Diaspora and Imperialism in Salman Rushidie's The Moor's Last Sigh

Abstract

Salman Rushdie deals with the decolonization of the India subcontinent and the political debacle following in its wake on its wider historical context. He traces the origin of the imperial involvement in India that began centuries ago on its southern coast. Diaspora and imperialism often oppose each other in this book, these issues and their implications sometimes existing in an imbricating correlation. Since diaspora results in the dispersal of large communities, their arrival in a new land is thus an act of necessity than choice. But the sociopolitical reality of that country may render their role as imperialistic, especially if it is that of a compradore, as in the case of the spice traders in Cochin. Sharply divided in their opinions about their functions in the soon-to-be independent India, the da Gamas feel the need to define their identity and swear allegiance either to India or to the departing imperial power Britain. In Fanonian term, Bombay’s invisible workers would be similar to the “lumpenproletariat” of Kenya, the landless peasants and the displaced workers, “the hopeless dregs of humanity, all who turn in circles between suicide and madness.”　 However, though The Moor’s Last Sigh attests to Rushdie’s dark vision of the reality of a postcolonial state, it also suggests a possibility of a better future. Therefore it should not be seen as an expression of absolute despair. The view that emerges of decolonization can be best summed up with Rushdies view on a comment from Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks that he uses and quotes in part himself in his introduction to Imaginary Homelands to underscore the repressive nature of the politics of the eighties, a time when hope of change was not in sight. Therefore, there lies “hope to awaken, [be] renewed and joyful, into a better time.”