell call the “traveler’s view” of the region is absent, but rather we
find a multitude of identities manifesting according to the context and the social experience of the
author. As the author start spending more and more time in the village and the people she seem to
familiarize more and more with the surrounding and by the end chapter her sense of belongingness (but
not identification mind you) reach its zenith when she tries to differentiate her as a part of the village
and the indentured labor who went abroad for work, and thus the author consider them more stranger
to the village then herself. This also tells us identities and social relations are much more fluid than are
assumed in anthropological studies, and this differentiates voiceless India from other texts.

Emerson is working under an invisible aura of power, partly derived from her economic power but there
are other factors that need to be considered. “Exoticness” is a two way process that is reflected here.
Emerson’s foreign demeanor, dressing, living style, language makes her an exotic person whom
everyone want to get associated with (though this association had economic imperative as well) at the
same time in the varied descriptions that Emerson provides of panchperwa and the very fact of her
choice of a distant village that can best reflect an Indian village, shows how the exotic factor works as
subtle. This is also evident in her description of the marriage rituals, weddings, her interactions with the
women (where strangely enough she is treated with as much reluctance as a man). Another interesting
fact is that for most part of the text she doesn’t chose to judge the proceedings in a condemning
manner and gives a more peaceful picture of the village. The only times the text tries to be thoroughly
descriptive is while describing the economic and political conditions where the text becomes a
derivation from other sources rather than an observatory discourse. Here she seems to be highly critical
of the British empire for ruining the local empire. This diatribe falsifies the doubt that the author seem
to be more closely associated to European imperialist powers than with local people. On the other hand,
we find her giving a very detailed and hunky dory image of her stay in panchperwa with hardly any
negative consciousness coming across. Though occasionally we do find her criticism of the local
conditions including her criticism of the unhygienic conditions that are responsible for spreading of
epidemics and the reluctance of people to go beyond their biases and traditional preconceived notions
and hence she puts a case for the
There is a very strong element