Global Journal of English Language and Literature

38

Identity in a ‘liminal’ space in M. G. Vassanji’s No New Land Arup Chandra Das & Dr. Smriti Singh

Abstract The prime focus of this paper is the quest for identity and the search for self that the protagonists in Vassanji’s novel ‘No New Land’ (1991) experience living in a postcolonial society. The writer’s concern is not new here. In most of his novels, he portrays the sufferings and hardships that the characters go through living in a society or ‘Third Space’ in Bhabha’s term where two or more cultures meet. It is a crucial space of pain and ambiguity. The protagonists lose their sense of self coming in touch with the two worlds of the old and the new. This happens only because of their frequent migration and immigration from one country to other. They can neither retain their old identity nor do they adapt to the new situations. The paper centres mainly on the characters in ‘No New Land’ who suffer from the search for identity in a ‘liminal space’ and the sense of nostalgia because of their migration from the colonized state of East Africa to Canada.

About the Author(s): Arup Chandra Das is Research Scholar at IIT Patna, India and Dr. Smriti Singh is Assistant Professor at IIT Patna, India. E-mail: [email protected].

I

ntroduction M. G. Vassanji as a diasporic writer writes about the migration and immigration that take place in the African nations like Kenya, Tanzania etc. The term

‘diaspora’ has been derived from the Greek word ‘diaspeirein’ meaning ‘to spread out’ while ‘dia’ means ‘apart’ and ‘speirein’ means ‘to scatter’. In a broader term it indicates the dispersion and scattering of people from the origin or the original homeland. It is the “movement or migration of a group of people, such as those sharing a national and/or ethnic identity, away from an established or ancestral homeland” (Narayanrao, 2011). Diaspora leads the individual identity to get into contact with various other identities of various other groups and communities in the new lands. It allows people to ‘compose and decompose their identities’ (Bauman, 2004). Giving birth to the ‘crisis of belonging’, diasporic movement of man “leads to some sort of pluralization of identities” (Bauman, 2004). People with multiple identities can have ‘various collective experiences and voices which can be opposed, see

Global Journal of English Language and Literature

April 2013. Volume 1. Issue 2. Website: https://sites.google.com/site/globaljournalofell/

ISSN 2320-4397

39 contradictory’ (Hermans, 2001). Then the individual is seen torn apart between the binary oppositions of white/black, good/bad, superior/ inferior, coloniser/ colonized, dominant/ dominated, etc. Vassanji’s purpose of writing about diaspora is mainly the deconstruction of the basic duality between the colonizer and the colonized, the dominant and the dominated. Peter Simatei divides the East African diaspora into two: the old diaspora constituted in the late 19th century as a result of the movement of indentured labourers to places such as Trinidad, Fizi, south Africa and Mauritius and new diaspora which is basically ‘a post-war formation constituted by the crossing of the descendants of the first diaspora into the metropolitan centers of the West’ (Mishra 1996). Vassanji in his works portrays old diaspora reflecting a community life whose in-between existence gives birth to the sense of the crisis of identity which is neither of the colonizer nor the colonized. ‘Identity never became a problem, it started as a problem’ (Bauman, 2004). Identity is the loudest talk in town, the burning issue on everybody’s mind and tongue’ (Bauman, 2004). The problem of identity has its root basically in people’s too much of migration and immigration and their getting into contact with various people of various different backgrounds and voices. It results in the emergence of different facets and arenas of identities. Multiple identities are often confusing and problematic as the consequences may be strong “conflicts and barbarities (Sen, 2006). They may be “stereotyping, humiliating, dehumanizing, stigmatizing identities” (Bauman, 2004). In such a situation a man cannot have a stable identity. He may take refuge to his past memory and try to find out some roots of his being. Identity crisis is thus a continuous form of alienation and disorientation. It is “never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation” (Hall, 1990). In the process of quest man often fails to distinguish between the new and the old, the present and the past. It results in the ‘displacement from the familiar systems of knowledge’ (Jayaraman, 2011) and thereby triggers in the emergence of



ISSN 2320-4397

40 transnational interactive spaces. ‘These spaces, irrespective of whether voluntarily or forcibly occupied, are in-between spaces that are narrowly defined by ideologies unique to these spaces. The exclusivity of these spaces opens them up to the danger of liminality’ (Jayaraman, 2011). The stage of ambiguity and uncertainty in positioning poses a sense of getting lost as it reveals possibilities of closing a door and opening another one. It gives the sense that the individual positions himself/herself in between two stages, one which he/she has left behind and the other in which he/she is going to enter. Thus ‘liminality is a space of transformation between phases of separation and reincorporation’ (Turner, 1967). ‘Liminal’ space is a threshold or a transitory in-between space characterized by ambiguity, hybridity and temporal border. Hybridity is a form of liminal or in-between space, where the ‘cutting edge of translation and negotiation’ (Bhabha 1996) occurs which he terms the third space. ‘The third space is a mode of articulation, a way of describing a productive, and not merely reflective, space that engenders new possibility’ (Meredith, 1998). It is an ‘interruptive, interrogative, and enunciative’ (Bhabha 1994) space of new forms of cultural meaning and production blurring the limitations of existing boundaries and calling into question established categorisations of culture and identity. According to Bhabha, this hybrid third space is an ambivalent site where cultural meaning and representation have no ‘primordial unity or fixity’ (Bhabha, 1994). Amin Malak (1993) states: “anyone who studies the works of Canadian writers whose roots are in the Third World- Austin Clarke, Michael Ondaatje, Neil Bissoondath, M.G. Vassanji- would notice a striking pre-occupation with the shifting boundaries of “in-between-ness” articulating in the process a complex phenomenon that I wish to call “ambivalent affiliations”. “Our path was the middle one, between the two? Our path was spiritual; outward forms of prayers and rituals didn’t matter” (The Assassin’s Song, 309) - this exemplifies Vassanji’s sole intention to situate his characters in the in-between zone or ambiguous space. In No New



ISSN 2320-4397

41 Land he sets his characters in such a liminal or hybrid space where they gather experiences from different cultures, sects, castes, creeds etc. Within such social flux, their identity is discussed in terms of ‘hybridity, double consciousness and subalternity’ (Moreiras 1999). They suffer from nostalgia in a multicultural space that Canada is. The novel ‘accommodates the doubly immigrated Indians who are undergoing ‘international diaspora’ and depicts Canada as a ‘Shangri-la for international refugees’ (Kavitha, 2012). Here the identity of the Lalanis has changed from Indianness to Africanness which again is transformed by the label of “Canadianness”. The title of the novel specifies the fact that Canada is not a new land. The land where Nurdin and his friends have settled is not new but it unearths many other layers of migrations, the English, French, Portuguese and Italians and Africans at last. The Shamsi community that Nurdin represents is doubly migrated to Canada; they represent the ‘Indian community immigrated to Africa during the colonial regime and in the postcolonial time transplanted in Canada’ (Kavitha, 2012). The reasons for their abandonment of African life may be political- ‘General Idi Amin, who had overthrown an elected government, had a dream. In this dream, Allah told him that the Asians, exploiters who did not want to integrate with the Africans, had to go’ (Vassanji, 25). As the author argues “Canada was open and, for the rich, Americans too” (25). In 1906, Lalani arrives from Gujarat and joined as an apprentice to an Indian firm. Hard work leads him to set up his own shop like other Asians who emigrated under the ascendency of the British. Being denied of economic sustenance in Tanganyika like other Asians the Lalanis embark on their navigation. ‘He (Nurdin) accepts the new cultural situations’ (Indira Bhatt, 1995), though some of his characteristics and traits remain unchanged and unassimilated and so he suffers from nostalgia in the changed situation. Crisis of Identity



ISSN 2320-4397

42 As has been defined by the Free Dictionary, identity crisis is a ‘psycho-social state or condition of disorientation and role confusion occurring especially in adolescents as a result of conflicting internal and external experiences, pressures, and expectations and often producing acute anxiety’. It is a concept with roots in psychoanalysis, psychology and sociology and is now ‘the most widely used concept these days in the social sciences and humanities’ (Wrong, 2000). According to Erikson (1968), ‘an identity crisis is a time of intensive analysis and exploration of different ways of looking at oneself’. Appiah and Gates (1995) address that identity is formed out of the ‘multiple intersections of race, class, and gender [with] post-colonialism, nationalism, and ethnicity’. The characters in the novel are from different class and gender and they are led by their painstaking search for job and social locus (status). A brief storyline will clarify the essence of the novel. Nurdin Lalani, an East African of Indian origin leaves Africa during African nationalization and immigrates to Canada with Zera, his wife and Hanif and Fatima, their two children. They come to Toronto suburb of Don Mills where they settle. However, life in Toronto becomes not so worth-living for them. Though Zera gets job immediately and the children easily adjust to the new situations, Nurdin finds himself jobless and rootless. He finds that the old world and its values still pursue him. It seems to him awkward to find himself fed up by his wife’s earnings. At a downtown hospital, he is accused of sexually assaulting a girl. He himself questions his purity. Ultimately he establishes friendship with Sushila who offers him freedom from past, routined marriage and trials of children. Thus, Lalani lives his life in in-between space merging the traditional and the modern, the old and the new, the domestic and the foreign. ‘Haji Lalani went to Tanganyika as a young man of sixteen in 1906 at the time when the German government there was recruiting Britain’s Indian subjects to help build the German empire in Africa’(12). ‘Young Haji



ISSN 2320-4397

43 apprenticed at an eminent Indian firm in the old slave capital of Bagamoyo’ (12). Lalani attempts to land in the United Kingdom and was refused by the immigration officials. He was separately interviewed of his whereabouts and proper footing, “why have you come?” “Do you know anyone here?” “Do you have a permanent address in East Africa?” (34). When Nurdin is accused of sexually assaulting the white Portuguese patient in the hospital he works in, he feels guilty for his wrong-doing and therefore he oscillates between two conflicting worlds- the old and the new, the past and the present, the dominated and the dominant, the black and the white, the colonized and the coloniser. He is caught between the “old days of colonization and the new age of globalization” (Inheritance of Loss, 285). Lalani sometimes got angry at the behaviour the Englishmen or Britishers show to him as he sobs- “the bastards” (34). He tried to find a job for his own ‘but try as he might, Nurdin Lalani could not find a job’ (Vassanji). This is only because he has no “Canadian experience”, in spite of having sold shoes in his country for eight years. Nurdin argues- “I am a salesman, I was a salesman. Just give me a chance. Why don’t they understand we can do the job. ‘Canadian experience’ is the trump they always call, against which you have to answer” (49). His wife Zera while working as a receptionist to a Chinese doctor is soon dismissed because she does not know well-pronounced English- “But then, after a few months, she has been dismissed. ‘Your English’ the doctor had said vaguely” (66). However Lalani is successful in gathering other Asian-African friends in his own creed. Jamal, the lawyer was ‘part Persian and dreamt of a new Africa’ (72). For him to get a job you have to ‘oil the hands of the supervisor’ (88). Jamal is a foil to Nanji’s high seriousness. Nanji is a part-time university professor who had a girlfriend in New York but ultimately suffers complete loneliness. He was serious about Racism; the word kept intruding into his mind. “The tragic-comic story of the Lalanis is complemented by the introspections and insights of their contemplative friend Nanji, who lives his own complex, private drama concerning frustrated love, intimidating racism, and an



ISSN 2320-4397

44 inordinate preoccupation with existentialist angst” (Malak, 1993). He drew attention to Esmail, the neighbour of the Lalani family attacked by white youths and being prey to racial violence. His African outfit is mistaken by them and he is thought to be a Pakistani. ‘The three louts had come up behind Esmail and began their abuse. “Paki” one of them shouted joyfully. Esmail turned towards them, looking frieghtened. “What do you have there, Paki? Hey, hey? Paki-paki-paki....’ (95). East Africans are badly treated as Pakis, those coming from Pakistan. Nanji has migrated by chance to Toronto and is not even aware of his new status ‘he had come to Toronto almost by chance. He had obtained his immigrant visa on a trip to Vancouver, automatically, as a citizen of a Commonwealth country, and had not been aware of his new status until Canada was in the news and someone asked him to check’ (101). Romesh is also an emigrant from other parts of Africa and he and Sushila stand for the Hindu community based in Toronto. Vassanji tackles the "predicament of in-between societies" (qtd. in Making a Difference 355) and fictionally presents a small immigrant community living in Don Mills, a suburb in Toronto and provides them a specific ‘South Asian African’ identity. The term ‘Asian African’ is less favoured in comparison to ‘South African Indian’ while Pallavi Rastogi gives the term ‘Afrindian’ to signify that “Indianness exists in South Africa in an Africanized state” (Rastogi18). About the identity of the inhabitants of Rosecliffe Park, the novelist argues ‘it seemed that they were being forced into an identity they didn’t care for, by the media and public, and not by these Paki Asians who meant well but couldn’t keep their distance’ (109). They have formed an assumed homogeneous community living together ‘none of them seemed to realise or care, that Esmail belonged to them, their particular East African Asian Shamsi community’ (109). They have emotional attachment with Esmail as they chant ‘Esmail we are with you, no to apartheid, let my people come’ (110). Esmail is such a



ISSN 2320-4397

45 migrant who even erases his old identity and once going to Dar he never came back only to maintain that he was still a Canadian citizen’. “There must be something in the Canadian air that changes us (them)...” (136). However, Nanji, Jamal and other residents of Sixty-Nine suffer from inferiority-complex like Jemubhai Patel in Desai’s Inheritance of Loss (2006) as they cannot adapt to the high culture of the Canadians. ‘...they could not relate to, all the accommodation- including the speech and jokes- being made for those others (the “Canadians”) and not for them. They had been made to feel inferior’ (159).They even attempt to express their ‘foreignness’ through their ‘partial presence’ (Bhabha 88) by imitating the Canadian dressing pattern and try to escape from their sense of inferiority. According to Bhabha (1994), the influence of multiple cultures brings in their mind ‘a kind of tension between their identity stasis and the demand for its change and mimicry makes a compromise to the tension’. Ashcroft (2002) claims, “Mimicry of the center is the periphery to immerse themselves in the imported culture, denying their origins in attempt to become more English than the English”. The beautiful quality of the Canadian clothes reflects better lifestyle and the immigrants being tempted by the possibility of rebirth through the imitation of foreign clothing decide to leave Dar. They target the new Canadians with ‘tall ladies in fur, men in tweeds and leather’ (52). Franz Fanon in his book, Black Skins, White Mask (1952) terms this complex as “epidermal schema” by which the colonized ones are subjugated. In the ‘little Paki shitty-stan’ (167), Fatima sternly denies her upbringing and family and wears fashionable dresses. Nanji was ‘under the impression that her wearing dresses now and more fashionable clothes meant she no longer thought much of him’ (168). Like Jemubhai in Inheritance of Loss (2006) who was ashamed of his epidermal difference from the white men and lost his self respect failing to conceal his skin beneath white powder, Roshan in No New Land also endeavours to hide her



ISSN 2320-4397

46 darker complexions. She uses huge make up and creams and straightens her wavy hair. She wears ‘garish clothes’ ‘perhaps to deflect attention from her face’ (37). She was ashamed being conscious of her identity- ‘she had been their father’s child by a previous mother, rarely mentioned but a black woman, as everyone guessed’ (37). In fact, ‘one of the major hurdles that East African Asians were to face was the notion of Africanness being equated with blackness and opposed to whiteness. Being African was not being white, in which case brown Africans were forced into a shady, borderline zone from which they had to contend with establishing their cultural credentials, by both distancing themselves from the African labourer and by not identifying too closely with the white ruling elite, as they were themselves colonized peoples’ (Hand, 2011). In this way the protagonists here try their best to court their novel identity but fail to fully authenticate themselves as Canadians. There still remains a long gap between their traditional upbringing and Canadian identity. Thus the characters are seen to be torn apart between the two poles of their adaptation to a great extent to the changed situations and their past nostalgia that drags them back. They lull the thoughts of ‘the land of their birth which they had left a long time ago, to which even the longing to return had been muted, although memories still persisted’ (10). Zera does not forget to maintain the traditions at home and never imitates the Canadian culture or dressing style like other Canadian newcomers. Lalani still bears in mind an Indian saying “Eat pig and become a pig” (128). Seeing an Indian woman in green sari he ‘naturally felt curious and empathized’ (150). Sushila’s story from her marriage to her husband’s death is full of misery and empathy because of her migration and maladjustment in the colonized aura. ‘She married to the son of a Dar cobbler and went to England where her husband refused to adjust, however her husband died and she refused to go back to Dar or India’. In fact, the immigrants within a certain period of time get adapted to the high culture of the coloniser while getting



ISSN 2320-4397

47 confused by the question of ‘us’ and ‘them’ and being pressurized to get blended into the mainstream culture. Jamal, the lawyer attracted more and more migrants after getting success as a lawyer. There were ‘hordes of people seeking immigration advice, trying to bring families into Canada’ (164). He has his office in Lisbon and he will fly to Singapore. ‘There’s minority Muslim community there that wants to emigrate’ (205). Thus the characters within a certain period of time try to adjust to the troubles and discrepancies in the new land and achieve proper footing in the changed situation. The women characters depicted in the novel get a proper footing in the midst of the colonized Asian African community. In most of his novels, Vassanji touches upon the theme of patriarchy and the discourse of the feminine and the masculine. Here the traditional scene of a patriarchal society is slightly altered by the novelist. Nurdin, the jobless migrant loses his masculine pre-eminence in the household as his wife is the sole breadwinner. “Unlike in Dar es Saalam, the immigrant Indian women in Canada stand a better chance than men in finding stable employment, which topples the gender system to which Nurdin has become accustomed” (Ojwang, 2011). He even desires to get out of the obligations of fatherhood and marriage. Being falsely accused of having sexual assault against a European migrant woman, Lalani faced his near social death. He feels guilty for his wrong-doing and bestial traits like cruelty, promiscuity and godlessness and this accumulates to his tragic situation. Vassanji in one of his interviews confesses: “In No New Land the point is not only whether Nurdin touched the woman inappropriately or not, it is also what was in his mind, and the fact that he was torn between duty to his wife and children and where he came from, the community establishment that he was a part of, and a real possibility for personal liberation.”(Bower et al, 2011). Conclusion



ISSN 2320-4397

48 Vassanji writes about the frequent oscillation, ‘liminal’ position or the ‘in-between’ space of his characters setting them in a crucial and even controversial situation where they for the favour of getting something, lose something else. They long for and lose their nostalgic past to a great extent in their endeavour to adjust to the new land. The ambivalent identity that is portrayed through the lives of the protagonists is quite similar to the identity of the novelist. The theories of ‘diaspora’, ‘ambivalence’, ‘in-between’ space, ‘liminality’ may be applied to the personal life of the writer. He was born in Kenya, brought up in Tanzania and studied in the United States before coming to Canada to settle there. He himself is a migrant and the feeling of marginality and alienation is injected by him in his characters. Thus there is a superb blending of the personal and the impersonal, the inner and the outer, the local and the national, the domestic and the foreign, the local and the global and this is a major discourse in diasporic writings. References Appiah, K. and Gates Jr., H. (eds). Identities. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin eds. The Empire Writes Back. New York: Routledge, 2002. Bauman, Z. Identity, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004

Bhabha, H.K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994 (Press, 1967) 94. Bhatt, Indira. No New Land: An Emigrant’s “M. G. Vassanji’s Journey through Experience to Self - Awareness” Canadian Literature Today. R. K. Dhawan (Ed.) New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1995. 72 – 78. Bower Rachel, Osborne D.A & Ross Oliver. An Interview with M G Vassanji. Version of record first published: 03 May 2011 from http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rwas20 Desai, Kiran. The Inheritance of Loss. New Delhi: Penguin, 2006.



ISSN 2320-4397

49 Erikson, E. Identity: Youth and Crisis, New York: Norton, 1968. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981. Print. Hall, Stuart. “Culture, Identity and Diaspora”. Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. Ed. J. Rutherford. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990.222-37. Hand, Felicity. Impossible Burdens: East African Asian Women Memoirs. Research in African Literatures: Indiana University Press, Fall 2011. Volume 42, Number 3 pp. 100116. Hermans, H.J.M “The Dialogical Self: Toward a Theory of Personal and Cultural Positioning”. Culture & Psychology, 2001 7, 243281.

Jayaraman, Uma. John Peter Peterson or Jemubhai Popatlal Patel?: “The Uncanny” Doubleness and “Cracking” of Identity in Kiran Desai’s Inheritance of Loss. Asiatic, June, 2011. Vol 5, no.1. Kavitha, N & Selvam, P. M. G. Vassanji’s No New Land: A Study in Multicultural Aspects The Criterion: An International Journal in English Victor, 2012. Vol. III. Issue. Malak, Amin. "Ambivalent Affiliations and the Postcolonial Condition: The Fiction of M. G. Vassanji." World Literature Today 6 7. 2 (1993): 277-82. Meredith, Paul. Hybridity in the Third Space: Rethinking Bi-cultural Politics in Aotearoa/New Zealand .Paper Presented to Te Oru Rangahau Maori Research and Development Conference 7-9 July. Massey University: University of Waikato, 1998. Mishra, Vijay. New Camps for Old Diasporas Migrancy Border, Interrogating Postcolonialism Text and Context. Shimla: IIAS, 1996. Moreiras, A. ‘Hybridity and Double Consciousness’, Cultural Studies, 1999. 13(3):373–408. Narayanrao, H.L & Vidya, Bharatiya. Impact Narratives in Indian English Diaspora: The



ISSN 2320-4397

50 International Institute for Science, Technology and Education (IISTE), Journal of Education and Practice Vol 2, No 2, 2011. Ojwang, Dan. Eat pig and become a beast: Food, Drink and Diaspora in East African Indian Writing. Research in African Literatures: Indiana University Press, Fall 2011. Volume 42, Number 3, pp. 68-87. Peter, Simatei. Diasporic Memories and National Histories in East African Asian writing. Research in African Literatures: Indiana University Press, Fall, 2011. Volume 42, Number 3, pp. 56-67. Rastogi, Pallavi. Afrindian Fictions: Diaspora, Race, and National Desire in South Africa. Columbus: Ohio UP, 2008. Print. Sen, Amartya. Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. All rights reserved. Turner, Victor. “Betwixt and Between: Liminal Period” in The Forest of Symbols. Ithaca: Cornell University, 1967. Vassanji, M.G. The Assassin’s Song. New Delhi: Penguin, 2007. Print. Wrong, D. ‘Adversarial Identities and Multiculturalism. Society, 2000.



ISSN 2320-4397

The author has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. All in-text references underlined in blue are linked to publications on ResearchGate.