Ancient Promises : A Diasporic Contextualisation of the ... - JPCS

Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and SocietiesISSN No. 1948-1853Ancient Promises : A Diasporic Contextualisation of the Second GenerationAbitha BalagopalanAbstract: This paper seeks out to explore how Jaishree Misra‟s novel Ancient Promisespositions the protagonist Janaki as the unspoken and invisible “other” by the dominantdiscourses of the society. By acknowledging Janaki as a dislocated “other”, the paper tries tointerrogate the various interimplications of marginalisation and displacement of the protagonistin the narrative, caused by her cofounding in-between identity. Again, through an appraisal ofthe ambivalent stance of the protagonist to the essentialised notions of identity, morality, homeand belongingness, the paper considers the narrative as a unique piece that touches withdisconcerting openness on the issues of strained caste, class and gender relations in Kerala. Thepaper views the novel as a seminal text that expounds on the strange adulation for upper castecustoms and practices, which the protagonist in this novel internalises in a very self-consciousmanner.Keywords: diaspora, identity, Ancient Promises, Janaki, Kerala.‘Ancient Promises : A Diasporic Contextualisation of the Second Generation’,Abitha Balgopalan.JPCS Vol. 3, No. 3 & 4, 2012.www.jpcs.in83

Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and SocietiesISSN No. 1948-1853Ancient Promises : A Diasporic Contextualisation of the Second GenerationAbitha Balagopalan“Diaspora does not simply refer to geographical dispersal but also to the vexedquestions of identity, memory and home which such displacement produces.”(Aschcroft,2002: 217-218).A rethinking of the status of the diaspora may have to start with an acknowledgement ofthe fact that, though the postmodern \ postcolonial writers have always embraced the idea of theformation of new and speculative hybrid identities, the question of the constantly changingsubject positions of the diasporic community has challenged at least some of them. Theprospect of a geographically and ontologically fluid identity, formed not only by disrupting thebinaries of the local and the global, but also by problematizing national, racial and ethnicformulations, is central to most of the diasporic writings. It is thus not surprising to seeenlightening postcolonial interpretations of the unnatural and awful treatment of the secondgeneration diaspora by the dominant discourse which often mask, occlude, alienate and disowntheir hyphenated identities. In a discussion on postcolonialism, Aschcroft et al., for instance,note that hybrid forms are always regarded as „the other‟ which is radically different from „theself‟ and a simultaneous proposition suggests that authority is maintained over them even asthere has been a deliberate attempt to destroy or marginalize their very presence. This argumentis supported by a recent approach in cultural studies that traces the unproblematic andconfounding nature of the cultural identity of the in-betweens, which, as the culturaltheoretician Stuart Hall puts it, “… is never complete, always in process, and alwaysconstituted within, not outside, representation.”(Hall, 1990:222).‘Ancient Promises : A Diasporic Contextualisation of the Second Generation’,Abitha Balgopalan.JPCS Vol. 3, No. 3 & 4, 2012.www.jpcs.in84

Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and SocietiesISSN No. 1948-1853Behind Stuart Hall‟s use of the term and his analysis of identity as not transparent andunproblematic, lie an echo of modern and postmodern theorizations and the political energy thathas crystallized around the question of identity since the 1800s. Many theorists have concurredthat the four forms of identity extremely influential these days, namely race, class, nationalityand sexuality, emerged along with, and as products of, modernity. It is possible to discern theroots of the concept of “race” in the anthropological writings of Kant, while the concept of“class” owes its origin to capitalism, “nationality” to that of the development of the nation state,and sexuality to the creation of alternative communities. After a detailed analysis of the pathbreakingtheoretical work on identity by various thinkers such as Hegel, Marx, Freud, Mead etc.,Linda Martin Alcoff, observes in an introduction to a volume titled Identities: Race ,Class,Gender and Nationality that, despite their differences, these thinkers opened the door to thequestions of identity by rejecting the notion that selves have an independence outside the socialdomain , thereby once again establishing the idea that „identities are essentially social objects,gaining their intelligibility and force only within a social realm‟.(Alcoff, 2003:4). So defined inthe works of Stuart Hall, Linda Martina Alcoff, Bill Ashcroft and others, the question of culturalidentity of the diaspora serves a position of magnified significance in the present climate ofpostcolonial and postmodern polemics that deliver heated debates on national, cultural, ethnicand religious identities. Therefore, not surprisingly, the figure of the „culturally contaminated‟second generation diaspora, caught in a historical limbo between the home and the world, lies atthe heart of the recent spate of post colonial fictions in contemporary India. (Gandhi, 1998:132).This is not to suggest that fiction in cultural domain follows theory, but that both inhabit thesimilar terrain on that both are informed by similar tendencies/concerns.However, an understanding of diasporic deconstructions of identity may have to start bycreating a mutually accountable dialogue for those hybrid identities that totalizes heterogenous“selves” and subjectivities. With the dominant paradigm of nationalist identity as part of animagined community, avant-garde theorists often view diasporic identities as a decapitation of‘Ancient Promises : A Diasporic Contextualisation of the Second Generation’,Abitha Balgopalan.JPCS Vol. 3, No. 3 & 4, 2012.www.jpcs.in85

Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and SocietiesISSN No. 1948-1853the subject and a permanent retirement from identitarian forms of thinking and belonging. Thus,contemporary hybrid identity of the diaspora, as post colonial theorist R.Radhakrishnan writesachieves its entitlement through “a choice between the violent history of colonialism and theindigenous genealogy that existed prior to the colonial era.” This argument also echoes thechallenges felt by expatriates in constructing their identities in a nationalist framework. In someinstances, a recognition of diasporic identity as a pre-condition for a particular class of excolonizedpeople involving access to greater educational and economic opportunities may raisethe concerns of class as an important issue of identity studies. Similarly, the play of identity anddifference in diasporic studies constructs ethnic identity as a fundamental category withinidentity studies. Ethnicity, often coupled with diasporic identity and hybridity, implies a sense ofbelongingness, founded on an attachment to an actual or possible homeland, its cultural heritage,belief systems, political history, language, characteristic myths, customs, manners, food, sports,literature, art or architectural style. Based on perceived differences between a given identity andthat of a dominant culture, the ethnic identity emerges with contemporary emphasis in theformation of migrant and hybrid identities.Most of the diasporic writings of the period are written against a back drop of the brutaland inhuman othering of the seemingly silent and marginalized masses of expatriates who havebeen dispersed or who have migrated across national boundaries. Published in the year 2000,Jiashree Misra‟s semi-autobiographical novel, Ancient Promises is certainly one such story ofdisplacement and disruption, despite its romantic overtones, as it charts both the complex andambivalent traumas of self- depreciation of the protagonist and the lamented horrors of hybridcultural identity of the second generation diaspora by the dominant discourses of the society.Along with the issue of representing and redefining the protagonist Janaki as a postmodernfloating signifier, the novel also talks about the process of negotiating human relationships thathave been foundered and are irrevocably damaged. A further implication, however, dependsupon detecting the symbolic and ideological meanings in superficial glamorous trappings of the‘Ancient Promises : A Diasporic Contextualisation of the Second Generation’,Abitha Balgopalan.JPCS Vol. 3, No. 3 & 4, 2012.www.jpcs.in86

Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and SocietiesISSN No. 1948-1853upper class Nair life, and the fake core beneath, where women are disregarded, oppressed andsilenced. An awareness of the displaced figure of Janaki, caught between tradition andmodernization, therefore, encourages a reading that the sanctified norms of a patriarchal culturein Keralam (southern most state of the Indian subcontinent) prefers docile, yet educated, womenwho become the perfect knick knack of the mantle piece of their husbands while others arerelegated to the periphery.(Spivak,1988:306).One question that comes up several times in this novel is “what is the identity of Janakias an in- between?” Her identity as an „incarcerated expatriate‟ is a complex one that emergesfrom the concurrent interplays of social roles foisted by dominant narratives as well as by herown interpretation and resistance of those societal roles and meanings. Her hybrid consciousnessinforms the whole text resulting in existential moments that express the up-rootednessexperienced by the migrant people. Hence Janaki‟s observation that , “Survival was one thinghalf way children were good at, hopping effortlessly back and forth between their differentidentities . Never quite belonging any where.” supports the construction of a self that is openended,heterogeneous and negotiable. To assert her identity as a Malayalee and a daughter-inlawof Marars, Janaki not only has to live in Keralam, formally belonging to the Mararhousehold, she has also to feel that this belonging is real. However, the Marar household turnsout to be a source of alienation and suffering for her as she sadly comments,What was I doing here, lying on somebody‟s foam-mattress bed that smelt of shopnew latex, on such a frighteningly clean sheet?....Tears that I‟d managed to staveoff all day, in some desperate bid to seem in control, were now rolling down thesides of my face, making the insides of my ear go squishy wet. I desperatelyneeded to see my parents and tell them their dream wasn‟t panning out too wellfor me. To ask them to get me out, to take me back.” ( Misra,2000:16-17).‘Ancient Promises : A Diasporic Contextualisation of the Second Generation’,Abitha Balgopalan.JPCS Vol. 3, No. 3 & 4, 2012.www.jpcs.in87

Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and SocietiesISSN No. 1948-1853Much the same might be said about the assaults on her linguistic peculiarities, as the inlawsviewed her „Delhi- English‟ as an instance of her unstable double consciousness. Strictlyembedded in power relations, it is crucial to address the linguistic hierarchies present in theMaarar family as an effect of the consumption and representation of a neocolonialist discoursewhich on the one hand privileges an English educated bride so that her husband “could take herto Bombay in the hoped-for expansion of his motel business” and on the other dislodges herwestern articulations/mannerisms to the margins. While exploring how language encodes powerrelations the Marxian thinker Gramsci observes that language conveys power differences whichbecome apparent in the attempt of the dominant class to create a common cultural climatethrough the imposition of a national language. In the novel the situation is a reversion of the roleof the post colonial whereby the in-laws who see themselves without any „assumption of nativebackwardness‟ scrutinizes and objectifies the hybrid position and language of Janaki as badgesof failure or denigration. Hence hearing the callous speech of her mother-in-law Janaki wonders:“Was her displeasure because I‟d spoken in English? …. Non-Kerala families like minetended to mix up English and Malayalam into an easy, casual city-speech that hadworked reasonably well on my holidays here. Now that I was here for ever, it looked likethat brand of Malayalam was going to be woefully inadequate . Even worse, seen asstylish.”( Misra,2000:80).Paradoxically enough, English, the language of the masters, acquires a resistant and subversivefunction in the Maraar household since Janaki often uses it against the hegemonizing role of herin-laws. Unlike the other hybrid characters in the diasporic narratives, Janaki shows no longingfor her mother tongue or homeland, thus complicating the „teleology ofassimilation.‟(Desai,2004:118).Where as her parents depict the diasporic desire to return to the homeland, Janaki‟sescapade to London in times of crisis explains the differences in the thinking of the first andsecond generation diaspora. The novel evinces that the second generation diaspora cannot‘Ancient Promises : A Diasporic Contextualisation of the Second Generation’,Abitha Balgopalan.JPCS Vol. 3, No. 3 & 4, 2012.www.jpcs.in89

Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and SocietiesISSN No. 1948-1853Oonk, Gijsbert. “Global Indian Diasporas: Exploring Trajectories of Migration and Theory.”Global Indian Diasporas Exploring Trajectories of Migration and Theory. (Ed).Gijsbert Oonk.Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007.Ponzanesi, Sandra. Paradoxes of Post colonial Culture: Contemporary Women Writers of theIndian and Afro-Italian Diaspora. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004.Rushdie,Salman. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticisms 1981-1991. London: GrantaBooks, 1991.Said, Edward. “Jane Austen and Empire”. Literary Theory: An Anthology. (Ed) Julie Rivkin andMichael Ryan. Australia: Blackwell, 2004.Spivak, Gayatri. “Feminism and Critical Theory.” Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader. Ed.David Lodge. Delhi : Pearson, 1988.Suleri, Sara. “The Rhetoric of English India.” The Post-colonial Studies Reader. (Ed). BillAshcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. London: Routledge, 1995.Biographical noteAbitha Balgopalan is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English, Vimala College, Thrissur,India. She is presently pursuing her Ph.D titled, Paradigms of Culture, Caste and Community:Representation of Nair Identity in Selected Narratives.‘Ancient Promises : A Diasporic Contextualisation of the Second Generation’,Abitha Balgopalan.JPCS Vol. 3, No. 3 & 4, 2012.www.jpcs.in92