Bengali Travel Writers of the Mid-20th Century in Search of an Asian Identity

This article looks into two Bengali travelogues, Syed Mujtaba Ali’s Deśe Bideśe and Jāpāne by Annada Shankar Ray, to examine the identity transformation of travellers who undertook journeys from India to other Asian countries in the mid-20th century. Both writers, a Bengali Muslim in Afghanistan and a Bengali Hindu in Japan, find themselves in spaces alien to them, but as they keep discovering common history, culture and values of Asian societies they develop a strong sense of belonging. Encounters with people and historical artefacts inspire them to reflect on their own cultural identity. The article argues that the selected narratives can be read in the light of Pan-Asianism, a discourse that gained popularity in India in the first half of the century, and that Pan-Asianism itself can be considered an intellectual outcome of the liminal experience of societies undergoing rapid transformation during the fall of colonialism.