The Fifty-fifty Man
Understanding Diaspora through Indo-Canadian Literature
Abstract
Indo-Canadian Diasporic literatures deal with the displacement of identities and
the cultural assimilation that occurs over generation and with re-discovering the
‘hyphenated-identities’ that forms a major part of a diaspora. The constant
conflict between ‘homeland’ and the ‘host-land’ creates a feeling of
displacement that becomes a central theme for diasporic literatures. Indo-
Canadian diasporic people bond over their shared nostalgia of the homeland –
they experience a sort of parallel existence with one foot in the homeland and
the other in the host-land. Through the two prominent novels of Indo-Canadian
diaspora – Anita Rau Badami’s Can You Hear The Nightbird Call? And
Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance we understand the diasporic identity and
what it entails. We will study how the characters in both the novels are all
effected by the socio-political and economic conditions of India during the 1975
Emergency and how it alters each character. Badami’s novel moves between the
Sikhs living in India and Sikhs living in Canada and the plight of them, while
Mistry deals with Hindu - Muslim conflicts. This paper focuses on how reading
these Canadian literatures during a worldwide Covid-19 pandemic changes
one’s understanding of diasporic literature, cultures and diasporic identities.In a covid-19 pandemic
situation when many Indians living in Canada are horrified about the conditions
in their homeland, their helplessness for not being able to visit, relying on
virtual world/online modes of communication to keep themselves up to date on
the conditions in their homeland. Reading Canadian literatures with historical
contexts of crisis situations, mass deaths, economic and sociological downfall,
political crisis etc., at a time when we ourselves are undergoing or rather
surviving through a worldwide pandemic with countless deaths, economic
downfall etc., shapes or alters the approach towards diasporic literatures giving
us a better understanding of Canadian literatures.
Downloads
References
Badami, A. R. (2006). Can You Hear the Night bird Call? Canada: Vintage Canada
Mistry, R. (1995). A Fine Balance. Canada: Vintage Canada
Copyright (c) 2022 Satarupa Sahoo
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with Langua Journal of Linguistics, Literature, and Language Education agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in Langua.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in Langua.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
