Inveterate Walkers, Literary Minds: Bengal’s Pilgrims and Their Himalayan Journeys

Inveterate Walkers, Literary Minds: Bengal’s Pilgrims and Their Himalayan Journeys brings under its critical focus the writings of Bengal’s travellers (mostly pilgrims) who went, on foot, into Himalayan trails from the mid-nineteenth to the early and mid-twentieth century. Unlike many European travellers and climbers in the age of empire, who saw the mountain as an obstacle overcoming which was a matter of individual and national pride, these modest walkers, unkempt and raddled in their meagre ways of travel, produced a discourse of surrender in their intimate and reflecting engagement with the mountains. The book examines the writings of Jadunath Sharbadhikary, the first among Bengal’s pilgrims whose Himalayan travels were published as a book and the more popular writers including Jaladhar Sen, Umaprasad Mukhopadhyay and Abadhut. It also traces emergent selfhoods and complex subjectivities of women travellers in particular, such as Ratnamala Devi, Rani Chanda and Nabaneeta Deb Sen whose accounts reveal both guarded, hesitant voices and self-assured, confident enunciation of the self.

Anandarup Biswas is an Associate Professor in English literary studies in Shibpur Dinobundhoo College, affiliated to the University of Calcutta. He is also a guest faculty in the Department of English, Presidency University, Kolkata. His doctoral research on the Australian writer Eric Rolls falls under the domain of environmental humanities. His essay titled ＂Bengal’s Encounter with the Himalaya: Mountaineering Beyond Conquest＂ has found a place in the anthology, The Mountain and the Politics of Representation, edited by Jenny and Martin Hall (2023). He has also published essays on environmental humanities, travel writing and Sherpa autobiographies.