Скачать или смотреть Dr. Mou Banerjee | At Home in Foreign Lands: Syed Mujtaba Ali's Depiction of Afghanistan, 1927-1929

Afghanistan, a focal point of British military ambition in the 19th and 20th centuries, had also ironically turned out to be the most spectacular failures of the British expansionist policy. In the milieu of imperial narratives circulating across the globe, we find a distinct voice of a young Bengali traveller in the northwestern terrain, weaving through his travelogue a counter argument and glimpse of the land beyond the colonial viewpoint. Filled with geographical descriptions, anecdotes and personal experiences along the way, Syed Mujtaba Ali's 'Deshe Bideshe' not only remains a classic example of Bengali travel literature, it provides us a view of Afghanistan at a pivotal juncture, a transition point between imperial experiments and decolonization.

Voyages into the Past had the honour of hosting Dr. Mou Banerjee, Assistant Professor of History at University of Wisconsin-Madison, in person at Presidency University, Kolkata on the 1st of August, 2024. This video podcast is an audio recording of the talk delivered on the 1st of August as well as the discussions that followed.