English Literature

A prestigious literary member of Indian diaspora and recipient of several literary awards, M.G. Vassanji is Canada 's latest literary golden boy. Like many others, he is an Indian expatriate separated from the subcontinent by generations. As a commonwealth literary hero, he must be ranked alongside Rushdie, Vikram Seth and Nigerian legend Chinua Achebe.           M.G. Vassanji was born in Nairobi , Kenya on 30th May 1950 to Gulamhussein Vassanji and Daulatkhanu Nanji. His family was a part of community of Indians who had immigrated to Africa . As we know that emigration from India did not cease after the abolition of indenture and other systems of organised export of labour. Emigrations to East African countries namely Kenya , Uganda and Tanzania during the late 19th century present a new pattern: ‘free’ or ‘passage’ emigration. Under this pattern trader, petty contractors, artisans, bankers, clerks and professionals o...

  The emergence of the concept of diaspora is fairly recent. This concept has elicited unprecedented interest among academicians and has provoked divergent responses worldwide. It has emerged as an important area of research in the departments of literature and social sciences. It is currently being used in both academic and popular discourse with a growing frequency and breadth. Yet this growth does not necessarily reflect a common understanding of the term. How to define diaspora has been the subject of ongoing debate. While some scholars have argued in favour of identifying a closed set of attributes, others have preferred to use the term in the broader sense of human dispersal. For example, Safran maintains that diaspora is that segment of people living outside homeland. Docker defines diaspora as “a sense of belonging to more than one history, to more than one time and place, to more than one past and future.” 1  The work of Brah on diaspora locates diaspora space in the ...