The father of Hindi travel writing was like a vessel into which all waters could flow. Rahul Sankrityayan (1893-1963) was the embodiment of travel. Everywhere he went, he kept his mind open; his tongue free to explore new languages; his beliefs and ideologies fluid.
Born an orthodox Hindu by the name Kedarnath Pande, his exploration of the ideas of man took him through the Arya Samaj, a stint with atheism, Tibetan Buddhism and even Soviet communism. He was happy to change his position; rejecting Gandhi then embracing him after his death, disavowing materialism when he had a home and rediscovering it when he had nothing. By the end of his life, he had traveled much of Asia and Europe, and spoke more than 34 languages.
Of these, Hindi was his favourite and the choice vessel for his memoirs. In an age where travel writing on India was largely English and Orientalist, Rahul’s voice in the local tongue would have opened countless doors to the wonders of the subcontinent. He wrote a treatise on travel – Ghummakar Shastra – that became an ideological text for the unhindered traveller.
Rahul was possessed by wanderlust. In our current era of social media travails, where so many posts on travel are written from the confines of our cities, Rahul presents an important message. True travel is an ethos, not a yearning alone. As he put it:
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