IDENTITY POLITCS in THE BRITISH ASIAN WRITINGS A CRITICAL STUDY

Abstract

Abstract newlineThis thesis examines the processes and mechanisms behind the conceptualization of the British South Asian community as a diasporic category. The thesis thoroughly analyses the complicated trajectories through which the British Asian diaspora moves from generation to generation alongside the continually changing multicultural policies of the British nation state. The thesis has taken up the second and the third generation of British Asian diasporic writers and their works. They include Hanif Kureishi s The Black Album and The Buddha of Suburbia, Ravinder Randhawa s A Wicked Old Woman (1987), Meera Syal s Anita and Me (1996), Monica Ali s Brick Lane (2003), Shelina Zahra Janmohamed s Love in a Headscarf: Muslim Woman seeks the One (2009) and Rosie Dastgir s A Small Fortune (2012). The thesis also examines the how these different phases of multicultural policies have been reflected through the above-mentioned literary works that bear the testimony of the changing fortunes of the British Asian diasporic community in Britain from time to time. newlineOn this premise, I outline in this thesis, through different chapters, how there are generational shifts found in the adaptive policies of the diasporic community in matters relating to the notions of ethnicity, home, nostalgia, cultural assimilation etc. With the coming in of the new generations of diasporic newline2 newlinecommunities, better adaptive strategies are usually noticed. But the unfortunate terrorist attacks of the 9/11 and the 7/7 alter the whole scenario and the Muslim diasporic communities suffer in particular due to the changed attitude of the whole world towards them. It also results in a lot of reaction from the community as seen in the works of some of the above mentioned writers. The thesis traces out the different strains of thought that develops during the process amongst which the fundamentalist strain of thought is a major one.