The literature of the Indian diaspora constitutes an important part of the burgeoning field of anglophone postcolonial literature. Some of the better-known authors in this archive include V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, Bharati Mukherjee, Amitav Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri, Anita Desai, M.G. Vassanji, Shyam Selvadurai, and Kiran Desai. The growing international visibility of these authors has gone hand in hand with the popularity of postcolonial criticism and theory in academe. Vijay Mishra's scholarly work on Bollywood cinema, Indian devotional poetry, Indian diasporic literature, and postcolonial theory and criticism has contributed greatly to our understanding of this important area of writing.
Giri offers a survey and a critique of the discourse of "diasporism" as it finds expression in postcolonial and minority cultural studies. In this context, "diasporism" names the effort to revise and revaluate what used to be a generally negative meaning of "diaspora." This revaluation, Giri argues, has taken place in the context of the contemporary transnational situation, which is marked by heightened international mobility and border crossings; in the articulation of diasporic culture and sensibility as politically transgressive and utopian; and in a conception of diasporic identity and subjectivity as hybrid, de-territorialized, and multiply situated. In the second part of his analysis, Giri questions the validity of this heroic and somewhat idealized view of postcolonial diaspora, and argues instead for a more variegated, worldly, and antinomial viewpoint, using examples from its literary archive.
This essay calls into question a certain viewpoint that has become widespread in postcolonial cultural theory with respect to the representation of phenomena grouped loosely under the rubric of diaspora. The viewpoint in question can be called "diasporism," referring to a pro-diaspora sensibility that has been and is being articulated in various disciplinary enclaves for at least the last two decades— principally in Jewish cultural studies but also in Black British, Asian American, and postcolonial cultural studies. Disillusioned by the Zionist dismissal of the legitimacy of diaspora as a "normal"— indeed, a desirable—form of existence, some Jewish cultural theorists have sought to articulate an affirmative view of diasporic culture, emphasizing its power to provide a fitting alternative to territorialized notions of Jewish identity (e.g., Boyarin and Boyarin; Omer, "Palestine," 147). To these critics, it remains a matter of pride that Judaism, along with most of modern Jewish culture, was itself fashioned in the diaspora; hence any charges that Jewish life in the galut (exile) is uncreative or inferior to life in the state of Israel are unsustainable. A good example of this diasporist outlook can be found in Philip Roth's 1993 novel Operation Shylock, whose main character, also named Philip Roth, preaches "diasporism" as a happier alternative to living in the war-torn State of Israel. George Steiner's widely discussed essay, "Our Homeland, The Text" similarly proclaims a diasporist sensibility, seeking to locate the Jewish homeland not in the enclosed territory of a nation-state but in the deterritorialized idioms of rabbinic spiritual and discursive traditions. There are, of course, many more such sources.
