The Varthamanappusthakam or Is There Justice for the Narrating Subaltern?

The article examines India’s first modern travelogue, The Varthamanappusthakam, from the point of view of narratology and Kanaganayakam’s observations on storytelling from the margins. The focus is on the travelogue’s narratology, including the story and its narration, and on the discussion it triggers, in a secular academy that is Western or Westernized, with a closed canon that incorporates postcolonial studies. The article draws on, among other things, Gérard Genette’s narrative theories and Gerhart Husserl’s phenomenological discussion of communities. It makes an argument for the inclusion of a translation of a Christian text from the Indian subcontinent in the curriculum of English Studies as a challenge to preconceived notions of colonial India, thereby providing the required institutional approval that Gayatri Spivak points to.