![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Intangible heritage and architecture, articulate specific cultural processes and history. In Vassanji’s non-fictional narrative A Place Within: Rediscovering India, there is place-making through the lens of culture, religion, history, politics and migration. Positioning himself as a tourist to his ancestral homeland, the author makes observations that can be critiqued through the concept of ‘palimpsest’ – an intriguing ‘layering’ that gesture at wider circuits of culture. This study is an examination of the diasporic consciousness, religious encounters; heritage narrative features, the tracing of overlapping cultural spheres in Delhi, aesthetic and political tensions, as represented in Vassanji’s narrative. The article is an exploration of a broad system of cultural and religious discursive constructions and practices in architecture, as suggested in the non-fictional narrative.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Vassanji’s own identity as one belonging to the Khoja community is intriguing in this context since the community is a syncretic one.
2. Godis and Nilsson (Citation2018) in their fascinating study, differentiate between genealogical and memory tourists (4). The nature of travel and tourism and the objective therein, is critical in defining identities, cultural affiliations and discursive representations.
3. For a comparative study on the state of nowhereness, Parameswaran’s Trishanku poem and ‘homing’, see Bhat (Citation2019) “‘Ambulocetus versus Trishanku: “Nowhere” space, diaspora and genealogical tourism through Paleontology and Hindu Mythology’.
4. The glorification of the Taj Mahal in the contemporary world as a world heritage site, for instance, connotes how a place of historic interest creates the discourse of universality. The mimicking of the Taj Mahal by Donald Trump for his restaurant in US, underscores how heritage monuments can be used, mimicked and imprinted in a new environment. Trump’s selection of the Taj Mahal also highlights the postcolonial concept of the Oriental gaze, portraying India as the exotic other.
5. Referring to travel narratives, in her article Weightman (Citation1987) states ‘Inauthentic place making is rampant as the promotion attempts to mystify the mundane; amplify the exotic; minimize the misery; rationalize the disquietude; and romanticize the strange’ (229). This perspective is interesting, particularly in the context of how regions that were colonised by European forces continue to be represented in travel narratives. Of course, Weighman’s research study is an old one. Nevertheless, it offers an valuable comparative perspective.
6. The Mahabharatha and the Ramayana are ancient epics sacred to Hindus in India. The figures of Lord Krishna and Lord Rama in the works respectively, elevate the status of the books as being religious and spiritual works. They symbolise ancient Indian culture and heritage.
7. Lord Indra in Indian Mythology is the ruler of Heavens. The name Indraprastha, connotes the grandeur with which the Pandavas, the ruling dynasty in the Mahabharatha epic were enjoying.
8. For a detailed study on hybridisation and literature, please see Bhat (Citation2019b) ‘Hackneying hybridity? Fending off “foreignness”, Khoja Community and hybridisation in The Magic of Saida’.
9. This idea has been mentioned in the article to look at the notion of palimpsest objectively. The instance suggests the dominance and destruction of cultures that are seen as the ‘other’.
10. Such representation of architecture and Indian heritage is found in the works of William Dalrymple. His historical works: The Last Mughal and White Mughals make an in-depth analysis of Mughal History in North and South India. He makes use of a variety of techniques to represent Indian heritage. For instance, he uses the epistolary method to show how politics of the time, shaped diplomatic developments and how they led to the creation of monuments, gardens and so on. The amount of money required for such enterprises of architectural construction was phenomenal.
11. With reference to the idea of narration and narrative techniques employed by Vassanji, an opposite to his kind of narration is the character of Salim Sinai in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. Salim Sinai through some sort of special magical telepathic ability is able to hear the voices of people who are born in the first hour of India’s Independence but then he is able to control their voices, the volume of the sounds. Ralf Hertel very beautifully describes him thus: ‘Saleem is a kind of human chat room, his head not dissimilar to the Internet, with voices and words floating freely across it like information through the World Wide Web’ (89). Now here the protagonist, like the protagonist of Vassanji in Canada, becomes a medium of centripetal narration; but in the end of Rushdie’s novel, Saleem Sinai loses control over the voices in his head and they all become independent going helter-skelter. There is no centre holding these polyphonous voices, diffusing them and making the narration external. The novel The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni where the conversation of the central protagonist Tilottama, with and about the spices takes place in her mind. She has the superhuman ability to gauge the minds, anguish and stories of her customers; and her voice assumes the quality of centripetality. She becomes the centre towards which all other voices and persona gravitate towards and therefore she becomes the holder of other voices in the novel. Nevertheless, the moment she is attracted to an American customer, she loses her capacity to hear the other voices. Like Salim Sinai, in a certain sense, she has access to the universes of the others but instead of a chaotic admixture of the various polyphonous voices, there is a complete blockade resulting in emptiness. In both these books, it is the central character in the novels that become agencies of the centripetal voice. A comparison of these diasporic writers also underlines the experimentation in narration that takes place in their works. The pattern is not linear and straightforward rather roundabout, representing different points of view.