Koushik Goswami, Reimagining Tibet: Politics of Literary Representation (London and New York: Routledge, 2023), xii + 216 pages, US$120.
‘Reimagining’ is a revisionist exercise. It critiques ‘imaginings’ of earlier “regimes of representation” (Hall, p. 257). Koushik Goswami’s book, Reimagining Tibet: Politics of Literary Representation, provides a picture of how new fictional and non-fictional works written mostly by exiled Tibetan authors contest age-old ideas about the country and its people. Speaking generally of the West, Goswami argues that Tibet, which remained “hidden” from the eyes of the “civilized” world for a long time, had been imagined as steeped in mystery (p. 11). Mythicized as a place of the yeti and the Shangri-La, it had been a site of conjectures, fantasies, and even desires. Elements of mystery and fantasy pervade Western cultural representations such as Hergé’s Tintin in Tibet (1960) or James Hilton’s Lost Horizon (1933). More interestingly, as Peter Bishop asserts, “[i]nstitutions such as the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Society, the Alpine Club and the Survey of India simultaneously encoded, concentrated and legitimized fantasies” (qtd. in Goswami, p. 42). These institutions, supposedly devoted to objective enquiry into geo-cultural and scientific features of nature and human lives, he argues, “establish[ed] these imaginative practices as truth” and “impose[d] this upon what Said has dramatically called the ‘silent Other’” (qtd. in Goswami, p. 42). Configurations of Western imagination mostly took the form of stereotypes which, according to Start Hall, are “representational practices” that reduce “people to a few, simple, essential characteristics,” supposedly “fixed by Nature” (p. 257). Goswami’s book attempts to contest the stereotyped Western images of Tibet that had been in circulation for a long time. In the book he examines how Tibet and Tibetans have been culturally constructed as ‘different,’ how their ‘otherness’ has excited fantasies of Western observers, and how such ‘imaginings’ are contested by a new crop of writers, mostly Tibetan in origin but including Indian authors such as Kaushik Barua.
Goswami foregrounds the trajectory of how Tibet is imagined and reimagined by analyzing three fictional works: James Hilton’s Lost Horizon (1933), Kaushik Barua’s Windhorse (2013) and Jamyang Norbu’s The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes (1999). These texts, according to him, represent three specific ideological standpoints—those of outsider, insider-outsider, and insider, respectively. He reads these standpoints in terms of theories of ‘gaze.’ Such a theoretical framework helps him unveil the ideologically driven instincts of observing objects in specific ways. This methodology of reading the texts goes well with Goswami’s effort to interpret the ‘politics of representation’ manifested in the fictional works mentioned above. All representations are informed of ideological positions of the authors which determine the kind of works they produce. The representation of an ‘outsider’ tends to stereotype objects of gaze into naïve types, essentializing their features, and naturalizing them as ‘different.’ An ‘insider,’ on the other hand, works on the familiar plane, representing familiar objects in familiar conditions. Familiarity, unlike unfamiliarity, does not breed curiosity, and hence possibilities of exoticization do not arise. The insider-outsider position is much more complex as it veers between the two positions mentioned earlier, and may share traits of both. It reads the observed phenomenon from the perspectives of both familiarity and unfamiliarity. Goswami’s positing of Kaushik Barua’s novel in this category presupposes India’s long historical and cultural dialogue with Tibet which ensured familiarity, friendship and mutual understanding. Yet, areas of ignorance remain and decades of absent interaction with the ‘forbidden’ country, particularly after the Chinese takeover, requires a fresh negotiation. Chinese atrocities on the bodies and minds of the Tibetan people and displacement of many of them have given rise to a new reality. Kaushik Barua researched into the history, geography, and culture of the region and investigated the ground reality of Tibetan refugee lives in camps and outside, and gathered knowledge about the rise of Tibetan resistance movements. He observed the quotidian lives of the Tibetans in Dharamsala and elsewhere, forging friendship with them. Knowing the lived reality of the members of a community and understanding it with empathy dispels much of the unfamiliarity. It ensures fictional representation of the community in a proper light, rendering the characters as capable of normal human behavior and having normal emotional responses to the happiness and pains of life.
The book is divided into six chapters. Besides an Introduction and Conclusion, four other chapters are: “Tibet as Myth: Patterns of Gaze in James Hilton’s Lost Horizon,” “Looking at Tibet from India: Tibetan Resistance Movement in Kaushik Barua’s Windhorse,” “An Insider’s View of Tibet: Jamyang Norbu’s The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes,” and “Reconfiguring Tibet: Tibetan Activism in Diaspora.” The introductory chapter provides a picture of how Tibet has consistently been misrepresented and how very concerned the emerging Tibetan Anglophone writers are about the stereotypes and misrepresentation that circulate in the Western representational regimes. The author Rinchen Lhamo’s expression of angst represents this concern appropriately:
Some of the statements made about us [i.e., Tibetans] display total ignorance, and others malice. Some are wrong but harmless; others made me laugh at the absurdity of them; still others made me angry. Why should people write falsehood about us, why should they write at all of things they do not know? (qtd. in Goswami; emphasis by Goswami (p. 2).
The quotation is suggestive of the range of emotion that the Western representations usually generate. It also underscores the urgency with which the ‘insiders’ should write back. This background justifies the acts of ‘reimagining’ in the forms of literary works. A sizeable corpus of Tibetan literary works in English has already emerged that reveals the nature of Tibetan life and culture. Goswami adequately provides this background in his book and interprets aspects of the theory of gaze in the introductory chapter. As mentioned earlier, he deploys the critical lens of the gaze to analyze the fictional works in the following chapters.
Hilton’s Lost Horizon represents perhaps the loftiest flight of Western imagination. By inventing a remote, idyllic place in Shangri-La in Tibet where the ageing process is slow and soft, Hilton introduces a utopic space as the center of action. Goswami does well to show that a careful reading of the text can unveil the underlying ideological investments. Although situated in Tibet, the lamasery is headed by a Western lama who is in search of a new head to replace the present one. One gathers the impression that only one from the West is capable of leading the institution, although the geo-cultural site and the source of spirituality belong to the East. The lamasery has a clearly discernable power structure. Interestingly, Western knowledge is stored in the library and other cultural resources such as music and painting have been accumulated from Europe. All these suggest that there have been attempts to replicate colonial hegemonic projects in Shangri-La. Goswami also explains that the creation of a utopic space in the Orient, in fact, responds to the desire of war-ravaged Europe for some kind of refuge in a quiet, spiritual space that can, in European imagination, best be located in the Orient.
Kaushik Barua’s Windhorse brings the focus down to reality. It dwells mainly on the Tibetan resistance movement and how the lives of Tibetan characters revolve round it. The novel depicts the ideological differences which are embedded in the characters who lead the movement and in the general flow of Tibetan exilic life in India. It shows that not all those involved in the movement preach and practice non-violence, thereby violating the precepts of Buddhism. The representation blasts all attempts of homogenizing the Tibetans and stereotyping them as non-violent people. Goswami also mentions the important point that besides having a nationalistic perspective, Barua owes his cultural location to the Northeast of India, a marginalized area near the Chinese border. The region witnessed a deluge of Tibetan refugees during the Chinese aggression and subsequent occupation of the country. Barua’s treatment of the Tibetan cause is empathetic. Goswami’s positing of insider-outsider location to Barua is thus quite appropriate.
The most important novel that displays the insider tag is Jamyang Norbu’s The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes which employs an innovative theme—he takes Sherlock Holmes and his rival Professor Moriarty to Tibet during the ‘lost years’ where they get involved in fresh rivalry. In “The Adventure of the Empty House” Holmes informs his friend and assistant Dr. Watson that he traveled to Tibet for two years after the ‘final’ encounter with his arch-enemy, and Norbu finds here an opportunity to improvise a plot. While using these two European characters as his protagonist and villain, respectively, Norbu makes them learn the Tibetan language and pick up Tibetan culture. While narrating the story from European perspectives—Holmes and Moriarty are, however, much culturally transformed characters in the novel—Norbu, through innovative stylistic devices such as addition of a Preface and a number of footnotes, continues to comment on their actions and rectify the factual errors and other details. Thus, the controlling power is in the hands of the novelist-cum-editor who keeps tabs on the imagination of the European characters. Goswami’s analysis of the novel brings out both the ideological workings and stylistic design effectively.
One may wonder why a chapter on Tibetan activism in diaspora is included in a book that interprets mainly fictional works. The answer lies in the fact that activism radically revises the image of Tibetans traditionally portrayed as a passive community. Goswami speaks of three kinds of activism: literary activism, direct political activism, and activism through virtual networking. This chapter analyzes in some detail these three forms of activism. His discussion of the spread of a virtual Tibetan network society is based on much empirical research. Virtual activities have created a Pan-Tibetan identity across borders. The concluding chapter sheds light on the emerging consciousness of the exiled Tibetans who have to negotiate a new terrain of transnational and transcultural reality.
The Tibetan literature in English is an emerging phenomenon and academic research in the area is just picking up. Publication of Goswami’s book will certainly boost academic exercises in the area. Although it focuses mainly on literary works, the author’s approach is basically interdisciplinary. Couched in historical and cultural contexts, Reimagining Tibet: Politics of Literary Representation will be helpful for scholars of social science departments, especially for those engaged in Postcolonial Studies and Diaspora Studies. Particularly useful will be the interviews of eight Anglophone Tibetan authors which constitute important academic resources. They offer insights into what contemporary Tibetan creative writers are thinking about their exilic condition, about their ‘lost’ and ‘imagined’ nation which is being reconfigured as a ‘virtual’ nation for the community members scattered around the world today.
Himadri Lahiri retired as a professor from the Department of English and Culture Studies, the University of Burdwan, West Bengal in 2016. Subsequently, he taught at the Department of English, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan for about a year. He is currently serving the School of Humanities, Netaji Subhas Open University, Kolkata as Professor of English. Lahiri has written extensively on Diaspora Studies and Indian English literature. His recent publications include two books—Asia Travels: Pan-Asian Cultural Discourses and Diasporic Asian Literature/s in English (Birutjatiya, 2021), and Diaspora Theory and Transnationalism (Orient Black Swan, 2019), two book chapters—“Pioneers Across Kala pani: Reading Girmitiyas etc” (Routledge, 2021), and “Generational Perspectives in Partition Narratives” (Pencraft, 2022), and a journal article, “Reading Modernism in The Waste Land: Eliot’s Use of Montage and Collage,” DUJES, Dibrugarh University Journal of English Studies (Vol. 30, March 2022). At present, he is working on a book project on the Partition of India. He is also interested in Postcolonial Literatures and Twentieth Century British Poetry.
Goswami, Koushik. Reimagining Tibet: Politics of Literary Representation. London and New York: Routledge, 2023.
Hall, Stuart, ed. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: The Open University Press and Sage, 1997.
