Abstract

It has often been pointed out, by several researchers in postcolonial studies, that despite several distinctive images of ‘the Orient’ produced by Orientalists, most of them extensively associated ‘the East’ with ‘the Other’. Thus, the perspective of postcolonial theories is that of trying to deconstruct the cultural dominance of Western colonizing subjects, and its impact on the present situation in former colonial nations. However, in contrast, in the case of attitudes in East European countries to non-European colonized people and their lands, there are concerns about the applicability of the critical concepts of domination or subordination. On the basis of a study of the perceptions of tourists from Slovakia visiting India and travel agencies providing services to the Indian subcontinent, this paper tries to capture some of the tendencies prevailing in recent images of India in the Slovak tourism sector. The evidence presented in this paper suggests that the Orientalist view of other cultures that formed during the colonial era can no longer be considered as solely a matter of the encounter between Anglo-European and Indian cultures, but instead, recently represents globalized way of thinking in the ‘Westernized’ world.