International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS)

Autobiography, Travel and Postnational Identity examines concepts of travel in the autobiographies of leading Indian nationalists in order to show how nationalism is grounded in notions of individual selfhood, how the idea of collective life can be drawn from a vison of the individual self, and how the writing of autobiography, fused with the genre of the travelogue, played a key role in formulating the complex tie between interiority and nationality in South Asia. A range of texts is analysed, from autobiographies to travelogues and poetry in English, Urdu and Persian, to show why the political thought of leading Indian nationalist figures and Muslim separatists was decisively articulated in their autobiographical narratives rather than through any other form of writing.