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British South Asian Women's Writing Divya Girishkumar

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British South Asian Women's Writing Divya Girishkumar Diaspora and Multiculturalism: British South Asian Women’s Writing Divya Girishkumar A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (English Literature/ Critical and Cultural Theory) at Cardiff University August 2014 DECLARATION This work has not been submitted in substance for any other degree or award at this or any other university or place of learning, nor is being submitted concurrently in candidature for any degree or other award. Signed Divya Girishkumar (sd/-) (candidate) Date 20/08/2014 STATEMENT 1 This thesis is being submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed Divya Girishkumar (sd/-) (candidate) Date 20/08/2014 STATEMENT 2 This thesis is the result of my own independent work/investigation, except where otherwise stated. Other sources are acknowledged by explicit references. The views expressed are my own. Signed Divya Girishkumar (sd/-) (candidate) Date 20/08/2014 STATEMENT 3 I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter- library loan, and for the title and summary to be made available to outside organisations. Signed Divya Girishkumar (sd/-) (candidate) Date 20/08/2014 STATEMENT 4: PREVIOUSLY APPROVED BAR ON ACCESS I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter- library loans after expiry of a bar on access previously approved by the Academic Standards & Quality Committee. Signed Divya Girishkumar (sd/-) (candidate) Date 20/08/2014 i Summary This thesis analyses how the British South Asian diaspora is conceptualized, understood and reflected in a selection of female-authored literary texts which engage with the multicultural policies of the British state from the 1950s to the present. The primary sources include Attia Hosain’s Phoenix Fled (1953) and Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961), Kamala Markandaya’s Possession (1963) and The Nowhere Man (1972), Ravinder Randhawa’s A Wicked Old Woman (1987), Meera Syal’s Anita and Me (1996), Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2003), Shelina Zahra Janmohamed’s Love in a Headscarf: Muslim Woman seeks the One (2009) and Rosie Dastgir’s A Small Fortune (2012). I conceive of British multicultural state policies as unfolding in three major phases: Assimilation (1950- 1979), Integration (1980-2001), Social Cohesion/Interculturalism (2001- present). The thesis examines these policy changes and illustrates how these shifts are mirrored in and shape the character of British South Asian women’s writings. In the light of this I argue that British South Asian women writers’ engagement with a sense of exile, dislocation or a ‘teleology of return’ along with a symbolic longing to create imaginary homelands has produced new alliances which exist outside what has been called the national time/space in order ‘to live inside, with a difference’. Through the selected writers’ individual attempts to configure new fictional home spaces, a new architecture for the diasporic imagination is constructed around the poetics of home and the multicultural politics of identity. Such cross-cultural literary interventions exist both within and outside colonial and postcolonial genealogies, reconfiguring the critical geographies by which they have been mostly defined. The first two chapters of the thesis attempt to define the complex configurations of the concept of multiculturalism and its interconnections with the terminology of diaspora. I have adopted a reading strategy tracing the South Asian migration history to Britain and the early literary representations which powerfully illuminate the fragmented imagination of the South Asian diaspora in terms of contemporary theoretical paradigms. The next three chapters analyse literary representations by Attia Hosain, Kamala Markandaya, Ravinder Randhawa, Meera Syal, Monica Ali, Shelina Zahra Janmohamed and Rosie Dastgir, who highlight and complicate the issues of race, ethnicity and gender in relation to the rhetoric of multiculturalism and multicultural policies. The writers use various strategies that testify to the innate relation between the political ‘real’ and the literary ‘imaginary’ and explain how real life experiences provide fuel to the ‘diasporic imaginary’ and affirm the transnational potency of literature. ii CONTENTS DECLARATION i SUMMARY ii CONTENTS iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vi PROLOGUE 1 Chapter One: Multiculturalism and Diaspora 20 • Multiculturalism: Problems and Possibilities 24 • The Praxis of Multiculturalism: The British Multicultural State 43 • Reframing Britain: Post-9/11 48 • Diaspora, Multiculturalism and Politics of Identity 50 Chapter Two: Politics and Poetics: South Asian Women Writing in Britain 56 • A Multiracial Britain in the Making: South Asians in Britain 58 • Homegrounds and Borderlands: South Asian Female Poetics 62 Chapter Three: (Re) Writing Britain: Politics of Assimilation in Attia Hosain and Kamala Markandaya 87 • Introduction 87 • Post-war Immigrant Britain: Writings of Kamala Markandaya and Attia Hosain 93 • Conclusion 128 iii Chapter Four: Multicultural Hybrid Aesthetic : Writings of Ravinder Randhawa and Meera Syal 130 • Introduction 130 • Celebrating Hybridity: Ravinder Randhawa and Meera Syal 141 • Conclusion 158 Chapter Five: Post-9/11 Britain and Female Muslimist Imaginary: Monica Ali, Shelina Zahra Janmohamed and Rosie Dastgir 160 • Post-9/11, 7/7: The British Political Scene 167 • Creative Responses post-9/11: British South Asian Women’s Writing 175 • Post-9/11 and politico-cultural zeitgeist: Monica Ali’s ‘Bricklane’, Shelina Zahra Janmohamed’s ‘Love in a Headscarf: Muslim Woman Seeks the One’ and Rosie Dastgir’s ‘A Small Fortune’. 178 Epilogue 205 iv Appendix I 218 Appendix II 228 Appendix III 236 Appendix IV 237 Appendix V 238 Appendix VI 239 Appendix VII 240 Appendix VIII 241 Appendix IX 248 Appendix X 249 Bibliography 250 v Acknowledgements First to Prof. Radhika Mohanram and Prof. Chris Weedon, without whose wonderful guidance, love and care this thesis would not be a reality now – immense thanks. I am grateful for the thoughtful comments, criticisms and suggestions offered and I believe that this is a better work for the revisions you provoked. Both of your higher levels of tolerance have always made me awestruck, especially when I met all the deadlines. For the generous financial assistance, I would like to acknowledge the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission and the British Council, United Kingdom that helped to facilitate my research and life in Britain. I wish to express my sincere thanks to my able and efficient award administrators, Mr. James Ransom, Ms. Selina Hannaford and Ms. Vanessa Worthington for their helpful assistance. I also thank the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Govt. of India, for their support. I am very much indebted to my eminent teachers for sharing with me their expertise and wisdom in the subject: Prof. Jancy James (Central University of Kerala), Prof. James Mayall (University of Cambridge) and Prof. Meena Alexander (City University of New York). I should give a special thank you to Prof. P.P Raveendran (School of Letters, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam) and Dr. V.M Santhosh (Payyanur College) for their help with reference letters. I express my deep sense of gratitude to Swami Sadyojathah (the Art of Living Foundation) for his great support. I am also indebted to Prof. Ted Cantle (Chairman, Institute of Community Cohesion, London) and Shelina Zahra Janmohamed (writer and TV-radio artist, London) for kindly consenting to my interviews. Thanks are due to a handful of British South Asian writers and experts: Rosie Dastgir, Hema Macherla, Safiya Husain, Prof. Gurharpal Singh (University of Birmingham), Prof. Sharada Sugirtharajah (University of Birmingham), Prof. Felix Van Urk (University of Oxford) and Dr. Trishima Mitra Kahn (University of Roehampton), who were wonderfully encouraging and always open to questions and requests for help. To the School of English, Communication and Philosophy (ENCAP) at Cardiff University, I also owe many thanks, in particular for their timely help and advice in abiding by the rules and norms of the university and gentle reminders to meet the deadlines.Thank you, Dawn Harrington, Rhian Rattray, Julie Alford and Rachel Thomas.I am thankful to the library staff at the Arts and Social Science Library (ASSL), Bute Library, Cardiff Central Library, Penylan Library, South Asian Studies Library, Cambridge University, Libraries at Central University of Kerala and Nehru Arts and Science College, Kanhangad. Special appreciation to Ms. Erica Swain, my subject librarian at ASSL, for making the library space convenient and comfortable for me. In preparing my final draft of the thesis, I also benefitted from the efforts of my adept proofreader, Liz Brown. Thank you, Liz. Friends, colleagues and my family have endured my passion for research and knowledge acquisition with patience and good cheer. Love and thanks to Adeola Dewis, Jihan Zachariya, Mari Lowe, Amal Hallak, Geraint Rhys, Hemnath Selvakumar, Daisy Arul, Preethi and Indira among others. A word of thanks is due to my fellow Commonwealth scholars. I also wish to thank the Art of Living family members in Cardiff: Capt. Brij Paul Singh, Tejash Mistry, Migle Turauskaite and Karen Hill for making my PhD stress lighter through meditation, laughter and Sudarshan Kriya. Love to my parents and my little sister, Luttu. Lots of kisses to my darlings, Vaishnav Shankar (Kuttan) and Devagayathri (Chuppu), without
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