Abstract: Indian Diaspora is an impregnated term coupled with various culture, religion, and linguistic diversity which form the multiple identities of an ethnic community pronounced as Indian. The term is highly contested and limited when it comes to the old classical Indian Diaspora of Labourer, which is replete with the memories of multiple displacement and totally different feeling of accommodation and hyper mobility. In vogue the successors of old Indian Diaspora (Indenture labour Diaspora) in Canada see themselves to be Twice-Displaced and consider them to be struggling with severe identity crisis. There is an anxiety in this community for having been once settled as Diasporic entities in Caribbean and having again been plunged into multiple hybrid identities which is highly uncertain and unfixed. They often term them as “Bastardised Indians”, “Unfixed Salves” and their identity is malleable, shifting and uneven. In such scenario the movement of women becomes even more challenging and ambiguous as they are already under multiple patriarchy of being Diasporic women. The present study tries to understand and ask the questions: how do women negotiate within the multiple hybrid space? How do they mediate with their unfixed salves and Multiple Identity as women? Do multiple migration empower them or de-empower them? What kind of memories do they peruse within them? What historicity do they trace is it the patriarchal Indenture History or the History of their grandmother and great grandmother as Coolie women that they associate their identity with? The above themes would be elaborated with the literatures produced by the multiple migrant women authors like Ramabai Espinet and Shani Mootoo.
Keywords: Bastardised Indians, unfixed salves, Multiple Hybrid Identity, Patriarchal indenture history, Coolie women.
Title: Narrative of Identity and Multiple-Migration of Indian Diasporic Women: Translating Shani Mootoo’s Out on Main Street (1993) And Ramabai Espinet’ The Swinging Bridge (2003)
Author: Neetu Devi
International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research
ISSN 2348-3156 (Print), ISSN 2348-3164 (online)
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