Uprootedness And Cosmopolitan Moments In Salman Rushdie’s The Golden House

Abstract

Diaspora refers to the expression of one’s feeling of being an outsider or alien in some other, the feeling which keeps on popping up repeatedly in front of them. The diasporic people were migrants, slaves, transported convicts, labourers etc. The reason behind the chase of the people was colonisation. As a result, the diaspora’s culture contained nothing but what the migrants imagined of their homelands and their feelings of tradition. It is an echo of reminiscence of the movement, the thoughts of their homelands, the sense of tradition and the circumstances. Both cultural fragmentation and ambivalence run a parallel in the diaspora.

Rushdie expresses his dilemma as an immigrant when he says he is an Indian-born who migrated to Pakistan, then to England and settled in New York. This immigration to various places greatly affects his life, which outpours in his works. His works show how he finds himself unable to cope with the alien lands and look for his roots. As an immigrant, Rushdie feels alienated from his country as well as from his religion.

Rushdie is a child of two different cultures and is one of the few Indians to write about the two communities with almost equal affection and understanding. His achievements as a writer, to a large degree, depend on his fictional prose. His fictional prose is significant for Rushdie as a writer and the development of Indian English in general.

Whatever Rushdie feels, he writes. The ideas presented by his characters are his ideas, and the voice of his characters is his voice; for this, Rushdie creates fantastic characters.