From the fringes of the diasporic garment: creative pageants of Indian Christian identity from Malaysia and Singapore

Abstract

There is no denying the great power invested in the inventiveness of the diasporic imaginary to reterritorialize Indian culture‐scapes into local contexts. Malaysian and Singaporean Indian diasporic writers are no exception. For a long while, the tendency of most discussions of writings from these countries has been to focus on the syncretism of identity politics of a mainly Hindu experience. Yet, the Indian diaspora in Malaysia and Singapore consists also of those who are Christians. Would there be different modulations to the tones, inflections of the diasporic experience when the creative imaginary intersects and negotiates with the Christian, the Indian as well as the Malaysian and Singaporean experience? Would the attendant myths and metaphors also take on different characteristics as a result? These are issues that this paper aims to investigate through a study of selected writings from Malaysia and Singapore that reflect nuances of an Indian Christian heritage. The ultimate aim of the paper is to highlight the reterritorialization of the Indian self from a community that has remained on the fringes of the garment of discussions about writings from the Malaysian and Singaporean diasporic Indian community.

Keywords:

• Indian‐Christian
• diaspora
• reterritorialization
• syncretism
• hybridity

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the kind assistance of P. Sakthivel, of the Library & Archives, Seminari Theoloji Malaysia, Seremban in obtaining some of the research material.