Diaspora as Subaltern: A study of V.S Naipaul’s In a Free State and Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss

Abstract

Diaspora mainly refers to the movement and scattering of people due to several factors. The paper studies the theme of Diaspora in two Booker Prize winning novels: V.S Naipaul's In a Free State (1971) and Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss(2006). The objectives of the paper are to study why the people who leave their homeland,especially from the third world countries to the first world countries feel like a subaltern and they lead a subaltern existence even after their immigration to the transnational land. The present paper studies multifaceted problems that originate since the time an immigrant lands on the alien shore and an amalgamation of  conflicting emotions which he/she undergoes after being transplanted in a culture which neither accepts nor rejects him/her and the ways in which economic, political, social, cultural life of immigrants is transformed due to transnational migration. In a nation subalterns remain deprived of dignified status, are inarticulate, poor, resourceless, and passive. Priviliges are enjoyed by the people belonging to the upper caste, rich class, higher position, power etc. The people who move to other countries because of various reasons also live like subalterns and suffer from alienation, insecurity, and rootlessness, distorted form of human relationships and the subsequent loss of history. The paper also compares the presentation of the theme of alienation, mobility, migration, and dislocation by V.S Naipaul, and Kiran Desai in their selected novels.