Use and Misuse of ‘Diaspora’ in Nepali Literary Discourse

By Ramji Timalsina, PhD

 Last year, I had to publicly criticize the organizer of a literary program. It was organized to promote a book written by a Nepali migrant working in Hong Kong. As a critic on the book, for the day, I started talking about the banner. ‘A diasporic kriti [creation]’ was imprinted on it. The locale of all the stories in the collection was Hong Kong; but it did not have any writing that reflected diasporic condition. Moreover, Hong Kong has no Nepali Diaspora. 

It is just an example of the trend of using ‘diaspora’ in Nepali literary and sociological discourses these days. Depicting any Nepali literary creation written outside Nepal as ‘diasporic’ has grown as a fashion inside and outside Nepal. To be termed as a ‘diaspora’ has become a symbol of pride for the Nepali migrants around the globe, except in India. Such a use has deflated the term ‘diaspora’ itself. Rogers Brubaker describes such a use as the diasporization of the concept of ‘diaspora’. People romanticize the concept of diaspora and use it in such a way that real meaning of diaspora is marginalized amid euphemisms. Nepali literary discourse is a good example of this practice. 

Such a misuse of the word ‘diaspora’ started with an article published in 1988. It was entitled “Contribution to the History of Nepal: Eastern Newar Diaspora Settlements”; was written by Todd Thornton Lewis and Daya Ratna Shakya; and was published in Contribution to Nepalese Studies, CNAS, Tribhuvan University. The article envisioned Kathmandu as a traditional locale for Newari society and going away from it as a formation of a diaspora. Here, for these writers, diaspora equaled to mere dispersion and settlements in different part of the nation itself. This view missed the crux of the formation of a diaspora: crossing the national border and going away never to return permanently. Treating a community dispersed within a nation as diaspora is a theoretical fallacy. 

After a decade, in 1997, an appropriate use of the term was made in regard with the Nepali Diaspora. It was in Michael James Hutt’s article “Being Nepali without Nepal: Reflections on a South Asian Diaspora”. This ethnographic research dealt with the size of the Nepali Diaspora community in South Asia with a special focus on India, Bhutan and Burma/Myanmar. It discussed the Gorkhali ethnic identity in India, the status of the Nepali language and the search for a home within India. It also dealt with the Nepalization of Sikkim and the Bhutanese Nepali Diaspora. According to Govinda Raj Bhattarai, in 1998 Hutt’s article “Going Muglan: Nepali Literary Representation of Migration to India and Bhutan” discussed some Nepali novels as the literature on Nepali migration. Some references in the novels he discussed were diasporic life of the Nepali people living in these places. But it is found that up to that time, Brahmaputrakaa Chheuchhaau [On the Banks of Brahmaputra] (1986) by Lilbahadur Chhetri and “Jayamaya Aaphoo Maatra Lekhaapaanee Aaipugee” [“Jayamaya Alone Reached Lekhapani”] by Indrabahadur Rai were examples of diasporic Nepali fiction in India with enough features of a diasporic literary creation. Bhramar (1936) by Rupnarayan Singh, Muluk Baahira [Beyond the Nation] (1948) by Lainsingh Bangdel, Basaai [Migration] (1957) by Lilbahadur Chhetri, andMuglaan [Foreign Land] (1975) by Govinda Raj Bhattarai have primarily treated the nature of Nepali migration to India, Bhutan and Burma. They, in some places, deal with the life in these Nepali Diasporas. But, diaspora is not the major focus of these works of fiction. It was Hutt, according to Bhattarai, who hinted that these texts could be dealt from the perspective of diaspora studies. It was the initial phase of Nepali diaspora discourse. 

The decade of the popularity of Nepali diaspora discourse was 2006 to 2015. It was initiated by researcher and critic Govinda Raj Bhattaraiand promoted by transnational Nepali writers. In 2003, Bhattarai used the term ‘diaspora’ in the preface to the fourth edition of his novel Muglaan [Foreign Land]. Then in 2006, he contributed preface to Seemaaheena Bimbaharoo [Borderless Images], a collection of Nepali poems composed in the United Kingdom. He termed the collection as a lively picture of diasporic life. Next year, in 2007, Khagendra Prasad Luitel presented a paper on the contribution of Nepali Diaspora to the promotion of Nepali literature. Luitel posed some questions to the then Nepali diaspora discourse. After that, it seemed, for more than ten years, that Bhattarai and Luitel led two contesting camps in this discourse. Though there were lots of theoretical confusions on both sections, such a contest and other creative and critical efforts fostered the interest of the public in this field of studies. 

Gradually, personal and group collections of poems and stories written by the Nepalis living beyond Nepal began to be published in a large number. Many novels and travelogues also made their appearance in the literary scene. Publication was taken as a signifier of the identity of the Nepali people living outside Nepal. It was the time when being called a ‘diaspora’ was a matter of pride for many Nepali transnational migrants. ‘Diaspora’ became a catch-phrase to refer to anyone living away from Nepal, especially used by literary creators, critics and journalists. 

It was appropriate to refer to the permanently settled community of the people of Nepali origin outside Nepal as Nepali Diaspora. Such communities were/are found in India, Bhutan, Burma/Myanmar, England, USA, Canada and Australia. Falsely, the term became so unnecessarily popular that writers, critics and journalists began to term the temporary migrant workers in the Arabs, Malaysia and Hong Kong also as diaspora. Critics began to describe their writings as Nepali diasporic creations. It is how the concept of ‘diaspora’ was misused.

Some books that put the term ‘diaspora’ in their title phrase became the victim of this misconception. The first among them was Nepaalee Daayasporaa Ra Anya Samaalochanaa [Nepali Diaspora and other Criticisms] (2010) by Netra Atom. It was followed by International Nepalese Diaspora Academic Studies (2012) edited by Gita Khatri et al, Aneka Daayasporaakaa Kavitaa [Poems from Several Diasporas] (2012) edited by Khimanand Acharya et al, Daayasporaa, Lahure Srastaa Ra Kavitaa [Diaspora, Lahure Creative Writers and Poetry] (2012) by Puran Rai, Nepaalee Daayasporaakaa Naaree Kathaakaar Ra Kathaa [Women Story Writers and Stories from Nepali Diaspora] (2013) edited by Netra Atom, Poems of the Nepali Diaspora (2015) published from Nepal Academy, Daayaasporaa: Siddhanta Ra Samaalochanaa [Diaspora: Theory and Criticism] (2015) by Govinda Raj Bhattarai, Nepali Diaspora in a Globalized Era (2016) edited by Tank B. Subba and A. C. Sinha, Daayasporaa Siddhanta: Rachanaa Ra Samaalochanaa [Diaspora Theory: Creations and Criticisms] (2016) compiled by Raksha Rai and Mijas Tembe, and Global Nepalis: Religion, Culture and Community in a New and Old Diaspora (2018) edited by David N. Gellner and Sondra L. Hausner. 

All these books have treated everybody who has left Nepal either temporarily or permanently as a diasporan. Subba and Sinha have accepted that though they do not think all such people and their communities make a diaspora, they have used the term ‘diaspora’ in the title following its popular use at that time. This realization further establishes that the popularity of the term has misguided its theoretical underpinnings. It is appalling to note that only seventeen out of the total one hundred poems collected in Poems of the Nepali Diaspora (2015) have diasporic subject matter, emotion and imagination. Sixty poems in this collection are the poems with non-transnational features. Such collections have shown what a misuse of the term ‘diaspora’ is made in Nepali literary discourse.

 Such a misuse was the result of diaspora discourse itself being in the making between 1990 and 2010. Theoretical uncertainty loomed during these two decades across the globe. Some theorists such as William Safran and Robin Cohen who shaped the discourse had different stand points. Safran (1991) proposed very strict criteria that narrowed the scope of the discourse; whereas, Cohen (1997) made it so inclusive that everybody beyond the border could be a diasporan. Playing between these exclusivist and inclusive perspectives, many researchers and writers used the term ‘diaspora’ with their own criteria. The uncertainty and misuse grew so much that in 2005 Brubaker argued that the real concept of diaspora was pushed to the diaspora i.e. the marginal space within the then diaspora discourse. 

After 2005, diaspora theory was consolidated. Gabriel Sheffer (2006), William Safran (2007), Uma Parameswaran (2007), Vijaya Mishra (2007), Robin Cohen (2008), Steven Vertovec (2009), and Rainer Baubock and Thomas Faist (2010) contributed to the consolidated theorization. The ideas of Salman Rushdie, Stuart Hall, Khachig Tololyan and James Clifford were also included in the process. Based on this consolidation, now diaspora discourse is treated as a section under transnationalism. The confusion on Nepali Diaspora and its literature can be removed when we use this perspective. 

Seen from the transnational angle, all the people of Nepali origin who have gone away from Nepal are Nepali transnational migrants, pravaasee in the Nepali term. Those who leave the nation for a short time as legal migrant workers or students, frequently cross the border, and invest in Nepal itself are Nepali transnational mobiles. Those who have gone away from Nepal but are not legally accepted in a new nation are transnational outsiders. And finally, those who have crossed the border of Nepal, have permanently settled in a new nation, and have grown a community that resembles and reflects Nepal are the members of the Nepali Diaspora. Nepali Diaspora, grown thus, confirms to the following basic characteristic features of a diaspora:

1. Diaspora is a community of permanent settlers in a place away from their land of origin. Those who live and grow, at least, with their nuclear family and long-term investment there can be called permanently settled.
2. It, as a mass, cannot return to homeland for permanent resettlement. Those individual members who return for it stop to be diasporic.
3. It is formed as a result of involuntary traumatic mass migration and/or gradual accumulation of voluntary transnational migrants.
4. It grows in four gradual stages: initial wonder, curiosity and shock (first stage); struggle for material existence (second stage); ethno-cultural and social involvement (third stage); and cultural awareness, and search, establishment and maintenance of differential identity (fourth stage).
5. It is different from transnational mobile communities, aboriginal ethnic minorities and cosmopolitan migrants because of its sedentariness and politically active transnational identity awareness in the hostland.
6. Its consciousness and so consequent behaviours are shaped by love, trust and relation with the homeland; and fear and discontent in the hostland. It promotes the strong desire to return to the homeland, and so prevents assimilation in the host society.
7. It maintains some collective memory and idealized homeland myths; and so has a nostalgic look/take on them.
8. It maintains and grows contacts and relations with the homeland through its members’ physical visits to it; use of communication technology; endogamous marriages; promotion of more migrations; involvement in homeland development and other forms of assistance and politics; and continuity in following the homeland culture.
9. It maintains the homeland culture through institutions, iconography and community-involving activities.
10. Its cultural pattern remains and grows different from that of the host society; but economic pattern grows similar to it. So, it grows hybrid.
11. It maintains international networks and develops a community feeling among the people dispersed into many locales from the same origin.

These features show that a diaspora is different from transnational mobiles’ community and that of transnational outsiders. The emotion and connection with Nepal of these three types of Nepali transnational migrants are not similar. The differences can be seen even in the expression of emotions, imaginations and realities in their literary creations, too. For example, the Nepali people migrated to the Arabs, Malaysia, and Hong Kong are transnational mobiles; they do not make Nepali Diaspora there. So, the literary creations based on their life are not diasporic. They are transnational mobiles’ literature. It is not necessary, the way some Nepali transnational writers think, for a creative writing to be diasporic for gaining good literary qualities. Any type of creation can be great if they have the features of a great literary piece. So, the race to be called diasporic in both life and literature is a meaningless feat. The way the life is lived and the characteristics of a creation automatically display the type it belongs to. 

Literature that reflects the life of the Nepali Diaspora is Nepali diasporic literature. It is the literature on the established Nepali Diaspora in Bhutan, India and Burma, and the literature on the incipient Nepali Diaspora as in England, USA, Canada and Australia. We can find the following features in such diasporic literary creations: 

1. Diasporic literature is an aesthetic depiction of the existential reality (physical, social and psycho-emotional) and imagination of a diaspora.
2. It is third-space writing with hybridity in language, culture, subjectivity and technique.
3. It is both realistic and fictio-critical in orientation. 
4. Fragmentation, satire, nostalgia, allegory and autobiographical tone are the major techniques used in the making of a diasporic text.
5. It is used as a diaspora’s defense mechanism in defining identity; creating and maintaining contact between homeland and hostland; and releasing the trauma of dispersion, dislocation and loss. So, it is a means of strengthening a diaspora and its identity formation, development and sustenance.
6. Thematically, literature by the first generation diasporans differs from their subsequent generations. Generally, the first generation focuses primarily on the homeland along with the hostland reality; whereas, the writers of the subsequent generations focus on the hostland realities.
7. Basically, the diasporans are the writers of diasporic literature. Sometimes, non-diasporans, too, can create it.

There is abundant diasporic literary creation in and on the Nepali Diaspora. But still many people treat all writings by Nepali transnational migrants as diasporic literature. It is an urgent need of the time to categorize such writings into transnational and non-transnational based on their subject matter. Then the writings with transnational qualities should also be categorized into diasporic writings, transnational mobiles’ writings and transnational outsiders’ writings. Here comes the role of serious literary critics. 

Finally, we need to be grateful to the senior writers, critics, researchers and editors for their contributions, theoretically right or wrong, to the Nepali diaspora discourse; and move ahead with theoretical clarity and serious researches. Nepali Diaspora is a bourgeoning area for ethnographic, sociological, political and literary studies. 

[Ramji Timlasina, PhD, is a lecturer of English at Tribhuvan University. A critic of high acclaim, he specializes in the study of Dispora. His seminal works include Nepalese Diaspora and Its Literature: Emotion and Expression, published by Lambert Academic Publishing, Germany. He has also written numerous critical reviews and research works and has represented Nepal at several academic events, both inside and outside Nepal.]