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Originally referring to the dispersal of the Jewish people away
from their homeland, `Diaspora' now refers to the dispersal or scattering of
people of any community including exiles, expatriates and immigrants. The term
is a debatable one, and as Emmanuel S Nelson (1992) puts it, "In all its
contexts, however, the concept of Diaspora remains problematic, for it raises
complex questions about the meanings of a number of related terms, such as "nationality,
ethnicity and migrancy". The South Asian diaspora is the most widely spread
and varied. However, on closer examination, the entire South Asian diaspora
falls into two distinct phases.
To the first category belong all those forced migrations on account of slavery
or indentured labor, while the second would include the voluntary migration of
businessmen and professionals who went abroad seeking their fortune.
Therefore, the old diaspora was made up largely of subaltern and underprivileged
classes, who hardly produced any literature. Theirs was mostly an oral culture.
For most of them, it was a one-way ticket to another land. Because a physical
return was virtually impossible, an emotional or spiritual bond was formed through
a process of replication, if not reproduction. As Vijay Mishra puts it, "the
old Indian diaspora replicated the space of India and sacralized the stones
and rivers of the new lands" (1996a, p. 442). |
