1

Chapter I

Introduction
Indian writing in English is a voice in which India speaks.
Indian writing in English is greatly influenced by the writing in
England. In its own way Indo-Anglian literature has contributed to
the common pool of world writing in English -- the major partners in
the enterprise being British literature and American literature.
Indian writing in English has emerged as a distinctive literature.
Indo-English literature has been regarded (i) as part of English
literature; (ii) as part of Commonwealth literature; (iii) as part of
Indian literature; and (iv) as a representative Indian literature that
crystallizes and synthesizes responses and traditions in ways that no
single Indian regional literature perhaps can.
Indian English Literature refers to the body of work by writers in
India who write in the English language and whose native or co-native
language could be one of the numerous languages of India.
Indian English literature has a relatively recent history and it is only
one and a half centuries old. The earliest specimens of Indian English
fiction were tales rather than novels proper. Kylash Chunder Dutts
A Journey of 48 Hours of the Year 1945 appeared in The Calcutta

2
Literary Gazette on 6 June 1835. In it, the author narrates the story
of an imaginary unsuccessful revolt against the British rule a hundred
years later. The first proper English novel is Bankim Chandra
Chatterjees Rajmohans Wife (1864). It is a melodramatic story of
the trials of a long suffering middle class wife at the hands of her
callous husband and is obviously designed to point a moral.
Raja Raos Kanthapura (1938) is Indian in terms of its
storytelling qualities.

Rabindranath Tagore wrote in Bengali and in

English and is responsible for the translations of his own work into
English. Nirad C. Chaudhuri, a writer of non-fiction is best known for
his novel The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (1951) where
he relates his life experiences and influences. P. Lal, a poet,
translator,

publisher

and

essayist,

translated

the

entire

Mahabharata into English. By 1930, Indian English Literature was

more than a century old. Then came a sudden flowering when the
Gandhian age (1920-1947) had reached its highest point of glory
during the Civil Disobedience Movement of the thirties. The nationalist
upsurge had stirred the whole country, making it acutely conscious of
its present and its past and filling it with new hopes for the future.
A society compelled into self-awareness provides a fertile soil for
fiction. Three major Indian English Novelists -- Mulk Raj Anand,
R.K. Narayan and Raja Rao began their career during this phase.
During this period Indian English fiction discovered some of its most
significant themes such as the ordeal of the freedom-struggle,

3
east-west relationship, the communal problem and plight of the
untouchables, the landless poor and the economically exploited.
A new dimension was added to the novel of social portraiture
when R.K. Narayan began his series of Malgudi novels with
Swami and Friends (1935).

During the Gandhian movement,

politics was virtually the daily bread of the age. Raja Raos
Kanthapura (1938) is easily the finest evocation of the Gandhian age
in Indian English fiction. With Anands Untouchable (1935), the
Indian

English

novel

becomes

truly

experimental

in

fiction.

Mulk Raj Anands Two Leaves and a Bud (1937) is a powerful study
of life in an Assamese tea-estate.
Two of the best novels about the Gandhian civil disobedience
movement in the early thirties are K.S. Venkataramanis Kandan the
Patriot (1932) and Raja Raos Kanthapura (1938). The Second World
War period in India, the growing chasm between India and Britain, the
Bengal hungers, the Quit India movement, and the mounting
frustration and misery are dealt with in novels like N.S. Phadkes
Leaves in August Wind (1947) Bhabani Bhattacharyas So Many
Hungers (1947), R.K. Narayans Waiting for the Mahatma (1955)
and Kamala Markandayas Some Inner Fury (1957).
History as a theme of creative fiction seems indeed to exercise a
special fascination for many an Indian novelist of yesterday and today.
Romesh Chander Dutts The Slave Girl of Agra (1909) and

4
Sir Jogendra Singhs Nur Jahan (1909) are historical romances.
Rabindranath Tagores The Home and the World (1916) and
Four Chapters (1934) present the issue between ends and means in
politics in the context of the revolutionary movements of the twentieth
century. Another type of fiction which made a fairly early appearance
was the historical romance. Prominent examples are T. Ramakrishnas
Padmini (1903) and A. Madhaviahs Clarinda (1915).
Novels were written on the partition horrors also.
most

satisfying

imaginative

records

of

the

One of the

partition

is

Khuswant Singhs Train to Pakistan (1956). In Balachandra Rajans

The Dark Dancer (1959) also we get towards the end, glimpses of the
partition horrors. Manogar Malgonkars A Bend in the Ganges (1964)
explores fully the origins of the two-nation theory and presents in
some detail the sheer frenzy that possessed people in Punjab in
August 1947.
The urge for social reform was a significant aspect of the
nineteenth century Indian Renaissance. Therefore it became an
important theme in some early Indian English fiction. R.C. Dutts
The Lake of Palms: A Story of Indian Domestic Life (1902)
strongly advocates widow-remarriage. Peasant life is the theme of Lal
Behari Days Govinda Samanta or The History of a Bengal Raiyat
(1874). The revised and enlarged version is entitled Bengal Peasant
Life (1908). The novels of social criticism and social protest also form
a distinctive group. Sir Jogendra Singhs Nasrin (1915) is an attempt

5
to expose the life of self-indulgence characteristic of some of the
nawabs. Hari Singh Gours His Only Love (1929) is a study of the
consequences of the emancipation of Indian women. Ahmed Alis
Twilight in Delhi (1940) is a picture of Muslim life in modern Delhi.
A. Madhaviahs Thillai Govindan (1916) is a portrait of a young
intellectual who rebels against the mere formalism of what passes for
religion. A. Subramaniams Indira Devi (1934) decries the validity of
reformation in the shape of inter-racial marriages, inter-caste dinners,
and so on.
The

fictional

study

in

Lifes

Shadows

(1938)

and

A Daughters Shadow (1943) by Kumara Guru are a mild protest

against westernization. S. Nagarajans Athawar House (1939) also
deals with a protest against westernisation. V.V. Chinthamanis
Vedantam: The Clash of Traditions (1940) is again a study of the
impact of western culture upon a traditional south Indian family.
Thakazhi

Sivasankara

Pillais

Chemmeen

(1965)

(translated into English by V.K. Narayana Menon) is a poignant record

of the life of the sea-faring folk on the coast of Allepey fringing the
Arabian Sea. S. Menon Maraths the Sale of an Island (1968) is
about a group of people who live in an island near Kuttanad. They are
suddenly faced with the startling prospect of eviction from the place
that has been their home for generations and so they feel almost
defenceless.

6
By a sheer effort of imagination, some novelists tried to bring to
life the hoary Rishis of the ancient times. In K.M. Munshis epic novel,
Bhagwan Parashurama (1946) there is a magnificent re-creation of
the Vedic and Epic ages, and Rishis like Vishvamitra and Vasishta,
come back to life. G.V. Desanis All about H. Hatter (1948) is a novel
in the stream of consciousness technique. Two women novelists,
Shakuntala Shrinagesh in her The Little Black Box (1955) and
Anita Desai in her Cry, the Peacock (1963) and Voices in the City
(1965), have also made use of the stream of consciousness method of
narration.
We have detective novels like S.K. Chetturs Bombay Murder
(1940)

and

Kamala

Sathianadhans

Detective

Janaki

(1944);

philosophical novels like Dilip Kumar Roys The Upward Spiral

(1949) and Raja Raos The Serpent and the Rope (1960) and
The Cat and Shakespeare (1965); novels of school life like
R.K. Narayans Swami and Friends (1935) and Muriel Wasis
Too High for Rivalry (1967). R.K. Narayan is a writer who has
contributed to Indian writing in English over many decades and who
continued to write till his death. Similar to Thomas Hardys Wessex,
Narayan created the fictitious town of Malgudi.
Among the later writers, the most notable is Salman Rushdie,
born in India but now living in the United States. Rushdie with his
famous work Midnight Children (1981) ushered in a new trend of
writing. He used a hybrid language -- English generously peppered

7
with Indian terms -- to convey a theme that could be seen as
representing the vast canvas of India.

One of the leading recent

novelists, Arun Joshi is preoccupied with the theme of alienation.

The hero of The Strange Case of Billy Biswas (1971) is alienated
from his middle class culture, which makes him run away from
civilization and join an aboriginal tribe. Vikram Seth, author of
A Suitable Boy (1994) is a writer who uses purer English and more
realistic themes.
Women are the natural story-tellers even when they do not write
or publish. The emergence of women writers during the last quarter
of the nineteenth century is of great significance as it marks the birth
of an era which promises a new deal for the Indian woman.
The

zealous

social

reforms

effected

by

William

Bentick

and

Raja Rammohan Roy had brought the Indian woman emancipation

from the tyranny of the ages and from cruel customs like sati.
The battle for emancipation was taken over by a few educated women
who communicated to the world their experiences as women as well as
their ideas of social reform as writers.

As Prof. Alphonso-Karkala

observes in Indo-English Literature in the Nineteenth Century,

They tried to tell the world the obstacles women faced

and the disadvantages they suffered in an orthodox
Hindu world.

These women writers struggled to give

form and shape to their autobiographical accounts,

8
which attracted publishers both in India and abroad
(78).
The
Krupabai

writers

of

this

Sathianathan

(1865-1895),

Smt.

group

are

(1862-1894),

Swarnakumari

Toru

Dutt

Shevantibai
Ghosal

(1865-1877),
M.

Nikambe

(1856-1932)

and

Cornelia Sorabji (1866-1954).

Only after the Second World War, women novelists of quality
have begun enriching Indian fiction in English. Of these writers,
Kamala Markandaya and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala are unquestionably
the most outstanding.

Markandaya in her first novel Nectar in a

Sieve (1954) takes us to the heart of a South Indian village where life
has apparently not changed for a thousand years. Jhabvala has had
opportunities of exercising her powers of close observation on a milieu
that changes chameleon-like from local to cosmopolitan, from
traditional to conventional, from nave to sophistication in her novels
-- To Whom She Will (1955), The Nature of Passion (1956),
Esmond in India (1958).

Krupabai Sattianandhans Kamala: A

Story of Hindu Life (1895) and Saguna: A Story of Native

Christian Life (1895) are frankly autobiographies in fictional form.
Nayantara Sahgal is mostly preoccupied with the political
theme.

Her novels, This Time of the Morning (1968), Storm in

Chandigarh (1969) and A Situation in New Delhi (1977) contain

some striking and easily recognizable portraits of leading political

9
personalities.

Depiction of the social scene has always been the

strong suit of women novelists. Kamala Markandayas A Silence of

Desire (1960) depicts rationalism and traditional religious faith.
Kamala Markandaya depicts the rural life of India in Nectar in a
Sieve (1954). Rama Mehtas Inside the Haveli (1977) is an absorbing
account of Rajasthan Purdah life. The works of the numerous women
novelists of the period offer a more sensitive picture of the theme of
east-west encounter. R.P. Jhabvala deals with the east-west encounter
in Esmond in India (1958) and Heat and Dust (1975). In her two
novels Cry, the Peacock (1963) and Voices in the City (1965) -Anita Desai has added new dimension to the achievement of Indian
women writers in English fiction.
Many Indian women novelists have explored female subjectivity
in order to establish an identity. Thus the theme of growing up from
childhood to womanhood, that is, the Bildungsroman, is a recurrent
strategy.

Santha

Rama

Raus

Remember

the

House

(1956),

Ruth Prawar Jhabvalas first novel To Whom She Will (1955) and
Kamala Markandayas Two Virgins (1973) are noteworthy examples.
As in poetry the image of the New Woman and her struggle for
an identity of her own also emerges in the Indian English novel.
Such a struggle needs supportive structures outside the family to
enable women to survive. Nayantara Sahgal uses this theme as the
nucleus of Rich like US (1986).

Cowasjees experiment with black

10
humour in Goodbye to Elsa (1975) indicates another new direction
which the new novelists are trying to explore.
A recurring theme in many of the novels of the women writers of
the recent years is an exploration of a womans identity, a study of her
self. There is, in the novels of all the women writers -- old or new, a
marked pre-occupation with nostalgia, dream and introspection.
Trends in recent fiction unmistakably indicate how the new novelists
are trying to tread fresh paths and this is the surest sign of the
continued vitality of an art.
Bharathi Mukherjee, author, of Jasmine (1989), has spent
much of her career exploring issues involving immigration and identity
with

particular

focus

on

the

United

States

and

Canada.

Bharathi Mukherjees study of the abnormal mind of the frustrated

Bengali wife in New York in Wife (1976) is a classic example of the
study of the theme of identity crisis.
A number of Indian women novelists made their debut in the
1990s, producing novels which revealed the real state of Indian
society and its treatment of women. In the field of regional fiction, four
women writers, Arundhati Roy, Anita Nair, Kamala Das and Susan
Viswanathan have put the southern state of Kerala on the map of the
genre of fiction while the culture of other regions has been represented
by other women writers.
Kiran

Desai,

Arundhati

Other authors include Anita Desai,

Roy,

Bapsi

Sidhwa,

Chitra

Banerjee

11
Divakaruni, Raj Kamal Jha, Prakash Kona, Rohinton Mistry and
others.
The Hindu moral code known as the Laws of Manu denies
woman an existence apart from that of her husband or his family.
Since

the

publication

of

Bankim

Chandra

Chatterjees

Rajmohans Wife in 1864, a significant number of authors have

portrayed Indian women as long-suffering wives and mothers silenced
by patriarchy. The ideal of the traditional, oppressed woman persisted
in a culture, permeated by religious images of virtuous goddesses as
devoted to their husbands and the Hindu goddesses Sita and Savitri
serve as powerful cultural ideals for women.
The image of women in fiction has undergone a change in recent
times.

Recent writers depict both the diversity of women and the

diversity within each woman, rather than limiting the lives of women
to one ideal.

The work of Indian women writers is significant in

making society aware of womens demands, and in providing a

medium for self-expression. The landscape of contemporary literature
has been transformed by the rising tide of globalization.

Texts are

now crossing the borders of nations and cultures, as newly emerging

authors express myriad voices of those once considered a subaltern.
In Indian Writing in English (1962), Professor K.R. Srinivasa
Iyengar

states

that

modern

Indian

literature

begins

with

Raja Rammohan Roy (1774-1833), who was destined to act as a

12
bridge between India and England (30). The award of the Nobel Prize
in Literature to Rabindranath Tagore in 1913 provided a stimulus to
Indians to write in English, for Tagores content, arrangement, and
style were exemplary, and many out of his fifty plays, one hundred
books of poetry, forty works of fiction were either written in English or
translated into that language by him.

Mohandas K. Gandhi,

Jawaharlal Nehru, and the creative writers Mulk Raj Anand,

R.K. Narayanan, and Raja Rao, all who resided outside India for years,
were quickly recognized as masters of English prose style.
Jerry Pinto, writing in the January 4, 1998 issue of Weekend
(Bombay) magazine, identified over a hundred English language
writers working in Bombay alone; but few of them have made a name
for themselves outside Maharashtra, except Nizzim Ezekiel, a
diasporic Jew. The sociology and economics of creative writing dictate
the living and writing where English is the dominant literary language.
Numerous writers have seen the necessity of short or long term
expatriation. Some remain overseas, others visit India periodically to
meet their families or for reasons of writing; still others become
bridge (Mcleod, xiv) Indians, because they maintain two homes, one
in India and the other overseas. In each case they contribute to the
Literature of the Indian diaspora. Today it can be well said that the
most important writing by Indians is being produced in the diaspora
by

such

people

as

Salman

Rushdie,

Kamala

Markandaya,

13
Bharati Mukherjee, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, Anita Desai,
V.S. Naipaul and Hanif Kureishi.
The term diaspora is used to refer to any people or ethnic
population forced or induced to leave their traditional ethnic homelands;
being dispersed throughout other parts of the world; and the ensuing
developments in their dispersal and culture. In the beginning, the term
diaspora was used by the ancient Greeks to refer to citizens of a grand
city who migrated to a conquered land with the purpose of colonization
to assimilate the territory into the empire. The original meaning was cut
off from the present meaning when the Old Testament was translated to
Greek and the word diaspora was used to refer specifically to the
populations of Jews exiled from Judea in 586 BC by the Babylonians,
and from Jerusalem in 136 AD by the Roman Empire. This term is used
interchangeably to refer to the historical movements of the dispersed
ethnic population of Israel, the cultural development of that population,
or the population itself. The probable origin of the word is the Septuagint
version of Deuteronomy 28:25, thou shalt be a diaspora in all kingdoms
of the earth. The term has been used in its modern sense since the late
twentieth century.

List of notable Diasporas

1.

Acadian Diaspora or Great expulsion occurred when the British

expelled 10,000 Acadians between 1755 and 1764. The British sent

14
members of the same community to different colonies to impose
assimilation.
2. Palestinian diaspora is a term used to describe Palestinians living
outside of historic Palestine -- an area today known as Israel.
This diaspora began in 1948, when the Palestinians were expelled
from Palestine (now called Israel).
3.

The African diaspora comprises the indigenous peoples of Africa

and their descendents, wherever they are in the world beyond the
African continent.
4.

Australian Diaspora is a new term, probably coined by the

Southern Cross Group, to refer to the 860,000 Australians living

overseas. The migrations have a variety of causes ranging from war
brides and their children to the more recent exodus of young
Australians to Europe under working holiday visa programmes.
5.

Bosnian diaspora as a phenomenon appeared after four years of

planned ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.

6.

Cornish

diaspora

refers

to

Cornish

emigrants

and

their

descendants in countries such as the United States, Canada,

Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Mexico.
7.

Tamil diaspora is a term used to denote people of Tamil Nadu and

Srilankan Tamil origin who have settled in many parts of India,

Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore Reunion, South Africa, Mauritius, Fiji,
Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and French Caribbean islands, Europe,
Australia and America.

15
8.

The French Canadian diaspora includes hundreds of thousands

of people who left Quebec for greener pastures in the United States,
Ontario and the Prairies between 1840 and 1930s.
9.

Cuban diaspora is the exodus of over two million Cubans

following the Cuban Revolution and the resulting communist regime.

It is the largest diaspora in the history of the western Hemisphere.
10. The Irish diaspora consists of Irish emigrants and their
descendants in countries such as the United States, the United
Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, South Africa
and nations of the Caribbean and Continental Europe. The diaspora
contains over 80 million people and it is the result of mass migration
from Ireland, due to past famines and political oppression. The term
first came widely into use in Ireland in the 1990s when the then
President of Ireland, Mary Robinson began using it to describe all
those of Irish descent.
11. The Jewish diaspora in its historical use refers to the period
between the Roman invasion and subsequent occupation of the land
of Israel beginning in 70 CE. In modern use, the word diaspora refers
to Jews living outside the Jewish state of Israel today.
12. The South African diaspora mainly consists of white South
African emigrants, especially white African speakers who have fled the
country for a number of reasons. There is also a growing black middle

16
class in South Africa, many of whom are starting to emigrate as well,
furthering the demographic weight of South Africans abroad.
South Africans have largely settled in the United Kingdom,
Australia, the United States, New Zealand and Canada.
13. The Ukranian diaspora, represented by the Ukranians who left
their homeland in several waves of emigration, settling mainly in
America, Australia and Europe.
14. The Southeast Asian diaspora includes the refugees from the
numerous wars that took place in Southeast Asia, such as the
World War II and the Vietnam War.
15. The Romanians, who emigrated for the first time in large
numbers between 1910 and 1925, and left enmasse after the fall of
the communist regime in Romania in 1989, comprise the Romanian
diaspora and are found today in large numbers in USA, Italy, Spain
and Canada.
16. The South Asian diaspora includes millions of people in South
Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Jamaica, Mauritius, Fiji,
Singapore, Malaysia and other countries, who left British India in the
nineteenth and early twentieth century, and millions who have moved
to

Australia,

Canada,

New

Zealand,

the

United

States,

the

United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates in recent decades.

The literatures produced by these people are known as diaspora
literature.

17
The term diaspora, originally used for the Jewish externment
from its homeland, is now applied as a metaphoric designation for
expatriates, refugees, exiles and immigrants. It refers to the work of
exile and expatriates and all those who have experienced unsettlement
and dislocation at the political, existential or metaphorical levels. It is
an interesting paradox that a great deal of Indian writing in English is
produced not in India but in widely distributed diaspora in the
South Pacific, the Caribbean, South Africa, Mauritius and the
Contemporary Indian diasporas in the United States of America, the
United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.

The writing of diasporic

Indians is not new, and it has attained very high standards as

literature in all its forms -- not just in general prose and poetry but in
the genres of drama, oratory, philosophy, theology, and literary history
and criticism.
Meena Alexander in an interview with the Hindu Literary
Magazine, December 1997, has related the Indian diaspora to freedom
and postcoloniality. The very idea of a diasporic literature is pregnant
with two relationships: One, the relationship to its motherland that
gives rise to nostalgia and reminiscences; second, the forged
relationship with the new land and its people, which gives rise to
conflicts and split personalities. The writings of any diaspora are full
of these.

They all talk of alienation, exile, loneliness, the cultural

conflicts, the sense of rejection by the host community, their efforts at

18
assimilation, sprinkled with descriptions of home again which become
sometimes romantic outpourings of nostalgia and longing.
A sense of dislocation and separation is common to immigrants
who find themselves caught up between their native land and the
adopted land.

The in-between world that the immigrant occupies

makes the immigrant a Janus looking at the past and the future life.
Immigration is a process that involves uprooting and replanting.
Hence the immigrant has a feeling of rootlessness. The major quest in
an

immigrants

life

is

search

for

roots.

The

process

of

transplantation makes the immigrant a victim of rootlessness.

The notion of in-betweeness fuels a desire in the immigrants for a
place to call their own. This is the main reason for the preoccupation
with home in an immigrant. Home becomes for an immigrant
a mythic place of desire -- a place of no return (McLeod 2000: 9).
Nirad C. Chaudhuri, V.S. Naipaul and Salman Rushdie made
their return journeys from India in disillusionment. Naipauls return
to India only promoted him to discover an area of darkness.
Chaudhuri mentions that for him to live in Calcutta was similar to
death. First-generation immigrants have a propensity to denigrate all
things that belong to the adopted land. Yet their children, the second
and third-generation immigrants may have accepted the culture of the
adopted country and forgotten the home-culture. Thus the concepts
of home continue as Uma Parameswaran says, to exacerbate

19
inter-generational frictions (Jain 35). There exists a disparate culture
within the diaspora itself.
There has been a surge of movement across geographical
boundaries in the twentieth century. The migration, especially to the
west has been fuelled by difficult conditions at home and the
attraction of peace and lucre outside. The age of globalisation,
therefore, belongs to the migrant. Migration forces a rethinking of the
issues of culture and community.

Multiculturalism is the defining

aspect of the new millennium.

Migrant literature is a topic which has commanded growing
interest within the literary studies since 1980s. Migrants are defined
here as peoples who have left their homes to settle in countries or
cultural communities which are initially strange to them. Migration or
immigration has directly or indirectly affected several generations of
contemporary writers in English, engendering hybridism and culture
complexity within them and urging them to grapple with multiple
cultures, countries and tensions between them.
First-generation migrants are those who as adults, themselves
made a move from one country to another. Second-generation
migrants are the children of migrants, who were very young at the
time of migration or were born in the country of arrival.

In the

literature of the second-generation migrants, a location between two

20
cultures is often mentioned as a way of expressing a sense of
belonging to neither the guest nor host community.
The study of diaspora opens up a multitude of paradoxes,
shifting identities and intellectual challenges.

There are centres of

Diaspora studies at Tulane University, the University of California at

Berkeley, the University of South Florida, Michigan state, the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Bryn Mawr College, the
Barnard project on Migration and Diaspora, to mention only a few;
journals like Diaspora: Journal of Transnational Studies to name only
one; music publishing companies such as Diaspora connections; and
numerous websites.
Diasporas occur as much across time as across space, for they
are like their motivations, continual but changing processes of the
scattering of peoples. They do not automatically exclude assimilation
or resettlement. This is precisely where, for example, Asian diasporic
studies find a common ground with Asian American studies.
The lived reality of relocations and dislocations of vast populations
makes the phenomenon of diaspora commonplace in these modern
times.
Diaspora Literature involves an idea of a homeland, a place from
where the displacement occurs and narratives of harsh journeys
undertaken

on

Indo-Christian

account
tradition

of
the

economic
fall

of

compulsions.

Satan

from

In

the

heaven

and

21
humankinds expulsion from the Garden of Eden, metaphorically the
separation

from

God

constitute

diasporic

situations.

Etymologically diaspora with its connotative political weight is drawn

from Greek, meaning to disperse and signifies a voluntary or forcible
movement of the people from the homeland into new regions.
Robin Cohen in Global Diasporas -- An Introduction (1997)
classifies Diaspora as (i) Victim Diasporas (ii) Labour Diasporas
(iii) Imperial Diasporas (iv) Trade Diasporas (v) Homeland Diasporas
and (vi) Cultural Diasporas. Cohen finds a common element in all
forms

of

Diaspora:

these

are

people

who

live

outside

their

natal territories (ix) and recognize that their traditional homelands

are reflected deeply in the languages they speak, the religions they
adapt to, and the cultures they produce.
diasporas

underlines

particular

Each of the categories of

cause

of

migration

usually

associated with particular groups of people. For example, Africans

through their experience of slavery have been noted to be victims of
extremely aggressive transmigration policies.
In the age of technological advancement where travelling is
made easier and the distance shorter, the term diaspora has lost its
original connotation; yet simultaneously it has also emerged in
another form healthier than the former. At first it is concerned with
human beings attached to the homelands. Their sense of yearning for
the homeland, a curious attachment to its traditions, religions and
languages give birth to diasporic literature which is primarily

22
concerned with the individuals or communitys attachment to the
homeland. According to Rushdie, the migrants arrive from the native
land and the migrants run from pillar to post crossing the boundaries
of time, memory and history, carrying with them the vision and
dreams of returning to their homeland as and when the migrants like
and find fit to return. Stuart Hall in Cultural Identity and Diaspora
(1994), states that it is an axiomatic truth that the migrants dreams
are futile and it would not be possible to return to the homeland.
The longing for the homeland is countered by the desire to belong to
the new home, so the migrant remains a creature of the edge, the
peripheral man (222-237). According to V.S. Naipaul the Indians are
well aware that their journey to Trinidad had been final, but these
tensions remain a recurring theme in diasporic Literature.
Indian diaspora can be classified into two kinds. They are,

1. Forced migration to Africa, Fiji or the Caribbean in the eighteenth

or nineteenth century.
2. Voluntary migration to the United States, United Kingdom, France
or other European countries for professional or academic purposes.

Amitav Ghosh in The Diaspora in Indian Culture (2002) says

that the Indian diaspora is one of the most important demographic
dislocation of Modern times (243), and each day is growing and
assuming the form of a representative of a significant force in global
culture.

23
Markand Paranjpe (2001) differentiates two distinct phases of
diaspora as the Visitor Diaspora and Settler Diaspora, similar to
Maxwells Invader and Settler Colonialist.

The Visitor Diaspora

consisted of dispriviledged and subaltern classes, whose forced

alienation was a one-way ticket to a distant diasporic settlement.
As in the days of yore the return to homeland was next to impossible
due to lack of proper means of transportation, economic deficiency
and great distances.

Hence the physical distance became a

psychological alienation, and the homeland became the sacred icon in

the diasporic imagination of the authors. V.S. Naipaul contributed to
the visitor diaspora. Naipaul remarkably portrays the search for the
roots in his novel A House for Mr. Biswas thus: to have lived without
even attempting to lay claim to ones portion of the earth; to have lived
and died as one has been born, unnecessary and accommodated (14).
Similarly Mohan Biswas peregrination over the next thirty five years,
he was to be a wanderer with no place to call his own (40).
The settler Diaspora was the result of mans choice and
inclination towards the material gains, professional and business
interests. It is particularly the representation of privilege and access
to contemporary advanced technology and communication. Here no
dearth of money or means is clear.

They go there for economic

upliftment and social status. Salman Rushdie is the representative of

this Diaspora.

Rushdies Midnight Children and Shame are the

novels of leave taking -- from the country of his birth (India) and from

24
that second country (Pakistan) where he tried, half-heartedly to settle
and couldnt (Aizaz 1992: 135).
The diasporian authors engage in cultural transmission that is
equitably exchanged in the manner of translating a map of reality for
multiple readership. Besides, they are equipped with lot of memories
and reveal an amalgamation of global and national strands that
embody real and imagined experience. Suketu Mehta is an advocate
of the idea that home is not a consumable entity. In Maximum City
(2004) he says, You cannot go home by eating certain foods, by
replaying its films on your T.V screens. At some point you have to live
there again (13). His novel Maximum City is the delineation of real
lives, habits, cares, customs, traditions, dreams and gloominess of
Metro life on the edge in an act of morphing Mumbai through the
unmaking of Bombay.
It is also true therefore that diasporic writing is full of the
feelings of alienation, love for the homeland -- a double identification
with the

original homeland and the adopted country, crisis of

identity, mythic memory and the protest against discrimination in the

adopted country.

Diasporic writings are to some extent about the

business of finding new angles to enter reality; the distance -geographical

and

cultural,

enables

new

structures

of

feeling.

The hybridity is subversive. It resists cultural authoritarianism and

challenges official truths.

Ahmad Aizaz, in In Theory: Classes,

Nations, Literatures (1992) states that one of the most relevant

25
aspects of diasporic writing is that it forces, interrogates and
challenges
Amitav

the

authoritative

Ghoshs

novels

voices

depict

of

time

contemporary

(126).
issues

Most
of

of

India.

Amitav Ghosh in his book The Shadow Line (1990) says:

In

India

there

is

drill

associated

with

civil

disturbances, a curfew is declared, paramilitary units

are deployed, in extreme cares, the army monarchs to
the stricken areas. No city in India is better equipped
to perform this drill than New Delhi, with its high
security apparatus. (51)

The writers of diaspora offer scope for global paradigm shift.

The challenges of the narratives of power relations are to silence the
voices of the dispossessed; these marginal voices have gained
ascendance and even found a current status of privilege. These shifts
according to Homi Bhabhas view in The Location of Culture (1994),
suggest That it is from those who have suffered the sentence of
history -- subjugation, domination, diaspora, displacement -- that we
learn our most enduring lessons for living and thinking (172). Most of
the major novels of South Asia are replete with the diasporic
consciousness which is nothing but the witness of the happenings of
social realities, longings and feelings of belonging. This theme became
whys and wherefores of most of the South Asian novels and the
popularity of it will prognosticate its golden future.

26
American novelist Henry James once noted that it takes a lot of
history to produce the flowering of literature (qtd. in Kirpal, 44).
In that light, the speed with which new Asian American literature is
surfacing might be considered a form of encapsulated history, an
enthusiastic response from mainstream US literary circles to the
belated appearance of Asian Americans on the US consciousness.
Scholarly and popular interest in Asian American literature is of
recent origin.
Courses in Asian American literature are common throughout
US higher education. This body of writing has expanded on a large
scale and has made remarkable progress. Journals such as Bridge in
New York City, and Amerasia, are published from the University of
California at Los Angeles.

They are vital forces in increasing the

awareness about Asian American writers.

Usually Asian American literature has been assessed by
reviewers and critics from the single perspective of race.

In other

words, the literature is read as centered on the identity position of

Americans of Asian descent and within the context of Asian American
immigration histories.
analysis

is

gender

Another theme operating alongside race

analysis,

with

many

works

recounting

Asian American womens struggles against traditional patriarchal

attitudes. Maxine Hong Kingstons The Woman Warrior (1976) is an
example of a complex series of narratives about growing up in a
community structured along gender and racial lines.

27
Immigration to the United States, where the male and female
roles are more fluidly and more freely defined has put the traditional
social values under stress. It is true, of course, that gender roles often
are presented as a function of culture. South Asian women writers
such as Bharathi Mukherjee and Bapsi Sidwa have focused on the
cross-cultural tensions that arise when crossing national borders.
Another major theme in Asian American writing is the
relationship between parents and children. While second-generation
children often reject their parents social expectations, immigrant
parents are not simply flat representations of static societies.
They are also individuals who have broken away from their original
communities in moving to the United States. As a result, the US born
Asian American writers portray complex parental characters who are
themselves double figures.
National identity is viewed as more porous, resulting in the
globalization of cultures. In reading the Asian American literature, we
are reminded that critics and teachers must mediate between new
texts and historically constructed US literary traditions, between
social locations and literary identities of the communities. Besides the
recent works of Asian American authors-- transnational, immigrant
and Native Americans alike -- underscore the phenomenon of rapid
publication and the continuous reinvention of Asian American
cultural identity.

28
The Great Indian diaspora has always been a key topic of
discussion whenever the theme of Asian American writing comes up.
As members of the Indian Diaspora, the diasporic writers share the
same diasporic consciousness, which is a shared sensibility generated
by a complex network of historical connections, spiritual affinities and
cultural memories.

This shared sensibility is manifested in the

cultural productions of Indian diasporic communities around the

world.

The writings of the Indian diaspora have, of late, been the

focus of much literary acclaim. What makes the writings of the Indian
diaspora unique is the fact that the Indian diaspora differs from the
other diasporas. Unlike the Jewish, and other Asian diasporas, the
Indians, despite being Indian, do not necessarily share a common
faith, language, cuisine and dress. The result is that the diversity of
India gets reflected in the literature of these people of diverse
backgrounds.
Diasporic writers differ among themselves in many ways.
Their attributes vary with regard to their choice of themes, points of
view and narrative techniques. Rohinton Mistry writes very differently
from Jhumpa Lahiri. Meena Alexander is different from Rushdie or
from the other Indian writers living and writing abroad. The cultural
baggage which these diasporic writers carry is different and unique to
the region from which they come.
expressing nostalgic outpourings.

But they are unanimous in

Their ways of adapting is also

29
different, for in India, there are vast differences with regard to time
cherished traditions.
It is only natural that when these diasporic writers start writing,
they write about the customs, tradition, dress and cuisine, peculiar to
the region from where they come. In a way they bring the same rich
diversity that exists in India into their writings by portraying the
minute details of their rites, dress and cuisine into the literature that
they create.
Another aspect that sets the Indian writers as a class apart is
their way of adoption of values and life in the country of their choice.
This adjustment varies, depending on whether the person is a
first-generation or second-generation migrant.

The first-generation

immigrants are invariably more obsessed by the home they have left
behind which is their land of birth and always suffer from a feeling of
uprootedness that makes it more difficult for them to adjust.
First-generation Indian-Americans are acutely aware of readily
apparent cultural differences. The family becomes a battlefield where
modernity clashes with tradition, where Indian culture clashes with
American

culture

and

where

theory

clashes

with

practice.

American culture becomes the basis for interactions outside the home.
Inside the home first-generation Indian-Americans attempt to preserve
their cultural and religious heritage and expect to live according to
Indian cultural values. For example, women are expected to maintain
the household chores like cooking, cleaning, childrearing, etc. in

30
addition to holding part-time or even full-time jobs which they take up
in the United States.
Like their parents, the second-generation Indian American also
compartmentalizes his or her life. At home and within the local
community component they are governed by the compromised Indian
lifestyle developed by their parents and the broader American
community.

Conflicts typically arise from the cultural clash of

American individualism and Indian communitarianism. For example,

a

second-generation

Indian-Americans

desire

to

pursue

an

undergraduate degree in the fine arts will not be supported by the

family.

Career decisions are based on their impact on the familys

well-being, not the individuals.

The second-generation is able to

assimilate the cultural import but their problems are of a different

kind. Having been born in the new country they are able to become a
part of the new culture more easily. But they face and experience a
greater sense of rejection and are constantly reminded by their peers
that they are different, that they do not belong to the adopted land
and all this leads to a great deal of conflict in the minds of these easily
influenced children born and brought up in a foreign land.
The conflict is not only caused by their peers, but also, because
they are expected to adhere to different values at home; the child
grows up with two distinct personalities.

This is especially true of

Asian immigrants because, even though they belong to the second or

third-generation they continue to remain aliens in the land of their

31
adoption. One of the major reasons for this is the colour of their skin.
They can never integrate and become a part of the white society like a
German, a Pole, a Russian or any other European.
The Asian immigrants are never accepted as part of the white
community. Hence they continue to suffer the sense of alienation, of
being exiles of not belonging. Born and bred there, for generations this
has a disturbing experience as they do not belong to any land, or to a
land that is more strange than the one in which they are settled.
This causes in them, a loss of identity, a feeling of being rootless and
of not belonging anywhere. At the best it gives them a hyphenated
identity. For example the children of the Jews who fled and settled in
America or Canada can call themselves American or Canadian and not
be questioned, but an Indian, or an Asian for that matter, will find
that acceptance lacking. They may dress like them, speak like them,
they may even adopt their culture but they will always remain
foreigners with the result that the sense of exile gets more or less
encoded in their psyche.
Time magazine carried a cover story on Generation AsianAmerican in its 1 May 2006 issue.

The interviews of the Asian

children -- conducted by their correspondents pointed out that racial

alienation and ethnic mockery are two experiences that all children of
Asian immigrants can understand because at some point of time, in
some way or other, they have all experienced them. The difference is
perhaps in the way they handle it or react to it. The first-generation

32
having gone in search of a better life has obviously weighed the pros
and cons of living abroad and may even deny the existence of such
discrimination. What they have done is perhaps, to bury it so deep in
the recesses of the sub-conscious that they do not have a conscious
memory of it. The immigrants are not lying; rather this helps them
survive. Sensitive people, belonging mostly to the second-generation
however are unable to forget or overlook such slights and they suffer
because the instances rankle; causing conflicts and questionings
accompanied by an emotional turmoil that helps the diasporic writers
to create something unique out of this pain.
This is further accentuated because most Indians tend to live in
ghettos, clustered in groups of their own communities. This helped
the first-generation immigrants to survive. Living in their communal
group makes their life somewhat better, for their social interaction
remains confined to people who understand them and who are like
them; who think like them, eat and dress like them. But at the same
time it makes it harder for their children. The Indians who go to settle
abroad try to preserve their culture and their way of thinking
according to the way it was when they left the country. But in India,
the Indians keep changing and accept the western ways of thinking.
They are more tolerant towards many things in the younger
generation, whereas those who settled abroad still resent them in their
children.

33
It is the children, who suffer the most. It is natural for them to
have a conflict, to rebel at times. Their home environment and the
outside world meet only tangentially, so that they are forced into
adopting two or may be even three different identities.

When they

write they succeed in creating something entirely different. It is said

that the pain, brings out the best in an artist. The sensitive Indian
born abroad, but treated as an unwanted, or second class citizen or as
an alien, but one who has known no other home, suffers a lot of pain,
and it is a pain, that the second-generation immigrant cannot even
share with anyone, except perhaps with others who can relate to his
or her experience.
Every member of Indian diaspora, while maintaining his
commitment to Indianness has made India proud. What gives a
common identity to all members of Indian Diaspora is their Indian
origin, their consciousness of their cultural heritage and their deep
attachment to India.

Throughout its history, India has received

migrants from various parts of the world and has absorbed them
instinctively with their culture, language, economic and social status.
This has equipped Indians to easily interact with cultures and
ethnicities abroad.

Indians have carried this rich legacy of

adaptability with them to their host countries. This unique feature of

Indian diaspora is the most important factor in the success of the
evolution of the Indian diaspora across the global countries.

34
A diasporic experience is the experience of the individual who
undergoes separation. It is the experience of the individual, because
literature deals with the specific individual, a specific time and a
specific situation. On examining diasporic literature, it is evident that
the various states of mind are those of indifference, apprehension,
realism, depression, painful projection and despondency. These are
the dominant states of mind.

Diaspora creates a specific state of

mind; to understand and to analyse the nature of the mind.

The seven elements which are used to investigate or recognize the
diasporic consciousness are: memory, return, strangeness, desire to
integrate, transience, desire for permanence, a sense of belonging and
embedding.
The diasporic experience is a composite one made up of
collectivities, multiple journeys, still points and border crossings. In a
piece titled The New Empire within Britain, included in the book
Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism (1981-91), Rushdie
points out that racism manifested a crisis of culture in the country of
adoption. He writes, British thought, British society, has never been
cleaned of the filth of imperialism . . . even British born blacks and
Asians are thought of as people whose real home is elsewhere.
(131-132)

The land of hope to which people migrate often turns out to be a

living hell of racial discrimination. In the same article Rushdie
observes:

35
A gulf in reality has been created. White and Black
perceptions of everyday life have moved so far apart as
to be incompatible . . . We stand on the opposite sides
of the abyss . . . while the ground crumbles beneath
our feet. (134)
It is not only homelands which are imaginary but even the land
of settlement or adoption is also imaginary.

Britain observes

Rushdie is now two entirely different worlds, and the one you inhabit
is determined by the colour of your skin (Rushdie (1994:134).
This reality is far removed from the dream of equal cross-cultural
relationships and transplantation to a new culture.
Creativity in order to be significant needs to be engaged not
merely with ones self but also with the other.

It may have its

traumas, its anguish and challenges, but finally it is not about

enclosures

but

open

spaces,

it

is

about

intermingling

and

interruptions. This intermingling is one value which can be used to

evaluate the diasporic experience.

It is this joy of having a double

vision and a pain of being split through and through, of carrying a

nation on their backs as they work through a different history, distant
culture and a fluid memory that characterises the diaspora, its
Indianness and its experience.
Writers like Nirad C. Chaudhuri, G.V. Desani, Balachandra
Rajan, Santha Rama Rau, Kamala Markandaya, V.S. Naipaul,

36
Ved Mehta, Anita Desai, Uma Parameswaran, Bharathi Mukerjee,
Cyril Dabydeen, Salman Rushdie, M.G. Vassanji, Meena Alexander,
Rohinton Mistry, Hanif Kureishi, Neil Bissoondath, Sujata Bhatt,
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Jumpa Lahiri can be labelled as the
writers of diaspora. These writers have roots in India or less
frequently, in Pakistan, Bangladesh, or Sri Lanka -- but represent
diverse

geographical

areas

of

the

Indian

Diaspora:

from

the

South Pacific to South America, from the Indian Ocean islands of

Mauritius and Singapore to the cities and suburbs of London,
New York, Johannesburg and Toronto. The writers practise a variety
of

literary

forms

and

represent

an

extraordinary

diversity

of

ethnicities, languages and religious traditions. The women among

them contribute to the perspective of gender along with the themes of
ethnicity and migrancy.

A large number of these diasporic writers

have given expression to their creative urge and have brought credit to
Indian English fiction as a distinctive force.
Writers of the Indian diaspora have been fairly in the centre
stage in the last decade, primarily because of the theoretical
formulations which are now being generated by the critiquing of their
work and the growing interest in cultural studies.

Language and

cultures are transformed as they come into contact with other

languages and cultures.

37
Bharathi Mukherjee embraces a monolithic Americanness,
irrespective of race and class. In the preface to her collection of stories
Darkness (1985), she notes:
Indianness is now a metaphor, a particular way of
partially

comprehending

the

world.

Though

the

characters in these stories are or were Indian, I see

most of these as stories of broken identities and
discarded languages and the will to bond oneself to a
new community against the ever-present fear of failure
and betrayal.

Mukherjee wants to be labelled as an American not as Indian and

American, not hyphenated. Besides, she wants to be recognized as an
American writer, in the tradition of American writers.
Meena Alexander allies herself with the voices of other minority
writers, particularly Asian Americans.
thoughtful stance about identity.

She takes a nuanced and

She does not deny her past and

links her present and past history as a South Asian American to that
of other ethnic groups in the United States. Meena Alexander opines
in her perceptive essay Is there an Asian American Aesthetic?

The present for me is the present of multiple

anchorages.

It is these multiple anchorages that an

ethnicity of Asian American provides for me, learning

from

Japanese

Americans,

Chinese

Americans,

38
African Americans, Indian Americans, and everyone
jostling, shifting and sliding the symbols that come out
of my mind. (26)

In the same essay she delineates aesthetics of dislocation (26) as one

component of an Asian American aesthetic. She says,

. . . the other is that we have all come under the sign

of America. In India, no one would ask me if I were
Asian American or Asian.

Here we are a part of

minority and the vision of being unselved comes into

our consciousness. It is from this consciousness that
I create my work of art (27).

Jhumpa Lahiris collection of stories presents a remarkable

vision that certainly transcends narrow nationalism but which
celebrates an ethnic heritage along with evoking an exemplary
universalist humanism. In the title story of the Pulitzer Prize winning
short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies (1999) the Das family
returns to India from the United States. As they cross the national
borders they are forced to recognize their own dual identities -- more
American in clothing, speech, body language than Indian, though
ethnically

marked.

Lahiri

recreates

national

identity

through

ethnicized codes of communication both spoken and unspoken;

culturally defined signals are misinterpreted by Mr. Kapasi, who

39
regards Mrs. Das as both native and also one who bears the stamp of
the United States.
Some of the stories in Interpreter of Maladies unfold in the
United States, others travel back to India through their characters
imaginations and histories and others are set in India with the west
looming in the wings. There are women who have affairs with men,
men who leave their wives, women who give more importance to career
than

their

families,

non-traditional

women

and

men.

Lahiris characters demonstrate the diversity of the South Asian

American community with their various languages, religions and
regional food cultures.
unfold

as

they

Their daily lives in this diasporic location

struggle

and

dream,

argue

and

entertain.

These portrayals broaden the representations of Indian Americans,

abandoning any fixed notion of great Indian culture.
According to Usha Kalyani, as stated in her essay Quilting a
New Canon: A Study of the Select Plays of Uma Parameswaran,
Uma Parameswaran is an effective cultural ambassador of India
(qtd. in Balachandran 2004: 176). She takes the different immigrants
experiences in her works. The first phase points out the nostalgia for
the world they have left behind and the mixed feelings of wonder and
fear at the new world in which they are in. In the second phase, due
to their impulse to survive, their concentration is on family and
career. In the third phase, the immigrants show an active interest in
the activities of their own ethnic community. The final phase leads to

40
the participation in the larger political and social arena of the new
country. Through this intermingling of cultures, Uma Parameswaran
attempts to effect a shift from a sense of rootlessness to a sense of
community, and from alienation to reconciliation.
Like the heroines of her stories, Sunnyvale author Chitra Lekha
Banerjee Divakaruni has come a long way in the literary circle.
Though

Divakarunis

unconventional,

it

path

still

to

took

literary
years

success
of

study

is

quick

and

and

struggle.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni was born in Calcutta on 29 July 1956 in

India.

She lived in several Indian cities as a child and teenager.

Her father Rajendra Kumar Banerjee, an accountant by profession,

and her mother Tatini Banerjee, a school teacher, brought up their
four children in a modest middle-class ambience. As the second-born
child and the only girl among three brothers, Partha, Dhurva and
Surya, Chitra spent her childhood days in sibling rivalry. She studied
at Loreto House, a convent school run by Irish nuns, from where she
graduated in 1971.

She attended the college at the University of

Calcutta and immigrated to the United States of America in 1976

when she was nineteen years old.

Divakaruni pursued a masters

degree at Wright State University in Ohio. To begin and continue her

education in the United States, she had to earn money. In order to
earn money she took up a variety of odd jobs, including babysitting,
selling merchandise in an Indian Boutique, slicing bread in a bakery
and washing instruments in a science lab.

While continuing her

41
studies in English Literature at the doctorate level at UC-Berkeley, she
lived in its International House and worked in the dining hall, slicing
Jell-O, removing dishes from the dishwasher.

Though she admits

these were not tasks to write home about, they have made it possible
for her to continue her education and have given her the financial
independence that she has always valued.
Divakaruni did not begin to write fiction until after she
graduated from Berkeley when she came to realize that she loved
teaching. But she did not want to do academic writing, and instead
she wanted to write something more immediate. She was married to
Murthy Divakaruni in 1979 and has two sons named Anand and
Abhay. She now lives in Sunnyvale, California. As she began living in
the United States, Divakaruni became more and more aware of the
differences in culture and then she wanted to write as a means of
exploring these differences.

In an interview with Julie Mehta, in

Arranging Ones Life Divakaruni says,

Immigrating was the most transformative experience of

my life -- it exposed to me a life beyond my existence
in Calcutta. Immigrating to America made me see my
own Indian culture in a different way, it made me both
appreciate my culture and question some aspects of
my culture. (Jan. 2000)

42
Divakaruni has published poetry, short fiction and novels.
About the many forms in which she writes, Divakaruni has said in an
interview with Erica Bauer in A Discussion with Chitra Divakaruni
thus:

I really like using different forms of writing -- each

form has its own strength. To me poetry focusses on
the moment and in images, it feels like an intuitive
form of writing. Recently Ive been writing more fiction
because Im interested in exploring relationships and
showing the differences that develop in characters.
(March 1993)

In 1995 her first book of short stories Arranged Marriage was

critically

acclaimed

and

received

many

awards,

including

the

American Book Award.

In

1991

she

also

began

an

organization

called

Maitri

(which means friend) for South Asian women. The first organization of
its kind on the west coast, Maitri offers counselling and referrals to
South Asian women about domestic violence, depression, cultural
alienation and other issues.

Besides her work as an author,

Divakaruni also teaches creative writing at the college level at the

University of Houston. She enjoys both reading and writing, and was
a judge for the National Book Award 2000, reading over 300 books
during the summer. She has written a piece for the New York Times

43
Writers on Writing which features on this experience and what it
taught about the novel.

Her work has appeared in publications as

The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, MS. and Best American
Short Stories 1999.

She has been writing full time, and teaching

with a South Asian Community organization. Each Sunday she takes

classes

based

on

various

Indian

philosophies

and

helps

second-generation immigrant children learn and explore their own

culture.
Divakarunis writing comprises poetry and fiction. She has to
her

credit

two

collection

of

short

stories

namely

Arranged Marriage (1995) and The Unknown Errors of Our Lives

(2001); childrens books namely Neela: Victory Song (2002) and
The Conch Bearer (2003) and novels like The Mistress of Spices
(1997), Sister of My Heart (1999), The Vine of Desire (2002),
Queen of Dreams (2004), The Palace of Illusions (2008) and
Shadowland (2009).

She has won many awards like the Hackney

Literary Award, Barbara Deming Memorial Award, Editors Choice

Award, Gerbode Foundation Award, Pen Syndicated Fiction Awards,
Bay Area Book Reviewers Award, American Book Award; she has also
won many prizes like Paterson poetry Prize, Pushcart Prize and
Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize.
Divakarunis first volume of short stories, Arranged Marriage
(1997), explores the cross-cultural experiences of womanhood through
a feminist perspective, a theme that continued to inform her work.

44
How the changing times are affecting the cherished Indian institution
of arranged marriage is the theme of all the eleven stories in this
anthology.

Most of the stories are about Indian immigrants to the

United States from the authors native region of Bengal. The stories
are being told by the female narrators in the first person singular
point of view, often in the present tense, imparting a voice of intimacy
and cinematic credibility. There are several immigrant brides who are
both liberated and trapped by cultural changes and who are
struggling to carve out an identity of their own. One common theme
that runs through all the stories is that for those Indian-born women
living new lives in America, independence is a mixed blessing.
It means walking the tightrope between old treasured beliefs and
surprising newfound desires, and understanding the emotions which
that conflict brings.

The strong moral values imposed by her own

middle-class Bengali upbringing often become the fixed loci against

which she juxtaposes the situations of the new world.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni made an indelible impression on the
literary world with her first novel The Mistress of Spices (1997), a
magical tale of love and herbs. Tilo, proprietress of the Spice Bazaar
in Oakland, California is not the elderly Indian woman she appears to
be. Trained as a mistress of spices, she evokes the magical powers of
the spices of her homeland to help her customers. These customers,
mostly first or second-generation immigrants, are struggling to adapt
their old world ideals to the unfamiliar New World. Though trapped in

45
an old womans body and forbidden to leave the store, Tilo is unable to
keep the required distance from her patrons lives. Her yearning to
join the world of mortals angers the spices. Tilo finds herself caught
up not only in the lives of several Indian immigrants but also in the
life of a young Native American, Raven, who in the process of getting
in touch with his background seduces her out of her enchanting
powers and pushes her into a very ordinary life of love and
community.
Sister of My Heart (1999) tells the tale of two cousins born on
the same day, their premature births brought on by a mysterious
occurrence that claims the lives of both their fathers. The two cousins
are Anjali and Basudha, known as Anju and Sudha respectively.
Their fathers go in search of a treasure, for a cave full of rubies, and
are mysteriously dead. Sudha is beautiful; Anju is not beautiful.
The girls love each other like sisters. The bond between them is so
strong that nothing can break it. Sudha grows up believing that her
father was a no-good schemer who brought ruin on her cousin Anjus
upper-class father. As they mature Anju dreams of college, Sudha of
children,

but

arranged

marriages

divide

and

thwart

them.

Anju adjusts to live in California with Sunil, a man who lusts after
Sudha. Sudha grapples with a mother-in-law who turns to goddess
Shasti to fill Sudhas womb rather than to a doctor for her sterile son,
Ramesh. Ultimately the tie between Anju and Sudha supersedes all
other love, as each sustains painful loss to save the other.

46
Sudha walks out of the marriage with Ramesh, when Mrs. Sanyal her
mother-in-law urges her to abort the female foetus.

Anju has a

miscarriage, as she hopes to bring Sudha to America. Sudha learns

the truth that her father is in no way responsible for the mysterious
deaths that occurred in the family. She no longer needs to right his
wrongs and finds that all along her affection for Anju has not been
dictated by necessity.

Set in the two worlds of San Francisco and

India, this exceptionally moving novel tells a story at once familiar and
exotic.
The Vine of Desire (2002) is a sequel to Sister of My Heart.
It picks up where Sudha, having been divorced because she refused to
abort a female foetus, comes to America to visit her cousin Anju and
her husband Sunil, who has never got over an early crush on Sudha
at the time of Sudha and Anjus double marriages. The two cousins
have travelled a lifetime away from their home city of Calcutta to
California.

Anju is miserable after a miscarriage and its unhappy

effect on her marriage. Sudha has fled both a husband whose family
forced her abort her daughter, and a first love, Ashok, who wants to
take care of her and her child.
sister-like relationship.

They hope to find solace in their

Anju uses Sudha to help her cope with a

growing restlessness as well as her dissatisfaction with her husband

Sunil.

Sudha is both comforted and suffocated by her life as an

escapee from her past, becoming a servant in her cousins household.

At the same time, each woman must eventually acknowledge Anjus

47
husbands unspoken but obvious attraction to Sudha.

The novel

carries the cousins through the inevitable betrayal of Anju and Sunils
marriage; but, more important through the gradual realization on the
part of both cousins, although in very different ways, of their
independence from the traditional expectations that have been laid on
them.

Anju reaches a position through college education and a

writing group that takes her stories seriously.

Sudha understands

that the desire for her beauty on the part of Sunil, her first love
Ashok, and a new love Lalit, is a trap against which she must guard
herself.
Queen of Dreams (2003), tells the double story of a mother
Mrs. Gupta, who is gifted as a dreamteller and a daughter Rakhi who
is trying to live in her shadow.

The daughter was born in the

United States, her mother having fled to India to escape the

confinements of her gifts and to experience passion and motherhood.
But the gift proves to be inescapable, causing her to help many
persons, but to remain distant from her husband and daughter,
Rakhi. The mother dies in a strange accident, bringing the daughter
and father together over an attempt to translate and understand
Mrs. Guptas journals. Their relationship heals others, such as the
daughter Rakhis with her musician husband, Sonny.

But 9/11

reveals to Rakhi that her own daughter, Jona has the dream telling
gift, like her grandmother, and so she must reconcile with that as
well.

48
The female protagonists of eight of the nine stories in
Divakarunis sensuously evocative collection The Unknown Errors of
Our Lives (2001) are caught between the beliefs and traditions of their
Indian heritage and those of their or their childrens new homeland,
America. The diverse range of stories depicts the life in the east and
west. Divakaruni writes about the problems of life which she knows
best. Through the eyes of people caught in the clash of cultures, and
by constantly juxtaposing Calcutta with a Californian city, Divakaruni
reveals the rewards and perils of breaking free from the past and the
complicated, often contradictory emotions that shape the passage to
independence.
The

Palace

of

Illusions

(2008)

is

retelling

of

The Mahabharata, one of the longest Indian epic poems in history

which takes place between 5000 and 6000 BC. The novel is populated
by kings, queens and deities of ancient Indian mythology, spanning
decades and revolving around Panchaali, a princess who is forced to
marry five men. The story is told from her point of view and through
her we learn of her birth, her childhood and her eventual marriages to
the Pandava brothers. The story is complex as political relationships
grow and develop, and friends and enemies are created, leading to
battles and wars that will eventually destroy them all.
The following interview with Arthur J. Pais in Emory reveals
Divakarunis attitude existing between women.

49
I have been watching how Indian women were forced
to do certain things -- as the stories of sacrifice and
devotion in the mythology demand from them . . .
And then there are inspiring stories about women like
the Rani of Jhansi that offer women refreshing role
models -- and the strength to fulfill their own
destinies. (Nov. 2007)

Friendships with women were very important to Divakaruni

when she grew up in Calcutta. Her husband, who is an engineer, is
also her best friend, faithful reader and a critical angel, she has
acknowledged. In the interview with Arthur Pais in Emory she says,
He understands women as few men do (Nov. 2007).
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni wanted to follow in her mothers
footsteps and be a teacher. She became serious about writing about
ten years ago when she joined a writing group in Berkeley and has
published four books of poetry. She has also edited two cross-cultural
anthologies, Multitude and We, too, Sing America. In an interview
with Arthur J. Pais in Emory, Divakaruni confesses thus:

Expatriates have powerful and poignant experiences

when they live away from their original culture -- and
this becomes home, but never quite, and then you
cant really go back and be quite at home there either.
So

you

become

kind

of

outsider

to

both

50
cultures.

This is very good for writers -- to be in a

position of looking in from the outside. (Nov. 2007)

While Divakaruni enjoyed doing her dissertation on Christopher

Marlowe and studying Renaissance literature at Berkeley, she was
also feeling very dissociated from life.

In an interview with Julie

Mehta in Arranging Ones Life, she has confessed, I needed to do

something intellectually connected to my life as an immigrant woman
in America (Jan. 2000).

In the same interview she expresses her

wonder as to whether she would have also thought seriously about

fiction had her husband remained cool to her poems but marvelled at
her ability to write fiction.

I realized then that fiction is in a way

more gratifying to write because it appeals to a wide range of people.

Poetry often scares people, I think (Jan. 2000). She offers her readers
a window into the multicultural world of her characters. In an
interview with Arthur J. Pais in Emory she says, I have no particular
reader in my mind but a passionate desire to tell a honest moving
story. If it is a good literature, I know as all sensitive writers know,
the reader and writer will connect. It is inevitable (Nov. 2007).
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni captures her cultural dilemma in
a magazine piece she wrote titled Born in the USA; Yet the question
Where are you From? In the article, she describes her five-year-old
son, Abhay returning home from school one day and taking a bath,
frantically trying, as he put it, to wash the dirt color out of his skin.
Divakaruni writes,

51
I began to realize, what a challenge it would be to
bring up my children in a country where all their lives
their appearance would proclaim them foreigners.
Where, though they were born in America no less than
Bruce Springsteen they would have to continually
answer

the

question

Where

are

you

from?

(Salon Aug. 1997).

In the same article Divakaruni narrates a flashback of the day

after she came to the United States from Calcutta in 1976, at the age
of nineteen. She was walking down the streets of Chicago with some
relatives, wearing a sari, when some white teenagers called them
nigger and threw slush at them.

That was such a shock to me;

I realized that people didnt know who we were (Hindu 7 Mar. 2004).
Although she kept quiet about the incident, it remained in her mind,
spurring her need to write. In the Pittsburgh Tribune Review she has
confessed thus: I never talked to anyone about it; I felt ashamed.
Writing was a way to go beyond the silence (12 Sept. 2004).
Divakarunis impetus was to write about a female-centric theme
in a South Asian setting.

Divakaruni shares the emotions of her

protagonists and finds in them a mode of feminist expression.

In San Francisco Examiner article, Divakaruni opines thus:

In the best friendships I have had with women, there is

a closeness that is unique, a sympathy that from

52
somewhere deep and primal in our bodies and does
not

need

explanation,

perhaps

because

of

the

life-changing experiences we share. (Feb. 1999)

Many critics have dealt exclusively with diasporic studies.

In 1992, Thomas Wheeler researched the issue in his book titled
The Immigrant Experience.

It is among the first of its kind to

analyse the problems faced by the immigrants. In India many writers

have contributed books and article on this topic. Jameela Begums
Locating the Exiles Culture: Shyam Selvadurais Funny Boy analyses
the displacement of the immigrant from his or her roots which leads to
the creation of space that is neither here nor there. While the article
focuses on Selvadurai, Begum is of the opinion that all diasporic
writers create a mythic narration of their native land. Begums book
on Cyril Dabydeen is a fruitful exercise on the major themes and
preoccupations in immigrant writing.
Jasbir Jains Writers of the Indian Diaspora is a collection of
essays on South Asian immigrant writers. In her introduction, she
examines the hyphenated status of such writers and the roles played
by them.

A.L. MCleods The Literature of Indian Diaspora is a

collection of essays in criticism. These essays assess the archive of

Indian diasporic writing and look at the adequacy of diaspora as a
concept.

The essays that appear in this volume were originally

delivered as papers at the fifth biennial international conference held

at the Institute for Commonwealth and American Studies and

53
English Language (ICASEL) in Mysore in January 1998.

In his

keynote address, Harvard University Professor, Dr. Graham Huggan

used V.S. Naipaul to show how displacements of inner drives and
fears can operate and to suggest an inherent imperialism in travel
writing.
Professor K. BalaChandran has edited the text, Critical Essays
on Diasporic Writings (2008), which presents Indian responses to
diasporic writing.

These critical essays bring to light the past, the

present and the future, the history and the geography, the customs
and the crafts, the religious and the rituals, the folklores and the
fashions, the emotions and the ethnicity which are prevalent in the
soils where the diasporic writers live.

Dr. B. Sudipta in her article

The Immigrant Narrative in the Writings of Chitra Banerjee

Divakaruni (43) traces how Divakaruni transcended boundaries,
negotiating

two

different

worlds

from

various

perspectives.

Mrs. K.S. Dhanams article, Negotiation with the New Culture: A

Study of Chitra Banerjee Divakarunis The Mistress of Spices (61)
informs that the novel was born out of a 1994 near death experience
that the writer had following her second pregnancy. Her inquiry into
transculturalism is allusive, subtle and lyrical which cuts through the
Indian stereotypes.
The present thesis attempts to analyse the issue of diaspora
from the perspective of the Indian immigrants struggle to maintain
their identity.

It seeks to analyse how the Indian experience in

54
America and the conflict between the traditions of her homeland and
the culture of her adopted country is the focus of Divakarunis writing
and how it has made her an emerging literary celebrity.
This thesis makes a slight departure from earlier attempts, in
that, for the first time Divakaruni has been evaluated independently
as a diasporic writer.

This thesis also attempts to bring out the

duality of cultures which will diminish for the next generation.

The main objective of the study is to examine the Indian immigrant
women dealing with cultural conflict. It is clearly brought out through
analysis that Divakarunis aim is to shatter stereotypes.

In the

process of analysis it is clear that all Divakarunis novels are set in

America and India, and are united by the motifs of exclusion,
loneliness and the search for fulfillment. The thesis also codifies the
finding that the American-Indian relationship is a two-way cultural
equation and the Indians who make their homes in the United States
are freed of many of the structures created by their homelands
complex, social and cultural codes.
The thesis is presented in five chapters. Chapter One traces the
history of Indian Writing in English.
estimate

of

the

Indian

Indian Writing in English.

novelists

It seeks to give a general

and

their

contribution

to

The major themes of Indo-Anglian

literature are described in detail.

It also throws light on women

novelists in Indian Writing in English.

This chapter introduces the

concept of diaspora. The definition and scope of diaspora is dealt with

55
in detail. Indian diaspora is discussed at length.

The writings by

Indian diasporic writers and South Asian diasporic women writers are
being focused. The literary space of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and
the uniqueness of her writings are vividly brought out.
Chapter Two brings out the excellent perspective of life between
and within the Oriental Values and Occidental ethos, with special
reference to the novels The Mistress of Spices and Queen of
Dreams. The Mistress of Spices presents the dilemma of negotiating
ones cultural and biological identity with the drama of alienation and
self transformation in an adopted homeland, that is, America.
Tilo, the mistress of spices has many disguises and names that reveal
her multiple identities.

Like a chameleon she keeps changing

throughout the novel making clear how complex is the problem of

identity crisis. Queen of Dreams is the story of a dream interpreter
caught between her compulsion to use her gift of dreaming the dream
of others, so that she can help them live their lives and her love for
her family.

The novel also centres on 9/11 and its impact on

immigrant communities.

The novel also contrasts the lives and

perceptions of first-generation immigrants with that of their children

born and raised in a foreign land. Inevitably it includes the Indian
Americans experience of grappling with two identities or cultures.
Chapter

Three

discusses

the

paradigmatic

shift

from

subordination to empowerment with reference to Sister of My Heart

and The Vine of Desire. Sister of My Heart tells the tale of the two

56
cousins Anju and Sudha born on the same day.

The novel spans

many years and zigzags between India and America as the cousins
grow apart and eventually reunite.
sacrifices.

The novel is about secrets and

The Vine of Desire is a sequel to Sister of My Heart.

In this novel Divakaruni reveals the rewards and perils of breaking

free from the past and the complicated and often contradictory
emotions that shape the passage to independence. Both Sudha and
Anju find that they cannot allow themselves to be dependent on men.
They separately search for independence. They try and find answers,
that is, from dependence they move to independence.
Chapter Four concentrates on the diasporic pulse in the novels
of Divakaruni.

The deft yoking of the diasporic reality with myths

from an ancient Indian culture within a woman-centric milieu is

clearly brought out. Divakaruni poignantly explores the struggles of
Indian women as they seek new frontiers in a world that would have
them remain submissive. On reading the novels of Divakaruni, it is
evident that the women must be emboldened by their own strength;
women have to fight those forces within the society which do not allow
them to be themselves.

Whether set in California, Chicago or

Calcutta, women learn to adapt to their new and changing culture

and, as a result, discover their own sense of self amidst joy and
heartbreak.
Chapter Five tries to sum up the arguments of the earlier
chapters to prove how Divakaruni succeeds in presenting a balanced

57
picture of diaspora. Diaspora is not merely a scattering or dispersion;
it is an experience made up of collective strands of experiences and
multiple journeys; an experience determined by who travels, where,
how and under what circumstances. The study concludes that there
may come a time when the differences between the first and
second-generation immigrants will be unified in the third-generation
immigrants.