From Nadi to New Delhi: A Reading of Satendra Nandan's Recollections of India

Abstract

Indian diasporic literature is a remarkably rich and prominent branch of Indian literature. If we speak specifically of Indian English literature, a very large number of its writers are primarily diasporic Indians for whom writing serves as a medium to revisit India and to reclaim their Indian roots. While the excellent quality and remarkable range of literature produced by many diasporic Indian writers has been duly acknowledged and appreciated, in India and beyond, there are many more who remain, even today, unheard, uncharted, and unexplored. These are largely writers who do acknowledge their Indian past, and who carry and assert their Indianness, but who do not recognise themselves as Indians, nor do they recognise India as their homeland. For them, the homeland is that island which their grandparents had decided to adopt as a new home for themselves, and as the future homeland for their posterity. It is from within this complex and layered relationship to India, neither the homeland nor entirely foreign, neither fully claimed nor fully relinquished, that their writing emerges. This article addresses this unexplored territory of Indian diasporic literature by focusing on the writings of one of the most prominent Indo-Fijian writers, namely Satendra Nandan. The article is primarily an analysis of Nandan's non-fiction, particularly his autobiography, Requiem for a Rainbow: A Fijian Indian Story (2001), and his collection of political essays, Fiji: A Paradise in Pieces, Writing Ethics-Politics (2000), in which he not only recounts and reflects upon his sojourn in India, but also offers critical and incisive observations on India – its history, culture, society, and contemporary politics – as well as his own evolving understanding of the idea of India itself.