"Yearning for the British Raj": The Touristic Consumption of Colonial Nostalgia in India

Abstract

This case study of Raj tourism is based on a postcolonial discourse of nostalgia that applies the language of tourism to the "Old Talk" of Empire when Britain once ruled the waves. Various facets of Raj tourism are semiotically explored in relation to the correspondence between motivation and promotion in order to more fully appreciate the process of understanding tourism itself. Typical areas of cultural communication that are inductively analyzed range from journalese to brochurese and include inter alia the popular press, imperial travel by train, and other forms of touring, as well as televised and film representations in such reality shows as the Marigold Hotel. In this way, the glories of the past can be better grasped as contributing to the comforting reprojection of empire on an uncertain future in a post-Brexit world.