"STUDYING DIASPORIC IDENTITY THROUGH INDIAN DIASPORAS" "Displacement has no replacement and this is the reality of diaspora" The dictionary meaning of the term diaspora refers to a large group of people with similar heritage or homeland who have since moved out to all places of the world. The term is derived from an ancient Greek word which means " to scatter about". But the term has been particularly referred to the historical mass movements of involuntary nature like that of the expulsion of the Jews from Israel, the trading of Africans as slaves into North America, the …show more content…
The first generation refers to those Indians which left the country during the colonial rule and the other set constitutes the Indians who moved out after India got independence. Another group may be added to these two groups which is called the modern diasporas . The national identity of the first generation may be changed politically, but they remain fastened to their original homeland culturally , linguistically and ethnically and the second generation finds it hard to adhere to the identity of the parental land. In contemporary modern era, immigration , exile and expatriation are related to home, identity , nostalgia, memory and isolation. These are mainly the recurrent themes in the diasporic writings of writers like V. S Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kiran Desai and many other …show more content…
Ashima's link with the Indian soil is mainly because of her love for the Bengali language and the American English seems less important to her. The grasping of "a tattered copy of desh megazine" in a hospital in America indicates her temporary relief in the foreign land . Another important factor in constructing the identity of these diasporic people or immigrants is culture. In the novel, the proximity of these people to Indian soil has been illustrated through the nurturing of the Bengali culture by singing songs of Nazrul and Tagore , analysing the films of Satyajit Roy as well as debating over the political issues and parties of West Bengal. Native cultural activities like dances and songs seem to construct the cultural identity of the people and at times even negotiate with the other cultures too. In the novel, The Namesake written by Jhumpa Lahiri, Ashima's preservation of the various Bengali rituals epitomizes the bond with her native land rather than bonding with the foreign land. The celebration of Gogol's Annaprasan (rice ceremony) as per the Bengali norms provided Ashima a temporary relief in the foreign land even though most of her relatives and family members are missing. But her son Gogol's cultural identity is more connected with the American culture. He listens to American music more than the Indian
Ashima’s name means limitless, life without borders, and she finally finds her way back home to where she had left her life off, finally following her passion of singing, where she feels most happy and free. Gogol follow’s directly in his father’s footsteps, getting on a train, and traveling as he once did. Gogol reads from the book, that perhaps “it is not a new overcoat, but an old one,” tying together the idea that modern culture is only built upon tradition. This is where Gogol is at peace, reading the words that sparked his creation, a place to finally
...is an American by virtue but Indian due to her parent’s upbringing. That is the reason why she is referred to being an Indian-American author which she has embraced. Due to the fact Bengali marries within their caste, Lahiri married a Latin American Journalist Alberto Vourvoulias and have two sons, Octivian and Noor. After getting married, Lahiri does not feel the need to be shy about speaking in Bengali or any other language. Currently residing in Rome with her family to feel how immigrants adapt to change and to go experience what her characters and parents do in her short stories. Through writing, Lahiri has discovered the fact she belongs to both the worlds and the generations of Indian-American immigrants will change and bring intense joy. "It has been liberating and brought me some peace to just confront that truth, if not to be able to solve it or answer it.”
The African Diaspora has been defined as communities throughout the world that are descended from historic movement of people from Africa predominately to the Americas, Europe, and the other areas around the globe. The process of explaining the affects of the Diaspora to the slave trade have become similar. The slave trade as defined is the business or process of procuring transporting and selling slaves, especially black Africans to the New World prior to the mid 19th century. These two items are fairly similar but vastly different. With explaining how one affected the other I will first go into detail of the African Diaspora and the slave trade then explains how one affected the other.
She conveys a moral to the migrating Indians in their pursuit of material wealth. She asserts that in Change of place or locality one must preserve the philosophical maturity of his native culture and tradition without which life becomes solipsistic. The theme of the novel is cultural but the tone is functionally ethical. “Namesake” seems to be autobiographical where Ashima is Jhumpa herself, though life situations may not be similar exactly. Jhumpa Lahiri with her three works has created history.
Today's modern usage of the term more commonly refers to the movement, migration, or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland or of people settled far from their ancestral homelands; the place where these people live. Using Somalia as an example, it is common for Somali Diaspora living in Australia to respond to the will of some influential elements in their home country, whether such influence is regional ethnicity, clan identity, cultural affiliations, language or religion, they respond to the promotion of long-term conflict resolution and peacekeeping initiatives within regional frameworks, or to motivate, challenge and remind the Somali community of the events taking place back home in Somalia and challenges faced by the community in Australia.
Ashima and Ashoke’s kid was born and they were nevervous to know if he was healthy or not, both Ashima and Ashoke checked to see if their first child was completely normal with all body parts which he was. Ashoka beliefs and scared when he holds the baby he's not going to be careful enough to hold him. Three family friends came to the child's birth,Maya and Dilip Nandi and also Dr. Gupta came to visit the baby boy in the hospital. Dr. Gupta gives him his first book as a gift. Ashima thinks back to her and Ashoke’s families in India he hasn't seen or meet his grandparents and vise versa he's only met the family they made in America. Ashima and Ashoke send a telegram to Calcutta, they let the extended family know that the baby boy was born
Ethnicity significantly influences the formation of an individuals identity and experiences of belonging. Every cultural background has its own guide of morals and values which places expectations on each individual to follow. The various elements of a certain background influence family life and general structure, greatly influencing a persons formation of identity, and ways an individual may experience belonging. Other impacts that may have an effect on ethnicity for various people today include globalisation, increased mobility and migration.
...zation leads to Gogol’s discovery of his true identity. Although he has always felt that he had to find a new, more American and ordinary identity, he has come to terms that he will always be the Gogol that is close to his family. While Gogol is coming to this understanding, Ashima has finally broken free from relying on her family, and has become “without borders” (176). No longer the isolated, unsure Bengali she was when arriving in Cambridge, Ashima has been liberated from dependent and powerless to self empowering. The passing of her husband has forced her to go through her life as a more self-reliant person, while at the same time she is able to maintain her daily Indian customs. This break-through is the final point of Ashima’s evolution into personal freedom and independency.
In the beginning of the book toward Gogol’s early life, the reader may make the observation that Gogol is more American than Bengali. In Gogol’s teen years he shows more admiration for being American than Bengali when he listens to his new American tape rather than his Indian one. On Gogol’s birthday, his father sees the “Lennon obituary pinned to the bulletin board, and then a cassette of classical Indian music he’d bought for Gogol months ago, after a concert at Kresge, still sealed in its wrapper” (Lahiri 78). Even since Gogol was little he had always been a little different considering that he was born as an American, unlike his parents. His parents carry on their Bengali traditions and for the most part avoid becoming full Americans. As for Gogol, he continues to act, think, and be American before any tragedy is present. Lahiri writes, “But Gogol never thinks of India as desh. He thinks of it as Americans do, as India” (Lahiri 118). Gogol is American and he knows it, he doesn’t mind thinking like one either. As Gogol is more American than his parents, he is simply dragged away due to hi...
...gh searching and preserving of their Indian culture. They find their comfort zone within their own racial group. Although they are U.S. citizen, they lose their sense of belonging in America. Nirrmala is living in her own little world while Professorji is disguising himself from the lost of dream. They do not know who they are and where they belong to in America. A wife who still keeps her Indian name and culture and a husband who attempts to fit into the American society but his ego is still drowning in his past. Mukherjee who has deserted her biological identity, she would exclaim to the immigrants that “to bunker oneself inside nostalgia…was to be a coward” (Mukherjee 185). Immigrants should abandon their cultural memory and let the American culture to transmogrify them. “Let the past make you wary, by all means. But do not let it deform you” (Mukherjee 131).
The quest for identity in Indo-English writing has emerged as a recurrent theme, as it is in much of modern literature (Pathak preface). Indeed, often the individual's identity and his quest for it becomes so bound up in the national quest for identity, that the individual's search for his identity becomes allegorical of the national search (Pathak pr...
Bollywood's Popular Culture in the South Asian Diaspora. The centre of the Indian movie industry is in the Indian city known as Bombay, which has since been renamed Mumbai. Owing to the industrial resemblance to the American movie city Hollywood, the Indian movie industry came to be known as Bollywood. Bollywood is now an industry.
In “One Out of Many,” Naipaul uses the literary device known as “stream of consciousness” in order to efficiently tell the story of immigrants who emigrate to the United States of America. Naipaul tells the story through an Indian man by the name of Santosh, who is emigrating from Bombay to America with his “master”. Santosh’s actions and thoughts of American life and culture is demonstrated unequivocally throughout the work. Naipaul begins his exposition of cultural alienation through the analysis of class. The author allows the reader to observe Santosh’s discomfort while he is on the plane traveling to America. (Norton 1662) Through this observation, the reader notes Santosh’s loss of his traditional Indian caste identity and his subseque...
This paper aims to explore varied facets of human relations in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss. This novel tries to discuss, at great length, the grave implications of colonized mindsets for individual, familial and social life. Besides, this paper makes a comprehensive analysis of colonialization, postcolonialism, cultural collisions, cultural encounters, gender bias, immigrants’bitter experiences, insurgency and racial discriminations in respect to the changing pattern of human relations. This, also, shows how human relations, even as influenced by love, longing and crosscultural contacts, are competently handled in a humane manner articulating diasporic experiences of nostalgia and in-betweeness.
V. S. Naipaul, the mouthpiece of displacement and rootlessness is one of the most significant contemporary English Novelists. Of Indian descent, born in Trinidad, and educated in England, Naipaul has been placed as a rootless nomad in the cultural world, always on a voyage to find his identity. The expatriate sensibility of Naipaul haunts him throughout his fiction and other works, he becomes spokesman of emigrants. He delineates the Indian immigrant’s dilemma, his problems and plights in a fast-changing world. In his works one can find the agony of an exile; the pangs of a man in search of meaning and identity: a dare-devil who has tried to explore myths and see through fantasies. Out of his dilemma is born a rich body of writings which has enriched diasporic literature and the English language.