A STUDY OF INDIAN WOMEN’S EXPERIENCES OF CROSS- CULTURAL DIASPORA

Abstract

The present paper focuses on woman’s experience of Indian Diaspora. When we talk about Diaspora and diasporic literary writing, we at once recall what has come to be established as a canon in this area. Writers like Raja Rao, Salman Rushdie, Ashish Gupta, Rohinton Mistry, Kamala Markandaya, Bharti Mukherjee, Suniti Namjoshee, Uma Parmeswaran, Chitra Banerjee Divakurni, and a host of other writers come to our mind. Unique writer like Salman Rushdie, for instance, is almost considered a paradigmatic figure for an understanding of diasporic experience. Home as a symbol of metaphor dominates all the diasporic imagination and hence has been theorized upon sufficiently. It is more directly and complicatedly involved in the emotional need to retain the security of a family but resist the reenactment of the dominant patterns of patriarchal subjugation. Home therefore directly linked to issues of marriage, motherhood, child- rearing and parenting, all of which acquire specific nuances when sited in diasporic locations. The immigrant women’s struggle to negotiate a new territory, culture, and milieu are often wrought with pain, fragmentation and psychic alienation. Writers of Indian Diaspora have been fairly center 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 their studies. Language and culture are transformed as they come into contact with other languages and cultures. Diasporic writings raise questions regarding the definitions of ‘Home’ and ‘Nation’. Nostalgia is often the preoccupation of these writers as they seek to locate themselves in new cultures. The present paper focuses on all these points in deep.