Reversing the Gaze: Amar Singh's Diary

Amar Singh reverses the gaze. A colonial subject contemplates an imperial other. He begins writing at twenty, producing over forty-four years what may be one of the world's longest continuous diaries. These selections from the years 1898 to 1905, are the work of the young Amar Singh. He records his sense of discovery and surprise at diverse sites - the Jodhpur court, the women' quarters of the Jaipur haveli, Lord Curzon's Imperial Cadet Corps. In daily negotiations with his British and Rajput counterplayers, he constructs a hybrid self, a Rajput nobleman and an Edwardian officer and gentleman. Through daily entries, the reader experiences the immediacy of Amar Singh's subjective knowledge. Threatened by the boredom of princely state and raj philistinism, Amar Singh writes to 'keep myself amused'. His diary becomes an alter ego. He writes about culture in the making as well as in the doing. In an era that seems more comfortable with the subjective truths of agency and voice than with the objective truths of structural determination or formal analysis, Amar Singh's reflexive narrative offers an open ended, constructivist explanation of history and self.