Poliics of Diaspora: Knowledge, Power And Freedom In Souh Asian Diasporic Narratives

Abstract

This research explores the politics of diaspora that includes the search for knowledge, power and freedom as embodied in diasporic literature, a postcolonial body of writings, in general and the representative South Asian diasporic narratives, in particular. This project has thus two fundamental claims: one is general and other is specific. First, it seeks to explore that diasporization is the process of entire human civilization and has always been a part of human experience. Second, it explores the way that the more the diasporas suffer, the stronger they become and the greater knowledge, power and freedom they achieve. Diasporas‘ success and progress, which come from suffering and change, are never ending. This research explores about why the diasporas move from known to unknown or comfort zone to strange world. In order to examine the postulations, this study hooks theoretical insights from the premises of postcolonial diasporic critics, mainly Edward Said, Homi K. Bhabha, Sturt Hall, Steven Vertovec, Vijay Mishra, Victoria Cook, Paul Gilroy, James Clifford, Avtar Brah and Daphne Grace as well as their critical insights of cultural pluralism, diversity, consciousness and dynamism of new diasporas. It particularly examines the dynamism of diasporas demonstrated in South Asian diasporic narratives in which the new diasporas stay in liminal third space and produce and reproduce, promote and practice innovative cultures, identities and worlds as being the custodians of cultural heritage and connectivity. The primary data of this research work are mainly based on the reading of Bharati Mukherjee‘s Jasmine (1989), Michael Ondaatje‘s Anil’s Ghost (2000), Mohsin Hamid‘s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) and Manjushree Thapa‘s Seasons of Flight (2010). The researcher is of the opinion 6

that these diasporic narratives under scrutiny cover and represent the issues of entire South Asian region. This research adopts qualitative methodology by utilizing narrative inquiry approach for interpreting and analyzing the primary sources. The major concept used to frame the present study is diaspora theory, which helps to unfold the politics of diaspora by providing the theoretical foundation. More specifically, this research work explores the connection between the modern diasporas in the South Asian diasporic narratives of the South Asian diaspora writers who celebrate and glorify the activism of new diasporas and their politics, in relation to Bhabhaen third space that emerges when two cultural forms interact to create a new form and from that space the three worlds are visible. The diasporas‘ inner and outer journeys are unending because they are in such a fertile and powerful postcolonial diasporic free cultural space from where they achieve empirical and firsthand experience, and exercise for greater knowledge, power and freedom. For this politics, the diasporas abandon their birthplace and their nears and dears without any regret and melancholy. They happily endure and embrace the loss, up rootedness and suffering for the purpose.