“civilization” in opposition to the barbarism attributed to the
natives living outside the central areas of Buenos Aires. They
would use their incipient knowledge of Eastern countries
and their social structure as a symbol of the natives’ culture,
characterized as a barbarian, which would later be destroyed
by the Argentine army. This would defi nitely result in the
birth of Orientalism in Argentina, in some way close to that
in Europe. Argentina’s history certainly paints the picture of
a culture that has never remained indiff erent to what happens
in the rest of the world.
As Argentine Dr. Axel Gasquet states in his book Oriente
al Sur, the infl uence the East will have on the Argentine
elite from the very birth of the nation cannot be ignored:
“Of the initial conceptual and ideological use of European
Orientalism, inherited from the Enlightenment in the
generation of 1837, which has served to establish the aesthetic
of the Pampas as a basic topic of Argentine literature and also
to defi ne the contours of native barbarism through Eastern
barbarian foundations, we see that there is a political, even
social, concern for the East among the members of the
Generation of ‘80”.
India and Argentina in the 20th Century
1910, the Centenary of Argentina, witnesses the birth
of the new century and of cultural desire. Both attest to the
increasing interest in India, in particular, that Argentina
starts developing. The crisis unleashed after the First World
War, which challenges the thus-far unquestionable values
of Western culture, awakens an existential craving for new
horizons by the Argentine intelligentsia.
At the same time, in addition, the 1895 census records
that there are 6 Indians in Argentina that have come to work
for British railway companies. But Dr. Lía Rodríguez de la
Vega, who has studied the Indian diaspora in our country,
states there are also additional sources that affi rm that the fi rst
Sikhs came to Argentina in 1879 to work in sugar cane mills
in Jujuy Province in the north-west of the country.
Many interesting facts show Argentina´s approach towards
India in the newly born century:
1. The Theosophical Society, a global Philo-Hindu
movement that quickly attracted and captured much of the
Argentine intelligentsia, opens its Argentine branch in Buenos
Aires in 1893. The most important writers at that time, from
Leopoldo Lugones, Alfredo Palacios, Joaquín V. González,
José Ingenieros among others, show increasing interest in
India.
2. In 1896 Emilio Roqué publishes the fi rst Spanish
translation of the Bhagavad Gita in Argentina.
3. In 1907 the young Danish Nicolas Kier buys an old
theosophical bookstore in Buenos Aires, which becomes a
meeting point for the elite keen on the East. He would later
found the “Editorial Kier” publishing house, which will
26
be one of the main promoters of Orientalist literature in
Argentina throughout the 20th century.
1920, the Turning Point: the Tagore-Ocampo Encounter
The second decade will show a turning point in the India-
Argentina relationship. The following facts should be taken
into account:
1. A circle of young intellectuals who will look for
humanistic alternatives to the increasing progress of
positivism is formed at the University of La Plata by Joaquín
V. González, the well-known Argentine politician, Carlos
Muzzio Sáenz Peña, who will be the fi rst to introduce Tagore
to important Argentine audiences through the editions of
Poems in 1915 and Tagore´s translation of Kabir’s poems
Fruit Gathering in 1917, and his celebrated edition of The
Gardener in the Nobel collection in 1924, just one year after
Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize in Europe.
2. In November 1924 Tagore arrives in Buenos Aires,
meets Victoria Ocampo and stays in the country for three
months.
3. Kier has already published Vedantic texts: The Gospel
of Sri Ramakrishna in 1909, as translated from the English
version by Swami Abhedananda of the Swami Ramakrishna
Order of India, and by 1922 the translations of Karma Yoga,