6. Diaspora

2020 ◽  
pp. 86-100
Author(s):  
Philip V. Bohlman
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
New World ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
World Music ◽  
South Asian Diaspora ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Asian Diaspora ◽  
A Chain ◽  
Human Displacement

‘Diaspora’ explores the effect of human displacement on world music after the ‘discovery’ of the New World by Columbus in 1492, which set off a chain of diasporas. The music of diaspora addresses both place and homelessness, wandering and the dream of return. Three diasporas are investigated, beginning with the Sephardic diaspora, which arose in turn from the expulsion of Jews from Europe; the displacement of Africans resulting from colonial slave trade; and the South Asian diaspora, which draws upon music to represent the post-colonial world. Diasporic music is diverse, including reggae, klezmer, bhangra, Bollywood, and hip-hop among other genres.

scholarly journals An existentialist reading of K.S. Maniam’s ‘The Return’

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-108
Author(s):  
Saroja Dhanapal
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
The Novel ◽  
South Asian Diaspora ◽  
Indian Diaspora ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Raja Rao ◽  
Asian Diaspora ◽  
Cultural Struggle ◽  
History Of ◽  
Existential Perspective

According to Peyre (1948:21), the fathers and forefathers of existentialism were mostly Germans, but it was adapted and transformed by the French and was re-exported to the rest of the world. Peyre’s inference reduces the history of existentialism to a nutshell. Existentialism can be defined as an intellectual movement that reflects all aspects of modern life. In literature, this theory acts as a useful approach to analysing literary works in order to make sense of the complexities, contradictions and dilemmas surrounding the characters. The purpose of this research paper is to study the novel of Subramaniam Krishnan, popularly known as K. S. Maniam, an Indian Malaysian academic and novelist, from an existentialist perspective. His novels deal with the lives and problems of the post-colonial Indian Diaspora in Malaysia. In 2000, he received the Raja Rao Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Literature of the South Asian Diaspora. His first novel ‘The Return’ is an autobiographical novel which deals with cultural struggle and cultural identity. This novel will be analysed from an existential perspective. 

Sikhs and the City: Sikh history and diasporic practice in Singapore

2011 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 1465-1498 ◽  
Author(s):  
GERARD McCANN
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Model Minority ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Minority Status ◽  
South Asian Diaspora ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Asian Diaspora ◽  
South Indian ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City

AbstractThe historiography of South Asian diaspora in colonial Southeast Asia has overwhelmingly focused on numerically dominant South Indian labourers at the expense of the small, but important, North Indian communities, of which the Sikhs were the most visually conspicuous and politically important. This paper will analyse the creation of various Sikh communities in one critical territory in British Asia—Singapore, and chart the development of the island's increasingly unified Sikh community into the post-colonial period. The paper will scrutinize colonial economic roles and socio-cultural formation, whilst links of Singaporean Sikhs to Punjab and their place within the post-colonial Singaporean state will preoccupy the latter portion of the paper. It will argue that more complicated notions of division relative to the social norms of Punjab must be acknowledged in this region of Sikh diaspora and indeed others. The final sections will assess the remarkable success of local Sikhs in utilizing statist policies of ‘domesticating difference’ towards altered ‘community’ ends. Such attachment to the state and the discursive parity of Singapore's Sikhs with official values, moreover, stymied the appeal of transnational Sikh militant movements that gained momentum in the West in the 1980s. The result has been the assertion of ‘model minority’ status for Singapore's Sikhs and notably successful socialization into Singaporean society.

Australianama

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samia Khatun
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
South Asian ◽  
South Asian Diaspora ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Asian Diaspora ◽  
Broken Hill ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Anglophone World ◽  
Indian Ocean World

Australian deserts remain dotted with the ruins of old mosques. Beginning with a Bengali poetry collection discovered in a nineteenth-century mosque in the town of Broken Hill, Samia Khatun weaves together the stories of various peoples colonized by the British Empire to chart a history of South Asian diaspora. Australia has long been an outpost of Anglo empires in the Indian Ocean world, today the site of military infrastructure central to the surveillance of 'Muslim-majority' countries across the region. Imperial knowledges from Australian territories contribute significantly to the Islamic-Western binary of the post- Cold War era. In narrating a history of Indian Ocean connections from the perspectives of those colonized by the British, Khatun highlights alternative contexts against which to consider accounts of non-white people. Australianama challenges a central idea that powerfully shapes history books across the Anglophone world: the colonial myth that European knowledge traditions are superior to the epistemologies of the colonized. Arguing that Aboriginal and South Asian language sources are keys to the vast, complex libraries that belie colonized geographies, Khatun shows that stories in colonized tongues can transform the very ground from which we view past, present and future.

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