Self, Other and Alter Idem: Bengali Internationalism and Fascist Italy in the 1920s and 1930s

In the early 20th century, with the advance of India’s national movement, looking beyond national boundaries became even more necessary not only because the restructuring of the government of India had to be applied through institutional models which were after all foreign, but also because it was felt that India’s full nationhood would have brought in its train a deeper participation in the wide arena of international politics and cultural exchange. In particular, the encounter with Continental Europe considerably increased its relevance in the period after the end of World War I, which is the subject of the present paper. The analysis focuses particularly on the role played by Italy. This seems justified by the fact that Italy exerted a special attraction on those Bengali patriots, thinkers and scholars who were in various ways engaged in the task of defining India’s new role and identity in the context of a fast changing world. As the following pages will try to show, Italy represented not only an “other” which made it possible to construct a non-colonised “self”, but also an alter idem, or “another self” in the classical definition of friendship.