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In Diaspora: Theories, Histories, Texts Makarand Paranjape, ed. New Delhi Indialog. 2001. vi + 351 pages Rs450/$25.95 (Rs350/$19.95 paper) ISBN 81-87981-05-9 (06-7 paper)
THE EDITOR OF THIS collection of twenty-- two papers, mostly from a seminar at Jawarhalal Nehru University in New Delhi in September 2000, contributed a hard-hitting afterword to a similar but foreign-dominated collection (Shifting Continents / Colliding Cultures: Diaspora Writing of the Indian Subcontinent, 2000), in which he asked: "What about Those Who Stayed Back Home? Interrogating the Privileging of Diasporic Writing." In concluding, Paranjape suggested an active response: "The privileging of diasporic writing ... serves to remind us of the real, if under-recognized, riches of India's native literatures."
Clearly aware of such critical "privileging," this diverse group of essayists -- three from Malaysia, four from the USA, two from Australia, one from Canada (eight of these being diasporans themselves), and eleven working all over India - may, however, be unable to avoid it. Despite all the heavy general theorizing in some of the early papers (thankfully, this relatively unproductive, overly abstract approach soon gives way to more particular studies), the collectivity seems to assume that Indian diasporic writers always employ English, no matter what other languages) they used in their individual households. One exception: a postmodernist sociological essay generalizes that the Punjabi literary-linguistic tradition has a crippling effect on most contemporary Punjabi diasporan writing and recommends historiographically mainstreaming it with Punjabi writing in India. Punjabis aside, surely only a small minority of Indian diasporans uses one or another Indian regional language (e.g., Columbia University's Susham Bedi writes Hindi stories). Still, what about translations of diasporan (and even home-staying nativist) writings into global English or, indeed, other languages? Or would such questions distract the discussion into a whole other set of theorizations about translation, which at least one essayist here does use as a metaphor of the diasporic experience?
Indian diasporans arrive elsewhere facing fairly clearly divided emigrant-- versus-immigrant dilemmas, but both possible chain migrations and the following generations add...