Reading Indian Diaspora Literature

"At a Slight Angle to Reality": Reading Indian Diaspora Literature
Author(s): Rosemary Marangoly George

Source: MELUS, Vol. 21, No. 3, Other Americas (Autumn, 1996), pp. 179-193
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic
Literature of the United States (MELUS)
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Review Essay
"At a Slight Angle to Reality":Reading Indian
Diaspora Literature
Rosemary Marangoly George
SanDiego
Universityof California,
In April 1984, India sent her first astronaut,Rakesh Sharma,into

space in the U.S.S.R.space craft"SoyuzT-11/Salyut-7."In a nationally telecast space to earth telephone conversation, Indira Gandhi,
(then prime minister of India) spoke with Sharma-the first such
conversation that was relayed live to millions of Indians. The highlight of this televised event was when Mrs. Gandhiasked Sharma(in
English): "Tellus, what does India look like from space?"Sharma's
quick response was the firstline of a popularpatrioticsong (in Hindi)
"Sareyjahaan sey achha, Hindustan hamara" [Better than all the uni-
verse, is my/our India].1Sharma'sseemingly unrehearsedcomment

was a perfectly patrioticutterancebecause it was delivered from his
vantage point in space: distance and technology, one wanted to believe, gave him proper perspective.He had subjectedthe words of a
nationalist poem to the most exacting test possible and declared the
sentiment true.2And as the newspapers announced the next day, Indians were amused, even moved, but chose to believe. Betterthan all
the universe indeed. Such is the hold that fictionshave on us.
Sharma'ssentiment resonatesin much of the everyday life of Indians living outside India.Over the last two centuries,thousands of Indians have moved out of the subcontinent and subsequently set up
small communities all over the globe. Today there are an estimated
ten million "Indians"living outside India. Every sixth person on the
globe today is of Indian origin.3The India that is declared "better
than all the universe" is the one carriedover and nostalgicallyrecreated in the mind, the heart,the food, the festivals,the clothes, the music, the films and sometimes eventhe literature.
In recent years, the use of the term "diaspora"has been extended
to referto situations other than the experienceof Jewish peoples outside a Jewish homeland. The nineteenthand twentieth centurieshave
MELUS, Volume 21, Number 3 (Fall 1996)

180
ROSEMARYMARANGOLY GEORGE
witnessed events that have resulted in several millions of expatriate

peoples whose exodus from home was marked by varying degrees of
violence and hope. Many of today's diasporic groups (Africans, Chinese, Palestinians, Armenians, Jews, Indian subcontinentals, to name
a few) have a long history of travel away from original homelands.
Yet very often within mainstream literary studies, terms like exile
and homelessness are read at a purely metaphoric level or as experiences afflicting the "lost generation" in Paris and other such dilettantes.4 However, in recent years, critical texts by Edward Said (especially After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives,) Mary Layoun's Travelsof a
Genre:The Modern Novel and Ideology,the now well-established Diaspora: A Journal of TransnationalStudies, and several articles in other
academic journals like Public Culture have brought the everyday
realities of exile, immigration, refugee status, migrancy, community
dispersal and dislocation to the notice of literary practitioners in
the U.S.5
The literature produced out of diasporic experiences has always
been in the business of constructing fictions that fit realities that don't
fit realities. The quality and quantity of literary writing by diasporic
peoples merit sustained, historically located, critical attention. Such
readings could, at the least, transform our reception of contemporary
fiction and our understanding of literary history. This is perhaps best
illustrated by the powerful counter-reading of modernity offered by
Paul Gilroy in The BlackAtlantic: Modernityand Double Consciousness.
This book forces a reorientation of every prior analysis of western
modernity that did not or could not recognize that cultural hybridity
(transcending ethnicity and nationality and resulting from the movement of peoples) was characteristic of modernity.6 Other scholars like
Abena Busia, Gloria T. Hull, Gay Wilentz, and Wendy Walters have
written critical texts that read African American literature as diasporean texts.7 In their essays, such literature is revealed to have global reach rather than operating only within a U.S. cultural context. Today it is becoming increasingly difficult to locate the nation in "national literatures," even as new nations are constituted daily.
What/where/which is the nation in diasporean literature? For every
new nation that is carved out, there is a new diaspora, a group of natives who find themselves outside the borders. A "national literature"
like that of contemporary US literature, it can be argued, is no more
than a weaving of various diasporic narratives. And yet, all diasporas
are not identical: they do not share identical histories nor will they follow the same trajectory into the future and as such deserve individual
attention. Even as insightful overarching theories about diasporas
continue to be produced, this essay will examine some of the issues

READINGINDIAN DIASPORALITERATURE
181
raised in recent publications on and by writers of "the Indian"

diaspora.
Two books published by Greenwood Press examine, and in the
process firmly establish the literary contours of, Indian diasporic
writing: Reworlding:TheLiterature
of theIndianDiasporaand Writersof
The Indian Diaspora:A Bio-Bibliographical
EmCriticalSourcebook.8
manuel S. Nelson, editor of both books, deserves rich praise for
bringing to our notice the work of an entire body of writers and for
matching bio/bibliographic information with critical commentary.
The strength of the two books lies in their refusal to homogenize the
experiences and histories of various groups of diasporic Indians,
even as they attempt to bring the literarywork produced in these circumstances under the rubricof "literatureof the Indian diaspora."
Nelson's two volumes need to be read against a 1993 anthology
compiled and edited by the Women of South Asian Descent Collective in Berkeley,California.OurFeetWalktheSky:Womenof theSouth
Asian Diaspora,is a remarkableprojectin many ways.9Germinating
from a course on South Asia offeredby U.C. Berkeley'sEthnicStudies department, this book was nurtured by a collective of many
women, foremost of whom are Sheela Bhatt, Preety Kalra, Aarti
Kohli, LatikaMalkani,and Dharini Rasiah.Its sixty-six contributors
include first, second and third generationwomen of South Asian descent who currentlyreside in the United States.Whatwe have in this
edited anthology is the first, collective demonstrationof the creativity and astute political sensibilitiesof a young generationof diasporic
South Asian women, born in the late 1960sand 1970s,grown up outside their place of origin, articulatingtheir identities as "women of
color" and as "SouthAsian."Their adept negotiation of these hypernations will be discussed later in this essay.
Emmanuel Nelson is to be commended for the scrupulousness
with which he refuses to sentimentalize gloss over difficulties or to
make his two edited volumes a panegyricto a specific "minority"literature.Reworlding,the first of the two books, begins with a theoretically and politically nuanced introduction to the very problematic
concept of diaspora itself. Nelson begins with the definition offered
by William Safranin the first issue of Diaspora:A Journalof Transnational Studies (1991).10According to Safran:
the concept of diaspora [can] be applied to expatriateminority communities whose members share several of the following characteristics: 1) they, or their ancestors, have been dispersed from a specific
original "center"to two or more "peripheral,"or foreign, regions; 2)
they retain a collective memory, vision or myth about their original

182
homeland-its physical location, history, and achievements;3) they

believe that they are not-and perhaps cannot be-fully accepted by
their host society and therefore feel partly alienated and insulated
from it; 4) they regard their ancestral homeland as their true, ideal
home and the place to which they or their descendants would (or
should) eventually return-when conditions are appropriate;5) they
believe they should collectively,be committed to the maintenanceor
restorationof their homeland and to its safety and prosperity;and 6)
they continue to relate,personally or vicariously,to that homeland in
one way or another,and theirethnocommunalconsciousnessand solidarity are importantlydefined by the existence of such a relationship
(ix-x).
This quotation amply demonstrates why commentators on ethnic

communities write themselves into the identity space provided by
the very term "diaspora." The term suggests a history, a line of movement, a route into the future, a place of origin, all of which is denied
in the alternate terms available to these ethnicities: "refugee," "migrant," "contract labor," "immigrant," "foreigner," or "resident
alien." Most importantly, "diaspora" in itself suggests solidarity,
numbers, community. In his introduction, Nelson proceeds to
demonstrate how this general term applies to Indian subcontinentals
in locations outside the Indian subcontinent. This is not as easy a task
as it might sound. The arena is fraught with ideological icebergs,
such as the use of the term "Indian" versus the term "subcontinental"
or "South Asian." To call this group "the Indian diaspora" could be
read as yet another act of post-independence India's geographic and
cultural imperialism toward its smaller neighbors. While "British India"denoted exactly what "the British/Indian subcontinent" did, independent India and the Indian subcontinent are two entirely different political entities. Nelson navigates around such icebergs, with
grace and careful argumentation in order to render acceptable the
very premise of the collection as well as the inclusion of writers who
trace their origins to locations that are now Pakistan, Bangladesh and
Sri Lanka.
Nelson's introductory essay asserts that there are "shared diasporic sensibilities" and "common thematic concerns" that invoke
varied response from writers of Indian origin in places as different as
Trinidad, Fiji, the U.S., Singapore, Uganda, Canada, South Africa and
Britain. According to Nelson, what is explored in this literature are
"issues of identity, problems of history, confrontations with racism,
intergenerational conflicts, difficulties in building new, supportive
communities" (xv). Despite acknowledging the differences in the in-

READING INDIAN DIASPORA LITERATURE
183
dividual writer's responses to these issues, Nelson ends the introduction with an insistence that
At the core of all diasporicfictions,nevertheless,is the haunting presence of India-and the anguish of personalloss it represents.It is precisely this sharedexperienceof absencethat engendersan aestheticsof
reworldingthat informs and unites the literatureof the Indiandiaspora. (xv-xvi)
Happily, despite this attempt to neatly pull together all the multifarious features of this literary genre, Nelson's sequencing of the essays
opens up the field in a productive manner. Most of the essays subject
notions such as "India," "unity," "loss," "absence," "exile," and "assimilation" to serious scrutiny. Each essay serves to underline (and in
some cases to undermine) the arguments put forth in other essays.
Hence, the follies of the less self-consciously written pieces are critiqued when read in conjunction with other essays in the collection.
Nelson astutely places Vijay Mishra's article on the "grimit" ideology driven Fiji Indian literature and culture at the beginning of this
collection. "Grimit" is the vernacular form of "agreement"-a reference to the agreement made (yet never honored) between the British
plantation owners and Indian indentured labor at the time of recruitment (from the late 1870s onward). This "grimit" ideology was based
on fictions: the fiction circulated by the British was of generous pay
and passage home to India after the contract period; and the Indian
laborers' fiction was of a glorious Indian past and an even more glorious return to India in the future. Mishra's theorizing of the "Grimit" ideology illuminates the phrase from Salman Rushdie's writing
that I have used as a title to this essay: both citations reveal the inescapable proximity of everyday life and fiction in the diasporic context. In what is almost an authorial aside in Shame, Rushdie writes
that the country in which the novel is set is "like myself, at a slight
angle to reality."" Since literature in itself can be understood to be
produced at a slight angle to reality, the match is perfect.
Mishra's definition of a diaspora is simple: it is "a fossilized" fragment of an original nation-that seeks renewal through a "refossilization" of itself (4). This very suggestive articulation cuts through
the weight of Safran's definition without quite as many clauses but
with equal precision. Another similarly productive juxtaposition is
offered in the essay by Helen Tiffin on "history and community involvement in Indo-Fijian and Indo-Trinidadian writing." Tiffin's
comparative study of these two very different literatures serves several purposes. First, the less familiar (to scholars in the west) and

184
younger Indo-Fijian literature takes shape when contrasted with the

older, more familiar Indo-Trinidadian literature. Using both scenarios as examples, Tiffin demonstrates how differences, in the historical
circumstances of the move away from India, in the history of the
place moved to, and in the composition of the local population, all effect the literature that expatriate Indians produced. Ultimately, Tiffin
stresses, writers in both locations have to realize the "potentialities of
a racially hybridized present" (96). Her comparative study subtly
challenges the very idea of a "unified" Indian diasporic literature and
provokes a very important question: are all hybridizations similar
simply by virtue of being hybrid?
This attention to diasporic movement over two centuries and over
the face of the entire globe brings complex and difficult issues to the
fore. For instance, in such analyses, some actors (literary critics, creative writers and the characters they create) have difficulty in accepting the fact or future possibility of racial hybridity and of split affiliations as undeniable features of any diaspora. Victor Ramraj dubs fictional characters who display such traits as "the traditionalists." In
his article on Indo-Caribbean literature, Ramraj suggests that the single most prominent feature of this literature is the conflict between
fictional characters whom he classifies as the "assimilationists" and
the "traditionalists" with authorial sympathy lying almost always
with the assimilationists (80). Simple though it sounds, could this argument be applied to all Indian diasporic literature produced from
various global locations at different times? My impulse is to resist
such classifications of literature that are motivated more by a desire
for easy categorizing than by the need to accurately reflect a clear-cut
feature of the literature itself.
Kirpal Singh's article on Indian writers in Singapore and Arlene
Elder's article on Indian writing in East and South Africa are informative and thoughtful assessments of historical circumstances and of
specific writers' engagement with these situations. In fact the most
rewarding aspect of Reworldingis the reader's sense of being exposed
to tantalizing glimpses of several hundred novels, poems, plays and
short stories. Names like Satendra Nandan, Raymond Pillai, Subramani, Sudesh Mishra, Suniti Namjoshi, Cyril Dabydeen, Neil Bossondath, Ismith Khan, Edwin Thambu, Gopal Baratham, Chandran Nair,
Nalla Tan, are added to the more familiar and shorter list of names
like V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Bharati Mukherjee.
In these essays the former group become more than just a string of
names of writers with local reputations and the latter group is given
a context that renders them less odd, less spectacular, less alien. Furthermore, post-1960s immigration to the west is placed within the

185
context of a long history of coerced and willful travel away from the
subcontinent over the last two hundred years.
The essays in Reworldingon individual writers who reside in the
west (Naipaul, Rushdie, Markandaya, and Mukherjee) are uneven in

quality. Reworldingwould have been a much tighter book without the
excessive attention paid to novelists like Rushdie and Naipaul. To

readers familiar with the works of these well-known writers and
with the critical debates around their work, there is not much new
material here. The attempt in most of these essays is to reposition
specific authors or to rereadtheir work as belonging squarelywithin
the diasporic sensibility. Hence, what other readers have called
Naipaul's racism, elitism, self-hatred and intense anglophilia, P. S.
Chauhantries to representas Naipaul's "cosmicirony"born of an essential Hindu consciousness. Chauhan relies too heavily on stock
phrases like "the ancient Indian view of life" and "the Hindu consciousness of the terriblefluidity of things human and non-human"
to be able to take his attempted exoneration of Naipaul as an unsentimental Hindu very far (22). Hena Ahmad's essay on Kamala
Markandaya is placed too late in the collection for the simple, introductory tone of her first few paragraphs to serve any useful purpose.
Lawrence Needham's essay on the work of the U.S. based poet, Agha
Shahid Ali, is the best of the many articleson individual writers. His
essay quietly guides the readerthroughfour volumes of Ali's poetry,
stopping for nuanced close readings of well-chosen poems.
Critical
While Writersof TheIndianDiaspora:A Bio-Bibliographical
Sourcebookwas published almost a year after Reworlding, it is clear
that each book requires the other.No doubt this is why Nelson embarked on the arduous task of compiling this lengthy sourcebook
with detailed entries on fifty-eight outstandingwriters of the Indian
diaspora. Eachentry contains otherwise hard to locate, up to date biographical, bibliographical and critical information on individual authors. There is a fair representation of feminist women writers as well
as of the better known gay/lesbian writers-groups that are usually
sidelined in diaspora projects. Nelson's choice of authors includes
those with unending lists of publications, awards and other honors
like Salman Rushdie, as well as lesser known writers of great promise
like IndiraGanesanand Suniti Namjoshi.

Nalini Natarajan'sintroductionto Writersof TheIndianDiasporadeserves special mention. Her short piece puts forth a brilliantand so-
phisticated argument for the theoretical soundness of this project that

basically provides the (mainly) western reader with a wealth of information on a group of "Third World" writers. Gayatri Spivak, the
most prolific of Indian expatriate cultural critics, has expressed her

186
doubts about the value of academic work (teaching/writing) where

the project becomes reduced to mere "information retrieval."12
Natarajan's essay suggests an alternative reading of the role of such
information-packed volumes. She argues that, "in introducing readers to the multiple subjectivities that arise in conditions of diaspora,
[Writersof the Indian Diaspora] provide[s] a useful antidote to the reductive processes of homogenization at work everywhere around us
today" (xix). Natarajan's introduction inscribes a framework around
the text that thwarts any attempt at mere information gathering. She
presents this sourcebook as an "invaluable resource" for understanding the "transnational potential of diasporic populations" to interrupt the "monologic discourses of contemporary nation states" (xix).
Reading through the entries on writers as different as Santha Rama
Rau and Samuel Dickson Selvon, one finds it impossible to summarize the wide range of authorial literary takes or even on the varied
inflections added on by different commentators. Natarajan's introduction walks the very fine line of not presenting one unified diasporic literary vision nor a field of endless multiplicity. She sees the literature as twisting together various strands of diasporic cultural preoccupations: the sub-textual inscription of male anxiety matched by
female escapism, an aesthetics of loss often comically represented, financial security undercut by cultural anxiety, religious fundamentalism fueled by consumerism, etc.
A given factor in the publication of such sourcebooks is that constant updating is required if this book is to continue to be a useful resource in the years to come. There are already several Indian diasporic writers (working in English) whose fiction has been published
in the period between the release of this book and the writing of this
essay: Anjana Appachana (U.S.), Sunetra Gupta (England), Manorama Mathai (Bangkok), Romesh Gunasekera (England), Meena Arora
Nayak (U.S.), Shyam Selvadurai (Canada).13Many of the contributors
to Our Feet Walkthe Sky will undoubtedly find a place in future editions of Writersof the Indian Diaspora.Foremost among them is Ginu
Kamani, whose powerful collection of short stories Junglee Girl was
published simultaneously in the U.S. and in India in 1995.14Future
editions of the sourcebook might also include those writers who were
overlooked when the current volume was assembled: writers such as
the Ghanaian writer, Abdulrazak Gurnah, author of Memoryof Departure, Pilgrims Way and Dottie, as well as Reshard Gool, the South
African Indian writer of Capetown Coolie, or fellow South Africans,
Agnes Sam (Jesusis Indian) and Ahmed Essop (TheHajji,Noorejehan).15
Sara Suleri, Alamgir Hashmi and Bapsi Sidwa ( all "from" Pakistan)
and Michael Ondaatje ("from" Sri Lanka,) are among those who

187
clearly merited inclusion in this edition of the sourcebook. What is of

course unpredictable is the continuous movement of writers out of
the subcontinent-for example, since the publication of this sourcebook I have seen established Indian writers like Anita Desai listed as
part of the diaspora.16 Then there is the case of Taslima Nasrin, the
outspoken Bangladeshi feminist whose 1993 novel Lajja[Shame] was
banned in her home country for it's strongly worded denouncement
of religious fundamentalism and communal politics in the region.17
Faced with death threats and constantly under attack in the press and
by the government and clergy, Nasrin went into hiding and was ultimately forced to accept political asylum in Norway in order to survive thefatwah issued against her in Bangladesh. Like Nasrin's novel,
which was written in Bengali, much of the writing produced within
the subcontinent and within Indian diasporic communities is not
written in English, and this needs to be clearly acknowledged in such
sourcebooks. There are several vernacular or regional language literary texts, newspapers and magazines published outside India. In the
U.S. itself there are Hindi, Gujarati and Malayalam literary associations with their own prominent and struggling writers. In Canada
there are groups of Punjabi writers who are organized into writing
groups, edit their own journal called Watan [Homeland], broadcast
radio programs and stage public performances.18
Our Feet Walkthe Sky:Womenof the SouthAsian Diasporaradically
challenges the very categories of writer, fiction, autobiography, theory, and "Indianness." The selection includes brilliant, nuanced meditations by well-known scholars like Chandra Talpade Mohanty and
Indira Karamcheti, as well as contributions from high school students like Tesha Sengupta and Sajani Patel who write with an engaging determination to "be who they want to be." Our Feet Walkthe Sky
forces many acknowledgments, the first and foremost being the issue
of gender as a dynamic within the diaspora. In their discussion of
family, sexuality and community, the best of these contributions
move far beyond the two categories of "assimilationalist" and "traditionalist" that Victor Ramraj established in his reading of diasporic
literature. For instance, in Lata Mani's reading of Indu Krishnan's
film, "Knowing her Place," in Inderpal Grewal's assessment of
Bharati Mukherjee's work, and in the oral history of Abha Sharma
Tyagi collected and transcribed by Kiran Lall and Francis Assisi,
Ramraj's "assimilation versus traditionalism" matrix is rendered inadequate to live or theorize by.
Despite the occasional piece that verges on the maudlin, this is an
anthology with a sophisticated articulation of its purpose and intent.
There was an editorial decision to attempt to deconstruct national af-

188
filiations and India's hegemony in the region as well as a determined

effort to share space with contributions that represent minority religions and cultures from the region. The introduction states that this
book is "primarily for South Asians" and, while there are very adequate glossaries of words from specific Indian languages right after
the appropriate pieces, "the non-South Asian reader" is instructed in
the introduction to "make an effort to try and understand the more
basic words in order to get a sense of the bi/multilingual vocabulary
of many of the writers" (xvii). The editors have shown admirable restraint in having resisted standardizing the grammar, genre, or subject requirements. Instead what has been fashioned out of many heterogeneous submissions is a narrative that begins with a section titled "Lighting the fire beneath our homes" and ends with a section
titled "Our feet found home." What we have in between are the
many stages of moving toward a politicized understanding of the
sustenance that can be provided by the terms "South Asian woman"
and "woman of color." Along the way numerous possible subject (or
non-subject) positions are examined and laughed at, cut down,
lamented, scorned, further embellished or wistfully put away as no
longer applicable. These positions, to name a few, include: non-immigrant South Asian, U.S. citizen, Asian American, ABCD (American
Born/Bred Confused Desi), ABCDEFG (ABCD Emigrated From Gujarat), Aryan/non-White Caucasian, Green Card Holder, NRI (NonResident Indian), and Resident Alien.19This anthology works to provide South Asian women with an alternate community to which
membership comes with political rather than blood affiliations. It
should also succeed in it's objective of speaking directly to the many
thousands of "1.5 and second generation South Asian Americans"
from various class, national, and religious backgrounds.
While the books edited by Nelson will no doubt circulate primarily within an academic audience, Our Feet Walkthe Sky might well become a kind of guidebook for young members of the Indian diaspora
as they struggle with issues of identity and community. The absence
of the kind of vocabulary that would self-select a small academic audience opens up the possibility that these new books may be given
the attention hitherto reserved for news magazines with a focus on
South Asia, children and/or young adult books with Indian themes,
films from the region, NRI taxation guides, NRI directories, etc. Yet
realistically, this is a slim possibility-and one that leads us to consider the kind of audience that South Asian diaspora literature appeals to. How would this literature fare when compared to the impact of Hindi films (imported from India) on the Indian diasporic
community? Furthermore, a project like Our Feet Walkthe Sky further

189
problematizes diasporic literary production and consumption by

highlighting a whole spectrum of cultural/political alliances other
than an affiliation to one's country of origin. It is such productive
complexities that await us in further bulletins on the literary and other cultural texts produced from diasporic locations.
In this context, a recent and noteworthy book is R. Radhakrish-
nan's DiasporicMediations:BetweenHomeand Location.While Radhakrishnan is not centrally concerned with the literary texts produced by the diaspora, his study offers a meditative and theoretically
nuanced consideration of the many affiliative tugs and pulls on different generations of the Indian diaspora in the U.S. In his first and
last chapters, Radhakrishnan explores the tensions and limitations of
the diasporic location that he himself epitomizes in his "present academic-immigrant location in the United States" (1). Radhakrishnan
writes:
Diasporic subjectivity is thus necessarily double: acknowledging the
imperativesof an earlier"elsewhere"in an active and criticalrelationship with the culturalpolitics of one's presenthome, all within the figurality of a reciprocaldisplacement."Home"then becomes a mode of
interpretivein-betweenness, as a form of accountabilityto more than
one location. (1-2)
From this starting point, Radhakrishnan proceeds, in ten more or less

autonomous essays, to write on issues that reveal his "accountability
to more than one location." Clearly, Radhakrishnan's greatest allegiance is to critical theory and consequently, the central figures in this
book are political/cultural theorists such as Michel Foucault, Antonio Gramsci, Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes. And yet, none of
this seems extraneous to the diasporic framework set up by the author at the very outset. What this book succeeds in demonstrating is
that issues as seemingly diverse as Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition
politics, the canon wars in western academia, the rise of religious
fundamentalism in India, the "Ethnic Foods" aisles in U.S. supermarkets, and a host of other political/cultural debates are ripe for "diasporic mediation." This stance takes us beyond the India-centered
world of the diaspora that Nelson presented in his introduction to Reworlding. However, it is important to keep in mind that Nelson is primarily concerned with the "aestheticsof reworlding that informs and
unites the literature of the Indian diaspora" and as such is an accurate reporter on the literary texts that his collection examines (xv-xvi;
emphasis added).

190
Overall, Nelson's Reworldingoffers academic and other readers an

introduction to the wide range of Indian diasporic literary responses
to the business of living away from an imagined "Home"-a condition that is shared not just by other diasporic peoples but by most
persons who inhabit this frenetic world of ours. Radhakrishnan's
book can be read as an urgent call to the diaspora to take on the responsibility of being accountable to both locations-contemporary
India and the "not-home" place. He writes:
I cannot live, earn, pay taxes, raise a family, produce scholarship,
teach, and take passionateand vigorous politicalstanceshere, and still
call it "not-home."Conversely,I cannothistoricizethe very valence of
my being here except through an Indian/subaltem/postcolonial perspectivism. The demands of the "politics of location" are complex:
"home"and the "not-home"and "coming"and "going"areneitherliteral nor figurative, but, ratherissues within the politics of "imaginative geographies." (2)
Despite, or perhaps because of, the relative youth of it editorial
group, Our Feet Walkthe Sky holds its own amidst such sophisticated
theorizing. This generation's assessments are made from the experience of having lived through an American childhood constantly interrupted by "India" (or Pakistan, or Sri Lanka and so on). At its
brightest moments, Our Feet Walkthe Sky directs us to an appreciation
of a stance best articulated by Salman Rushdie in Shame: "Roots, I
sometimes think, are a conservative myth designed to keep us in our
place." The final impression left by both books edited by Nelson is
one of whole groups of people for whom living (and writing) on the
margins has been an everyday event for many decades and over several generations. Our Feet Walk The Sky demonstrates the ways in
which this "everyday" is transformed in the lives and writings of
contemporary diasporic women. It could be argued that diasporic
peoples, rather than being a fringe population, in fact best epitomize
the postmodern/postcolonial condition. Writing of a not so different
circumstance in Claiming an Identity They TaughtMe to Despise,
Michelle Cliff concludes a chapter called "Passing" with lines that

seem equally appropriate to this conclusion:
We are not exotic-or aromatic-or poignant
We are not aberrations.We are ordinary.
All this has happened before.20

READINGINDIAN DIASPORALITERATURE
191
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
"Hindustan" is commonly understood to signify India in Hindi. However, given the resurgence of Hindu fundamentalism in India today, "Hindustan" can
be readily understood to signify a "Hindu" state and can therefore easily take
on anti-secular inflections that this patriotic song "Tarana-a-Hind"(written by
the poet Mohammad Iqbal in the 1940s) expressly opposed.
What is noteworthy is that the Indian mission of this joint venture into space
was to photograph India from space in order to gather information on water
sources in arid areas and to find possible sites for hydroelectric power stations,
etc. The space shuttle made several passes over the Indian region of the globe
collecting hundreds of images of India, shot with the sophisticated MKF-6M.
Hence the special potency of Sharma's sentimental declaration.
I use the term "of Indian origin" to account for persons who can trace their origins to the subcontinent. This usage, while less objectionable than the use of
the term "Indian" for all subcontinentals, is fraught with political overtones
that should become clearer as the essay proceeds.
In recent years, the catastrophic events in the former Soviet Union and the displacements caused by the series of crises in that region, have bought mainstream media attention to such issues as diasporas, exile and homelessness.
Over the next few years we should see some analysis of the literature being
produced from such locations.
Edward Said, After The Last Sky: Palestinian Lives (New York: Pantheon Books,
1986); Mary N. Layoun, Travels of a Genre: The Modern Novel and Ideology
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1990). This is, of course, a partial list. There are
several books, published in the last five years, that consider various aspects of
diaspora cultures. In the context of the Indian diaspora, the most relevant new
book would be R. Radhakrishnan's DiasporicMediations:BetweenHome and Location (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 1996) which is briefly discussed later in this essay. Also see the periodicals India Alert and SAMAR (South Asian
Magazine for Action and Reflection) as well as the activities of groups like
SALGA (South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association) for a sampling of the progressive political stances adopted by U.S. based South Asians. For studies that
offer some examination of diasporic literary/cultural texts, please see: Writing
Diaspora:Tacticsof Interventionin ContemporaryCultural Studies, Rey Chow (Indiana: Indiana UP, 1993); Women's Writing in Exile, ed. Mary Lynn Broe and
Angela Ingram, (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: U of North Carolina P, 1989);
Displacements:Cultural Identities in Question, ed. Angelika Bammer (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994); Migrancy, Culture, Identity, Iain Chambers (NY: Routledge, 1994); The Politics of Home: PostcolonialRelocationsand TwentiethCentury
Fiction, Rosemary Marangoly George (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1996);
and ImmigrantActs: Asian American Cultural Politics, Lisa Lowe (Forthcoming,
Duke UP, 1996). Also see the very interesting and theoretically sophisticated
work on "border cultures" being produced by/about minority cultural workers in the west.
See Paul Gilroy, The BlackAtlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993). Also see Gilroy's book on the Black presence in
Britain, ThereAin't No Black in the Union Jack:The Cultural Politics of Race and
Nation (London: Hutchinson, 1987) and the important work of Stuart Hall, especially, "Cultural Identity and Diaspora" in Identity:Community,Culture,Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990).

192
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
MARANGOLYGEORGE
ROSEMARY
Abena Busia, "Words Whispered over Voids: A Context for Black Women's Rebellious Voices in the Novels of the African Diaspora" in BlackFeminist Criticism and Critical Theory, eds. Joe Weixlmann and Houston A. Baker (Greenwood, FL: Penkevill, 1988) 1-44. Also see by Busia "'What is Your Nation?' Reconnecting Africa and Her Diaspora through Paule Marshall's Praisesongfor
the Widow"in Changing Our Own Words:Essays on Criticism,Theory,and Writing
By Black Women,eds. Cheryl Wall (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1989) 196211; Gloria T. Hull, "The Black Woman Writer and the Diaspora," BlackScholar,
17.2 (March-April, 1986) 2-4; Gay Wilentz, Binding Cultures:BlackWomenWriters in Africa and the Diaspora (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992); Wendy W. Walters, "Michelle Cliff's No Telephoneto Heaven: Diasporic Displacement and the
Feminization of the Landscape," Diaspora/ Borders/Exiles, ed. Elazar Barkan
(Forthcoming, Stanford UP, 1997). For a reading of African American culture
that focuses on migration within national borders see Farah J. Griffins, "Who
Set YouFlowin'?" TheAfricanAmericanMigrationNarrative (Oxford: Oxford UP,
1995).
Reworlding:The Literatureof the Indian Diaspora.Ed. Emmanuel S. Nelson. (New
York: Greenwood, 1992). Writers of The Indian Diaspora: A Bio-Bibliographical
Critical Sourcebook.Ed. Emmanuel S. Nelson. (New York: Greenwood, 1993).
Further references to these books will be cited by page number in the essay.
Our Feet Walk the Sky: Women of the South Asian Diaspora, ed. The Women of
South Asian Descent Collective (San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1993).
See William Safran, "Diasporas in Modem Societies: Myths of Homeland and
Return," Diaspora:A Journalof TransnationalStudies 1 (Spring 1991): 83-99. For
an earlier definition of diaspora that was developed in the analysis of crosscultural trade, see Abner Cohen," Cultural strategies in the organization of
trading diasporas" in The Developmentof Indigenous Tradeand Markets in West
Africa, ed. Claude Meillassoux (Oxford, UK: Oxford UP, 1971) 267.
See Shame, (London: Jonathan Cape, 1983) 29.
See Gayatri. C Spivak, The Post-ColonialCritic:Interviews, Strategies,Dialogues,
ed. Sarah Harasym (New York: Routledge, 1990) 77, 91.
Archana Appachana, Incantations and Other Stories. (London: Virago, 1991);
Sunetra Gupta, Memoriesof Rain (New Delhi, India: Penguin India, 1992) and
also by Gupta, The Glassblower'sBreath(UK: Orion, 1993); Manorama Mathai,
Mulligatawny Soup (New Delhi, India: Penguin, 1993); Meena Arora Nayak, In
the Aftermath(New Delhi, India: Penguin, 1992); Shyam Selvadurai, Funny Boy
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1994). Romesh Gunasekera's Monkfish Moon (New
York:New, 1993) and Reef(New York:New, 1994).Again, this is a very partial list.
Hailed as a "new subversive voice" by Alice Walker, Kamani's JungleeGirl was
published by Aunt Lute Press, U.S. in 1995 and by Penguin India in 1995. India
CurrentsMagazine, a U.S. based newspaper, compares Kamani's writing quite
accurately to "ripe fruit-lush, bursting and sticky. And brimming with sinful
delight." (Both quotations are taken from the Penguin book jacket.)
Abdulrazak Gurnah, Memories of Departure (London: Jonathan Cape, 1987);
also see by Gurnah, Pilgrim's Way (1988) and Dottie (1990)-both novels were
published by Jonathan Cape Press. Reshard Gool, Capetown Coolie (Oxford:
Heinemann, 1990); Agnes Sam, Jesus is Indian and Other Stories (London:
Women's, 1989); Ahmed Essop, The Hajji and Other Stories, (Johannesburg,
1978) and Noorjehanand Other Stories, Johannesburg: Raven, 1990).
For instance, Bapsi Sidhwa is categorized as both Pakistani writer and as part
of the diaspora. The cover of American Brat informs readers that Sidhwa "di-

17.
18.
19.
20.
193
vides her time between the United States where she teaches and Lahore [Pakistan] where she lives."
See Tutul Gupta's translation of this novel into English, published by Penguin
India in 1994 under the same title, Lajja.
Writers based in Vancouver, British Columbia, who write in Punjabi and occasionally in English would include Sadhu Binning, Gurcharan Rampuri, Surjeet
Kalsey and Ajmer Rode. An older generation of Punjabi-Canadian writers also
deserves mention-Sadhu Singh Dhami, author of the English novel Malooka
and Giani Kesar Singh. I am grateful to Amritjit Singh for discussing this issue
of inclusions/exclusions with me and for providing me with names of additional writers and information on their literary works and activities.
Desi derives from the Hindi word Des/Desh which means "country"-hence,
Desi signifies "from/of the country." ABCD is a dismissive term for second
generation South Asians used mainly by newly arrived South Asians in the
U.S. who are unsettled by their encounters with "Americanized" South
Asians. The complementary and equally uncomplimentary term used to refer
to newly arrived Indians, especially scholarship students on college campuses,
is PIGS (Poor Indian Graduate Students). In India, NRIs are often perceived as
not deserving of the many tax and investment concessions made to them by a
government eager for foreign exchange, hence NRIs are sometimes referred to
as "Non-Relevant Indians" or as "Nervously Returning Indians." Envy and a
desire for the authentic mark all these exchanges.
See Michele Cliff, The Landof LookBehind. (Ithaca, NY: Firebrand, 1985) 23.


Reading Indian Diaspora Literature

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"At a Slight Angle to Reality": Reading Indian Diaspora Literature

Author(s): Rosemary Marangoly George

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/467981 .

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In April 1984, India sent her first astronaut,Rakesh Sharma,into

verse, is my/our India].1Sharma'sseemingly unrehearsedcomment

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witnessed events that have resulted in several millions of expatriate

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raised in recent publications on and by writers of "the Indian"

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homeland-its physical location, history, and achievements;3) they

This quotation amply demonstrates why commentators on ethnic

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