Chapter I

Theoretical Framework

1.1. Introduction:
As the child watches television, she telephones a travel agent, never before,
since she came to this land, has she ventured to take her destiny into her
own hands, not a single decision, in these ten years, she has never made
any arrangements other than for dinner parties, other than getting a baby-
sitter, other than buying birthday presents, these ten years. She pays by
Anthony's credit card, her own credit limit is not high enough, she can pick
up the tickets on the morning of the flight... (Gupta 23).

"Why would you want to do that?" his voice is suspicious, but she can see
the rapid beat of a pulse in his emaciated throat. "Young people who come
to this country never want to leave." Sudha shrugs. "America isn't the same
country for everyone, you know. Things here didn't work out the way I'd
hoped. Going back with you would be a way for me to start in a culture I
understand the way I'll never understand America. In a new part of India,
where no one knows me. Without the weight of old memories, the whispers
that say, we knew she 'dfail, or Serves her right" (Divakaruni 320-21).

"May I have that one instead?" she asked finally, pointing to a small red
pen that he had bought for fifty paise firom a roadside vendor when he was
in college. It was the cheapest one in his collection.
"If you wish," he said, the beginning of a smile tugging at the comers of his
mouth. Just like her mother, he thought. She liked to make her own choices.
"What will you do with it?"
"I want to write a letter to Molly and Yee," she said importantly, settling
down on the floor near him. "May I have a sheet of paper too?" (Badami
358).

"I hope that you will one day feel better about this," I told Thatha. "I'm
happy with this man. I thought that would be important to you."
1
 Thatha shook his head, defeated. He didn't say anything. He was coming to
terms with the fact that he was not master of my father's house, that when
push came to shove, Ma would always stand by her husband and they both
would stand by me, regardless of my decision and their consequences
(Malladi 224).

In Memories of Rain, Moni has decided to return with her daughter to India, in
The Vine of Desire, Sudha's choice is to settle in India, in The Hero's Walk, Nandana
the granddaughter has finally accepted her relationship with her grandfather Sripathi
Rao and in The Mango Season Priya Rao's choice of Nick as her husband is
supported by her parents. The present study seeks to deal with the circumstances
leading to cultural clashes they are required to face.

1.2. A Conceptual Background of 'Diaspora':

1.2.1. Defining the Concept: Diaspora
'Diaspora' is a word of immense possibilities in the world of literature. In
lexical terms, the word 'Diaspora' (with a capital "D') refers only to the dispersal of
the Jews after 538 BC. Etymologically, it is derived from Greek, where it means
"scattering". The latter meaning has come to assume and exert a bigger authority. The
dispersion of Jews after the Babylonian exile refers to the formation of Jewish
communities scattered in exile outside Palestine away from their homeland. This does
not indicate, however, a traveling or nomadic existence. On the contrary, the term
means exit from one place to several places but always shipping the reminiscence of
the original motherland. Thus, the word holds inside it both things-the notion of
departure from a set point that is ones source and the prospect of return. This prospect
of return may be more imagined than real (Varma, Seshan 2-3).

In his article "Mythical Interpretation of Indo-Canadian Diaspora" Stephen

Gill illustrates the sense of diaspora. In Hebrew, the word 'diaspora' is used for
diaspora as Gault, which means exile. It refers to the Jewish communities scattered in
exile outside Palestine. Those Jewish communities were exiled from their mother
country by Roman authorities between 66 and 70 CE. Diaspora is therefore
"expulsion of a national from his country by the government or voluntary removal of
a citizen, usually in order to escape punishment" (The Columbia Encyclopedia).
Diaspora has been mentioned in Old Testament as punishment or penalty. In
Deuteronomy, Jix\i\\\ xxxll, dispersion of the Jews among nations is interpreted as
punishment for their apostasy. The book says, "thou shall be a Diaspora in all
Kingdoms of the earth" (The Bible, 28.25). The Jews were exiled from Judea by
Babylonians and Jerusalem by the Roman Empire. They travelled with their own
belongings. Their dislocation, homelessness, and memories of their homeland were
part of their diasporic consciousness. The intense pains in an alien land under new
rigid rules and helplessness in returning to one's home were the significant features of
the diaspora of the Jews. Jews suffered more severely in the 20th century with the
Nazis coming to rule in Germany and setting up concentration camps. Around seven
million Jews were killed. Even after forming a homeland, their pains continued. It is
estimated that around 90,000 Jews from Arab countries dispersed to different parts of
the world, mostly to Europe and North America (Gill 276-77).

The depiction of the 'wandering Jew' became the sole part of an invariable
Christian myth, a myth frequently absorbed and rendered liable for by Jews
themselves. Jews are forced to wander, so the belief went, because of their part in the
killing of Christ. These wandering Jews were feared as much as they were despised.
Jews turned to accept the rescuer, and helped the Romans to crucify Christ. This kind
of thought produced a clashing set of Christian attitudes to the Jews. By being
responsible for the Son of God's death, they were fated to eternal suffering (Cohen
25). Another important diaspora that has particular model for research is from Africa,
which arose due to slave trade. A forced displacement began in the 16*'^ century.
Africans were inhumanly sold as slaves in North America, South America, the
Caribbean Islands, and other parts of the world. In addition to those of the Jews and
the Africans, other major diasporas are those of Armenians and Indians. We can see
some resemblances with these major diasporas such as loss of home, pains and
sufferings linked with the defeat. This loss is especially concerned with the Jews, the
Armenians, the Africans and Indian indentured labour and a few other groups. In all
these stories, migration was under pressure and it was based on compulsory exile (Gill
276-77).
 The word 'diaspora' was first used by the Greek for the movements of the
Jews away from their place of origin. In ancient Greece, this gained a very
constructive sense in the form of colonization and the invasion of far away coasts for
the native land. However, the term soon became identical with captivity
(imprisonment) and anguish. The forced exile of the Jewish people became the main
case for a diaspora community. It is observed that until the late twentieth century, the
very word "Diaspora" was almost wholly applied to the Jewish expatriate group of
people, that is: the Jewish diaspora. Today, the term is used to denote "a number of
ethnic and racial groups, living abroad (McLeod ix).

William Safran aptly remarks that "diaspora referred to a very specific case-
that of the exile of the Jews from the Holy Land and their dispersal throughout several
parts of the globe" (Safran, "Jewish" 36). Referring to the classical and traditional
diasporas, Khachig Tololyan writes:

a diaspora was understood as a social infomiation engendered by

catastrophic violence or, at the very least, by coerced expulsion from a
homeland, followed by settlement in other countries and among alien host
societies, and, crucially, capped by generations of survival as a distinct
community that worked hard to maintain its old identity or create new ones
that sustained its difference from the host society (Tololyan 648).

However, today the term is used in diverse context. As Judith Shuval says:

The term refers not only to such classic groups as Jews, Greeks and
Armenians, but to much wider categories which reflect processes of
politically motivated uprooting and moving of populations, voluntary
migration, global communications and transport...The term has acquired a
broad semantic domain and now encompasses a motley array of groups
such as political refugees, alien residents, guest workers, immigrants,
expellees, ethnic and racial minorities, overseas communities (Shuval 41-
42).
 According to Khachig Tololyan, the term today "'shares meanings with a larger
semantic domain that includes words like immigrant, expatriate, refugee, guest-
worker, exile community, overseas community, ethnic community" (4). Safran,
Sahoo, and Lai have used the aforesaid definitions of 'diaspora', which makes the
study easier (viii-ix).

Ashcroft, Griffihs and Tiffin have defined diaspora as "the voluntary or

forcible movement of peoples from their homelands into new regions..." (68). Robert
Cohen describes diasporas as the groups of the people from different cultures living
together in one country who acknowledge that "the old country-a nation often buried
deep in language, religion, custom or folklore—always has some claim on the loyalty
and emotions" (ix). Avtar Brah believes that "Diaspora space is the intersectionality
of Diaspora, border and dislocation as a point of confluence of economic, political,
cultural and psychic processes. It is where multiple subject positions are juxtaposed,
contested, proclaimed or disavowed" (71). According to Steven Vertovec, the term
Diaspora is often applied to "describe practically any population that is considered
'deterritorialized' or 'transnational'- that is, which has originated in land other than
that in which it currently resides, and whose social, economic, and political networks
across the borders of nation states or, indeed, span the globe" (Vertovec, "Three"
277). Vijay Mishra says that, "Diasporic epistemology locates itself squarely in the
realm of the hybrid, in the domain of cross-cultural and contaminated social and
cultural regimes" (Mishra, "New" 71). He also says that all diasporas are unhappy,
but each diaspora is discontented in its own way. Diasporas refer to people who feel
uncomfortable with their non-hyphenated identities as shown on their passports.
Diasporas are people who truly want to realize the meaning of the hyphen, but may
not press the hyphen too far for fear that this would engender to enormous communal
schizophrenia. They are anxiously lodged within an episteme of real or imagined
displacements; spirits, by phantoms arising from within that encourage irredenfist or
separatist movements, disturbs them (Mishra, Literature 1).

William Safiran describes diasporas as 'expatriate minority communities'

(Safran, "Diaspora" 83-84). He perceives the Jewish diaspora as the 'ideal type' and
recognizes seven others as 'legitimate' in terms of all or most of the above criteria.
These are the Armenian, Maghrebi, Palestinian, Cuban, Greek, Chinese and Polish

5
diasporas. Cohen (1997) who extends the definition of diasporas to comprise other
historical processes, proposes a five-fold typology. These types with a few examples,
are victim diasporas (Jews, Armenians, slave diasporas), labour diasporas (Indian
indentured labour, Italians, Filipinos), imperial/colonial diasporas (Ancient Greek,
British, Portuguese), trade diasporas (Lebanese, Chinese) and cultural diasporas
(Caribbean). These types are not uniformly restricted; so, certain migrant people
either fit the characteristics of two or more diaspora types, at the same time or may be
at different points in time. The Greek diasporas are a case in point, moving
successively through imperial, trading and labour-migration phases. Diasporas are
persistently under creation, thus creating 'new diasporas', 'incipient diasporas' or
'diasporas-in-the-making'. Existing diasporas may undergo latest phases of dispersion
or 'rediasporisation' (Clifford 305).

The Indian diaspora is to be regarded as a global occurrence; it is there in

more than 100 countries worldwide. We can see that the heredity of the existing
Indian diaspora can be traced to the colonial power of the British and the abuse of
cheap indentured labour from the Asian subcontinent in different parts of the colonial
empire. India has one of the world's most varied and composite migration histories.
Right from the 19th century, ethnic Indians started establishing communities on every
continent as well as on Islands in the Caribbean, the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
'Indian diaspora' implies population outside India, particularly of those who have
migrated to foreign lands and in course of time deserted their Indian citizenship. The
term stands for the firagments of Indian population outside India, who have the
citizenship of the foreign countries and now very much fit in to the country of their
dream but they trace their origin in another land.

1.2.2. A Historical Slietch of Indian Diaspora:

The Indian diaspora in the world is mainly known by its diversity in
population in terms of culture, including languages, gender, class, caste, education,
origin, religion, beliefs, linguistic affiliations, regions, and other forms of cultural
patterns. Emigration from India proves that it has been extensively varied in regards
to the historical context, causes, effects, and consequences of migration from India. A
brief history of Indian emigration to other parts of the world shows how the Indian
diaspora is formed under different social, political, economic, and cultural contexts
over a period. Landy, Brij and Helene have categorized the Indian emigration from
the historical to the contemporary period into six broad phases:

a)merchants who went to East Africa or Southeast Asia before the 16th
century; b) migration of various groups (trades, farmers) to neighbouring
countries (Srilanka, Nepal); c)indentured labourers to colonial empires like
the Caribbean, Fiji, Mauritius or Natal; as well as migration through
middlemen (kangani, maistry) to Southeast Asia; d) migration of skilled
workers after the Second World War towards the developed countries
(UK); e) migration of contract workers to the Gulf countries; and f) recent
migration of knowledge workers to developed countries (USA) (203-4).

By taking the assistance of aforesaid categories of the history of Indian

emigration, Safran, Sahoo, and Lai have suggested four wide patterns of emigration:

*Pre-colonial emigration;
*Colonial emigration that began in the 1830s to the British, French, and Dutch
colonies;
*Post-coIonial emigration to the industrially advanced countries; and
*Recent emigration to West Asia

In fact, Immigration is a fact that has been taking place for thousands of years
all over the globe. It happens when people no longer support themselves within their
own country. They choose migrating to places where prospects are high and easily
accessible. In the ancient period people migrated from one place to another in search
of food, shelter, and safety. However, today, people are lured to migrate in search of
better career prospects, worth and standards of life. While traveling abroad,
immigrants carry not only their acquaintances but also their home traditions and
cultural reminiscences. For ages, irrespective of nationality or ethnicity, migrations
have become common occurrence.

In the introduction of the book, The Indian Diaspora: Dynamics of Migration,

N. Jayram has divided the history of Indian diaspora into two major phases of
emigration: "Overseas emigration in the nineteenth century" and "Twentieth century
migration to industrially developed countries". In terms of logical understanding,
these can be termed as the colonial and the post-colonial phases of Indian diaspora
{Indian 18). Abha Pande, in the book, Indian Diasporic Literature has given three
broad phases of the journey of Indian migration: Pre-colonial phase. Colonial phase,
and Postcolonial phase (A. Pande 20). The story of the growth of Indian diaspora
starts in the nineteenth century, and can be understood by dividing it into three major
categories. In the first wave, there were chiefly two reasons behind migration under
the colonial rule. The primary reason was the deprived state that existed at that time in
India because of the throttling of the Indian countryside and cottage industry resulting
in severe scarcity and unemployment. Second, every colonial authority found Indians
efficient, skilled, and hard working people because of that the British, the French, the
Dutch, and the Portuguese all captured Indian skilled labour for the progress of
plantations and undeveloped economies of their terrains (J. Sharma 20). The third
wave of migration was to get hold of the best possible job prospects in developing
nations like America, Canada, Britain, and Australia, while untrained workers
travelled to Gulf countries. The historical evolution of the Indian diaspora is presented
below.

1.2,2.1. Pre-colonial Emigration:

The Indian emigration has begun since ancient times, when there were some
purposes like trading and proliferating religion. The past data suggests that Indian
emigration started as early as the first century AD, when Indian priests, poets, princes,
and artisans preferred migrating to South East Asian countries. The early emigration
from India related mainly to the Buddhist Missionaries, when the Hindu kingdoms of
medieval Southeast Asia planned to create a center of attention for the Indian people
during the ^"'century. Therefore, as time passed this trade developed bit by bit and by
this means, the Indian emigrants started establishing their miniature colonies in the
lands of their migration such as East Africa and Southeast Asia. In the same period,
merchants from Gujarat, Bengal and Tamilnadu settled in the major cities of Southern
Asia and started the most intricate but necessary process of assimilation in alien land
(Safran, Sahoo, and Lai xvi).
 Historical evidences show that Buddhist Bhikkus travelled into inaccessible
comers of Central and Eastern Asia. There was a constant contact between the
kingdoms of the Coromandel Coast and the islands of South-East Asia. Owing to
trade with East Africa, Indian migrants decided to settle down there. These early
Indian migrants were from small trading communities like Bhoras, Ismailis, and
Banyas of Gujarat state. Their counterparts approximately covered Malaya, Burma,
Ceylon, Thailand, and Indonesia (Jayaram, Indian 19-20).

Some Indian merchants preferred to continue their commerce in Malaya,

Sumatra, Java, and some other parts of South East Asia. They also made their stay
permanent there by marrying native women. Brahmans and Buddhist monks also
followed them. It is also found that Indian migration to the East is evidenced by the
fact that the typical civilizations of China, Korea, Japan and Tibet are mostly shaped
by the absorption of Buddhism into the native culture of their lands. Abha Pandey
systematically observes that before the finding of Mediterranean trade routes, some
Indian traders headed their journey in the Indian ocean to discover new trading routes
to the East coast of Africa, South East Asia and some of the regions that are now
familiar as the Middle East (A. Pandey 22).

1.2.2,2. Colonial Emigration:

The emigration of Indian labour overseas can be studied through Tinker
Hugh's comprehensive surveys of three distinct patterns of Indian emigration, 1.
"Indentured" labour emigration, 2. 'Kangani' and 'maistry' labour emigration, and 3.
"Passage" or "free" emigration. Jayaram in his introduction of the book The Indian
Diaspora: Dynamics of Migration identifies the same patterns of Indian emigration as
given by Tinker Hugh. The colonial government authoritatively supported the
'Indentured Labour Emigrafion', which means those individual migrants, who signed
the agreement, had to work on plantations for a period of five years. The extension of
colonization in all the main colonies of the British, French, and the Dutch colonizers
had enormous producfive areas in distant places (A. Pandey 22). This phase began in
1834 and ended in 1920. Majority of the labour emigrants under this forced scheme
were recruited particularly from North India. These labour migrants were taken to
different parts of the world to serve their colonial masters. For instance, these labour-
emigrants were taken to the British colonies of British Guiana (now Guyana), Fiji,
Trinidad, and Jamaica; the French colonies of Guadeloupe and Martinique; and the
Dutch colony of Surinam. During roughly the same period, another form of migration
took place. The kangany and maistry system succeeded in the process of staffing of
labour for emigration to Srilanka, Malaysia and Burma. Kangani derived from Tamil
kankani; which means foreman while maistry derives trom Tamil mistry, meaning
supervisor. Under these systems, the kangani or maistry recruited entire families and
shifted them to plantations. Under these systems, the laborers were mostly free to
choose their period of service in the different colonies. These systems began in the
first and third quarters of the nineteenth century and were brought to an end in 1938
(Jayaram, Indian 20-21).

In the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century the European imperialist

powers paved the way for Indian emigration to different parts of the colonies set up
by British, French, and Dutch imperialists. Because of creating new colonies, there
was a great scope for dealers of labour for the plantations, industrial and commercial
business enterprises. The ending of slavery in the British, French, and Dutch colonies,
respectively, in 1834, 1846, and 1873, created dearth of laborers to work in the sugar,
tea, coffee, cocoa, and rubber plantations in different parts of the colonies. Therefore,
these colonial masters started looking for different sources of labour. Besides the
African ex-slaves and European immigrants, the colonial governments introduced
Indians under the title of "indentured labour". To meet their demands, colonial
masters urgently needed work force on various ventures, which led the British to
establish the system of "Indentured labor Migration" firom the Indian subcontinent.
The indentured labour system "took a variety of forms, typically articulating with
indigenous social relations, but generally was a contractual arrangement with penal
sanctions whereby workers agreed to passage to and employment in a foreign country
under specified terms, usually for five to ten years" (Goss, Bruce 389).

The Dutch and French imitated the British system and started exporting Indian
labours to their colonies. It was a group movement, which enormously provided cheap
labour to European colonies. Indians became bonded-labourers because the extreme
drought and scarcity in many parts of India forced them to sell themselves to the
imperial powers. The journeyfi-omIndian sub-continent to other parts of colonies was

10
very hard. The shipping boats were not in proper conditions, not even better than the
slave boats that carried Africans to the Southern United States.

There were thousands of Indians who emigrated to East and South Africa,
Mauritius, Fiji, and the Caribbean under this system (Safran, Sahoo, and Lai xvii).
Laborers for plantation work in Mauritius, Suriname. Guyana and East Africa were
recruited from Gujarat and Punjab. The Indian workers in different parts of French
colonies, such as Guadeloupe, Martinique, and La Reunion were Tamils. All these
workers were male immigrants. This evil immigration system continued until First
World War.

Basdeo, Sahadeo and Brinsley Samaroo examine that the Indian indenture
labour shifted to the British West Indies after the abolition of slavery. In the British
West Indian colonies, Indians successfully assimilated with the unkind and unsuitable
working conditions of the plantations. They absorbed the Caribbean culture and
resettled there too. Today we see that the decedents of these indentured workers are
spread everywhere in the entire Caribbean region. They also fonn a majority in
Guyana and significant minorities in Trinidad and Tobago as well as Surinam (98).
The colonial emigration of Indian labor to the various countries of Africa and the
Caribbean had very similar features of indentured laborers (Safran, Sahoo, and Lai
xix).

The history of Indian presence in South Africa goes back to the seventeenth
century; however, it was only in the mid-nineteenth century that a large population
emigrated under the indentured system, which was first used in Mauritius in 1834,
then in the West Indies, followed by Natal in 1860 (Safran, Sahoo, and Lai xviii). As
P.S Joshi observes most Indian laborers immigrated to East Africa to work
particularly on the construction of railroads. They were not officially sponsored. They
themselves paid their 'passage', and they were quite free because of not having been
bound with any contract. The British initiated the indentured labour system as a better
substitute for "forced labour and slavery. The indentured 'coolies' were half slaves,
bound over body and soul by a hundred and one inhuman regulations" (44). British
masters knew that the indentured laborers were vital to the economy of Natal because
those poor indentures could be easily exploited with extra working hours and meager

11
wages, which were also reduced through the severe system of massive penahies for
trivial offences. According to the 1996 census, there were almost 1.1 million South
African "Indians". They made up less than 3 percent of the total South African
population (Landy, Brij and Helene 205).

Chandra Jayawardena describes that the migration of Indians to Sri Lanka,

Burma, and Malaya during the British Raj was very different from former migrations.
All the emigrants to those places were essentially from South India and a headman
known as kangani recruited them. "Each kangani recruited a score or more of men
belonging mainly to his own caste and kin group...Often the kangani was a man with
some capital who lent his followers the expense of traveling to, and settling down on,
a plantation" (433). The Indians emigrants worked on the tea, coffee, and rubber
plantations under this system. After 1920s, the kangani emigration system gradually
paved the way for free individual migration due to the fall in demand for Indian
immigrant labour (Safran, Sahoo, and Lai xx).

Besides low-skilled workers, there were many members of Indian trading

communities that settled in various countries of the British Empire, particularly,
where the business chances were very high. Of course, these traders settled where
indentured labor had been brought. For instance, Guajarati immigrant merchants
turned out to be shop owners in East Africa, and traders from present day states like
Kerala and Tamilnadu offered rural credits to fanners in Burma, Ceylon (Srilanka),
and Malaya (Malaysia).

Migration to the United Kingdom and Northern America started during

colonial rule in India. However, the number of other emigrants was much less in
relation to emigration from India. Canada was also a part of the British Empire, in
1904; there were about 100 Indians in Canada. In the subsequent three years, this
number increased to 5,000.

Although Indian emigration has been taking place since early times, Indians
never observed such a huge movement of people from India to other parts of
European colonies as in the 19"" and 20"^ centuries. Actually, the migration during this
period started with the Indian soldiers to various British colonies who went together
12
with their colonial masters to fight in different wars. The large-scale migration took
place chiefly because of the staffing of labour under Indenture system. The causes
behind this migration may be extreme poverty, lack of employment and constant
exploitation at the hands of the British Raj in India. Therefore, some people preferred
to migrate either to earn a livelihood elsewhere or to flee from the viciousness and
cruelties of the British masters (A. Pandey 24).

It is studied that the emigration of Indians that began in the second quarter of
the nineteenth century continued till the early decades of the 20'^ century. Here it is to
be kept in mind that the emigration of Indians to the industrially urbanized countries
received a special weightage in the post-colonial phase and in the nineteenth century
as well.

Major migrations to the U.S.A. and Canada took place after India won
independence in 1947. The migrants were mostly Sikhs from four or five districts of
Punjab. Early migration to North America was of ex-servicemen, who had served
overseas with the British forces in places like Hong Kong etc. A few of them arrived
in Canada as more prospects became available. More Indians migrated to Canada.
Indians found jobs in the railways, in farming, dairy work, and fruit picking (A.
Pandey 27).

1.2.2.3. Post-colonial Emigration:

The Second World War changed the entire method of international migration.
It strongly affected every migrant country of the world, and India was not an
exception to this change. During this era, the migration was heading to industrially
developed countries, and those who migrated from India were educated, talented,
skilled professionals, and laborers. The postcolonial migration was not similar to that
in the colonial period. During this period, the Indian migration headed towards the
developed countries such as US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Some
Indian migrants migrated from the previous colonies with the expectation of better
opportunities. They were rightly labeled as "twice migrants" (Safran, Sahoo, and Lai
xx-xxi). US, UK and Canadian statisticsfi-om2010, esfimates that the Indian diaspora
grew to 3 millions in the US, 1.5 millions in the UK, and 1 million in Canada; a

13
twenty-fold increase in a half century. After the Mexicans, Filipinos, and Chinese, we
are the fourth biggest group in the US.

Even though the first phase of Indian settlement in the US started in the
nineteenth century, due to very unbending and rigid conditions of immigration laws,
the major migration from India to USA actually began after the Second World War. It
is particularly after the immigration laws of the US in 1965, rendered the conditions
moderate that people from South Asia in general, and India in particular, migrated to
the US in bigger numbers (Gottschlich 156). Johana Lessinger has observed that the
new migrants to the US since 1965 were wholly different in comparison to the
nineteenth century immigrants with whom Americans were most familiar (5). They
were from the educated and professional elite class, such as engineers, scientists,
doctors, and businesspersons (Safran, Sahoo, and Lai xxi). Indians who moved to
America in the late 1960s and 1970s were an extremely proficient community and till
the 1980s the Indian immigrants in USA were a skill-oriented and professional class
dispersed throughout the border and living among other middle class people in
America. The post-colonial emigration to industrially developed countries was mostly
individual in nature and often called the "brain drain" in India. The emigrant
population enjoyed fmancial affluence and socio-cultural rights. This flow of
emigrafion has resulted in lively Indian population abroad (Jayaram, The Indian 11).

India has a long history of very huge migration. Besides America, Indian
immigrants also settled in other countries around the world, especially Guyana,
Trinidad, Uganda, England and so on. Though all these diaspora communities
migrated from India, it is important to note that they were culturally different even to
themselves. For instance, in USA, there are many Indian immigrants, among whom,
the dissimilarities are between those who directly migrated from India and those who
arrived there indirectly from the Caribbean region. Their ancestral origin in India is
far less direct compared to those that directly migrated to the USA from India. It is
also to be taken into account that Caribbean Indians were inclined to identify their
country of birth, as Guyana or Trinidad but not their mother country, Indias
(Bhattacharya 80).

14
 There are two large waves of Indian immigrants in the USA. The first began in
1965, and the second was around 1990s. Because of lifting the restrictions on Asian
immigrants in 1965, people irom the Indian subcontinent came in large numbers in
search of better educational and professional opportunities. During the 1990s, the jobs
in the mechanical field opened the doors of America to the Indian immigrants. There
was a high demand for white-collar jobs. The second (1990s) wave of immigrants
included Indian professionals' relatives who were not trained or specialized during the
first wave. Therefore, they had an option to apply for immigrant visas under the
"family-relatives" type. These relatives got subordinate-level jobs in the USA. They
did not have professional ability to meet the demands of USA. So, they started
working in various fields like newsstand dealers, gas stations attendants or cab
drivers. These blue-collar jobs in USA brought numerous problems in the lives of
Indian immigrants. These Indian immigrants felt that they had a slight chance to
accomplish their dreams and enjoy upward social positions within their ethnic group
of people and American society as a whole (Bhattacharya 81-84).

The Indian emigrants have settled in Britain for almost three centuries. So,
Indian existence in the UK has been significant ever since. Indian immigrants in the
UK have been working as lawyers, doctors, professionals since the beginning of the
eighteenth century. Indian immigrants, who went as workers on low jobs in the 1950s
in Britain, slowly started uplifting their social mobility by establishing small comer
shops. Twenty years later, they had transformed their business into bigger enterprises,
raising the status of Indian community, which is now one of the most prosperous
minorities in the country (A. Pandey 29-30). According to the April 2001 UK
National Census, there are 1,051,800 Indian immigrants in the UK. They are the most
educated, cultured, and economically rich South Asian immigrant communities. It is
also observed that since the Second World War, the migration to the UK fi-om India
has been in large numbers, of which most of them were fi-om the state of Punjab.
There was another large migrafion that took place from former colonies of East Africa
to the UK in the wake of ethnic violence in those countries (Safran, Sahoo, and Lai
xxi-xxii).

"Secondary Migration" of people of Indian origin to the UK started as a result

of anti-Indian discrimination in Afiican countries like Kenya and Uganda in the
15
1960s. One-fifth of the current Indian diaspora is the result of this secondary
migration from an East African country or South Africa. "Twice migrants" were
greatly accomplished young workers such as IT experts, engineers, teachers, and
nurses (Safran, Sahoo, and Lai xxii). According to the 2001 survey, the Indian
population is the largest single ethnic minority group in Britain, making up almost one
quarter of the entire minority ethnic inhabitants (Robinson 184).

India's postcolonial ties and the UK's Commonwealth Immigration Policy

paved the way to any inhabitant of a commonwealth country to reside, work, take part
in an election, and hold public office in the United Kingdom. This has resulted in
many immigrants settling in London as well as business cities from 1947 to 1963.
Indian nafionals, as commonwealth citizens, got unlimited rights to go to the UK.
During this period, most workers from Punjabi Sikh community migrated to UK.
These migrants were mostly from four or five districts of Punjab.

Early migration to North America was of ex-servicemen, who lent a hand to

serve overseas along with the British forces in places like Hong Kong etc. The first
batch of immigrants in Canada faced harsh racial discriminafion by the local white
Canadians. The racial riots against these immigrants provoked in Canada led most of
the Indian immigrants to decide to go back their homeland, while a few migrants
showed reluctance to leave Canada. In the case of Canada, the first decade of the 20"'
century saw a steady expansion of Indian immigration (Petros 475). Nevertheless,
later the Canadian immigration restrictions were relaxed and legislafion in 1962 and
1967 considerably started liberalizing immigration policy of Canada. Prior to 1962,
most of the immigrants were from the state of Punjab, who preferred to settle down in
the province of British Columbia. Subsequently there were immigrants from every
segment of India, from every regional, linguistic, and work-related group representing
India. There were many Hindus from Gujarat, Bombay, and Delhi, Christians from
Kerala and Parsis from Bombay who emigrated to Canada during the liberalisation of
immigrant policy of Canada. Presently the Indian diaspora in Canada is enjoying
much advanced level of approval than any other immigrant community in Canada. It
is one of the most flourishing minorities that constitutes a significant proportion of the
total immigrants in the multicultural society in Canada (Safran, Sahoo, and Lai xxii).
Owing to the family sponsorship immigration policy in Canada, Indian immigrants

16
were free to assert their social mobility and professional skills in the field of
academia, information technology, and medicine. In Canada, the current generation of
Indians is involved in IT industry in one way or the other.

As far as the Indian migration to Australia is concerned, it categorizes under

three large waves. The first wave began during the early part of the twentieth century,
when both Australia and India were under British colonial rule, and most of them
belonged to the Sikh population. The second wave began after Indian independence,
when a large number of British, and Anglo-Indians migrated to Australia.

N. Jayaram rightly examines one of the least studied parts of Indian diaspora.
He says that the migration of the Anglo-Indians is one of the least focused aspects of
Indian diaspra. Feeling marginalized as a consequence of India's freedom, many of the
descendants, who had intermarriages between Indians and the English, left India for
England. Later, they found that they were not ethnically and culturally acceptable to
the English, so much so that a number of them emigrated to Australia, which has
turned into a second "homeland" to a significant segment of the Anglo-Indians {The
Indian 22).

The next wave of Indian migration to Australia occurred in the early seventies,
particularly after Australia discarded its 'Whites Policy' in 1973. The immigration
policy of Australia was totally free from any discrimination on the grounds of race,
skin, colour, or nationality. It resulted in the increase of Asia-Pacific immigration to
Canada. The Indian immigrants in Canada mostly hailed from Punjab and Gujarat.
They started migrating to Australia from 1976 onwards (A. Pandey 28). The big
arrival of Indian immigrants started with the revolution in communication technology
that resulted in a large number of computer software professionals in IT business
migrating to Australia from 1976 onwards. According to the High Level Committee
Report on Indian diaspora, an estimate of Indian population in Australia stands at
190,000(2004).

As far as Indian immigration in New Zeland is concerned, it has a long history

that goes back to the nineteenth century. "They have established an 'Indian' identity
based on occupational activities which they typically undertook and on the regions of
17
India from which they originated" (Friesen 45). Before 1987, Indians who migrated to
New Zealand were from either Gujarat or Punjab state. However, later, Indo-Fijians,
another branch of the Indian diaspora began to come into New Zealand in the wake of
two military takeovers in Fiji (Leckie 163).

In difference to the ex-indentured populations, today Indian immigrants are

settled in the technologically urbanized countries and are successfully preserving
broad ties with their motherland. Since a large number of Indian immigrants are still
first generation migrants they are very much linked and associated to their place of
origin by attending and celebrating Indian wedding ceremonies, affiliation networks,
sacred affiliations, cultural festivals and so on. Overseas Indians are cautiously
maintaining relationships with their homeland because of the flow of their payments
and savings (Safran, Sahoo, and Lai xxiii-xxiv).

1.2.2.4. Recent Emigration to West Asia:

The emigration to West Asian countries is mainly based on labour and
servicing occupations on a treaty base. We see that the oil boom of the 1970s changed
the entire infrastructural face of the countries in the Gulf It raised the demand for
expatriate labor in the oil-exporting countries of the Gulf and North Africa, Saudi
Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Libya. Owing to
adopting infrastructural growth policies, a number of prospects for unskilled manual
labour were created in the construction sector (Safran, Sahoo, and Lai xxiv).

The Gulf countries provided favourable environment for investment with no

taxes, no limitations on foreign asset and sponsored free zones. These industrial and
marketing activities of the Gulf countries helped Indian immigrants to invest there.
Indians began investing in retail stores, gold and fabric trade, hotels and cafe as
entrepreneurs in the Gulf (A. Pandey 31). The oil boom marked a massive impact on
the noteworthy migration from India to the West Asia. The Indian emigrants chiefly
from South India migrated there to work on provisional schemes in the oil business
and in services and production. These schemes were on a contractual basis rather than
on a permanent basis as in the 19' century.

18
 The Indian migration to West Asian countries was voluntary in nature. It was
mostly male migration, which is exemplified by constant ties with the families and
communities back in India. In West Asian countries, the Indian emigrants could not
settle down, they had neither ownership rights lior the liberty to practice their own
religion (Jayaram, The Indian 22). It is noticed that Indian emigrants in Gulf countries
did not have the rights to live as migrant Indians, as their counterparts in western
realms. Indian migrants went to Gulf countries to earn and save money. In Gulf
countries, Indians faced favoritism and exploitation; they had restricted rights and no
prospect to settle down there.

In the current migration, Indian entrepreneurs, scientists, academics, media

personalities, and particularly IT professionals in the US have gained faith and
conviction about India's intellectual abilities. The most developed countries prefer
recruiting Indian graduates and professionals on the prestigious posts of their
companies. The Indian immigrants are helping to improve the economies of the
countries of their settlement. The achievement of the Indian diaspora in the current
period can be credited to its conventional culture, legacy, cultural principles, and
educational ability and so on. The Indian diaspora has transfonned India's image
overseas, which has vastly served to strengthen the Indian cultural custom abroad.

The Indian diaspora has played a precious role in promoting Indian culture
worldwide. The growing awareness of Indian presence on the international scene has
instilled a new self-assurance and curiosity about their cultural origin among Indians
abroad. Non-residential Indians are now helping their country both financially and
politically. Now many Indians are returning to develop the financial system of their
country as a part of a search for their ancestral roots. The new generation of Indians
abroad now feels the sense of belonging with respect to their origin by showing that
they are more than just Americans, British, Afi-icans, Canadians of Indian origin.

Indians have migrated to different parts of the world at different periods of

time in the past. They migrated to British, French, and Dutch colonies during the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as indentured and kangani laborers and they
represent the Old Diaspora (Bhat 11-24). They also migrated to industrially
developed countries of Europe and North America as highly trained professionals and

19
workers in the post-colonial age, and thus they represent the New Diaspora. The
experience of these Indian emigrants is from distress to felicitations, from nostalgia to
forgetfiilness. They have assimilated themselves with the hosts' society as well as
retained their identity. In their diasporic voyage, these immigrants have experienced
both being marginalized and feeling a sense of pride in the lands of their immigration.
The formation of Indian diasporas is one of the most noteworthy demographic
dislodgment of modem times and can be sorted out according to Sudesh Mishra as the
'Sugar' and 'Masala' Diaspora. As he puts it:

There is a distinction to be made between the old and the new diaspora.
This distinctions between on the one hand, the semi-voluntary flight of
indentured peasants to the non-metropolitan plantation colonies such as
Fiji, Trinidad... and on the other the late capital or post-modem dispersal of
new migrants of all classes to thriving metropolitan centers such as
Australia, the U.S., Canada and Britain (S. Mishra 276).

This categorization is extended into the terms as "forced diaspora' and

'voluntary diaspora'. It is noticed that the latter diaspora is doing very well in
establishing close contact with their families and relatives back home. Indians today
have formed strong networks around the globe. Their networks are guided and
directed through various mechanisms such as using telephone, internet, remittance,
sending and receiving videos, attending wedding ceremonies and celebrating and
observing cultural religious festivals.

People of the Indian subcontinent have migrated to different countries for a

variety of reasons at different periods of its history. Among the immigrants of diverse
nationalities, overseas Indians comprise a significant section. It is estimated that in
addition to six million Indian citizens, total number of Indians abroad goes up to more
than twenty million (Government of India 680). Taking 10,000 as the minimum
figure, about fifty countries have more than 10000 populations of Indian origin and in
six countries it ranges between 5000 and 10000. Those countries are Malaysia,
Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, United Kingdom, and United States of
America, their number is approximated to be more than a million. The people of
Indian origin form the single major ethnic community in Fiji (49%), Guyana (53%),
20
Mauritius (74%), Trinidad and Tobago (40%), and Surinam (37%). They fom
substantial marginal groups of people in Asian realms like Hong Kong, Malaysia,
Singapore, Srilanka, and in South Africa and East Africa. They also include a
remarkable continuation in Australia, Canada, UK, and US (Jayaram, Diversities 1).

1.2.3. Towards a Typology of the Indian Diaspora:

Colonialism is the key sign in a typology of the Indian diaspora. N.Jayaram
has presented it in the following manner {Diversities 234-238).

1.2.3.1. Tlie Colonialism-Induced Diaspora:

The Indian immigrant's population that comes under this group migrated to
the colonies-the British, the French and the Dutch-mostly as plantation labour, and
their immigration was administered by the colonial powers. They are today the fourth
or fifth generation of early settlers, and a lot of them have rejoiced the arrival of the
first Indians in their settlement country. It is particularly based on the racial and
cultural composition of the country of settlement, the politics of ethnicity and identity
there, and the contribution of the diasporic population in their strife for control. The
colonialism-induced Indian diaspora can be identified under three subtypes.

1.2.3.1.1. Competing Community:

We see Indian immigrants comprise a numerically chief part of the population
in biracial/multi-ethnic settlement countries, where they, either get delight in
supremacy in financial system and politics of the country or are occupied in
authoritative strife with other ethnic or racial groups. The Indian communities in
Maurifius, Trinidad, Surinam, and Singapore are typical instances of this piece.

1.2.3.1.2. Subjected Community:

Though Indian migrants comprise a numerically vital part of the population,
yet because of their unimportant status in biracial (arrangement) countries, they are
marginalized relegated to an inferior status or subjected to exploitation by the resident
inhabitants and a numerically leading ethnic group. The Indian communities in Fiji,
Guyana, Malaysia, and South Afiica are cases in point.

21
1.2.3.1.3. Marginalized Community:
It is seen that the Indian migrants in countries of their settlement are
marginalized or their benefits are meager. Indian migrants in these countries of
settlement numerically represent a small part of the native population; The Indian
communities in Guadeloupe, Jamaica, Martinique, and St Lucia are the examples of
this type.

1.2.3.2. The Colonialism-Facilitated Diaspora:

The Indian diasporic communities from this group emigrated to Great Britain,
Canada, or to some African countries all through colonialism. It is observed that the
migrants concerned were not sponsored by the colonial administration. They were
paid for their passage and were not bound by any bond or contract. These Indian
immigrants strongly desired to get away from the post-colonial domination of their
society and its interests; there was a mass emigration of the diasporic Indians from
East Africa to England and Canada. The diasporic Indians who stayed behind
undisturbed stands for the fourth or fifth generation of settlers there today. The
Colonialism-facilitated diaspora is based on the racial and ethnic composition of the
agreement- country, and the politics of ethnicity/identity and the association of the
diasporic community in their finn stand for acquiring financial power and political
acknowledgment there. There are three subtypes of the colonialism-facilitated Indian
Diaspora:

1.2.3.2.1. Original Immigrant Community:

Under this category, the Indian immigrant populations are in better conditions
with full nationality, constitutional rights in the UK and Canada. Even though there
are a few socio-economic differences among these Indian immigrants, some of these
immigrants have been prosperous. The Gujarati Patels and the Sikhs from Punjab are
the instances of this subtype.

22
1.2.3.2.2. Twice-Removed Community:
The communities of the 'twice-removed' Indians were at first considered as
migrants, but they are now accepted as diasporic populations in their subsequent land
of acceptance. For instance in the UK and Canada, these 'twice removed' diasporic
communities have to vie with the Indian diasporic communities, which are already
established there. It is seen that these twice-removed migrants keep sharing their
religious and cultural uniqueness with their fellow citizens of the same country. The
Sikh and Gujarati emigrants from East Africa in the UK and Canada are
representative of this subtype.

1.2.3.2.3. Suppressed Community:

The suppressed community comprises those who failed to become a part of the
mass exit from East Africa. They were inhibited to the position of subjects under the
new government, and were held back economically and politically. Even though the
condition of their overall lifestyle has enhanced in the present years, their status is not
yet improved much.

1.2.3.3. The Post-Independence Diaspora:

This group covers the migrations of Indians after India became free in 1947.
Under this migration movements, the following phases can be incorporated: i) the
migration of Indian emigrant professionals and semi-professionals to the
technologically sophisticated countries like the US, the UK, and Canada, which is
called the Indian 'brain drain' ii) the migration of both skilled and unskilled laborers
to West Asia, which is known as 'skill drain' and iii) the migration of Anglo-Indians
to Australia and the UK.

In the primary flow, with the second and subsequent generations having
emerged, the migrant residents seem to be happy in their financial wealth and socio
cultural civil liberties in multicultural affairs of state, and they are the exciting Indian
diasporic society. In the second flow, even though migration is individual and
voluntary in nature, its trends and circumstances are determined by the unpredictable
labour marketplace affairs. It is mostly male exodus, who had almost no projection of
arrangement as a diasporic community. The third flow is numerically unimportant,

23
and does not fall under the educational hub. The post independence diaspora is based
on the racial composition of the country of arrangement and the political beliefs of
civilization and identity there, as also the duration and legal status of the Indian
migrants. The following subtypes come under the post-independence diaspora:

1.2.3.3.1. People of Indian Origin (PIOs):

The immigrants come under this type, have been in Australia, Canada, the UK,
or the US for an adequately extended time to have turned out to be citizens of the
respective countries or to seize stable resident position like the green card possessors
in the US. The People of Indian Origin Card was launched by the Ministry of Home
Affairs in March 1999 to stre'ngthen the bonds of Indians who have made other
countries their homes, but who now have a desire to renew their ties with the land of
their origin. The foreign spouses of citizens of India or PIO would also be covered
under the plan.

1.2.3.3.2. Non-Resident Indians (NRIs):

The immigrants coming under this type are those who have not been in
Australia, Canada, the UK, or the US for an adequately extended time to obtain the
residency of the respective country or even the stable inhabitant position. The NRIs
normally seize work consent and extensive visas for an officially allowed stay in these
countries. Those who are illegitimate Indian immigrants staying unofficially in these
countries would also fall in this group, because as and when they are found they will
be transported to India.

The Government of India was indifferent to the questions of Indians abroad. It

became conscious of the potential of the new diaspora, or NRIs who immigrated after
independence to the developed world. They came from the middle class privileged
families and extremely accomplished groups of professional, scientists, doctors and
engineers. Liberalization and the new industrial strategy in the 1970s sought
participation of overseas Indians both in terms of funds and in terms of technology
(Bhat 18).

24
1.2.3.3.3. Transient Diasporas:
The Indian immigrants, who come under this category are mostly workers in
West Asia, who, in spite of their stay in the nation cannot develop into a settlement
group of people. Since their return to their motherland is yet awaited, they are only
temporary diasporas there.

Now, it is evident that this typology may well be helpful in understanding

other aspects of the Indian diaspora. As far as a typology of the Indian diaspora is
concerned, it may be useflil in knowing about other aspects of the Indian diaspora.
There are significant distinctions among the diasporic Indian populations, each having
its own profits in, prospects of, and direction towards India and the Indians. A central
topic related to the difficulty in discussing the Indian diaspora in particular concerns
the applicability of simplification arrived at by studying given diasporic communities,
or some facet of theirs. 'The Indian diaspora' is a multifaceted experience, many
phases, patterns, and processes coming under it. There is a long way to go before we
could confidently theorize the Indian diaspora. The study of Indian diaspora, with all
its ideas has to be studied with the accessible perspectives of anthropology, history,
and sociology (Jayaram, diversities 238).

As William Safran aptly says, it is the universal uniqueness of diasporas that

"they continue to relate, personally or vicariously, to the homeland in one way or
another, and their ethno-communal consciousness and solidarity are importantly
defined by the existence of such a relationship" ("Diasporas" 84). As a result, the
diasporic Indians do not snap their association with their inherited country. The nature
of this connection is highly changeable in diverse diasporic circumstances (Jayaram,
Diversities 238).

Although not an entirely new phenomenon, the global Indian diaspora is

emerging as a serious phenomenon for twenty-first-century researchers to explore its
wide range. Now, Indian diaspora communities around the world are rising fast
through enlarged immigration rather than birth rates (Bhattacharya 77-79). Because of
the fast shifting globalised world, millions of nadves live outside their nafive soil.
Today almost every country has a diaspora and every ethnic/religious/cultural group

25
has a diaspora somewhere on the planet. Of late, role of diasporas in cultural clashes
and conflict solutions has become one of the main research interests.

1.2.4. Indian Diaspora in Transnational Contexts:

The term transnationalism refers to the relationships between people of diverse
nation states, and the set of connections, which link them together (Vertovec, Cohen
xx). When the phrase is used, as an adjective to clarify a literary art, then it shows the
aesthetics being situated in a variety of nations across the sphere. Diaspora usually
refers to an inhabitant who has originated in a land other than that in which he
currently resides (Vertovec, Cohen xvi). It means that heterogeneity and multiplicity
characterizes both transnationalism and diaspora. The increase in communal and
cultural changes are brought up by both transnational and diaspora.

According to Susheila Nasta, South Asian diasporic writers in general draw

from their sub continental, multicultural, and multilingual tradition, resulting in a deep
feeling which "is adapted not only in daily transitions but in the broader translations
of a linguistic process that has historically inscribed such heteroglossic
transformations," which enables them "not only to adapt, to assimilate and
appropriate, but also to hybridize, reshape and sometimes deliberately
misappropriate" (Nasta, Home 240).

Transnationalism differs from diaspora. It is first and foremost a sort of a

movement of people from one or more nation states to another. They migrate to the
foreign land and happily become a part of their adopted land. They do not fancy
themselves to be confined to the province of nation state; they just travel for their
personal growth and better life style (D. Mishra 171). Therefore, the diasporic
community is the displaced transnational community. They are not an uprooted
society as it was in the colonial period. Diasporic transnational communifies happily
reorganize their identifies as soon as they land. They are free to move back and forth.

As far as the Indian diaspora is concerned, the communities belonging to the

old diaspora undertook regular hard work to preserve their idenfity as 'Indians' by
rising above the diversities that they jointly practiced in their relations with foreign

26
cultures. However, we see the new Indian diaspora is closely attached to families and
relatives back home and other people around the globe. They use various mechanisms
to uphold their relationship with their origin. Their networks are various. They use
telephone, internet, remittance, visits and correspondence, sending and receiving
videos on family events. Therefore, religious, regional, linguistic, and caste issues still
play a major role in the new diasporic community. The identity of Tndianness'
becomes a part of everyday interaction with others for this diasporic community. It is
observed that one is without difficulty an Indian in the host lands than in India; the
category of'Indian' is not confronted and contested abroad as it is in India.

Steven Vertovec takes a very different position to define how the different
terms are used interchangeably in the current diasporic studies. He says that some
aspirants prefer going overseas in search of new prospects and label themselves as
'diaspora', which cannot be diaspora because they are free to go back. Skillful
workers and experts are under no compulsion to leave their homeland. Some migrants
leave their lands for acquiring property only. They come, go anywhere, and finally
settle abroad, enjoying the privileges of both homelands and host lands. Such
immigrants are like neo colonizers who earn money in much better livelihood
conditions and send it to their homelands. Nowadays the diasporic groups of people
go beyond their nation-states and countries of origin, motherland or ancestral land to
keep hold of the network with their communities dispersed around the globe. The
forming of such a set of connections and diasporic community's responses, cutting
across the entire world is most rightfully illustrated by the term 'transnationalism'.
'Transnational' generally implies migration of people across the borders of one or
more nations. In fact, the terms 'transnationalism', 'transnational communities' and
'diaspora' are often used interchangeably in the current studies ("Three"277-299).
Transnational networks form a source for the appearance of transnational
communities and the system of this transformation is normally referred to as by
'transnationalism' (Safran, Sahoo, and Lai xi).

The transnational networks facilitate immigrants to preserve immediate

relations with several nation states. It is noticed in a global world that there is stable
movement of people, money, and information at a higher level. It results in
strengthening and extending their relationships with the members of their community

27
settled worldwide. These rising networks are transnational in nature as they cut the
remoteness between their mother country and the host lands. It also covers every
nation where the members from the same community are dispersed. Now, Overseas
Citizenship of India, People of Indian Origin Card, and liberalization of travel VISA
have more notably assisted and enlightened the configuration and formation of this
transnational space.

Irrespective of physical and territorial distance, now, the migrants have formed
current transnational spaces and maintain contact with their heritage by using modem
versatile technology such as email, satellite, television, internet, and other
conventional modes of communication such as mass media. Thus, diaspora
communities efficiently utilize a new level of adaptation to host societies as well as
maintain associations with the country of origin (Beswick 135). The enormous
developments in the fields like transportation and communication technology have
brought the members of diaspora communities much nearer to one other. The new
progress of technological equipments like Internet has massively contributed to the
enlargement of transnational networks and diasporic imagination.

Globalization has brought about progress in technologies of voyage, transport,

and communication, which ultimately lead to the appearance of transnational
networks. The chief access of air travel, telephones, televisions, electronic mail and
the most flexible internet have brought a sense of connectedness and belonging
among the diasporic communities far and wide. Globalization has improved
international mobility and facilitated transnational communal relationships by
increasing the prospects of diasporic configuration. The concept of diaspora is
obviously associated with transnationalism, as Khachig Tololyan writes, "Diasporas
are the exemplary communities of the transnational momenf' ("The Nation" 4).
Therefore, today the concept of diaspora is used to portray the processes of
transnationalism, the experience of displacement as well as the cultural clashes
suffered by immigrants.

In the present world, globalization has tested the traditional ways in which
migration and ethnic relations have been defined. Globalization may be defined as
"social processes in which the constraints of geography on the social and cultural
28
arrangements recede and in which people become increasingly aware that they are
receding" (Waters 3). The impact of international migration and new technological
developments have reconstructured global, transnational and even completely
deterritorialised societal relations much strong.

In the world of globalization, Indian diasporic group of people are displaced

everywhere in the world. Indians represent one of the major immigrant groups in the
world. In the present world people regularly migrate from their homeland to host
lands for academic and economic reasons. In spite of preferring their adopted land by
themselves, they look across time and space to their motherland. During their stay in
an alien land, they meet with confrontation of values at social, cultural, religious, and
moral levels. Both the value systems of their native land and adopted land have their
divided claims to pull them. In such circumstances, they begin to suffer from a
psychic crisis. Despite their nostalgic feelings, they learn to assimilate with the
adopted culture. They try to go from margins to the centre. As far as the diasporic
writers are concerned, they find their state of exile as a source of formation and
through this innovative act, they restore their memories and reform their past. The
exilic condition proves to be very fruitful to them (Neeta 184-185). As Neeta quotes
Salman Rushdie, who is already quoted by Niru Shroyia.

It may be that when the Indian writer who writes from outside India tries to
reflect that world, he is obliged to deal in broken mirrors, some of whose
fragments have been irretrievably lost...but these fragmentations made
trivial things seem like symbols and then mundane acquired numinous
qualities (qtd. in Shrotiya 37).

Today's diasporic communities are bridging the 'local' and 'global' issues
mutually. The growth in communication and transport has paved the way for further
progression in these networks among the Indian diaspora in general and particularly in
regional, linguistic and caste diasporas. Throughout the past decade, these contacts
were encouraged and supported by the Government of India and a number of other
state governments in various political, cultural, and economic matters. Irrespective of
physical distance, Indians are strongly linked to their homeland through hard times of
actual or unreal kinship and cultural exchanges. They observe and celebrate their

29
cultural festivals and reconstruct their culture in the new adopted land across the
globe. Today India is more than a place or bounded country shaping a nation-state.
This move has successfully formed global Indian family. Under the process of
contemporary globalization, diaspora communities are emerging as transnational and
cyber communities. The members of diasporic communities have transcended the
boundaries of nation-states. They have successfully created a space of their own.
Some of the diasporas have secured "dual citizenship" and many people have been
permitted to travel across nation-state boundaries to practice socio-economic and
cultural interests. Their network of relation is extended to embrace several other
nation states where other diasporic communities are in existence.

The term 'diaspora' is often used to state powerless dispersed ethnic

communities. However, the experiences of several contemporary diasporas are
shifting considerably. The coming of the internet and the World Wide Web during
1990s has swiftly extended the new forms of transnational relationships and
communication expertise. Therefore, both the tenns diaspora and transnational
community regularly lapse into one. All diasporas can be intercontinental but not all
transnationals are diasporas. In other words, if transnationalism is a condition of
living, diaspora is about a condition of leaving with a mixed feeling.

^ ^
>T;\-
1.3. A Theoretical Framework of 'Diaspora Studies';
1.3.1. Introduction: •^••->-:-^^y-k^
In recent years Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, James Clifford
and Paul Gilroy and others have essentialised postcolonial and diaspora studies and
challenged our perception of 'culture' and developed new modes of thinking that go
beyond the confines of the nation state. The notion of diaspora is very creative since
the real-life movement of immigrant people is led all through the world. It paves the
way for greater implication in the study of postcolonial theory with the
epistemological implications of the notion of diaspora as theory. We come across
such studies as migrancy in terms of adaptation and newly constructive
configurations, adaptations to changes and transformations and the construction of
highly fruitful forms of knowledge and ways of looking at the world. Leela Gandhi

30
describes them as 'mutual transformations' (Gandhi 129), which affects the colonizer
and the colonized, migrants, as well as native populations, victims and victimizers.

1.3.2. Edward Said:

Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi Bhabha are the major theorists of
diaspora. As we know these theorists are also the promoters of 'colonialism' and
'post-colonialism'. Both theories refer to the historical and political facets of a
country, but the diasporic theory is more concerned with the question of centrality,
ambiance, hybridity, or transculturation. Diasporic writing is concerned with what
Edward Said calls "not only of a basic geographical distinction but also a whole sense
of'interest'" {Orientalism 12). Edward Said's Orientalism (1978) imagines the Orient
as 'the Other' that is basically dominated by the Occident in the power-game of
politics. This obviously assigns 'an inferior status' to the 'subject-races', and the
sense of inferiority, inadequacy, anxiety, unemployment or the aspiration of grabbing
the opportunities outside is the cause of the spreading of the diaspora.

Edward Said's theory that "knowledge gives power, more power requires
more knowledge, and so on in an increasingly profitable dialectic of information and
control" {Orientalism 36), confirms this idea. Gayatri Sipvak's theory of
'subaltemity' includes women, blacks, the colonized, and the working class. Her well-
known essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" mainly deals with the 'muteness' of women
in postcolonial societies. In contrast to Said's emphatic assertion of 'identity' or
'centrality' that an exile or expatriate should seek in order to save himself/herself, she
supports the theory of 'hybridity' in the cultural frame, and her poetics of 'disjunctive
temporality', which is corresponding to Salman Rushdie's notion of 'broken mirror'
about the immigrant, makes a 'mimicry' of the idea of 'centrality'. Homi Bhabha's
temporality "creates a signifying time for the inscription of cultural
incommensurability" (Bhabha, The Location 177).

1.3.3. Stuart Hall:

Diaspora culture in postcolonial studies has gained importance since it
demonstrates that culture need not stay behind a temporally closed/fixed notion but
needs to be mobile. Stuart Hall in Cultural Identity and Diaspora clarifies that

31
diasporan culture demonstrates that identity is not a thing given, but something that is
always in the process of being asserted. According to him, "the Diaspora experience
is defined not by essence or purity, but by the recognition of a necessary
heterogeneity and diversity: by a conception of "identity' which lives with and
through, not despite, difference: by hybhdity'' ("Cultural Identity" 401-2). Hybridity
is the product of mixed societies and varied cultural practices that are enhanced due to
dispersion and settlement of people in alien cultures around the world. The notion of
hybridization is closely linked with the post structural doctrine. The study of hybridity
in postcolonial literature shows the working culture of the diasporic scenario.

hi the postcolonial context, multiculturalism is a notion of the different

cultural communities keeping hold of their cultural 'differences' even by staying in
the same land and partaking of a culturally fluid landscape. Stuart Hall also states that
this postcolonial force for a multicultural atmosphere is being generated both by the
lately emerging Third World from the outside and by the diaspora writers within the
western world. He writes, "Cultural diversity is not something that is coming in from
the outside, it is also something that is going on inside" ("Reinventing" 38). We
should not forget that postcolonial theory mainly deals with cultural contradictions,
ambiguities, and ambivalences. It is transnational and multicultural and a movement
beyond the binary resistance of the power relations between the "colonizer/
colonized,' and 'centre/periphery."

Stuart Hall opines that rather than thinking of identity as an '"already

accomplished fact, which the new cultural practices then represent" ("Cultural
Identity" 392), we must think instead of "identity as a 'production' which is never
complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside,
representation" (392). It is observed that the cultural identity is not a fixed core at all,
lying altered outside history and culture. It is not some universal and transcendental
spirit inside us on which history has created no fundamental mark. It is not a fixed
state to which we can make some final and fixed return. (395). Cultural identities are
the "unstable points of identification . . . which are made, within the discourses of
history and culture" (394) In his "Cultural Identity and Diaspora", Stuart Hall
describes cultural identity as:

32
 a matter of "becoming" as well as of "being". It belongs to the future as
much as to the past. It is not something which already exists, transcending
place, time history and culture. Cultural identies come from somewhere,
have histories. But, like everything which is historical, they undergo
constant transformation. Far from being eternally fixed in some
essentialised past, they are subject to the continuous "play" of history,
culture and power (394).

The immigrants and their children may take up and assimilate the culture of
the adopted land but they are not surely taken to be a part of the "host" country. The
Orientals continue to be looked down upon by the Occidentals.

1.3.4. James Clifford:

Diasporic subjects are homogenous, collective identities bound together by
unique shared thoughts of alienation or division and holding a very strong nostalgic
desire for the place of origin. James Clifford points out that it is essential to be
cautious in the working definition by choosing an "ideal type" because even the
"pure" fomis "are ambivalent, even embattled over basic features" (306). Makarand
Paranjpe takes almost a parallel position when he suggests that the diaspora should
involve a cross-cultural or cross-civilizational passage. The same crossing may result
in the sole awareness of the diasporic.

1.3.5. Honii Bhabha:

This multiplicity of 'homes' cannot overpass the gap between the culture of
origin; and the culture of adoption. The boundaries have a strange habit of preserving
in thousand different ways, and are very often conflicting. Homi Bhabha shifts this
conflict to a theoretical gain, he transforms the diaspora scattering to a gathering
(J.Jain Writers 12-13). For Homi Bhabha diasporas are:

Gatherings of exiles and emigres and refugees; gathering on the edge of

'foreign' cultures; gathering at the frontiers; gathering in the ghettos or
cafes or city centers; gathering in the half-life, half-life of foreign tongues,
or in the uncanny fluency of another's language; gathering the signs of

33
 approval and acceptance, degrees, discourses, disciplines; gathering the
memories of underdevelopment, of other worlds lived retroactively;
gathering the past in a ritual of revival; gathering the present {The Location
139).

Bhabha observes that both individual and local experience of diaspora writers
are a main part of the bigger procedure of historical change. As a result Homi Bhabha
shifts the focus from nationhood to culture, from historicity to temporality-a
hybridity, which cannot be, contained either in hierarchical or binary structures.
Diasporas inhabit liminal, interstitial spaces and their intersubjective and intercultural
incidents comprise them as hyphenated, hybrid subjects. The hyphenated state of
affairs of the diasporas shifts gear to fluid identities which are constantly
reconfigurated in continuing negotiation with the varying political settings (Swaraj
52). Bhabha questions the historical conviction and settled nature of the term
nationalism. Ambivalence is the prerequisite of the national culture. The idea of
nation as an independent and supreme form of political nationality is uncertain. He
states:

The nation is no longer the sign of modernity under which cultural

differences are homogenized in the 'horizontal' view of society. The nation
reveals, in its ambivalent and vacillating representations, the ethnography
of its own history and opens up the possibility of other narratives of the
people and their differences ("Dissemination" 300).

According to Foucault, liminality of the nation-space removes the delicacy of

cultural difference. Homi Bhabha's theory of cultural hybridity (1994) identifies all
cultural relations as ambivalent, rebel, transgressive and hybrid. To Bhabha, hybridity
is not a thing but a process. Hybridity does not comprise two original moments from
which the third appears but points out to an ambivalent third space of cultural
construction and reproduction. Hybridity helps to appreciate varied experiences of
contemporary diaspora. According to Stuart Hall, the diaspora experience "is defined,
not by essence or purity, but by recognition of necessary heterogeneity and diversity,
by a conception of 'identity' which lives with and through, not despite, difference; by
hybridity" and diaspora identities "are constantly producing and reproducing

34
themselves a new, through transformation and difference" ("Cultural Identity"402).
He also argues that "cultural identities are the points of identification, the unstable
points of identification or suture, which are made, within the discourses of history and
culture. Not an essence but a positioning' ("A Place" 395). In an alien land, claiming
one's identity is a key question for each person; it is because cultural self is not only
the outcome of nationality and ethnicity. It is observed that the South Asian
immigrants have to undergo some cultural astonishment or shock when setting foot in
the western countries and it is especially much harsh when they carry on their life in a
conventional manner instead of absorbing western culture readily.

Like Homi Bhabha, Salman Rushdie and Edward Said also visualize creative
potentialities with higher configurations in the exilic situation. For Avtar Brah the
"Diaspora space is the intersectionality of diaspora, border, and dislocation as a point
of confluence of economic, political, cultural and psychic process. It is where multiple
subject positions are juxtaposed, contested, proclaimed or disavowed..." (Brah 208).
For him diasporic space is a highly challenging site.

Theorists Homi K. Bhabha, Paul Gilroy and Stuart Hall made hybridity a key
term in postcolonial discourse, although they attempted different explanations of the
concept of hybridity. In The Location of Culture (1994), Homi Bhabha suggests that
"hybridity is camoutlage" (193), associated to a "process of translating and transvaing
cultural differences" (252). In Bhabha's theory hybridity is the third space of the "in-
between", while other scholars state that hybridity is not an in-between state, but the
interface and mixture of cultures, a third unit, a new joint identity. Stuart Hall
suggests that hybridity is "the contaminated, yet connective tissue between cultures"
("Reinventing" 54), and it is changing British life. He also believes that hybridity
incorporates identification related to gender and sexuality. It helps to know how a
human being's love for one's native language and culture remains profoundly deep-
rooted in the unconscious state.

In The Location of Culture (1994), Homi Bhabha uses concepts such as

mimicry, interstice, hybridity and liminality all influenced by semiotics and Lacanian
psychoanalysis to state that cultural construction is always the most fertile act of
ambivalence. He observes the relation between the culture and hybridity that like

35
colonial culture, current culture is also a mix. He points out that no culture is very
much pure in the modern sense, as there is always a combination of many cultures.
Therefore, it becomes a tricky job to draw a line to mark out one's original culture.
Mixedness is the unique feature of modern culture. Bhabha also suggests that we
should see colonialism as straightforward domination and violence and a period of
complex and varied cultural connections. The use of the term 'diaspora' is extensive
in discussions of a variety of kinds. It is used to describe the dispersion of people
from their original homeland. As Abha Kaushik says, for Ashcroft, Griffiths, and
Tiffin diaspora cannot be separated from colonialism, as it was this historical state
that led to the dislocation of people across the world under diverse situations or forms
of obligation (Kaushik 89).

1.4. A Conceptual Framework of 'Culture'

1.4.1. Culture Defined:

'Culture" as a temi is not very simple to describe, and still it is a concept that
always lies at the center of all human perception, hereditary and nurture. Like other
theoretical and abstract words, such as beauty, personality, kindness, virtue, the word
"culture" is also difficult to explain. Sometimes, it is used with reference to a human
being: educated, sophisticated, refined, well mannered, therefore, cultured. At the
same time, it is also used to explain the disparities between groups of people. If
differences in regard to attitudes, customs, and behaviors are not easily understood,
they are called cultural differences. The terni 'culture' has been clearly divided and
sub-divided into other alternate ways. Socialists have preferred dealing with mass
culture, popular culture, media culture, ethnic culture, minority culture, aborigine
culture, black culture, white culture, colonial culture, modernist and post-modernist
culture, Marxist and post-Marxist culture, high-brow, middle-brow, low-brow culture,
techno-culture, managerial culture, managerial and administrative culture, culture of
grievance, culture of aggression and violence. The list is almost endless (Laungani
30-31). Culture can be defined as learned beliefs, atfitudes, values, norms, and
customs of a society or group of people, shared by them and transmitted from
generation to generation within the same group. It includes art, morals, knowledge
customs, values, and our way of thinking and perception

36
 Culture according to William Haviland (1975) can be studied in terms "of
shared assumptions where people can predict each other's actions in a given
circumstance and react accordingly" (6). Clifford Geertz (1973) recognizes "culture
as a historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols" (89). There
are so many psychologists, who have laid stress on various things, which constitute
several factors that constitute a culture: ecology, physical geography, climate,
ordinary language, dietary practices, religious beliefs, and so on (Leech, "Comment"
299).

Pramod K Nayar says what 'culture' meant earlier. It derives from 'cultura'
and 'colere', meaning 'to cultivate'. It also meant 'to honour' and 'protect'. He further
defines 'culture' in the context of 'cultural studies' and says 'Culture' is the mode of
producing meanings and thoughts. This 'mode' is a negotiation over which meanings
are valid (Nayar 4).

Satish Aikant firmly declares that culture is not very easy to define, and he
refers to Raymond Williams, who while defining his 'Keywords' finds 'culture' as
"one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language" (63-64).
Stuart Hall concedes that there is "no single unproblematic defmifion of culture...The
concept remains a complex one- a site of convergent interests rather than a logically
or conceptually clarified idea" ("Cultural Studies" 611). Even though culture is an
abstraction, still we feel a reality within us and around us. There is no such thing as a
human nature independent of culture (Aikant 63-64).

John Storey firmly opines that the global is often seen as a part of the local.
The local keeps engaged in resisting the global. He quotes Edward Said, who
observes, "all cultures are involved in one another; none is single and pure, all are
hybrid, heterogeneous, extraordinarily differenfiated, and unmonolithic" (qtd in Said
xxix). It means globalization offers the range for cultural gathering or mixing. He
fiarther finds interesting Nederveen Pieterse's observafion that "cultures have been
hybrid all along, hybridization is in effect a tautology; contemporary accelerated
globalization means the hybridizafion of hybrid cultures" (qtd in Nederveen 64). So,
hybridization disturbs reserved concept of culture. Even though globalization

37
obliterates the fonns of culture, yet it supplies revolutionary access to establish new
fonns of culture.

1.4.2. Cross-Cultural Situations:

. Culture always plays a very important role in the formation of a person's
identity. All cultures have a set of beliefs that explains the rules and regulations and
values for that particular culture. This set of diverse beliefs differs from culture to
culture. Cultural differences occur when two or more cultures disagree about their
beliefs or ways of life. Our perception of the world is shaped by our cultural identity,
which is seen as the outcome of location, gender, race, history, nationality, religious
beliefs, ethnicity, and aesthetics. We see individuals are treated differently because of
the variation in culture in the context of the term. India, with her wide history,
provides amiable setting for the writers to explore cultural differences in their works
efficiently.

Culture is the minor of social reality. The meaning of a particular cultural

object is generated by the social structure it reflects. Therefore, we need to look for
direct and one-to-one correspondence between culture and society (Griswold 25). In
the present situation, all cultures are found experiencing various inner conflicts and
confusions as never before in the past.

When people depart from their own culture and migrate to another, they do not
leave their history, their cultural norms, values, and identities behind. They carry with
them their culturally acquired psyche, including their social, communal, familial,
norms and values, their hopes and their aspirations, their dreams and their desires,
their fears and their doubts, their art, their music, their literature, their culturally
determined ways and everything that is closely attached with their culture (Laungani
49). In the land of immense socio-cultural diversities, people often get engaged with
various forms of cultural disparities. Therefore, it needs to be asked what happens
with human relationships in the multiple and diverse order. In the present research this
question has been examined by looking at a variety of concepts from psychology,
sociology, anthropology, education, political science, and cultural studies.

38
 All cultures share their diverse sections of commonalities. Human beings are
both divided and united by many of their similarities and dissimilarities. All cultures
inherit their own social, religious, spiritual, and idealistic legacies of the past, which
they weave into their contemporary way of life. They make their own social
ecological, political, legal, ethical, moral, and religious systems. They also construct
valuable lessons that could be usefiil to other cultures as well. Such exchange of
differences carry cares and concerns that life around the world as a whole becomes
much more meaningful and enriched (Laungani 202).

Historically, it is proved that all societies are often characterized by enormous

internal diversity and difference, if not conflicts, long before the advent of
modernization. Internal politics and ideological inconsistencies have been an essential
factor in the dynamics of their respective processes of development. Europe is not at
all the exception in this context. The ideas of the enlightenment were challenged and
opposed right from the initial stage of their emergence. During any historical course
of modernization of the society, clash between 'traditionalists' and 'modemizers', and
other associated social forces behind them can take violent turns (Dieter xi).

Cultural clashes do arise, when cultural differences are noticed within a

culture or more than one culture. Cultural clash is an unavoidable feature of societies,
and more frequent within communities that encompass diverse cultural identities and
economic disparities. It is usually thought of as occurring between natives and
foreigners, but it can also occur within the context of one's own family or culture. It is
crucial to realize that any cultural clash that occurs in relationships within a culture or
different cultures always results in displacement and a painful experience. Cultural
clashes occur because of having differences in language, religion, region, food, as
well as different cultural rules, patterns, values, attitudes, behaviors, generation gap,
tradition and modernity, misunderstanding between people and so on. These
contribute to the feelings of frustration, annoyance, aggravation, uncertainty, and
anxiety cause cultural disorientation.

39
1.4.3. Cross-Cultural Psychology:
Cross-cultural psychology is about understanding behaviors of people across
cultures. Such a concern carries great weight if we presume that our behavior is
largely influenced by the culture in which we live. This does not signify that there is
no equivalence of behaviors across cultures. There are behaviors, which are largely
influenced by the cultures in which people live and there are those that rise above
cultural boundaries and may be considered to be universal (Laungani 39). Cross-
cultural psychology is actually concerned with understanding human multiplicity in
all its forms and finding out behaviors, which are worldwide or culturally invariant,
and those that are influenced by cultural aspects (Laungani 39). Thus, we see that
cross-cultural psychology demonstrates a useful link between cultural context and
individual behaviour development in the study of cultural clashes.

IT) 12.4^ 2-
Ruben (1983) guesses that rather than approaching adaptation, culture-shock
experiences might encourage effective adaptation. Peter Adler (1975) also states that
culture-shock is a transitional learning occurrence reflecting "movement from a state
of low self-and cultural awareness to a state of high self-and cultural awareness" (15).
Cross-cultural adaptation is a natural phenomenon, which reflects the extensively
accepted "assimilationist" or "melting pot" social ideology. The individual uses the
tenn 'assimilation' (or amalgamation) to emphasize acceptance and internalization of
the host culture. Whereas 'acculturation" is defined as the process by which
individuals obtain a few aspects of the host culture (Yunkim 23).

The present study helps understanding the cultural conflict and its association
with different bitter experiences and resolves them with cultural assimilation, for the
reason that it is required to appreciate cultural diversity and cultural pluralism for the
promotion of mutual synchronization of cultures as each culture is unique and
distinctive. Diasporic literature reflects cultural tension but the uUimate solution lies
in the acceptance of cultural diversity and pluralism. Therefore, cultural,
psychological, and sociological adjustment during cross-cultural transmissions is
required.

/ - ' - > ' / •

r/j. -Xi KYJ--

' \'. • ^
;iAv-^/
\- \K

40
1.4.4. Cross-Cultural Diversity:
Diversity has many dimensions in the Indian diaspora. The old diaspora is a
phenomenon more generations old, which is the result of migration during the
colonial era and the nature of their migration was convict (offender) migration and the
indentured labor migration. The new diaspora is hardly three generations old, which is
known as post-colonial migration. In Canada and UK, the new diaspora is placed over
the old diaspora. In some countries where the Indian diasporic community is larger or
economically strong, the struggle for seeking political power has gone beyond the
bounds of democratic system and that has led to vast conflicts and subjugation of the
Indian diaspora. For instance, the Hindustani Surinamese migrating to the
Netherlands, the East African Sikhs, and Guajaratis to UK, the Indo-Guyanese to
North America and the Indo-Fijians to Australia and New Zealand (Jayaram,
Diversities 5-6).

It is a worldwide fact that India is an ancient land of immense socio-cultural

diversities. There are various religions and sects, tribes and castes, languages and
dialects, family and kinship patterns, food systems and dietary practices, personal
attires and dress styles, festivals and feasts, music and dance, and customs and
traditions afford special joy to anthropologists and sociologists. Obviously, the
emigrants from India in the fonn of cultural baggage carry these types of conventions
with a huge diversity in the folk-form within regional variants. Some of these cultural
elements have disappeared; some have still survived or exist in the form of
persistence; others have experienced syncretism, or change; and a few elements are
sought to be rejuvenated. Because of these variations, one often encounters various
kinds of cultural clashes, which are again so difficult to deal with when being a part of
different cultural groups of people (Jayaram, Diversities 6).

Paramjit Judge rightly states that socio-cultural diversity is the consequence of

long historical processes that provides the members of a society with numerous
existential records. Sociologically, caste, region, religion, and the year of migration of
the diaspora are supposed to be known as useful indicators of diversity. These
indicators of huge variations are inseparably linked with the social existence of
Indians and are a part of their awareness (Judge 25). The socio-cultural diversities

41
continue to flourish among the Indian diasporic communities in North America and
UK, particularly those that are produced by the post-independence emigration wave in
a postcolonial era.

1.5. The Diversity of Indian Diaspora:

The diversity in Indian diaspora reflects Indian society with huge variation.
Therefore, this diversity needs to be measured on the basis of various indicators. Yet,
it must be seen whether this diversity has implications for the construction of Indian
Identity abroad. Ohri provides a stimulating insight into this, when she writes; "This
identification with an overall "Indianness", rather than with a specific caste/branch of
canonical Hinduism or other religious sects, differentiates what it means to be an
"Indian" in the US from what it means in India" (413). While emphasizing that the
plurality among Indians should be recognized, she comments, "It is not enough to
recognize that these religious and other cultural boundaries no longer exist between
Indian immigrants. One must also examine the circumstances under which such
boundaries are ignored" (414). The building of Indian cultural identity seems a type of
long-distance nationalism of a public type where individuals are free to recognize
themselves (Judge 43-44). Therefore, we need to focus on the orientation of the
Indians in the diaspora towards India and the Indian nationals, and that of India as a
nation and the Indian nationals towards the Indian diasporic community.

It is seen that diaspora maintains multiple connections with its homeland

through trade relations, socio cultural associational networks, marriage, pilgrimage
and tourism, etc. Such multiple linkages are often initiated and maintained fi-om both
the sides. As far as multiple linkages with Indian diaspora are concerned, for instance,
since 2003 the Government of India has been organizing the annual event 'Pravasi
Bhartiya Divas' (Indian Diaspora Day), which seems to be a major initiative by the
motherland. The Global Organization of the People of Indian Origin that started in
1989 in New York was also a special move as a diasporic initiative.

The diversity of Indian diaspora in terms of socio-cultural affiliation, regional

belonging, settlement pattern, and socio-economic transformation make it a very
complex heterogeneity. Diversity suggests heterogeneity rather than homogeneity of a

42
phenomenon. The diversities in the Indian diasporic community suggest that there are
many diasporas of Indian communities abroad, rather than a particular Indian
diaspora. The articulation of identities, which are based on region, language, religion,
and caste/sub caste, does not mean that the Indian diaspora is permanently cracked.

India is unique for its diversities in temis of languages and regions, castes and
sub castes, religions and sects, food and style of dress, rural and urban and so on.
Hence, there is an extensive networks based on religion and caste, language and
region among the Indian diaspora, "Hindu Diaspora'(Vertovec, The //mJ«)'Muslim
Diaspora"(Brah) and 'Sikh Diaspora'(Singh) are the instances of such extensive
religious networks in Indian diaspora. In the same way there are diasporic
communities based on linguistic or regional identities such as Punjabis, Gujaratis,
Sindhis, Tamilians, Malayalees and Telugus. Now global organizations are taking
initiatives to preserve and promote these identities and variable cultures, uniting in a
transnational level in India and the global Indian diaspora (Bhat and Narayan 16-17).

India is considered the largest democratic country in the world with the
population at around 1.27 billion, which is 16 times more than the population of
Britain, and around 4 times the population of the USA. 1.27 billion people are the
greatest unifying force for India. At the same time India consists of different religious
groups that are there in India for centuries; they consist of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs,
Christians, Catholics, Parsees, Jews, Buddhists, Jains, Europeans, and a multiplicity
of tribal and other minority groups. Therefore, India is not at all a monolingual
country; more than 35 languages, hundreds of dialects are spoken and maintained in
India. People from the north are fair-skinned, whereas people from south India are
largely dark-skinned. In India 78% of the population consists of Hindus and they are
divided both in their caste structure, and by their linguistic, culinary, dietary, social,
familial, religious beliefs, and other traditional customs and practices. Diversity is
found even in tenns of literacy, poverty and affluence, patterns of childbearing, health
and illness, position of women and forms of worship. It varies from one region to
another, even from one village to another. Given the heterogeneity of India in terms of
diverse cultural patterns India becomes a large multicultural society (Laungani 8-9).
Indians do not need to travel to distant lands of the world. They can see the culture of
the distant lands right in India.

43
 The unity we observe in broad variations of the people is not just skin color,
but language, dietary practices, religious beliefs, social interactions, and relationships.
The differences extend into religious, political, social, economic, physical, ecological,
linguistic, and other environmental domains. Despite such a large heterogeneity, we
can experience a sense of belongingness, a feeling of 'together' among the diverse
groups around us. For showing unity within heterogeneity, one can look at the state of
Kerala, India, where we have four different religious groups-Hindus, Muslims,
Catholics, and Jews having been there for centuries in relative peace and goodwill.
Although they go after different Gods and observe different types of customs, wear
diverse cloths, get pleasure from different food, still they are unified by the same
pattern of the set of values, which ultimately hold them Indians together in an unique
identity. In India, no single culture, language, or religion dominates as in some
countries in the world. People grow up with assimilating and absorbing diverse
indigenous cultures. Indians ultimately appear to be homogeneous mass of people, but
in the true sense of the word India is the world's oldest melting pot where the
population can be classified and broken down by language, religion, caste, class, and
sex.

India is united by its secular politico-legal system and its written constitution.
There is an outstanding diversity in its ecology, climate, religious practices, language,
diet, education, patterns of worship, and other cultural differences. Indians contain
within it multiple cultures. Although Britain is relatively a small country contains
within it diverse forms of cultural identities and multiple religious groups, including
the Irish, the Scots, the Welsh, Europeans, Australians, Asians, Afi"0-Caribbean,
South Africans, East Africans, People fi-om the Middle East, Nigerians, Ethiopians,
Sudanese, and even the political refugees firom the Eastern European countries,
including Russia as well (Laungani 57).

1.6. Indian Diasporic Writing:

Owing to acquiring an academic and disciplinary status worldwide, the
diasporic writing comes out into a different variety. The effect of its emergence can
be seen through fundamental transformation in diasporic and cultural studies. Now it

44
has reached the stage of gaining colonial status. The diasporic writers are often
engaged in raising their voice for displaced group of people. They are firmly
concerned to narrate their unforgettable connections with the origin. While reacting to
immigrants past, they do not spare any chance to certify their reactions to the host
land where they came as immigrants. Their hurting response to their lost origin and
reaction to the host land take them towards a kind of hope for the change of the alien
state into a very secure and peaceful land.

Diasporic writers often bring into being the problems and possibilities of
displaced and alienated immigrants. While depicting their apprehension on notions
like history, identity, gender, cultural and racial purity, their writings truly depict their
cultural, religious, and ethnic situations (Anand 164). Diasporic writing depicts the
voyage of immigrants, which starts fi-om one's homeland to the foreign land and then
with cultural shock in the hostile surrounding and finally meets with a fabulous hope
of change, that brings the third stage of the mode of their journey with assimilation
and reconciliation. It means that this is a journey from the centre to the periphery and
again from the periphery to the centre. This journey indicates three distinct regions,
which the diasporic writers themselves employ and they are the homeland, the alien
land, and the new homeland. Some writers identify these three regions with the past,
the present, and the future thereby denoting historic time. However, it denotes three
stages of an immigrant's life. The three regions are supposed to be home culture, alien
culture and the multicultural. Wherever emigrants situate themselves, they carry same
identity. The first period is very much glorified with kind and magnificent feelings,
the second period is fiall of suffering due to the feelings of isolation in an antagonistic
land and the third is a period of assimilation and reconciliation in which predicament
is replaced with new hope (S. Sharma 13-14).

The Indian diasporic community has attained a new identity in the post-
colonial period. It is because of self-fashioning and increasing reception by the
western countries. However, it is important to note that the history of diasporic Indian
writing is as old as the diaspora itself. In fact, the first Indian writing in English is
ascribed to Dean Mahomed, who was bom in Patna, and migrated to Ireland, and after
that to England in 1784. His book The Travels of Dean Mahomet was published in
1794. Therefore, the first English text written by an Indian was published in the last

45
decade of the eighteen century. Kylas Chunder Dutt's "imaginary history" A Journal
of Forty-Eight Hours of the Year 1945 was published in 1835 (Mehrotra, An
Illustrated 95).The first Indian English novel, Bankimchandra Chatterjee's
Rajmohan's Wife, was published much later in 1864. It shows that the Indian
diasporic writing is as old as the diaspora itself The contribution of the Indian
diaspora to the Indian writing in English is highly noticeable and admirable (Saha,
"Exile" 191-92).

Prof K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar in his book, Indian Writing in English (1962),
reveals that "modem Indian Literature" starts with Raja Rammohan Roy (1774-1833),
who "was destined to act as a bridge between India and England"(30). The great
Indian writers like Toru Dutt, Romesh Chander Dutt, Manmohan Ghose, and Sri
Aurobindo were bom and brought up in India, later moved to the West for pursuing
academic and literary goals. In due course of the time, they produced works of
immense worth. Sarojini Naidu, M.K. Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mulk Raj Anand,
R.K. Narayan, Raja Rao, and a host of other authors expressed themselves in English
with much comfort and authority. However, not all these authors liked abroad as a
'home' to settle down and returned to India after a short or a little long stay in the
West.

The diasporic Indian writing in English is produced by those who are of Indian
origin and presently living or settled outside their homeland. The diasporic Indian
writers are scattered everywhere in the world. The modem diasporic Indian writers
can be grouped into two separate classes. One class includes those who have spent a
part of their life in India and have carried the belongings of their native land offshore.
It is called the old or first generation Indian diaspora. The other class comprises those
who were bom and brought up outside India, whom we call new or second generation
of Indian diaspora. They view their country only Irom the outside as a foreign and
exotic place of their origin. The writers of the former group have a tmthfial
displacement, whereas the latter group find themselves rootless. Both the groups of
writers have succeeded in constmcting a desirable body of English literature. While
portraying migrant characters in their fiction they explore the theme of cultural
dislocation and self-fashioning (Saha, "Exile" 193). The first generation of the
diasporic Indian writers have already proved their credentials by winning several
45
literary awards and honors and recently many writers of the second generation of
diasporic Indian writing have also received high acknowledgment worldwide.

Malti Agarwal argues that in the present situation, people are voluntarily
migrating to various parts of the world for various reasons. Indian migrants are also
not an exception to this. In the past, millions of people from India migrated to various
lands under.'forced exiles' or 'voluntary/self-imposed exiles'. Some of them have
already earned high status in the field of writing. These diasporic writers strongly
reproduce their emotional attachment to the land of their origin and explore their
separation in the land of their immigration. They suffer from psychological damage
and the constant memories of their lost motherland and they seem involved in
reinventing their home in the land of their preference. The diasporic writings also
known as 'expatriate writings' or 'immigrant writings' give them sovereignty to raise
their voice about their disturbing experiences, due to the clash of two diverse cultures
or the ethnic exploration they bear. Those who absorb themselves in an unfamiliar
land can discover immigration as an enjoyable experience, but most of the writers do
not get satisfying experience from their travel and stay in a foreign land. They often
find themselves sandwiched between two varied groups or cultures. A sense of defeat,
nervousness, and homesickness lead them to get obsessed with their motherland
through conscious or unconscious attempt at writing. There are many diasporic
writers, spread in their choice of countries like Britain, America, Canada, Australia,
East Africa, Mauritius, Malaysia, Fiji, Trinidad, Tobago and so on. The writers like
V.S. Naipaul, Vikram Seth, Rohinton Mistry, Uma Parameswaran, Salman Rushdie,
and several others have left their nation and settled overseas for one cause or the other
(v-vi). Diasporic Indian writers have effectively projected Indian diaspora in
numerous forms with diverse connections and configurations. Their writings help to
bring out awareness of cultural ambivalence, social, political, cultural, and
geographical displacement and cleariy explore the nonappearance of centrality in an
alien land. Their concerns are largely global due to the problems of immigrants,
refiigees, and all other kinds of exiles. This exilic status brings out the feelings of
dislocation and rootlessness.

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1.7. Indian Diasporic Women Novelists in English:
Diasporic Indian women writers have worked on different literary types of
literature, fiction being the leading fonn of literature accomplished by them. These
diasporic writers have received an enviable status as fiction writers in the diasporic
body of literature. These women writers portray the dilemma, joys and sorrows, the
situations of immigrants in cross-cultural contexts, the matter of identity of Indian
immigrants and diverse cultural clashes faced by immigrants not only in the unknown
soil but also in their own motherland. They also explore various situations in
immigrant's life in an alien land. They also depict cultural clashes suffered by
immigrants in both cross-cultural interactions and within their own culture, among
their own people. They view gender from a woman's point of view and lengthen the
limitations of human understanding from different perspectives and proportions. The
women writers of the Indian diaspora are struggling within patriarchy, and the
dislocated and marginalized diasporic identity. Their writing is self-representing,
politicized and often aimed at freedom and self-empowerment. They are conscious of
the troubles and limitations that women face in the societal and cultural set-up of
India. Therefore, they take up the charge of representing immigrant women's
sufferings in a cross-cultural setting. Women in particular face disturbances at
multiples levels. Women in diasporic group of people suffer from dual subordination.
They are marginalized in the alien set up. Their identity as a wife and a mother within
the private sphere as brown, non-working, tradition bound Indian in the public sphere
is an unchanging site of struggle. The women writers can be studied under two
diverse categories such as diasporic writers of the first generation and second
generation.

There are many diasporic Indian women writers, who are based in the USA,
Canada, Britain, and other parts of the world. Some are first generation immigrants,
while others are second-generafion immigrants. They have enhanced Indian English
literature and won international recognition. They are Kamala Markandaya, Anita
Desai, Meena Alexander, Sujata Bhatt, Suniti Namjoshi, Santha Rama Rau, Bharafi
Mukherjee, Uma Parameswaran, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Githa Hariharan,
Sunetra Gupta, Anita Rau Badami, Shauna Singh Baldwin, Anita Rau Badami,
Amulya Malladi, Kiran Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kiran Desai, Meera Syal and others.

48
These writers have immensely contributed towards the flowering of Indian writing in
English. Therefore, a brief survey of Indian Diasporic Women Novelists in English is
offered below.

1.7.1. Kamala Markandaya:

In the early immigrant writers group, Kamala Markandaya comes first. She is
the most outstanding writer, who has successfully explored the individual
consciousness by showing the diverse images of changing cultural prospects in her
novels. She was bom in Mysore in 1924. As a grown woman, she went to England
hoping to hold up herself as a journalist. Meanwhile, she married an English man and
lived in England as an expatriate. Even though she is a British citizen, her writings
make her an anti-colonist and an anti-imperialist. Her novel Nectar in a Sieve (1954)
is her literary travel. Some Inner Fury (1955) focuses on cultural difficulties
associated with interracial relationship that develops between Mira and Richard
Marlowe. Her novel. The Nowhere Man (1972) is about the predicaments of the first
generation immigrants in England. The novel deals with the issues of diasporic
anxiety, mental and physical displacement, and hyphenated identity often experienced
by the immigrants in an alien country.

1.7.2. Anita Desai:

Anita Desai divides her valuable time between England (Cambridge) and the
USA. She has discovered the third 'space', which implies a disturbed hybrid place as
a journey. Desai's concerns are deeper than mere East-West confi-ontation or conflict
between spiritualism and materialism. She has depicted the psychic life of her
characters, revealing tensions between family members and the alienation of middle-
class women in her fiction. The husband-wife alienation created by the poignant
inappropriateness between Gautama and Maya forms the important theme of her
novel, Cry, the Peacock (1963). Desai's Journey to Ithaca (1996) makes use of the
spiritual quest pattern to show the vagueness of the diasporic condition.

Desai's novel Fasting Feasting (1999) was a finalist for the 1999 Booker
prize. Her novel Fasting, Feasting reveals how women suffer both physically and
mentally in a male dominated patriarchal structure. She has articulated significant

49
questions concerning cultural disparities. She has effectively portrayed the theme of
multiculturalism in her novels. She has added a new aspect to Indian English Fiction
by bringing out existential concerns about alienation, estrangement, nervousness and
agony. Her Bye Bye Black Bird (1971) is a genuine study of human relationships
bedeviled by cultural encounters. The novel is most intimately related to her own
experiences (A. Pandey 124). The novel deals with postcolonial diasporic migration
of the younger generation. The novel suggests that inequality of class, race, and
culture in marriage, places the individual in a conflict and brings stress in
relationships.

1.7.3. Bharati Mukherjee:

Bharati Mukherjee is a well-known name in diasporic literature. She was bom
in Calcutta, married a Canadian fellow student in 1963. She lived in Canada from
1966 to 1980. She got Canadian citizenship there. However, she migrated to the USA
in 1980 and became a permanent citizen of the USA. As a post-modem writer,
Mukherjee deals with issues relating to identity crisis faced by immigrants in search
of better future prospects. In her fiction, Mukherjee focuses on the immigrants in
America and records their dealings with the unidentified forces of the New World.
Mukherjee is a representative voice of the new generation writers in multi-ethnic
America. She has presented an absorbing study of the problem of a dislocated person
in America as well as India.

While in Canada, Mukherjee published two novels The Tiger's Daughter in

1971 and Wife in 1975. Both the protagonists Tara and Dimple are geographically
expatriated in mind and spirit and represent the dilemma of the expatriates. In her
novels Jasmine (1989) and The Tiger's Daughter, Mukherjee has shown a dual
cultural shock. Jasmine and Tara leave their respective countries in search of their
dreams. The migration or "cultural transplant leads to the emergence of identity and
a final settlement of the choice. The Tiger's Daughter explores the process of coming
over the dilemma of double identity. It offers an understanding to probe the
consciousness not only of the protagonist but also of the writer. The novel is a true
manifestation of Mukherjee's real life experience. Mukherjee's novel, Wife delineates
the portrait of a fhistrated Bengali wife, who suffers a sense of estrangement in New

50
York. Her novel, Jasmine is a dramatic story of a Punjabi girl's sexual escapades
when she arrives in the U.S.A. as an illegal immigrant. Mukherjee's two novels
Jasmine and Wife deal with two extreme gender portrayals in diasporic circumstances.
Mukherjee has maintained a fine balance between her indigenous culture and the
adopted one. She is endlessly engaged in redefining the traditional concept of
diaspora where loss is replaced by gain. Her The Middleman and Other Stories is a
fascinating collection that depicts the problems of the people emigrating to America
and the dream of new life that tempts them to go there.

1.7.4. Meena Alexander:

Meena Alexander was bom in Allahabad, India. She is an immigrant Syrian
Christian Indian writer settled in America. She is one of the current South Asian
American immigrant writers, who have come forward from a post-colonial country.
As a result, her work deals with both personal and national concerns. She has
published seven volumes of poetry. Her book of poems House of Thousand Doors
(1988) brings out the exilic patterns of her diasporic articulations. She is a true
diasporic voice, articulating her own lived diasporic experiences in her poetry. Her
novels including Nampally Road (1991), Fault Lines (1993), and Manhattan Music
(1997) provide an authentic depiction of the Indian immigrant occurrence. Her semi-
autobiographical first novel, Nampally Road accurately focuses on the dislocation at
diverse stages. Fault Lines, her autobiographical memoir, illustrates a mission
wherein the writer is placed in her early days in Kerala. Manhattan Music describes
the dilemmas and pains of Indian immigrants in the U.S.A.

1.7.5. Githa Hariharan:

Githa Hariharan was bom in Coimbatore and grew up in Bombay and Manila.
Her first novel The Thousand Faces of Night (1992), won her the Commonwealth
Writer's Prize in 1993. After that, she has published a set of stories, The Art of Dying
(1993), a coUecfion of stories for children. The Winning Team (2004) and Fugitive
Histories (2009), three novels; The Ghosts of Vasu Master (1994), When Dreams
Travel (1999) and In Times of Siege (2003).

51
1.7.6. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni:
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni was bom in Calcutta, West Bengal, India. She is
known as an Indian American writer, who began her writing profession during 1990
and shortly established herself as a fruitful and highly sensitive writer. Her fiction
includes The Mistress of Spices (1997), Sister of My Heart n999). The Vine of Desire
(2002), The Conch Bearer (2003), Queen of Dreams (2004), The Mirror of Fire and
Dreaming: Book Two of the Brotherhood of the Conch f2005), The Palace of
Illusions: A Novel (2008), One Amazing Thing (2010), explores the issues that are
central to the experience of immigration. Her characters resolve the inner dilemmas
caused by the clash of two diverse cultural practices. They reveal humankind and
close the obvious distance between people of different cultures. Her female
protagonists are true representations of diasporic Indian women. Her book, Arranged
Marriage (1995), is a collection of short stories about women from India, who are
caught between two worlds. It is a collection of eleven short stories, focusing mainly
on Indian women whose lives are linked both to the Indian custom of arranged
marriage and to the dramatic changes brought by emigration to America.

1.7.7. Sunetra Gupta:

Sunetra Gupta was bom in West Bengal, India and currently lives in the UK,
working as a Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology in Oxford University. She
published five acclaimed novels. Memories of Rain (1992), The Glassblowers Breath
(1993), Moonlight into Marzipan (1895), A Sin of Colour (1999), and So Good in
Black (2009). Her debut novel Memories of Rain (1992) won her Sahitya Akademi
Award in 1996. The novel tells the story somewhat through the events of one
weekend through flashback of a marriage between an Indian girl and an Englishman
caught in the clash of the two cultures, their love having been caught up in the pain of
unfaithfulness and misunderstanding. Her works are mostly characterized by stream
of consciousness technique focusing on the interior lives of her characters. Her fiction
shifts the central preoccupation of diasporic writings from the crisis of identity to the
mapping of a process of experience and feeling. Gupta's fiction shifts the central
preoccupation of diasporic writings from the crisis of identity to the mapping of a
process of experience and feeling.

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1.7.8. Jhumpa Lahiri:
Jhumpa Lahiri was bom in London of Bengali parents; she grew up in Rhode
Island, USA. She belongs to the second generation of the Indian immigrants in the
United States. She has traveled widely in India and has examined the postcolonial
society as well as overseas. She is a well-known Indian American writer of Bengali
origin who won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her debut short story collection
Interpreter of Maladies in 2000. Her works such as Interpreter of Maladies (1999),
The Namesake (2003), Unaccustomed Earth (2008) and The lowland (2013) portray
the living experiences of Indian immigrants and their children in America and
discover the themes of the complexities of the styles, cultural disorientation, and the
conflicts of assimilation. The Namesake offers the themes of migration and cross-
cultural problem through Indian-America family, the Gangulis, at first through a
married couple, Ashima and Ashok and then through their son, Gogal.

Lahiri's short story collection Interpreter of Maladies presents the problem of

complicated intergenerational relationships analyzed from migrants' viewpoints. It is
about the immigrants' lives, of people navigating between the strict tradition they
have inherited and the mysterious new world they must come across every day. The
solitariness and sense of alienation felt by immigrants of the second generation, their
predicament of being neither Indian nor Western, and the distressed effort of
immigrants to adjust their fright and nervousness are all shown in different stories in
Interpreter of Maladies (A. Pandey 127). Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies consists of
nine short stories, which offer an account of the diversified experiences of immigrants
living in America and UK, some on a short visit to their native country confronting
cultural differences.

1.7.9. Kiran Desai:

Kiran Desai is the daughter of well-known diasporic writer Anita Desai. Being
a writer of the second generation, she does not articulate the similar obsession that her
mother weaves in her tales but like her mother the strain of the umbilical cord is not
lost entirely in her writings. Desai became the youngest female writer to win the
Booker prize in 2006 for her novel The Inheritance of Loss (2006). The novel
explores contemporary international issues: globalization, multiculturalism, economic

53
inequality, fundamentalism, and terrorist violence (Pandey 127). It examines the
immigrant's experience and renders the predicament of being an exile in one's own
place. Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (1998) drew wide critical praise for Desai
and received a 1998 Betty Trask Prize from the British Society of Authors.

1.7.10. Meera Syal:

Meera Syal is a second-generation writer, who was bom in England. She has
successftilly represented the lives of first generation as well as second-generation
diasporic Indians in the West. In her novels Anita and Me {1996) and Life Isn 't All Ha
Ha Hee Hee (1999), she expresses her conviction that there is a chance for a positive
change in the alien worid of migrants. Anita and Me is an autobiographical work set
in an English mining village. Meena, a ten-year-old non-white girl faces racial
discrimination and develops a profound disaster of identity. Life isn't All Ha Ha Hee
Hee deals with female companionship of three South Asian women.

1.8. The Need and Significance of the Present Study:

In the present study, the study of four selected novels of diasporic Indian
women writers has been undertaken; Sunetra Gupta's Memories of Rain, Chitra
Banerjee Divakaruni's The Vine of Desire, Anita Rau Badami's The Hero's Walk and
Amulya Malladi's The Mango Season. All these women writers belong to South
Asian region, particularly to Indian diaspora. They belong to the first generation of
the diasporic Indian women's writing. All of them are Indians who have settled
abroad, they have almost permanently left the country of their birth. They raise issues
in the present day postmodern world in entirely different ways than that of diasporic
Indian male writers. So, their ideas surely differ fi-om those of their male counterparts.
These novelists highlight the cultural clashes, which occur in both their homelands
and host lands.

Sunetra Gupta's debut novel Memories of Rain (1992) is about Moni, an

Indian woman, who decides to leave her unfaithful husband Anthony, an Englishman
and returns to India with her daughter. The relationship between Moni and Anthony
presents the usual issue of cross cultural differences and racism. The novel sheds light
on the cultural clash of two modes of life, the Western and the Oriental, and resultant

54
painful process of transformation. Gupta describes the cultural clashes in various
forms such as traditional versus modernity, the village versus the town, faith versus
reason, mysticism versus science, heritage versus hybridity, exile versus involvement
and spiritualism versus materialism. Moni becomes the victim of racial discrimination
and cultural dominance in England. In the present novel race and colour
consciousness create a clash between the Oriental and Occidental culture.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's The Vine of Desire (2002) deals with a new
aspect of immigrant experience in the sense that the movement is not essentially a
physical one from East to West. By making Sudha decide that she is not interested in
America anymore and would like to go back to her motherland, the novel sheds light
on various issues concerned with cultural clashes due to having diverse cultural
patterns followed by the characters in the novel. These include Indian arranged
marriage institution, married relationships, misunderstanding between husband and
wife, divorce, female foeticide, single parenthood, childlessness, loneliness, illness,
death, dislocation versus relocation and dispossession versus interrogation.

Anita Rau Badami's The Hero's Walk (2001) explores the formation of
diasporic identities as an empowering process shaped by multiple changes at the local
level rather than by transnational mobility. Badami narrates the story of Sripathi Rao,
the patriarch of the family and the novel's protagonist, who has to cope with the death
of his alienated daughter, Maya, and the arrival of his Canadian granddaughter,
Nandana. The novel is mainly concerned with Maya, who used to live with her family
in Vancouver and is the novel's most predictable diasporic subject. It examines
cultural clashes and multiple displacements that are found in the diverse relationships.
Nandana crosses borders from Canada to India, and enters the circle of adults
uprooted by hidden injustices of the past, asking through her stillness everyone to
examine the meaning of their own lives. The novel reveals various cultural clashes in
relation to a woman's quest for identity, her subjugation to double marginalization
within and outside the family, diverse Indian caste system, the joint family system,
family tensions, and the collapsing traditions of the society, the misunderstandings
between two generations and conflict between modernity and traditional values etc.

55
 Amulya Malladi's novel The Mango Season (2003) takes us to modem India
during the height of the summer's mango season. It is about an Indian woman Priya
who hides her engagement to an American man from her traditional Brahmin family.
Returning to India is an awesome occurrence for Priya. Malladi succeeds in giving a
vivid sensory impression of the south of India, its foods, climate, and customs with
migration and relational balancing between the cultures. The novel also deals with
Indians who have moved to America and are living a multi-cultural existence, which
go against what their parents' generation believes. It explores two distinct generations,
who believe in different cultural norms. All the commonplaces of cultural clashes are
on display in this novel, for instance ideological conflicts, clash of an ancient way of
life with the western ideas, patriarchal norms, arranged marriages, diverse caste
system, social and cultural transformation and generational differences between the
mother and daughter as a result of a changing culture in a modernized world.

The significance of the study as discussed above gives the grounds of self-
justification to undertake the present study. It is a maiden attempt to club together
four novels by four Indian diasporic women novelists. Of these Memories of Rain and
The Vine of Desire show how the protagonists have made up their minds to return to
the country of their origin. In The Mango Season, the protagonist is torn between her
attachment to the life partner of her choice in America and the partners of her life
since her childhood in her parents and grandparents houses in India. The novel The
Hero's Walk presents how a young girl bom in Canada goes through the process of
acculturation in India. These circumstances lead to different cultural clashes which are
critically analyzed for the first time in the present study.

1.9. Summing Up:

The present study is an in-depth analysis of the selected novels of diasporic
Indian women writers. The study explores the cultural clashes reflected in the selected
novels. The cultural clash is the misunderstanding and disagreement between different
cultures. It occurs when two or more cultures disagree about their beliefs or ways of
life. It strongly affects individuals by changing their personal views, which turn into
diverse cultural conflicts. Cultural clashes are usually the fundamental part of
diasporic Indian women's writing. The selected novels explore those cultural clashes,

56
which occur not only in cross-cultural interactions and encounters but also within
one's own culture, among its own people. Each culture is distinctly unique. Therefore,
it is necessary to understand the cultural diversity and plurality of the respective
cultures for appreciating the differences of each other.

57