Introduction of Diaspora
The word Diaspora have so many synonyms such as dispersion, dissemination, migration, displacement, scattering etc. and its antonym is return. The word ‘diasporic’ is used as an adjective for ‘diaspora’ and its plural is ‘diasporas’. Diasporas are recognized as exiles, refugees, guest workers, expatriates, immigrants, and transnational’s. Thus Diaspora communication is abounding with the words, concepts, and terms such as emigrant, expatriate, immigrant, migrant and transnational. It seems that the expressions: migration, emigration and immigration are identical in meaning i.e. to move from one country to other, but these words have different meanings. ‘Migration’ means the movement of man from one place to another place or from one country to another country. The migrants who go through journey, longing, homesickness, nostalgia and experience restlessness, unbelongingness, isolation, double consciousness, are called expatriate. While as the term ‘immigration’ means, to settle permanently into another country than that of birth place. So, ‘Immigrant’ is someone who comes to live in a country from another country. While as emigration means leaving ones country so as to inhabit in another country. So, ‘Emigrant’ is somebody who leaves his country in order to live in another foreign country. Immigrant is one who tries to reroot, enhouse, reconstruct the home, incorporate or acculturate, and replant himself in the new soil. Expatriate is somebody who lives ‘abroad’ for a long period or who is debarred or moved from his inhabitant country or who departs ‘himself’ from its nationality. The transnational is capable to survive and integrate in the countries of source and target; and is the man of the whole globe. He considers - ‘one world, one people.’ There are different reasons for migration; it may be expulsion or attraction. In view of the fact that the immigrated countries are famous and fertile for their profit and social system, so people prefer to go in these countries for earning more. The migration has different reasons; they may be willing or unwilling and push or pull type etc. Migration has played an important role in the mobility of man from one place to another place. Man as the mover of civilizing possessions transports it into new civilizing environment where he arranges out his knowledge and becomes familiar himself in a new country. As such the word diaspora has become multiple in its dimensions and includes brain drainage and as well as loss and dispersion as the result of a powerful displacement of peoples from countries or regions diverse as their civilizing and historical centers. The importance of the word has very much changed depending on situation, and extends to do so. Recent researchers have proved that diaspora entrepreneurship can help in the development of the original mother land of diasporic persons by creating businesses and jobs, using innovation, and transferring the political and financial capital. Diaspora shares the culture and tradition of his country of origin through different ways such as: art, music, films, literature, crafts, etc. These can be used as tools by the diaspora people in the form of cultural diplomacy. When the culture and tradition of the diaspra ones are known in the host country they help the motherland in broader sense.
The word ‘diaspora’ has been originally came from an ancient Greek word ‘diasperien’, which is amalgamation of two words ‘dia— across’ and ‘sperien— to sow or scatter seeds’. So, for Greeks diaspora owes its origin to horticulture, as the concept refers to the scattering and dispersal of seeds. This is what actually happens with the diaspora people as they scatter throughout the earth from their motherland. So for the Greeks the concept of diaspora referred to describe the colonization of Asia Minor and the Mediterranean. As in the Archaic period (800-600) people migrated from Ancient Greek to Asia Minor; that type of migration was due to poverty, or war, so it had positive connotation. In Hebrew language it was called ‘Golah or Galut’, which means ‘Exile’. Thus, it was used for the banishment of Jews who had been banished from Israel after the Babylonian and Roman conquests of Palestine. The Jewish state comes to an end in 70 AD when Romans drag out the Jews from their motherland. The Jewish Diaspora had its origin before that when the Assyrians conquered Israel in 722. Actually 597 is considered the beginning date of the Jewish Diaspora. So, in the commencement the term ‘diaspora’ was applied by the earliest Greeks to mention to citizens of a majestic city who migrated to the conquered land with the intention of colonization to include the region into the kingdom. The word ‘diaspora’ with Capital ‘D’ like ‘Diaspora’ in the start was used for the Jewish diaspora depicting the dispersion of the Jews from Israel back in the sixth-seventh century B.C. and then in the second century A.D. from Jerusalem. Also the term diaspora mostly not capital letter ‘D’ was used for the scattering or spreading of the people belonging to one country or having same civilization. So, it is clear that the idea of ‘Diaspora’ refers to dispersion of Jews people from the land of Palestine throughout the universe. Since the Jewish people refused to assimilate and were confronted with repression, they moved out of Israel. Thus Diaspora represents those Jews who were expelled from Babylon. As such along with physical scattering of the Jews, the word carries religious suggestion, in as much as a particular relationship is implied to be present between the land of Israel and Jewish people. This connection provides lastly in meeting of the exiles to the classic vision of Reform Judaism. Some of the Jews submerged themselves in non-Jewish environments more completely than the others. Because of adjustment and acculturation, diaspora Jews were the Jews in a religious sense only.
During the contemporary times Diaspora as an expression gained a
worldwide currency as it does not remain confined only with the Jewish
Diaspora. Thus Diaspora relates with the dispersion or spread of people from
their original motherland to other foreign lands. With its etymological meaning,
'to scatter,’ diaspora is defined as any community of people who do not live in
their own country of origin, but maintain their heritage in a new land. Many of
them can probably relate to this issue, since they have ancestral roots from
one country but reside in another country. The model of Jewish Diaspora was
followed by the Armenian, Chinese, African (slavery) and Indian communities.
The difference with the Jewish Diaspora is that the other communities have been
separated due to their selected countries of migration. Thus in the beginning
the term ‘diaspora’ suggested the Jewish Diaspora; later from 200 A.D. to 900
A.D. there was great amount of migrations between different countries for job
and learning, besides, spreading of
religions also occurred as one of the important cause of migration. Colonial
period out looked migration due to interior as well as exterior differences, such as slavery and colonial repression in
the society. Another ancient past indication
is the Black African diaspora, in 16th century, with slave employment, which send
abroad West Africans out of their inhabitant region and isolated them in the
other parts of the earth. Spreading of Africans, Armenians, Irish, Palestinians
and the Jews visualized their spreading as starting from a disastrous occurrence
that had surprised the group in total. Their scattering was not deliberate,
miserable and terrible. After the World War II, the concept of diaspora has
become omnipresent to a great extent. One of the most important causes for its
development was decolonization. So the term ‘Diaspora’ is now used to refer to
any one, either forced or tempted to
leave his traditional national homeland; being isolated throughout other parts
of the world; and the succeeding developments in their scattering and
civilization. Thus the term ‘Diaspora’ has not remained restricted to the
Jewish people’s world-wide dispersion outside their homeland; the Land of
Israel, but became general concept of migration. So, it is used for any group
of people who spend their life outside the land of their ancestors in which
they had lived for a long time. In other words ‘diaspora’ is used for a group
migration from one country to another country of the people who belongs to one
nation or have the common culture and tradition.
The most commonly conservative definitions of the expression diaspora can describe four wide periods: ancient times, a time in which it had different meanings; the Middle Ages to the Renaissance; the beginning of the nineteenth century to the 1970s; and the 1980s to the present modern age. During antique times (800–600 BC), the phrase was used to explain the Greek migration of Asia Minor and the Mediterranean; it referred to business development and had a positive suggestion. It was in the beginning used for Jews throughout the third century BC in a Greek translation of the Bible as it was used for displacement of Jews from Babylon after the eradication of Jerusalem and its temple (586 BC). This type of Diaspora expressed the view of anguish and anxiety and of banishment from a position of source, at the same time it also represents the divine punishment of the Jews. This meaning changed because Jews settled in the peripheral of Palestine and diaspora came to suggest the gathering of all Jews by the will of God. By the third century BC, the phrase had rejected its negative connotation and nominated Jews living in the Greco-Roman world and speaking Greek, as well as the Jews living in Mesopotamia and speaking Aramaic. But with the Roman destruction of the second temple in 70 BC, it became connected once again with exile (galut) from a historical and cultural centre, while this sense declined through the centuries to follow. Jews experienced devotion and interruption in Europe with the rise of Christian anti-Semitism in the middle Ages. Then from 200 A.D. to 900 A.D., there were enormous migrations in the whole world for the purpose of business, employment or education. Some people go from one country to another country for spending their life in happy environment; others want to spread their religion throughout the world. During the Colonial times the migration of the people was due to war, slavery and colonial subjugation. People want to save themselves from the colonial oppression and so start migration because they like freedom than the slavery. The colonizers restricted some people of the African countries and treated them as slaves. There was a lot of immigration during the cold war time, people from Third world Countries became immigrants of some European countries such as the UK, the USA. So, Diaspora, in simple words can be defined as spreading or resettlement of a people, by choice or compulsion, from its motherland, where the reason may be trade, battle, natural calamity, slavery, labour, employment, education etc. This migration has the consequences of longing, partition, homesickness, and fondness towards homeland; and this diasporic consciousness for the roots is one of the peculiarities of diaspora. Thus home becomes a heart and focal point and it troubles them like anything else. As Lim puts it "'Home'...could be a domestic site of comfort and security. . . [or] mythic homeland left behind . . . [or] multilocal, yet it is, paradoxically, never fiilly ours for all times . ..[i] . At the time of World War II Nazi Germany exiled, murdered, and enslaved millions of Jews Ukrainians, Russians and other Slaves. Most of the victims moved to the West, including Western Europe, and millions seeking refuge in the United States and other Western counties. In addition, with the help creation of Israel in 1948, Palestinian diaspora came in which a large number of people were exiled from the land of Palestine. Many Palestinians people still continue to live in refugee camps maintained by Middle Eastern nations, but others have resettled in the Middle East and other countries. From the late 19th century, Japan made Korea a colony country for their benefit and millions of Chinese fled to western provinces not occupied by Japan for the safety of their life.
In postmodernist age, migration is
mostly encouraged by economic benefits and luxurious life style. The new
diaspora in modern times usually summons from trained experts and upwardly
moveable people. Thus the idea of 'diaspora' in modern time has undergone
modification. There is scientific development in all fields of life. In the
modern age the whole world become one as time and space have shrunk. Modern
progress of social networking has made a better donation in avoiding this
sensation. Modern social media such as Face book and Twitter have searched for
people their lost associates and relatives living in distant land. This every
moment communication and its easy user-friendliness have helped people to get
familiar in remote lands happily. The disturbance that went along with
dislocation among the diaspora has gone out of track. Safran says that there are
six features of the diaspora: “dispersal,
collective memory, alienation, longing for the homeland, a belief in its
restoration and the act of
self-defining with the homeland.”[ii] Homi Bhabha had given the twist to the
original meaning of word ‘Diaspora’ which was ‘scattering’ and he changed in to
‘gathering’. According
to Homi Bhabha diasporas are “gatherings of exiles and emigres and refuges; gathering on the edge of
foreign cultures; gathering at the
frontiers; gatherings in the ghettos or cafes of city centers; gathering in the
half-life, half-light of foreign tongues or in the uncanny fluency of author’s
language, gathering the signs of approval and acceptance, degrees, discourses,
disciplines; gathering the memories of underdevelopment of other world lived
restoratively; gathering the past in a ritual of revival; gathering the present.”[iii] In
contemporary diaspora, we may not get all these characteristics but some new
happenings such as replacement, adjustment, understanding and so on. The second
generation diasporic writing stresses on the ‘third space’ which is the space
of negotiates between two distinct cultures. Then there is the subject of
individuality, which is ‘hybrid’ individuality. It merges pluralities and
multilayeredness. There are different eccentricity groups among the diaspora people
depending upon the reasons of migration and their responses to alien countries.
The knowledge of disarticulation in the globalised depends upon the features such
as the manufacture of diaspora one belongs to, the approach of the host
countries etc. In the age of
globalization, there is less dislocation but the psychological dislocation is
the dominating trait of the all men in the whole universe. These days, the word ‘Diaspora’ has different
meaning such as it shows variety of national inhabitants and a diversity of
groups of citizens. Diaspora can perhaps be seen as a description of the
‘other’ which has historically referred to dislocated population who have been
dislocated from their inhabitant motherland all the way through the actions of
migration, or expulsion. Diaspora advocates turmoil from the nation-state or
physical position of source and transfer in one or more nation-states,
provinces or countries. ‘Diaspora’ now addresses to different groups of moved
people and communities moving across the world. This term has been used by different
persons to explain the group migration and displacements in the second half of
the 20th century.
Diasporic
life, whether enforced or self-imposed, is in many ways a tragedy. It is
necessary here to mention that the writers in their dislocated survival usually
be prone to do extremely well in their works, as if the changed environment
acts as a stimulant for them. These writings in dislocated circumstances are
often named as diasporic literature. The study of globe literature might be the
study of the way in which cultures distinguish themselves through their
projections of ‘otherness. So it is clear that the term ‘diaspora’, from the
Greek, meaning dispersal, distribution, or spreading has been applied for many
years to the global spreading of the Jews; in more recent times it has been
applied to a number of national and cultural groups living far-away from their
conventional homelands. So, it is clear that in broader sense the meaning of
word ‘Diaspora’ becomes too much complicated. ‘Diaspora’ has
undergone changes in the meaning, it retains some of the features such as ‘homelessness’
‘alienation’ ‘rootlessness’ and love for
the mother country. So, home becomes the centre of the diasporic writers; as
they express their feelings and emotions about their ‘home’ with the help of
their creative writing. The diasporic writers have nothing about their ‘home’
except imagination and nothing substitutes it; or it becomes, as a place of
haunt for the diasporic consciousness.
In the foreign land the writers built their home with the help of their
art of writing. The diaspora means to reexamine
remind the meaning and remembrance of home, its different senses of where,
what, and how. This means they are always haunted with the questions regarding
their original home. Diasporan people find themselves among the dilemma of
which is their home the original or in which they spend their lives. They are comparing their new and old homes,
their new and old lives and identities not in physical sense but in imagination.
In
short, the term ‘diaspora’ points out groups of people transferred from their
resident motherlands during migration, immigration, or banishment as a result
of colonial expansion, imperialism, employment, trade, superior prospect,
globalization etc. The causes of migration may be intentional or unintentional.
There are so many causes as such which are responsible for the diaspora such as
business and trade etc. As the whole world has become a global village due to
the modern scientific technologies and the whole earth has become the yard for
man.
[i]
David C. L. Lim. The Infinite Longing for Home: Desire and
the Nation in Selected Writings of Ben Okri and K.S. Maniam. Amsterdam:
Rodopi, 2004. 86.
[ii]
William, Safran. Diasporas in modern societies; myths of
homeland and return. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1991. 83-99.
[iii]
Homi, Bhabha. Location of Culture. London: Routledge,
1994. 74.
