The Postcolonial Careers of Santha Rama Rau

Next Wave: New Directions in Women's Studies

by Antoinette Burton

Santha Rama Rau was one of the best known South Asian writers in postwar America. Born into India’s elite in 1923, Rama Rau has lived in the United States since the 1940s. Although she is no longer well known, she was for several decades a popular expert on India. She provided an insider’s view of Indian cultures, traditions, and history to an American public increasingly aware of the expanded role of the United States on the world stage. Between 1945 and 1970, Rama Rau published half a dozen books, including travelogues, novels, a memoir, and a Time-Life cookbook; she was a regular contributor to periodicals such as the New Yorker, the New York Times, McCall’s, and Reader’s Digest.Drawing on archival research and interviews with Rama Rau, historian Antoinette Burton opens Rama Rau’s career into an examination of orientalism in the postwar United States, the changing idioms of cosmopolitanism in the postcolonial era, and the afterlife of British colonialism in the American public sphere. Burton describes how Rama Rau’s career was shaped by gendered perceptions of India and “the East” as well as by the shifting relationships between the United States, India, Pakistan, and Great Britain during the Cold War. Exploring how Rama Rau positioned herself as an expert on both India and the British empire, Burton analyzes the correspondence between Rama Rau and her Time-Life editors over the contents of her book The Cooking of India (1969), and Rama Rau’s theatrical adaptation of E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India, which played on Broadway in 1961 and was the basis for David Lean’s 1985 film. Burton assesses the critical reception of Rama Rau’s play as well as her correspondence with Forster and Lean.

232 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Antoinette Burton is Catherine C. and Bruce A. Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies, Department of History, University of Illinois. Among her books are Dwelling in the Archive: Women Writing House, Home, and History in Late Colonial India and At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late-Victorian Britain.

Also Antoinette M. Burton

Reviews

[Evie]

I became acquainted with Santha Rama Rau's writing when I stumbled across a copy of East of Home at a local book sale. Her writing style felt very accessible, and I fell in love with her voice. I found myself intrigued by both travel and political commentary (things I rarely read books about), and fascinated by the 1950s world she inhabited.

Buying more of her books and reading more of her life, I wondered if anyone in academia had brought her to light. I'm 22 and in my Masters program for English literature, so my Orientalism/cosmopolitanism/post-colonialism senses were tingling. Lo and behold, I found this book, and it did give me a sense of how Santha Rama Rau is seen by the larger modern world (which is not often).

As Antoinette Burton explains, Santha Rama Rau is a minor figure, and arguing for her relevancy is very difficult. Her writing has me convinced, though, that even if Rama Rau is considered minor, her career did contribute to Cold War cosmopolitanism and shaped how America viewed India during the 1950s and later. This isn't my area of expertise, but I do think Burton has done a very good job arguing her case that Rama Rau's career helped us understand British imperialism in America as well. I hope to see this book make its way into university libraries and course syllabi, and that more people read about this very intriguing author.