Through Colour-tinted Lenses: Eurocentrism in James Cameron’s An Indian Summer: A Personal Experience of India

Abstract

William Graham Sumner (1950), who popularised the term ‘ethnocentrism’, defined it as a belief that one’s culture is superior to others and the use of a frame of reference derived from one’s own culture to judge the attributes of another culture, often in disparaging terms. Eurocentrism is a subtype which looks from the perspective of a European. Eurocentrism goes beyond ethnocentrism, which assumes superiority at the expense of other cultures, having an alienating and marginalising effect. Every culture has its ways and means of sustaining strategies and propagating formulae. When one culture comes in contact with the other, the apparent cultural shock experienced by the author transforms its form and spills over the papers. An Indian Summer: A Personal Experience of India (1974) is, in many parts, a perfect example of this. It is a part-travelogue, part memoir of journalist James Cameron. His observations about India enhance it and sketches about cities, people and personalities. This travelogue touches on some of the critical aspects of Indian society. However, much of it is complicated by the author’s bias towards Indian systems. This paper looks at the European gaze of the author towards India. Further, it explores the representative politics of a country by an outsider. Finally, it will comment on the texts’ Eurocentric aspects and analyse whether they align with reality.