Paper 14; Module 07; E Text (A) Personal Details
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Paper 14; Module 07; E Text (A) Personal Details Role Name Affiliation Principal Investigator Prof. Tutun University of Hyderabad Mukherjee Paper Coordinator Prof. Asha Kuthari Guwahati University Chaudhuri, Content Writer/Author Dr. Sanghamitra Arya Vidyapeeth College, (CW) Dey. Guwahati Content Reviewer (CR) Dr. Lalan Kishore Dept. of English, Gauhati Singh University Language Editor (LE) Dr. Dolikajyoti Assistant Professor, Gauhati Sharma, University (B) Description of Module Item Description of module Subject Name English Paper name Indian Writing in English Module title ‘Indianness’ at Crossroads: Diaspora, Border and Travel Module ID MODULE 07 1 Module Seven ‘Indianness’ at Crossroads: Diaspora, Border and Travel Introduction The module “‘Indiannesss’ at Crossroads: Diaspora, Home, Border and Travel” aims not be conclusive and attempt is made to continue the debate of ‘Indiannesss’ ongoing by situating the discourse of identity, nationalism, cultural difference in the context of the widening territorial range of the nation-state and the ensuing fluidity of the above mentioned concepts. The distinction between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ Indian diasporas, according to Sudesh Mishra is between “the semi-voluntary flight of indentured peasants to non-metropolitan plantation colonies such as Fiji, Trinidad,Mauritius, South Africa, Malaysia, Surinam, and Guyana, roughly between the years 1830 and 1917; and on the other the late capital or postmodern dispersal of new migrants of all classes to thriving metropolitan centres such as Australia, the United States, Canada, and Britain” (“From Sugar to Masala: Writing by the Indian Diaspora”, 277). Keeping in mind the above mentioned distinctions, this module addresses how the concept of Indianness has gained wide circulation in recent years in the context of globalization and the consequent history of migration and displacement. As Avtar Brah argues in the context of diasporic identity and its relation to home “the concept of diaspora signals these processes of multi-locationality across geographical cultural and psychic boundaries” (191). The problematic of identity politics in a globalized world offers a perspective on the fluidity of constitution of self in a postcolonial world. This module deals with the politics of representation of ‘home’, in-between spaces and deterritorialised belonging. Salman Rushdie’s 2 Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991 (1991) offers a complex negotiation of diasporic identity in terms of feelings of displacement, discontinuity and rootlessness, living in- between different nations. Objectives The module is designed to help you read critically the history of Indian English novel in the context of the experiences of migrancy and living in a diaspora understand the important socio-cultural events/contexts instrumental to the history of diasporic literature analyse the complex negotiations between home and host countries, questions of border and margin, time and place apprehend the major texts address the transition from roots to routes Diaspora, Travel and the Politics of Displacement All diasporas are unhappy, but every diaspora is unhappy in its own way. Diasporas refer to people who do not feel comfortable with their non-hyphenated identities as indicated on their passport. Diasporas are people who would want to explore the meaning of the hyphen, but perhaps not press the hyphen too far for fear that this would lead to massive communal schizophrenia. They are precariously lodged within an episteme of real or imagined displacements, self-imposed sense of exile; they are haunted by spectres, by ghosts arising from within that encourage irredentist or separatist movements. (Vijay Mishra1) Literary Representations Novel/ Short Story 3 Categorising Diasporas Sudesh Mishra in “From Sugar to Masala: Writing by the Indian Diaspora” offers an interesting perspective on the question of diasporic identity: Although the old diaspora is made up of communities that hail from different provinces, who speak different languages and practice different religions, and who are often inspired to leave ‘home’ for quite dissimilar reasons, the category is justifiable on the grounds that the earlier or older migration happened in the context of (and was determined by) colonialism in the heyday of capitalism. For, after all, it was CSR, a giant Australian sugar corporation, that initiated the migration of indentured labour to the Fiji Islands. Likewise, under the category of ‘new’, we have to include those descendants of the old diaspora who, together with the wave of post- Independence emigrants from the subcontinent to sundry metropolitan centres, are the willing subjects of – or unwillingly subjected to—a postcolonial or transnational political economy( 277) Girmit Diasporas The term ‘Girmit’ diaspora refers to the migration of indentured Indian labourers to Fiji by European settlers and the connotation of mutual agreement is invoked in the term. The Indian labourers were brought to Fiji to work on sugarcane plantation and the writers effectively reproduce the Indo-fijian indenture experience in their works. Vijay Mishra opts for a productive use of the term for old Indian diaspora. Seepersad Naipaul is concerned with girmit or sugar diaspora. Seepersad Naipaul (1906-53), a journalist of The Trinidad Guardian invokes 4 community feeling and bonding in the collection of short stories, originally appearing in 1943 as Gurudeva and Other Indian Tales and revised and republished in 1976 as The Adventures of Gurudeva and Other Stories. His sons Shiva Naipaul and Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul continue the tradition. Shiva Naipaul (1945-85) is noted for Firelies (1970) and The Chip-Chip Gatherers (1973) and Beyond the Dragon’s Mouth (1984) noted for his sensitive depiction of the plantation colonies. The history of plantation colonies is vividly represented by Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (b.1932), winner of Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001. Born in Trinidad, Naipaul went to Britain in 1950 and lives there. Grappling with the issues of cultural identity and locational positioning, Naipaul is a polymath for whom both Caribbean and Indian sensibilities open vistas of creative energy. His perspective on nation, culture, border and postcolonial sensibility is expressed in works like The Mystic Masseur (1957), The Suffrage of Elvira (1958), Miguel Street (1959), A House for Mr. Biswas (1961),The Mimic Men (1967), In A Free State (1971), Guerillas (1975), A Bend in the River(1979), The Enigma of Arrival (1987), The Return of Eva Peron; The Killings in Trinidad (1980), Among the Believers (1981), Finding the Centre (1984), Half A Life (2001). The depiction of Hanuman House in Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas (1961) invokes the sense of homelessness and consequent longing for home as expressed in the architectural metaphor of the house. The desire to achieve psycho-cultural recognition and integrity through the activity of house-building is recurrent in K.S. Maniam’s The Return (1981) and in Neil Bissoondath’s collection of stories, Digging Up the Mountains (1986). K. S. Maniam (b. 1942), an Indo- Malayasian writer of Tamil background spent his childhood in provincial Kedah, Malayasia, and completed his education in England. He is a professor in English at the University of Malaya. Maniam’s works include The Cord (1983) and In a Far Country (1993) and his fictional world is 5 replete with the descendents of rubber planters indentured in Malayasia. Like Naipaul, Subramani (b.1943) explores the themes of alienation, dislocation against the backdrop of girmit diaspora in The Fantasy Eaters and Other Stories (1988). Cyril Dabydeen, David Dabydeen, Harold Ladoo are some other famous writers of girmit diaspora. Non-Girmit Diasporas The writers of the old non-girmit diaspora, Menon Marath (b. 1906), Santha Rama Rau (b. 1923), Balachandra Rajan (b. 1920), and Victor Anant (b. 1927), are all born on the sub- continent (Rajan in Burma). They invoke an intimate representation of homeland and the pangs of dislocation and spatial displacement but their representation is, to some extent, address the dislocation of communities by colonial history. The most noted works are Marath’s The Wound of Spring (1960) and An Island for Sale (1968), Home to India (1945), an autobiographical novel by Santha Rama Rau. Rama Rau’s Remember the House (1956) and The Adventurer (1970), three travel books, East of Home (1950), A View to the Southeast (1957), and My Russian Journey (1959). Her playscript of E.M. Forster’s novel,A Passage to India is unique. In the two novels by Balachandran Rajan, The Dark Dancer (1958) and Too Long in the West (1961), we encounter the problematic dimension of returning home faced by an expatriate. The Revolving Man (1959) and Sacred Cow (1996) by Victor Anant (India-Britain) skillfully represents the themes of dislocation, homelessness and divided self. In-between Sudesh Mishra offers a categorization of an in-between diaspora: There exists another group of writers from the old diaspora who belong neither to the comprador class nor to the girmit diaspora, but who share some of their 6 preoccupations in relation to its own geo-political context. Most of these writers come from the professional or trading diasporas who took advantage of the mobility afforded by colonial rule, both in this and in the last century, and settled mostly in East or South Africa. They write preeminently about the unenviable middle position held by their community, sandwiched between the