Conclusion

In all his fiction Vassanji shows his deep concern for history. Through the histories

of individuals, communities and nation, Vassanji tries to discover a pattern in the lives of

the Indian diaspora dispersed in different countries. He also underlines the interrelatedness

among these histories. His chief interest is with tracing the origins. The "beginnings" interest

him. The origin of the fictional Shamsi community with its mixed Hindu and Muslim culture

and tradition is dramatized or mentioned in all his novels in one way or the other. Most of

his protagonists — Salim Juma, Nurdin and Ramji — are Muslim Shamsis (Mzee Pipa is

not a Shamsi, though he associates himself with Shamsis, and Vikram is a Hindu). The

Shamsis are a major part of Indian immigrants and hold the focus of narrative interest.

Though Vassanji is interested in social histories of communities and political histories

of nations, he also focuses on individuals and their stories or histories. It is significant to
note how these individuals affect and are affected by the events at community and national
levels. In The Gunny Sack, Dhanji Govindji's obsessive love for his half-caste son involves
him in a fraud to his community which feels cheated, resulting in his murder. It is at the
community level that the Indian diaspora invites the ire of the Blacks who, when they come
to power, force them to move to alien lands. The deep-rooted suspicions and antipathy
towards the Indians for their dubious role in the colonial Africa make the new leaders devise
policies and programmes discriminatory to the Indian diaspora. This is what we also find in
No New Land. If the conditions are unfavourable to Indian diaspora in Africa, they are
plainly discriminatory in Canada. Violence against a Dar immigrant at a subway in Toronto
provokes the whole Shamsi community to protest against the attitude of the host society.
The Book of Secrets presents a complex interrelationship among the white colonizers, the

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Indian settler communities and the black natives. However, the pattern is the same. In the

centre/periphery binary, the Indians remain at the periphery in the colonial and the postcolonial

Africa. In the colonial era, they feel patrionized by the white rulers to the dislike of the

natives. In the postcolonial period, they are made to face the music for their early attitude by

the neo-colonial rulers. However, in this novel we are made to feel that even an individual

can affect the destiny of a nation. Mzee Pipa's spying act costs the Germans heavily in their

rivalry with the British. There is a hint of Akber All's involvement in the Faulkland war

with Britian. In Amriika, Vassanji shows how political events determine the fate of individuals.

Ramji, an Indian-African migrant, is almost forced to take part in anti-war protests and

peace marches. He associates himself with a radical Islamic institution only because of his

beloved. Ironically, he learns to his dismay how radicalism proves to be false and shallow in

the end, and how the votaries of secularism and liberalism are involved in violent disruptive

activities to tarnish the imge of Islam. The In-Between World of Vikram Lall only repeats the

pattern of histories depicted variously in The Gunny Sack and The Book of Secrets, though

in a different setting, and with a different set of characters. Vikram Lai is instrumental in

shaping the evil history of the corrupt regimes in Kenya. Ironically, he falls a victim to the

fall-out of the same historical process he is a part of.

The second point of interest in Vassanji's fiction is dislocation. People get dislocated
when they are pushed out by social, political or economic factors, which include
discriminatory policies, oppression or suppression or both, terrorism, revolution, recession,
famine or drought, etc. They migrate to other countries when they are pulled by certain
temptations such as opportunities of good work and jobs, high living standards, good
infrastructure and weather conditions. In Vassanji's novels, both the "push" and "pull" factors

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seem to operate. The search for green pastures, to make easy and quick fortune, is the single

potent factor why Indians migrate to other countries in Vassanji. The narrators in The Gunny

Sack, No New Land and The Book of Secrets attribute the migration of the Indians to Africa

to harsh economic conditions in the homeland and plenty of reports of fortune-making in

Africa. "Security" and "wander-lust" are additional factors behind Indians' willing migration

to Africa. However, the second generation migration in Vassanji takes place mostly because

of "push" factors. Better job opportunities and material comforts, and better avenues for

education and research also attract the Indians to Canada (No New Land) and the U.S.A.

(Amriika).

The consequences of people's dislocation are many. In all his novels, Vassanji shows
them in various ways. At the physical level, the dislocated people have to face verbal abuse,
physical assult, rape and violence. The host society, irrespective of its much-acclaimed liberal
policies, does not tolerate the overwhelming presence of aliens which may affect them
economically, socially and politically in the long run. In No New Land and Amriika, there
are a number of incidents of racial hatred, discrimination and violence against the Indian
diaspora. The mainstream people remain hostile to the people with different cultural and
religious affiliations.

At the mental or emotional level, the people in diaspora have to face many identity-
related issues. The problem is that people cannot altogether change their cultural identity.
The past cannot be totally dispensed with. The identity of being Indian cannot be shed,
howsoever one may consciously or unconsciously try. This is really what seems to create
problems for the diasporic communities in the fictional world of Vassanji. Most of the Indians
in Africa are proudly aware of their cultural past, and zealously guard their traditions, customs
and faiths against all assaults and/or temptations. They feel anguished when their identity is

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not recognized or undermined by some among their own class. They are ready to sacrifice

anything to preserve their culture, tradition and identity. For many of the second generation

of migrants, India is just an imagined home, as they are bom and brought up in Africa. They

remain basically Indians, but are amenable to change. They try to accommodate themselves

to new societies and new cultures. Only when they are rebuffed by the mainstream people

that they feel puzzled and realize their "inbetween" state. The hybrid nature of their identity

produces a painful crisis for them, which makes them either reactionaries (half-castes people

like Huseni in The Gunny Sack and Young Jamali in The Book of Secrets) or drifters (Ramji

in Amriika and Akber Ali in The Book of Secrets). It becomes a cause of their angst (Nurdin

in No New Land) and anguish (Vikram Lall in The Inbetween World ofVikram Lall). The

question of survival in hostile circumstances continues to be uppermost in their mind.

Vassanji chooses such modes and techniques of narration that enable him to portray
his thematic concerns effectively. His favourite narrative mode is first person narration. It is
the most direct method and the sure way to achieve verisimilitude. In The Gunny Sack, the
narrator is the protogonist Huseni Salim Juma. As he is not in a position to know much of
the past history of his ancestors, the novelist introduces a gunny sack of his great grandmother
Ji Bai, containing a lot of things of the past and must information about forgotten persons
and episodes. The gunny sack helps the narrator to connect the present with the past. In The
Book of Secrets, the mode of narration is much more complex than that in The Gunny Sack.
The narrator here is Pius Femandes, a retired teacehr of history, who is helped in his narration
by a diary of a colonial administrator among many other things. The Book of Secrets is
constructed like a detective fiction. There are many loose ends which get connected as the
narrative moves. There are sudden jumps in time and space. In Amriika, The first and third
person modes of narration are blended in a neat structure. Ramji, the protogonist, begins his

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story in a short chapter enMtled 'Beginnings'. The rest of the novel is divided into three

parts. In each part, the story is narrated in the third person, and each part ends on a concluding

chapter, told in the first person. At times the narator jumps the chronological order to give a

peep into the future. It is intended to keep curiosity. In The In-Between World of Vikram

Lall, the story is told in the first person by the protogonist, as a participant-witness narrator

The narrative is structured in a way as to relate the past, not as past, but as modified by the

present.

Vassanji's love for the circular narrative is manifest in each of his five novels. The

Gunny Sack begins with and ends on Ji Bai's death in Canada, taking us back in time and

space over different continents. No New Land begins with the most excruciating event for

the protagonist in Canada, and ends on its satisfying resolution. The rest of the novel charts

the journey of the protagonist from his hometown Dar-es-Salaam in Africa to Toronto in

Canada. The Book of Secrets has a prologue and an epilogue by the narrator, focussing on

the significance of the discovery of the secretive diary. Amriika begins and ends on the

narrator's bewildered state of long waiting for his lost beloved. The In-Between World of

Vikram Lall is similarly structured. The narrative begins with Vikram Lall's present state of

exile, and ends on it, after recounting all the circumstances that have led to it.

It is obvious that in such a structure memory plays a prominent role as a narrative

device. Vassanji uses memory very skilfully in the structure of his novels. Memory juxtaposes
the past with the present in his fiction. It is significant to note that Vassanji does not use
memory to evoke only nostalgia. He does not seek past as a source of comfort. Rather he
uses it in terms of its constructive potential to arrive at some vision of the future, howsoever
tentative that may be.

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 As apostcolonial writer, Vassanji is aware of the importance of relating the language

to the colonized place or mind. In his first novel The Gunny Sack, one can notice a liberal

use of words from a variety of languages spoken by the diaspora—the words from Kiswahili

(called Swahili in the novel), Hindi, Gujarati and Urdu. Such words in the English language

structure sound odd, but they perform a specific purpose of imparting an impression of

muUi-cuUural milieu in Africa. Words such as 'afande' (officer), 'mchawi' (a witch doctor)

'duka' (shop), 'chokra' (boy) have been used to evoke a new emerging culture in multi-racial

and multi-lingual society. Vassanji has continued to use commonplace words from different

languages in The Book of Secrets, as also in The In-Between World of Vikram Lall. He has

also modified standard English syntax to suit the temperament of his characters. The novels

which are not set in Africa (No New Land and Amriika) mostly embody familiar English

constructions.

It is interesting to note how Vassanji has shifted his neutral immigrant stance to a

more politically assertive tone in his fictional world. In The Gunny Sack, Vassanji is concerned

chiefly with the immigrant experience of the Indian diaspora in pre-and post-independent

Africa. Because of the vast canvas and plethora of characters, the narrative focus is blured.

The neutral tone of the narrator belonging to the later generation of migrants leaves no

scope for any difinitive stance. Vassanji, however, succeeds in presenting the trauma of the

migrants, particularly in the post-colonial phase of African history. The novel seems to be

brilliant in delineating some episodes at the individual level.

In No New Land, Vassanji once again presents the agonized state of the alienated

Indian diaspora but fails to come out with a clear-cut stand. The ending of this novel is

unsatisfactory, though it is in the best Western novelistic tradition. The protagonist is relieved

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of the ghost of his past, but he seems to recede to the cocoon of his traditional world,

rejecting all the 'temptations' of the new world.

It is in The Books of Secrets that Vassanji shows a definitive, bold stance against

neo-colonialism. In the bold decision of the protagonist to stay back in his adopted country

and face the oppression of the new rulers we find a new direction in Vassanji's fiction.

Amriika and The In-Between World ofVikram Lall mark a watershed in Vassanji's

development as a novelist. His entire discourse in these novels becomes relatively more

radical, more political with his characters. In both these novels he is not merely concerned

with the depiction of a socio-political reality, rather he is concerned with taking a certain

attitude to that reality.

Even though Vassanji canont be equated with the famous African novelist Ngugi wa

Thing'o in his radicalism, yet his last two novels are radical enough to disturb those who

always toe the Western establishment. Amriika, through its dramatization of some highly

volatile incidents in the America of 70s, implicitly takes an ideological stand against the

short-sighted policies of America which led to the tragic happening of 9/11 in our recent

memory. The protagonist Ramji in Amriika is a direct victim of fundamentalist foi'ces, and

a fundamentalist establishment. Vassanji gives an implicit warning against the spirit of

intolerance shown by America in her relationship with developing countries, particularly

the Islamic world, by quoting two lines of Walt Whitman, the votary of peace and democracy,

as the epigraph to his novel:

"But where is what I started for so long ago?

And why is it yet unfound?"

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 The In-Between World ofVikram Lall may not be Vassanji's best novel but it is so far

his most mature woric. The centre of focus in this novel remains on the protagonist Vikram

Lall as he depicts the socio-political conditions in colonial and neo-colonial Kenya, and

their impact on the Indian diaspora. The open criticism of the corrupt and opperssive regimes

of Presidents Jomo Kenyatta and Patrick Iba Madola, and of the unholy nexus between the

top bureaucrats and the international forces of neo-colonialism reminds us of Ngugi'sPefa/5

of Blood which, too, is seriously concerned with these political mattersin the same context.

Vassanji's novel seems to be better than the earlier ones in the execution of its structure,

mingling the private and the public, and in objectifying the anguish and trauma of

the immigrants at the individual level through intense love affairs and the conditions of

exile.

In the development of Vassanji as a writer we can discern two different directions:

the past viewed from the present, and the present seen through the past. The stories of
Vassanji's three novels. The Gunny Sack, The Book of Secrets and The In-Between World of
Vikram Lall, are set mainly in Tanzania and Kenya, two major East African countries. Vassanji
invokes his past experiences in these novels from the perspective of his present life as
immigrant in Canada. It is possibily done to gain better insights into the present. In No New
Land (set in Canada) and Amrikka (set in America), the present is seen from the advantage
of a hindsight of the past in Africa.

Vassanji has lived in multi-cultural, multi-racial and multi-linguistic societies of

Africa and Canada. His works are, as such, multi-cultural, though he himself derides the
term as "multivulturalism". Multiculturalism recognizes the ethnic diversity existing in a
society. It aims at the preservation of multiple identities and cultural independence of the
minorities. It is the officially declared policy in Canada. Opposed to it is the idea of

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assimilation ('the melting pot') which denies the distinctiveness of minorities and forces
them to enter the mainstream culture. In actual life, both the ideas have failed.
Multiculturalism is viewed by the minority groups as strategy to compartmentalize and
alienate them. The idea of 'melting pot' has failed in view of the belligerent attitude of the
white majority and the apprehensions of the minorities of the coloured people from Asia
and Africa. In the post 9/11 climate of heightened xenophobia, the cultural assimilation or
homogenization of population are talked about openly in America and Britain, but this is
demanded on the terms of the majority.

In fact, there is little hope for people in diaspora in the Western world. Writers like

Vassanji are, of course, still optimistic. Through his protagonists in The Gunny Sack, No

New Land and The Book of Secrets, Vassanji gives a message of mutual accommodation

and tolerance.

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