We at the Department of English, Kakatiya University, Warangal, India organised a two-day National Seminar on "The Expatriate Indian Writing in English" during September 22-23, 2005. There was much lively debate. Participants included well known scholars in the field. The key participants, among others, were Prof. Jasbir Jain (Jaipur), Prof. Manju Jaidka (Chandigarh), Dr. Somdatta Mandal (Shantiniketan), Prof. Veena Noble Dass (Tirupati), Prof. Vijayashree (Hyderabad), Prof. Gopal Rao (Hyderabad), Dr. R.K. Dhawan (Delhi), and Prof. Vinoda (Warangal).
We are now firming up plans for a book on the subject, putting together the papers we have already received at the Seminar, along with the invited ones that fit in. The scope of the book is enlarged to include contributions on writers of Indian origin from the Far East, Africa, Caribbean, and Australia. We are also devoting some space for diasporic theory in the book.
The focus of the book, as in the Seminar, will be on defining (a) the way each of the new writers [of the last quarter century] has come to terms with the diasporic experience, and (b) how he/she relates to India. As with all labels, the “Expatriate Indian Writers” as a broad category subsumes the emigrant first generation as well as the subsequent generations, wherever they are. We welcome submissions on writers of Indian origin not only from USA, Canada and UK, but also from countries like Australia, Far East, Caribbean, and Africa.
We are also planning a section in the book to include responses to a set of questions and issues that are central to diasporic experience across the world. Writers and scholars are welcome to use the following list of issues to send in their responses and, unless permission is specifically withheld, they will be included in the forthcoming book.
ISSUES IN DIASPORIC DISCOURSE
(Prepared by Dr. T. Vinoda, Professor of English, Kaktiya University, Warangal, A.P., India)
Note: The issues listed below are meant to be merely triggers and
alerts to help with diasporic discourse. They do not
pretend to be exhaustive.
1. When we talk about the expatriate Indian writing in English we tend to see Indian expatriate individuals everywhere—scattered across several continents—as linked by a common heritage, history and racial descent. Does such a conception homogenize difference and form a kind of “ethnic absolutism.” (Paul Gilroy was critical about such a conception in “The Black Atlantic as a Counter Culture of Modernity” in the context of African diaspora)?
2. The experience of Indian diaspora in the West vis-à-vis that of the expatriate Indians in the Asian, African, and Pacific regions.
3. How does the expatriate experience of the Asians compare with that of the white Europeans in countries like Britain, America, and Canada.
4. How are voluntary diasporic subjects different from those whose lives were mapped by exile, refugee camps, mass migration and economic emigration? How do constructions of nation and diaspora differ in various transmigrational groups like exiles, fugitives, refugees, immigrants and migrants?
5. In the USA even the naturalized ethnic expatriates are officially categorized with hyphenated designation such as African-American, Asian-American, Jewish American, Indian-American, etc. Some writers like Saul Bellow have felt this to be delimiting. Should this hyphenated integration of ethnic identity with national identity be viewed as “empowerment” or “marginalisation”?
6. Expatriation does not transcend differences of race, class, gender, and sexuality, nor can it stand alone as an epistemological or historical category of analysis, separate and distinct from these interrelated categories.
7. i) To what extent does the ‘old country’ function as a framework and regulate the transplanted identities within the diaspora?
ii) Varying degrees of significance of the origin-ary homeland for the second generation and the generations succeeding it, born and brought up as they are in the diasporic context across the globe. How do they differ from the first/immigrant generation in relating to their cultural heritage?
In the gifted writers, the cross-cultural conflicts/dilemmas are generally disrupted and complicated in productive ways, especially in areas where differences in generations, gender and sexuality intersect--as in Meera Syal in Britain, Jhumpa Lahiri in the USA. Does this point to a trend or a pattern in the future of Indian diaspora.
8. A substantial number of Indian expatriates have several homelands since they have changed places from India, Africa, Britain, Far East and so on after long periods of stay in each place. How does critical discourse treat such multiple acts of expatriation?
9. Is it possible to draw a line of distinction between authentic projections of Indian reality and the allegedly exoticised/stereotyped versions of the same?
10. Writers like Ashis Gupta and Michael Ondaatje have written about subjects unrelated to their bicultural/transcultural experience. How do they answer the question of authenticity? Or, is this to be viewed as a deliberate creative evasion of the delimiting hold of hyphenated label?
11. What creative purpose must have been meant to be served with the inclusion of Indian words in expatriate Indian writing when they actually create a barrier in the understanding for the international reader addressed by the expatriate Indian writer?
12. Genres are often said to be culture-specific. For instance the ‘novel’ as epic, as community dominant, is associated with the East, where as the ‘romance’ as novel, as the tale of an individual, is identified with the West. In this light, is it possible to trace the new narrative modes, points of view and new genres adopted by the expatriate Indian writers to their cultural heritage?
