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  • The Old and the New Diaspora

    An ‘ideal’ type of ‗Diaspora‘ refers to the exile of the Jews. The African experience of ‘slavery’ under the colonial rule had also created equally tormenting circumstances to those ‘slaves’. Soon after the abolition of slavery, a new system emerged that created a large amount of migrants to most of the British colonies. Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffins in their Post Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts explains When slavery was finally outlawed in colonial systems such as Britain’s, it was replaced by an extension of a system of employment called indentured labour. Although, as the term implies, indenture contracts were apparently voluntarily entered into, in practice this operated as a system of forced labour, with many of the labourers impressed rather than recruited. Indenture became the main means of securing cheap labour after 1833, supplying the workers for British colonial plantations in locations as widespread as Fuji, Malaya, Northern Queensland and of course the Caribbean. Many diasporic groups, notably Indians and Chinese were transported under this system. Consequently, even after the formal abolition of slavery, various forms of forced or contracted labour, such as indenture in English colonies, and debt peonage in Latin America, meant that oppressive labour habits died hard in these regions, where the forms of agriculture developed under the slave system required a continued supply of cheap and controlled labour, cheap and controlled labour. (215)

    As stated by Professor Amit Kumar Mishra, University of Hyderabad, in his essay ―Sardars, Kanganies and Maistries: Intermediaries in the Indian Labour Diaspora during the Colonial Period‖, the British planters were worried about the problem of seeking labour searching after the abolition of slavery in the Parliament on 1 August 1834 which created a sense of anxiety and insecurity among them. Hence they started the new system of recruiting contract labourers for plantations. This new capitalist system in the nineteenth century became successful as large number of Indians migrated to the newly expanded plantations in colonies like Mauritius. The British had worked for the supply of contract labourers initially in African and East European colonies which ended up in failure. Only later they had turned towards the over populated Asian countries. To ensure the availability of migrant labourers in abundance, the plantation lobby preferred the contract system in contrast to free labour. Contracts ensured the availability of labourers for a fixed period with the possibility of further extension. To obtain labourers under such a system, there were some initial experimentations with African and East European immigrants. When these proved to be a failure, planters resorted to looking for a supply of contract labourers from the ‗densely populated‘ regions of Asia – China, Japan, India and few a Pacific Islands. Indeed, these regions did historically satisfy the demands stemming from the rapidly growing plantation settlements. (4). This new system of labour recruitments had been divided into two types accordingly. The first type was the indentured labourers and the second type was the Sardars, Kanganies and Masteries. Mishra emphasises that the nineteenth century had been a century of “men moving”(4) which has been recorded as the gigantic mass human displacement for labour across the nations. This system was brought to notice by other 128 European nations following the abolition of slavery in those colonies as well. Emigration of Indian indentured labourers was not confined to the British settlements. Following the abolition of slavery in French colonies in 1846 and in Dutch ones as of 1863, planters there also entered into agreements with their colonial governments to acquire labourers from India. Subsequently, the French Caribbean received 79,089 Indian labourers between 1851 and 1890 and Dutch Guiana (Suriname) received more than 34,000 Indian labourers between 1873 and 1916. (4). The labourers were sent from different regions in India. Their migration process was carried out under the government regulation only in three major ports, namely Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. The main regions supplying labourers were: tribal regions of Chota Nagpur in eastern India; Saran, Chapra, Shahabad, Champaran, Gaya, and Patna in Bihar; Banaras, Ghazipur, Azamgarh, Gorakhpur, Basti, Bahraich, Jaunpur in the United Provinces; Chingalpet, Tanjore, Trichirapally, South and North Arcot, Salem, Coimbatore, Vizagapatam in southern India; and the Ratnagiri region in western India. In the initial period, a mixed lot of emigrants embarked for different colonies where emigrants came from from diverse regions. (6).

    Though there had been many forms of migration, indentured labourer system 129 holds the mark in creating a large mass migration from India. This form of diaspora belongs to the colonial phase which had two options to decide from-either to return back to their homeland after the stipulated time of their contract for five years or to continue their stay by accepting another contract to work as indentured labourer and to buy a piece of land for themselves if affordable. As TLS Bhaskar explains it, the process of immigrating to the plantation was governed by an Immigration Ordinance which would be enacted in the country of destination, The prospective emigrants testified before a Magistrate in India and the terms of the contract as required under the British administration (Jain, Ibid). The recruitment process involved emigration agents, sub- agents and depots in the rural areas. The chief features of the indenture system, “…were five years of stereotyped state regulated labor, denial of the right to change the employer or employment, recruitment of labor units and not families, gross disproportions of men to women, changes for recruitment by the employer, and the denial of increased wages in spite of increased prices and profits. (5) Bhaskar also emphasises on the recruitment process as stated by Singh that the recruiters of the indentured labourer had instructions to choose them mainly from the agricultural background which would help them run the plantations well due to lack of enough labourers. The Ministry of External Affairs planned a High Level Committee on Indian Diaspora which published a report in 2000. It has demonstrated an analysis on Indian Diaspora regarding its culture. As mentioned by Oonk, the report says that the “Members of Indian Diaspora are deeply conscious of their rich cultural heritage. They are aware that they are the inheritors of the traditions of the world’s oldest continuous civilisation. Being part of such a rich legacy, they are naturally keen to maintain their cultural identity.” (403). The report further states that the survey, taken on Indian diaspora residing in their host lands shows that labourers did not experienced conflict with their fellow citizens of the countries where they reside which clearly according to the report is due to their commitment to the tradition and civilisation ethos of India which have been imbibed not only into the illiterate indentured labourers of highly qualified professionals but also by their descendants. Keeping in mind that the term Diaspora is a metaphorical term which derives its metaphor from the field of agriculture, associated with the dispersion of seeds or scattering of seeds the migration of indentured labourers in search of a livelihood cannot be seen in the same way as the initial ascription of the forced migration of the Jews from Palestine. As explained by Fernando Galvan in the article ―Metaphors of Diaspora‖, The first is an agricultural metaphor associated with the idea of dispersion, of sowing or scattering seeds (from the Greek diá ‗through‘, and the verb speirein ‗to sow‘, ‗to scatter‘). Moreover, its initial metaphorical ascription to the dispersion of a particular people, the Jews, after the Babylonian captivity, and then later, with the Jewish people being forced to leave Palestine, has been extended to other peoples and communities. Thus the classical, Jewish diaspora has carried over its meaning, extending it to other similar dispersions: we now view the African diaspora, the Asian diaspora, the Indian diaspora, and others, as equivalent to (similar to or 131 like) the Jewish diaspora. (114) Such has become the impact of diaspora across the world and it is important to note that the Indian Diaspora holds its own position of difference in it. It does not only represent the migration of people, but the world of culture as well. The essay by Ghosh, ―The Modern Indian Diaspora‖ – the huge migration from the subcontinent that began in the mid-nineteenth century- is not merely one of the most important demographic dislocations of modern times: it now represents an important force in world culture. The culture of the diaspora is also increasingly a factor within the culture of the Indian Subcontinent‖. (243) Hence, it is equally important to distinguish between the ‗forced‘ and ‗chosen‘ need based migrations. Diaspora which has come to represent the migrants has been categorised into ‗old‘ and ‗new‘ diasporas by considering the lives of the migrants and by the struggles they had to undergo under the British rule. As Ghosh explains the ‗old‘ diaspora has emerged well in the mid of the nineteenth century during the British colonisation. Though there had been a few Indian‘s who migrated for trade purposes a whole lot of people started migrating only during the nineteenth century which was the result of the trade undertaken by the British through India. As put forth by Dr. Vinay Lal in his essay, ―Living in the Shadows‖, the Indian diaspora as known and referred to by the people has started mainly into the countries like U.S.A., Australia, Canada, the Middle East and a little lesser in the U.K. A wide range of its global presence has been experienced in all these countries through various cultural phenomena like, ―Bollywood, Indian Writing in English, tandoori cooking and even the emergence of a new class of aggressive Indian business tycoons‖ (2)

    All the successful stories told by ―diasporic‖ Indians at large to other middle class Indians have centred on a clear image that such countries provide them a bright future and hence thrive to move to these destinations themselves. Such a painting would be stained by the real fact that the great mass of migration, the real diaspora of the Indian dates back to the nineteenth century and that their land of destinations were not the US or UK but to the southeast Asian countries, the Caribbean Islands and several other countries like Mauritius and Fiji. Mostly subjugated ancestral diasporic Indians had taken with them the agonies and struggles of their lives and being washed away from their familial bounds and to be left behind by working for the East India Company during the period of the first Governor General Warren Hastings in 1780. Though migration started during the period of the production of opium, many people fled to other countries for plantations and as farmers, thereby toiling too hard for a little amount of money paid to them. Several bonds had been made with these migrants either to stay in their colonies or to leave in a few years with whatever they are given. This agonizing era, has in turn changed and developed into an era of mainly of the professional elites who have migrated under various pull and push factors and have established themselves in different aspects and various fields of development. As a matter of fact, Dr. Lal explains how the Indian Diaspora cannot be written so easily based on the success stories and accounting to these few people‘s lives. He says, the story of the Indian diaspora can scarcely be written in the singular idiom of resounding successes, stories of the rags to riches, or of the entrepreneurial drive of people determined to make their mark in life. Certain elementary distinctions are the bedrock of understanding why some diasporic Indian Communities are more liable to suffer from political, economic or social disabilities than others, and what might be the systemic forms of exclusion or oppression which have operated to keep some diasporic communities on the margin. (2) This ‗old‘ diaspora of the nineteenth century is said to be a truly great saga of people who made their way as indentured labourers to various countries like Mauritius, Trinidad, Fiji, Surinam, Guyana, South Africa and several other places under the British colonies. These experiences and tumultuous voyages have attracted the recent scholars to delve deep into their lifestyle and had attracted a few, Indian writers who were interested to acknowledge their existence that still have serious impacts on the generations of the early migrants. Especially in the recent years it is being acknowledged officially by the Government of India and as a nation come forward to celebrate and respect the sacrifices by the early migrants by arranging the annual celebrations known as Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas in order to pay them respect from 2003 onwards. This sort of response by India towards its people, its own diaspora brings disappointment upon the country‘s government which yields all its possession to itself yet neglecting those historical moments and voyages of mass migration. It is much more surprising to have known the hidden fact through Ghosh‘s interviews that such migrations had happened not at the coastal areas of the country but from the interior parts of the country. The nation, ―Mother India‖ (2), as Lal calls India, has neglected its responsibility to safeguard and uphold its own divergent communities apart from their social, economic and religious differences. The earlier times had been much worse than this as the overseas Indians were given least concern by India during the crisis in Uganda and Kenya. Lal poses a doubt if ―the expulsions of Indians from Uganda and Kenya in the late 1960‘s might have been 134 overlooked had many of them not had British citizenship and considerable assets at their command‖. (2). When Ghosh discusses it in his essay ―The Diaspora in Indian Culture‖, he says, ―…, the relationship between India and its diaspora is very real. On at least two occasions – the Uganda crisis and the recent crisis in Fiji – the Indian Government did actually resort to real political brinkmanship on behalf of its diaspora. Its efforts may not have amounted to very much in either case – a fact for which the diaspora will probably of a poor and relatively impotent nation, it did what little it could. (247). Further he raises a question of ―why for the populations of Uganda and Fiji were not Indian citizens and India owed them no obligations‖. (247) As told by him, the Indian government has acted indifferently towards its own old diaspora, as the country, India is poor and has comparatively little political influence in influencing ―the conduct of other nation states‖ (2). The bitter fact is that the country is filled with its own cold war and politics to indulge in such aspects leading it to an inadequate or an incompetent situation, thus creating problems in retaining the country‘s old diaspora. Caste and cultural discrimination and differences themselves might have been the hurdles to embrace the diasporic communities away from their traumatic situations. Lal provides another perspective where in the other reasons for India to neglect the communities is because the diasporic communities were the indentured labourers who are just a level above the Africans who had been considered to be born as slaves carrying the burdens of their masters: And yet there may have been other significant considerations that perhaps explain why India was generally not keen to embrace its dispersed children around the world. If one recalls a well-known scholars‘ controversial characterization of indentured labour, which accounts for the bulk of early Indian migrations, as another name for slavery (Tinker 1947), one begins to suspect that the disapprobation with which many Indians have received this term has to do with much more than question of historical accuracy or even scholarly predilections. (3) This act of not considering the diasporic communities shows the fragility of the country which has been very much ready in submitting itself to the colonial rule, subjugating the whole nation and its people. Yet the same vulnerability has brought in strength to a few people of the country who had made use of the colonial rule for their own good and turning their lives into a bed of roses, thereby neglecting the impact that it would create on their countrymen. On the contrary, migration has also brought unity among the migrants who have left their families behind in forming new families and hope for the betterment of their lives in the land that they are destined to live in. Hence, by the mid – 1990s we begin to see the differentiation between the ‗old‘ diaspora and the ‗new‘ diaspora; the former comprising the labourers and the latter comprising the professional elites who have started developing themselves out of the fragility of the nation. In short, the ‗new‘ diaspora has been oblivious about the ‗old‘ diaspora to march towards progress among the various developments and conflicts between the nation and its people. The Government of India has turned its back to the ‗lost‘ history of the early migration, busying itself in the development of the country by joining hands with the professional elites who were unwilling to protect their own ancestors‘ history and their past. The ‗old‘ diaspora was no more an exclusively working-class diaspora than the ‗new‘ diaspora was a diaspora comprising only professional elites. The Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas gatherings in New Delhi were designed to invoke an ecumenical conception of the Indian diaspora that, as I have previously suggested, the government of India has almost always disowned. As I have also argued, the Indian government, and no less the educated elites of India, were oblivious to the presence of an older Indian diaspora and were predisposed towards viewing it as a reminder of everything that India had to leave behind if it wished to be seen as a nation marching towards progress and development. There was more than a touch of poverty in the older Indian diaspora, given its origins in the migrations of labourers often suffering from destitution, and most of all what India sought was to refurbish its image abroad so that India would not be indelibly stamped as a land of seething poverty. (3) The ‗old‘ had been left behind in order to march towards progress and development of the still developing ‗New‘ country amidst competitions and business or even due to political issues in the era of globalisation. The ‗old‘ remains ―as the reminder of everything that India had to leave behind if it wished to be seen as a nation marching towards progress and development‖ (3), says Lal by pointing at the cold hands of the country towards its own people who had brought miseries to themselves to make amends for their families and the nation they left behind to suffer destitution and lost deep within the image created by India as a land of developing prospects and not ―a land of seething poverty‖ (3). This attitude changed when it was demanded to have equal prominence and oppose discrimination openly.

    Lal is of the opinion that ―The inescapable conclusion appears to be that Indians can be oppressed without much consequence to the oppressor.‖ (4), which proves to be accurate in the above circumstances. For, some people were taken as indentured labourers to various lands for plantation purposes of the British when India was in the hands British as British Raj to escape from their personal hardships. The people who opted for such a journey happened to settle in those foreign lands, though they longed to return to their homeland which was a miracle at times. Most of the migrants were from the North, Bhojpuri speaking people working in the sugarcane plantations. The Indian settlers of Trinidad and Fiji had never been much in touch with India, like the people who settled in Malaysia who were in contact constantly which may be due to the distance between the countries which are nearby to kindle their nostalgia for their homeland. Yet the Indians are outnumbered by the indigenous Malays and the Chinese who are the next great migrant people. Whereas, Trinidad and Fiji have the population divided, if not equally but smoothly between the Afro-Trinidadians and Indians and the Indo-Fijians. Indians settled in South Africa are classed as one among the four major groups which included the Europeans, and even the Africans who are categorised as ―‗coloreds‘‖ (4). The Indian diasporic community of each of these countries has its own pros and cons, as it is dominated by the host country‘s indigenous people or the already settled people. Trinidad had its own political and racial views and issues in dealing with the large group of Indian community. As per Lal, the Indians had first landed in Trinidad through sea in FatelRozack on 30 May 1845, just a decade after the abolition of the term ‗slavery‘. They had been the large yet cheap group of labourers who were supposed to provide profits for their landlords and the oppressors. This highly appreciable hard work has been paid attention to and praised by one of the greatest Afro-Trinidadian novelists, George Lamming (1989) who has written that the Indians ―humanised the landscape. Tilled the soil, and put the food on the table (Lal 1996:133-42)‖ (4). He has not only spoken about the landscape and agriculture but also about the human values on humanitarian grounds. This has changed in time over two or three generations, let alone the common celebration of Muharram, the Shiva festival which in due course became a common festival for the people of all religions. This attitude has changed gradually when the new generations stepped out of agriculture and educated themselves that led to ―greed and exploitative nature‖ (5) which was brought to control politically. In the later period, the Indian community became the victims under the Afro-Trinidadians who have become indifferent to their sufferings, which is the present situation of the country. An important aspect to be noted is that the Trinidad Indian community holds the pride of becoming the first diasporic community to mark their presence with an Indian Arrival Day which was established in 1995 after various clarifications and proposals. The confusions did not stop here since the government of Trinidad & Tobago declared 1 August, the Emancipation Day, as a national holiday, as though the country had only the black community. ―Suddenly it seemed that both Indo-Trinidadians and AfroTrinidadians were rivals to laying claim to the history of Trinidad, with little or no recognition in the part of either that they were, perhaps, equally interlopers in a country whose native inhabitants had been exterminated‖. (6). Though the abolition of slavery in 1835 resulted in the arrival of the Indians to Trinidad, it also resulted in the arrival of the Africans who behaved in a ―diabolical‖ (6) manner in exterminating the native inhabitants of Trinidad. After the arrival of Patrick Manning as Prime Minister the national holiday ‗Arrival Day‘. It was changed again as the ‗Indian Arrival Day‘ with the help of Basdeo Panday, the former Prime Minister. The situation was almost the same even in Fiji, where the Indian community was left to struggle among Fiji‘s population. The Indians were brought to the land of Fiji as indentured labourers to work in the Australia based sugar plantations in 1879. The circumstances of the people changed from bad to the worse as the women who thought to have attained the economic freedom in the new land had only been pushed into violence in extreme forms of displacement, as they were unaware of the social and political system of that country. Women were forced into sexual abuse and the living conditions according to them were ―narak (hell). (Voigt-Graf 2004: 179)‖ (6), which is termed by a scholar as ‗prison-like‘ (Naidu 2004). Indian labourers have been the reason behind the development of Queensland and New South Wales through their labour which brought profits on the farmed lands. This historical event of the Indians in the land of Fiji has been concealed by certain forces of the ethnic Fijians and Europeans, leaving behind the Indians estranged to suffer in their hands ―… as though any recognition of the suffering of Indians undermines our understanding of the manner in which ethnic Fijians (or Melanesians) were deliberately confined by the colonial state to their native villages under the threat of draconian sanctions,…‖ (7), which is a trick followed by the British to isolate themselves from a modern economy. The Indians living there still till the soil apart from not being given more lands for their purpose and for various reasons that still prevail. South African Indian communities of labourers immigrated to the land first in 1860 in Natal. Their presence brought a drastic change in the production of sugar and even in other forms of agriculture which resulted in strong objections on account of their removal from the land. They have been accused of being violent on the rest of the South African community which was eventually rejected by the South African Human Rights Commissioner ―taints an entire community‖ (10). The Indian indentured labourers were taken mostly from the South India, especially from Tamil Nadu. A large number of Indians were brought to Malaysia between 1911 and 1930. Being a multicultural society, Malaysia has been dominant in holding the Government jobs for itself while the Chinese diasporic community held the business to itself. Indians were left alone with the plantations in which they cherished until recently providing them the income only through the available crops. Such had been the condition of the Indian diasporic community that migrated to Trinidad, South Africa and Southeast Asian countries whose predicament has been uncertain. Though the democratical Government of Fiji was held by an Indian there was no room for the Indians to be strong against the crimes and discriminations committed upon them and to uphold them away from being kept on the margins of the civil society. Indians are the majority in these countries and yet they are treated as minorities for their fragility and yet they make a difference in their confidence; i.e., the minorities with confidence as the majorities.

  • English Language

    English language came in to many countries during the time of British rule. It is universally used for economic reasons.

    There are certain features lying outside the language which helped become English, an international language. One major reason is its wider vocabulary, borrowed from many other languages. And the other reason is by making itself flexible to taking in the rules of grammar, spelling, pronunciation and so on. There are words (phonemes) which read alike but differ in their meanings. Though the English grammatical elements like verbs and adjectives are similar to other absorbed languages, it possesses it’s own grammatical patterns. And hence, the English language differs from other languages and dialects. It came into many countries through colonisation, purely due to political reasons. The colonised people gradually learned English and also the English culture. Not only were they taught the English culture, but also their religion, science which influenced many people.This helped them to retaliate against the colonisers and grab their country back.

    Later on, English found its own place as an official language and acquired its own place universally. Two major aspects considered essential were communication and cultural and ideological perceptions. People allow themselves to be influenced by any other language either by curiosity or for their own needs. Hence, they try to deliberately take in a lot of such perceptions and also change their way of thinking; thereby making compromises in their expressions and learning to think in a foreign language. In a way, to be exposed to English and to be convinced about their culture and so on. This for instance happens when a person stays abroad for several years.

    For instance, an English teacher in India has to adopt a strategy to teach that language. In general, the students must be taught about the necessity of learning English. This may prevent them from being drifted away from class when they are taught a language which is not native to them. The major differences lie not in the words the teachers use, but in structures and syntactic patterns, creating fear in learning a language. Hence, the English teachers rely on their own mother tongues in helping them understand the complex structures. They move on from the familiar to the unfamiliar. This use of strategy gradually brought in an understanding of the English language by its speakers other lands.

  • Susan Sontag’s Essay “Against Interpretation”

    Susan Sontag is an avante-guarde writer (who discards conventions) who belongs to the American school of criticism. She has written novels like The Benefactor (1964) and Death Kit (1968) . “Notes on Camp”, an essay was first published in 1964, and was republished in 1966 in her collection of essays, Against Interpretation. 

    Susan Sontag in her essay “Against Interpretation” focuses on what an interpretation really is. She discusses and mixes the ideas of other writers and further differentiates two kinds of interpretation – form based interpretation and content based interpretation.

    She talks about the past with the present interpretation. Nothing was rejected in classical interpretation. She believes that it was the classical period which gave importance to ‘content’ of a work other than meaning and other things. She also believes that margins are always inverted. The title “against” does not mean that Sontag is against interpretation, rather it questions those that are against and tries to defend interpretation. 

    Hence, Sontag advocates against interpretations of a work that plays more importance in finding the meaning, message, intention in a work. She strongly believes that in trying to establish the content of a work the interpreter avoids the form of the work. This is because it has been believed that literature or any work of art has two major functions; – ‘to teach’ and ‘to delight’ in trying to assimilate art into thought or art into culture. An interpreter exercises all the sensory experiences to set up a “shadow world of meanings” and “turn the world into this world”. The world here she refers to is the text in all it’s gestalt glory and this is what the interpreter recreates. Hence, the world of art gets depleted and impoverished in the transformation of ‘the’ to ‘this’ work, art or world. 

    Sontag traces interpretation with all its doubtful, corollaries, to the classical theory of art as mimesis (imitation) of reality. Plato speaks of the value of art being dubious, since the poet-creator is “twice removed from reality”. Therefore art was neither useful nor true. Aristotle disputed this idea and interpreted that art is “medicinally useful in arousing and purging dangerous emotions” (catharsis). Here, Aristotle does not reject Plato but only adds more meaning to substantiate and defend the value of both the poet and his heart. She argues that, yet they both have looked upon art as (in Freudian terms) manifest content with the intention to communicate meanings alone. Until the advent of New Criticism, the study of ‘form’ was never given a serious thought or exercised diligently. Form is present in all animate and inanimate things even as content is. Modern theorists following soon after the formalist school believed the theory of art as a subjective expression to the point of viewing art as semiotics (study of signs) and power relationships.

    Irrespective of the conceptions on the theories of art, whether art is a picture of social reality or of language, the content of it is what all finally look to (that something it says or it is trying to say or it has said). The only difference is in classical theory interpretation, only alter in order to reconcile meaning where insistent but respectful in their opinions and give one more meaning to the existing meaning without rejecting the original. On the other hand, modern theorists were radical, aggressive and dismissive in their act of interpretation. These modern theorists acting as interpreters question the truth and started excavating in order to create new meanings by “digging behind the text”. That is, in the classical period of interpretation, the old is not discarded but only revamped. On the contrary, modern interpreters discarded established truths in order to recreate their own. Therefore interpretation does not give absolute and complete meaning that is it does not have absolute and complete meaning; that is, it does not have absolute value. On the other hand, Sontag believes interpretation must be self-evaluated, with the historical view of human consciousness. 

    So there has been two phases in understanding art – the innocent acceptance of art (needed no defence or support outside itself) and secondly, the experienced justification of what it says or attempts to say. In this case art began needing support from outside to appreciate it. The theory of interpretation both makes and mars context as she believes that the task of interpretation is virtually one of translating through transforming. In reducing the work of art to its content, an interpreter “lames the work of art”. Sontag cites Thomas Mann as an over-cooperative author and “the mars ravishment” of Kafka. 

    By three armies of interpreters one citing is writing as a social allegory, the other as psychoanalytic allegory and the third as a religious allegory. Among the three interpretations, Kafka as Kafka is lost. In the same way, Samuel Beckett is read as an absurd world of man’s alienation from meaning or from God and from the psychological point of view looked on as an allegory of psycho-pathology. The numerous writers that Sontag cites show that interpretation has only undone the gestalt of a work. Answering the question, what kind of criticism or commentary on the arts is disabled today, Sontag begins saying that works of art are ineffable and cannot be described or paraphrased. 

    A work of art can be as Sontag believes that more attention to form in art should be given. She also asks for “a vocabulary of forms” that is like descriptive rather than prescriptive. Thirdly she finds equally valuable those criticisms which are accurate, sharp and feels the form of a work of an art. In conclusion Sontag advocates against looking at an interpreting art didactically or as a delight. What is needed according to her is to refine our senses “to see, more to hear more and to feel more”. If a reader learns to remove the content from focus, one will begin to see things as they are and as they should be. She closes with a very debatable punchline saying “in place of a hermeneutics we need and erotics of art”. 

  • Dr Vinay Lal’s Concepts of the Indian Diaspora

    Dr. Vinay Lal, an Indian born US settled Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA) has published articles on the aspects of diaspora and about the migrants of India. He has created an official website where he portrays the cultures, religions, landscape and so on about India, dedicating a special page for Indian diaspora. He explains: “The origins of the modern Indian diaspora lie mainly in the subjugation of India by the British and its incorporation into the British empire. Indians were taken over as indentured labor to far-flung parts of the empire in the nineteenth-century, a circumstance to which the modern Indian populations of Fiji, Mauritius, Guyana, Trinidad, Surinam, Malaysia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and other places attest in their own peculiar ways. Over two million Indian men fought on behalf of the empire in numerous wars, including the Boer War and the two World Wars, and some remained behind to claim the land on which they had fought as their own. As if in emulation of their ancestors, many Gujarati traders once again left for East Africa in large numbers in the early part of the twentieth century. (sscnet.ucla.edu)

    Lal says that the dispersal of Indian labours and professionals took a great rise in number during the period of post-World War II including many other South Asians who helped in the reconstruction of the war-torn countries, especially the European countries. The 13 unskilled labours from South Asia changed the physical landscape of the Middle East and the Indian professionals on the other hand marked their presence in countries like Unite States, Canada and Australia. (sscnet.ucla.edu) He, further in his essay, explains how several immigrants of US (where he speaks of US settled Indians) who had an intention to settle back in India had returned to US in a few years time by blaming the discomforting conditions prevailing in India. He answers the question that he puts forth, ― “who and what is an Indian?” (sscnet.ucla.edu) and explains the prevailing positions of Hindus where women at some point are degraded for following their tradition with ―’vermillion’. “The Indian woman in her ‘native dress’, with the vermillion dot on her forehead, is easily seen as an embodiment of sheer otherness, and so she has been perceived by the so-called “dot-busters”, a gang of white teenagers operating in New Jersey who have already been responsible for several violent crimes against Indians.” (sscnet.ucla.edu).

    In the countries like North America and the U.K., the traditional costumes of Indians have been in public scrutiny and discussion according to him where Sikhs insisted the government to exempt them from wearing helmets while riding bicycles and motorcycles to wear helmets, since they cannot be worn over turbans, and that their religious faith requires them to wear turbans. (sscnet.ucla.edu). The corner shop according to Lal, is now mainly in the hands of Indians. (sscnet.ucla.edu). He poses the questions like, ―”What do the English think of that’, but also: ‘If the English landscape has been so altered, what is English about England’? The diaspora, in short, affects the center as well.” (sscnet.ucla.edu)

    He further employs the subject of cinema by bringing in Bollywood. He says that all Indians maintain some sort of link to their motherland through Hindi films; a phenomenon according to him which is unique to the Indian diaspora,

    “… what Hollywood is to Western Europe, the Bombay Hollywood (“Bollywood”) is to the Middle East and East Africa. The modesty, not to mention Puritanism, of the Hindi film is said to explain its appeal to the Islamic world; and though we may well contest that interpretation, it is worthy of note that Hindi films found in grocery and video stores across the U.S. often carry subtitles in Arabic, one language which is indubitably not spoken by any Indian community in the U.S.!” (sscnet.ucla.edu)

    He delves into the concept of two sorts of otherness in Indians. The newspapers published by Indian communities carrying a section of matrimonial ads through which the Indians, ―locate one another, they pose difficult questions about ‘otherness’, both the ‘otherness’ of Indians in relation to ‘Americans’ and the internal ‘otherness’ of certain Indians in relation to other Indians.” (sscnet.ucla.edu)

  • The Three Waves of The Indian Diaspora

    The Indian Diaspora: Historical and Contemporary Context (2009) edited by Laxmi Narayan Kadekar, Ajaya Kumar Sahoo and Gauri Bhattachariya have made a statistical research on the percentage, reasons, and different aspects of diaspora in India. The book focuses on the international migration and has divided the book into parts containing various essays namely: old Indian diaspora and new Indian diaspora, with supporting essays on both parts. The introduction of the book states that the broad usage of ― “diaspora” (1) became common since the 1970s. As the editor of the journal Diaspora, Khachig Tololyan, commenting on the name of his publication says, ―”We use diaspora‘ provisionally to indicate our belief that once described Jewish, Greek, and Armenian dispersion now shares meanings with a larger semantic domain that includes words like immigrant, expatriate, refugee, guest worker, exile community, overseas community, ethnic community” (4).

    The Indian Diaspora (2009) has estimated that Indian diaspora is the third largest diaspora following the British and the Chinese. ―Recent population estimates suggest that the Indian diaspora has crossed the mark of 20 million, dispersed around the globe in more than 70 countries. Its population is above 10,000 in 48 countries and more than half a-million in 11 countries” (3) it also states that, ―”unprecedented emigration” (3) of indentured labourers, traders, professionals and employees of the British government to British, French, Dutch, Portuguese, America and Caribbean were witnessed in the nineteenth and the early twentieth century. Especially, ―”far- reaching emigration of Indian (mainly professionals)” (3) occurred during the post-World War II period. Such emigration of Indians has been categorised into four waves.

    The first wave consisted mostly of indentured labourers to the European colonies who filled the spaces left away by the African slaves who were emancipated by the law that banned the practice of slavery, who worked on the basis of contract for a period of five years. The survey states that around 1.5 million people migrated under the indentured system which was terminated in 1917 following the anti-indenture ship campaign led by Indian nationalists.

    The second wave of emigration occurred during the post-World War II period that took Indians to developed countries. “Phenomenal changes in the political and economic scenario of the receiving and sending countries led to their new wave of international migration.” (5). This wave led to a shift where the four English-speaking countries like 17 United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand removed the immigration restrictions in the 1960s, where Asians, mostly professionally trained and skilled were allowed to immigrate. The third wave emigration is also a post-World War II phenomenon that took a large scale of Indians to the West Asian countries. “There were only 14,000 Indians in the Gulf in 1948. By 1971, their population had risen to 40,000. During the 1970s and 1980s, there was large-scale immigration to the gulf due to the oil boom. The population of Indian workers which was 1,51,418 in 1975 rose to 5,99,500 in 1981, and to 11,50,000 in 1992. In 1990, there were about 1.4 million Indians in the West Asian countries. In 2001, according to the Ministry of External Affairs report there were 32, 82, 600 Indians in the gulf countries namely Saudi Arabia, The United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar. Most of the Indians working in the Gulf are unskilled and semiskilled labourers.” (5)

    The last wave consisted of software engineers who chose western countries like USA, since the 1980‘s. They have been considered ―the cream of India, trained in her premier educational institutions such as IITs, IIMs and universities” (5). They have been having a close contact with India in terms of socio-economic interests; migration of these professionals to the developed countries especially after the 1960‘s has been designated by scholars as the period of ―brain drain’ (6) that created negative impacts on India. Yet, there has been a reverse situation in the last decades designated by the scholars as, ‘reverse migration’ (6), ‘brain circulation’ (6) or ‘brain gain’ (6) creating several positive impacts on India.

  • Robin Cohen’s Views on Diaspora

    Robin Cohen, born in South Africa is a social scientist, an Emeritus Professor in the fields of globalisation, migration and diaspora studies and a former Director of the International Migration Institute, University of Oxford. He has published several books and essays emphasising on the various categories of diaspora, into which each country falls under accordingly. In his essay, “Diasporas and the State:  From Victims to Challengers” published in International Affairs in 1996, he points out the fact that the term diaspora which is found in the Greek translation of the Bible denotes more of a positive expression. Though there was some displacement of the ancient Greeks to Asia Minor due to poverty, over population and inter-state war, the term “‘diaspora’ essentially had a positive connotation. Expansion through plunder, military conquest, colonization and migration were the predominant features of the Greek diaspora.” (1).

    While mentioning William Safran’s views Cohen, in his second edition of the book Global Diaspora: An Introduction, states that “In allowing such cases (and many others) to shelter under the increasingly broader circumference of the diasporic umbrella, we need both to draw generalised inferences from the Jewish tradition and to be sensitive to the inevitable dilutions, changes and expansions of the meaning of the term diaspora as it comes to be more widely applied” (5). He lets out four important tools, led by social scientists, to help out this task namely distinguishing between emic and ethic claims (the participant’s view verses the observer’s view);  have a time dimension to look at how a putative social formation, its development in various countries of settlement and in its response to events in  host plans in host  lands and home lands; listing out the most important features applying to diaspora that are considered a part of the phenomenon that are being investigated and creating typology  classifying phenomenon, and their sub types using the measures of consistency, objectivity, pattern recognition and dimensionality to evolve an agreed and controlled vocabulary.

    Relating to the recent changes and application regarding ‘diaspora’ Cohen has categorised the different types of diaspora with each one following various traits: 1. Victim diaspora – Jews, Armenians, Africans, Irish, Palestinians; 2. Labour diaspora – Indentured Indians, Chinese and Japanese. 3. Imperial diaspora – British, colonial powers other than British (Russia); 4. Trade diaspora- Lebanese, Chinese, Venetians, business and professional Indians; 5. De-territorialized diaspora – Caribbean, Sindhies, Parsies, Muslims and other religious diasporas (18).

    Furthermore, Cohen has emphasised on using a tool with consolidated list of common features of diasporas with William Safran’s list and his own views. He also opines that not all the features will necessarily constitute any diaspora, but only some of the traits stated below formulate a diaspora, such as:

    Dispersal from an original homeland, often traumatically, to two or more foreign regions; Alternatively or additionally, the expansion from a homeland in search of work, in pursuit of trade or to further colonial ambitions; A collective memory and myth about the homeland, including its location, history, suffering and achievements; An idealization of the real or imagined ancestral home and a collective commitment to its maintenance, restoration, safety and prosperity, even to its creation; The frequent development of a return movement to the homeland that gains collective approbation even if many in the group are satisfied with only a vicarious relationship or intermittent visits to the homeland; A strong ethnic group consciousness sustained over a long time and based on a sense of distinctiveness, a common history, the transmission of a common cultural and religious heritage and the belief in a common fate; A troubled relationship with host societies, suggesting a lack of acceptance or the possibility that another calamity might befall the group; A sense of empathy and co-responsibility with co-ethnic members in other countries of settlement even where home has become more vestigial; and  The possibility of a distinctive creative, enriching life in host countries with a tolerance for pluralism.” (17)

  • William Safran and Rogers Brubaker’s Views on Diaspora

    Many researchers have set out various factors and rules to define diaspora and migration in accordance with their arguments and discussions put forth by them. William Safran characterises six sets of rules to distinguish diaspora from migrant communities. They include a few views that the group maintains a myth or a collecting memory of homeland; regarding their ancestral homeland as their homeland, to which they hope to return; to be committed to the restoration or maintenance of the homeland, and their relating themselves personally to the homeland that may shape and stabilise their identity as summarised from his “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return”. His views are naturally influenced by the Jewish Diaspora, hence expanding its term. Rogers Brubaker touches on the point that the term diaspora is widened intellectually. In one of his essays “The ‘Diaspora’ Diaspora” he suggests that the idea of diaspora has been proliferating in the recent years.

    As the term has proliferated, its meaning has been stretched to accommodate the various intellectual, cultural and political agendas in the service of which it has been enlisted. This has resulted in what one might call a ‘“Diaspora” diaspora’ – a dispersion of the meanings of the term in semantic, conceptual and disciplinary space. (1)

     Brubaker is of the opinion that several diasporas like Palestinian diaspora, as in Cohen’s term “victim diaspora” (2) and the concept of “trading diaspora”, modelled by John Armstrong as “mobilized diaspora” (2) are modelled and constructed on the basis of Jewish diaspora and other “‘classical’” (2) diasporas like Armenian and Greek. According to him, the recent extensions of the term in reference to paradigmatic cases have reduced and weakened thereby rising in other possible ways in various countries as mentioned by various writers. (2)

    In several recent extensions of the term, however, the reference to the paradigmatic cases has become more attenuated. Some emigrant groups − characterized as ‘long-distance nationalists’ by Anderson (1998) − have been construed as diasporas because of their continued involvement in homeland politics, sometimes involving the support of terrorist or ultra-nationalist movements (Sheffer 1986, 2003; Angoustures and Pascal 1996; Bhatt and Mukta 2000). Albanians, Hindu Indians, Irish, Kashmiri, Kurds, Palestinians, Tamils and others have been construed as diasporas in this way. (2).

    He also says that the term has further extended to labour migrants who are to some extent emotionally and socially tied up with a homeland like Algerian, Bangladeshi, Filipino, Greek, Haitian, Indian, Italian, Korean, Mexican, Pakistani, Puerto Rican, Polish, Salvadoran, Turkish, and Vietnamese who are conceptualised as diaspora (2).

              Brubaker points out that the reference to the “‘classical’ (3) diaspora’s aspect of a conceptual homeland has become largely attenuated “to the point of being lost altogether” (2-3); stating that the transethnic and transborder linguistic categories like, “Francophone, Anglophone and Lusophone ‘communities’ (a word that should be used in inverted commas [Baumann 1996]) – have been conceptualised as diasporas” (3). He also mentions the global religious communities like, “Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Confucian, Huguenot, Muslim and Catholic diaspora (3) that appear to be “little more than sheer dispersion that under rights the formulation of such population as ‘diasporas’” (3). One of the dimensions he speaks about regarding the dispersion involves, “the application of the term diaspora to an ever-broadening set of cases: essentially to any and every nameable population category” (4) which he says is dispersed to some extent in space. The term that once described Jewish, Greek and Armenian dispersion now shares meanings with a larger semantic domains that includes words like immigrant, expatriate, refugee, guest worker, exile community, overseas community, ethnic community’ (qtd. in safran 4).

  • Diaspora Defined: From Ancient Roots to Modern Impacts

    Diaspora Defined: From Ancient Roots to Modern Impacts

    The word ‘diaspora’ explained by Fernando Galvan, a well known researcher and a Professor at University of Alcala, Spain in his essay “Metaphors of Diaspora: English Literature at the Turn of the Century” originates from the Greek verb “speirein” (to sow, to scatter) and the preposition “dia” (through), which in agricultural metaphor is associated to the signification of the act and aftermath of the “dispersion, of sowing or scattering seeds” (114). Sociologically, it was initially used in reference to the Greek settlers and colonisers in the Mediterranean, as stated by Marianne David and Javier Munoz-Basols in their introduction “Defining and Re-Defining Diaspora: An Unstable Concept” to the book Defining and Re-Defining Diaspora: From Theory to Reality. The Hebrews adopted the word ‘Diaspora’ politically and sociologically as a reference to their own people of exile after the Babylonian captivity in 587 BC. As well explained by David and Munoz-Basols, the term at the outset referred to diverse groups such as settlers, colonisers, victims, slaves, and others who suffered hardships in their homeland (place of primary domain) and chose to leave or were forced to leave resulting in trying to find a home away from home in search of a better life – a collective identity of their old country, homeland buried deep in their religion, language and tradition; this created a sense of separate identity from their host land resulting in the diasporic experience of the memory of the home lost (xi).

    The anguish of displacement and the home lost is engraved deep in memory and idealised by nostalgia produces a dichotomy between the desire for the lost home and the pressure to live in the host land (xi); a dichotomy between forced expulsion and voluntary attraction which ends up in the search of both a home and a land, hence a homeland. The term hence has two specific distinctions namely ‘Diaspora’ with ‘D’ in the upper case denoting the exile of Jews and the ‘diaspora’ with ‘d’ in the lower case denoting  a cross-cultural displacement in general.

    The online dictionaryreference.com comes out with this meaning which is found in Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible (Deut. 25). It explains that the definition of Diaspora often with an initial capital letter refers to the displacement of the Jews and also to the Jews living today outside of Israel. Diaspora also has been applied to similar experiences of other people who have been forced from their homelands; for example, to the trans-Atlantic passage of Africans under the slave trade of the seventeenth through nineteenth-centuries, which has been called the African Diaspora.  More recently, we find a scattering of the meaning of diaspora now being used to refer not only to a group of people, but also to some aspect of their culture, as in “the global diaspora of American style capitalism”. (dictionaryreference.com).

    The term was first created as a result of translating the Hebrew Bible, into Greek, where it was used to refer to the people who were dominant enough to conquer other lands into a large empire through emigration. According to the Oxford English Dictionary the term was first recorded to be used in the English language in 1876 relating to national Protestant churches. Later, the term became more common in the mid twentieth-century where people from different countries became expatriates for various reasons which resulted in the study of diasporic studies in the academic field of sociology and literature.

    In a sense, the term means displacement of a certain group of people or a population separated from their land or territory with the displaced people for various reasons with the hope and desire to return to their homeland at some point. Writers write about the multiple homes that people form by moving to places and thereby obtaining some sort of attachment to each place. They create a mixed and nouveau cultural development that in due course varied with respect to culture, traditions, language and other factors.

    The above mentioned definitions of diaspora mostly involve the physical and geographical displacement of the people, signifying their crossing of their territories and borders, moving from one’s homeland to another. More than the aspects of physical migration and dislocation, the other sides of diaspora have to be taken into account while examining the cause and effects of diaspora as presented in novels. The recent studies explain the other major dimensions and ramifications of diaspora as historical, psychological and cultural aspects that fully explain the dislocated self as a result of crossing borders.

    Based on these cultural and geographical developments of the phenomenon, diaspora can be divided into three phases – the ancient and the medieval, the colonial and the post-colonial. The ancient and the medieval phase became the early period of migration over factors like trade and religion towards Greek and Mesopotamian civilisations. It even dates back to the Buddhist monks who had spread the religion and religious practices across Southeast Asia. Dr.TLS Bhaskar, former CAO of India Centre for Migration, Ministry of External Affairs, in his “Indian Diaspora” quotes from Tinker stating that the Cholas had organised expeditions in the eleventh century to vanquish the great Indonesian Empire of Sri Vijaya. The colonial period witnessed the majority of Indian migration between the 1830s and 1930s. The British rule had great impacts on Indian peasants leading to famine and an economically backward status thus resulting in mass migrations. The numerous “imperial diaspora” (GD 18), as Cohen calls them, had settled in the colonies of the Europeans thus creating a shortage of food supply to them by the influx of the natives. Hence they had to create plantations which needed labourers; but, it was the time when slavery (Africans) was banished. A “new system of slavery”, according to Tinker, was formed naming them the “indentured labourers” (a new name for an old trade) from India and other parts of Asia. The post-colonial phase brought about a different and a somewhat better economic status for the middle class people who had migrated to many countries like UK, USA, Canada, Australia as professional elites and other migrants to UAE and other Muslim countries as skilled labourers.

    Hence, the perplexity of defining diaspora has become more and more complicated in the present era along with the growth of technology and communications. As Asma Sayed in her introduction to her book Writing Diaspora: Transnational Memories, Identities and Cultures notes, “Technologies of travel – from the automobile to the airplane to the space rocket – combined with communication technologies have also transformed diasporic encounters, whether direct or virtual, and made them more intricate and complex than ever before” (ix).

    Sources:

    Writing Diaspora: Transnational Memories, Identities and Cultures

    “Metaphors of Diaspora: English Literature at the Turn of the Century” by Fernando Galvan

    Defining and Re-defining Diaspora: From Theory to Reality by Marianne David and Javier Munoz-Basols

  • Methods of Teaching English

    The method of teaching English as a second language includes all the four important components – selection, grading, presentation and reputation. The four main methods of teaching English are as under 

    •  The Grammar – Translation method: This method is also known as a classical method which envisages a distinctive treatment of the language —grammatical explanation and translation of a language pattern. Here, the mother tongue becomes the medium of instruction of teaching English. The students are required to memorise the rules of grammar and translate passages from mother tongue into English and vice versa. It is believed that the foreign language forces to acquire the rules of grammar. This method begins with the definitions of parts of speech and memorisation of grammar rules, meaning of new words phrases and sentences.
    • The Direct Method: This is also known as a ‘Natural Method’ or the ‘Mother’s Method’ based on the philosophy of fluency in reading and facility in writing, with fluency in speech. The central idea of the direct method is not to use the mother tongue. But it is the association of words and sentences with their meaning through demonstration, dramatisation and such other means. It enables the pupils to establish a bond between a word and an idea and think in English.
    • Bilingual Method of Teaching: The use of mother tongue is allowed to certain extent but strictly controlled and limited to concept translation procedure of this method. Here, situations are vital. The focus is on the early stages, on oral or conversational proficiency. Imitation and interpretation of a basic foreign language is done along with first language questions – answers and conversation. It ensures accuracy, fluency and saves time and cost.
    • West’s New Method:  This method is named after its invention by M.P.West. It was based on two important considerations – English should be studied from utilitarian point of view and as a means of international understanding. He believes that students should emphasise on developing reading ability and must have a control over vocabulary

  • ELT – Definitions, Methodology

    What is ELT?

    ELT is the teaching of English to speakers of other languages. It is the teaching of English to people whose first language is not English.

    ELT is the abbreviation for English Language Teaching. It refers to the activity and industry of teaching English to the non-native speakers.

    Reasons why learning English is so important

    English is the only language or even more, the only language used in all our walks of life. It

    1. Increases the chances of getting a good job in a MNCs or abroad.
    2. The only source of international communication
    3. The media
    4. A global language for internet
    5. For socialisation

    History and it’s Development

    New learning of theories, approaches and methods of teaching made it necessary for framing the target learning techniques. In 1970 it was renamed as (TESL) Teaching English as Second Language. The acronym came into being after the publication of the British Council journal, ‘English Language Teaching’ in 1946 . (https://shodhganga.inflibnet) 

    ELT Methodology                                                                                     Generally, a methodology is a system of practices and procedures that a teacher uses to teach. Briefly speaking the clear methodologies are :

    1. The Grammar Translation Method.
    2. The Audiolingual Method and
    3. The Direct Method

    These methods are associated with the practices and procedures associated with it and every method is based on differentiations, namely the interpretations of the nature of language and language learning.

    Methodology simply refers to more than a simple set of methods. In Language Teaching, methodology means the science of teaching practices (pedagogical) in general, including theoretical implications and searches related to it. It also implies what is involved in how to teach.

    Difference between Method and Methodology in Teaching 

    A method is a particular way of approaching or doing something in a skillful way or particularly a systematic or established way to do something with a definite plan.

    A methodology is a system of employing a series of methods in a particular area or a study or an activity. This is employed only in teaching. It is system of practices and procedures where a teacher uses to teach. It varies from a range of factors like deciding on how to teach, understanding well or bearing in mind the learner’s caliber, ability to understand, the goals and objectives of the lesson, how the outcome would be and various resources employed in teaching.

    Emphasis is laid on giving a number of examples in language teaching. Situational examples are more appropriate in a class room. Teaching of science implies various experiments and demonstrations