Signs Of Belongingness and Nostalgia in K.S.Maniam’s The Return

Abstract

After the inception of postcolonial studies, the issue of migration and dislocation, place and displacement remain a major paradigm of postcolonial concern and critique. The history of migration, displacement and relocation has made the process of cultural translocation, a complex form of significance. Malaysia is a land of multicultural and multi-ethnic society in which the national and ethnic identities are very critical and widely disputed issues. Immigrants in Malaysia, have a sense of displacement and identity crisis. Their identities are no more based on their own culture but become hybrid. Their displacement creates a sense of in-betweeness in search of self. K.S. Maniam, one of the greatest writers in of Malaysia, has widely addressed the issues in his literary productions. This paper intends to examine the dilemma, dislocation, nostalgia and the crisis of identity formation of the immigrant Indian community in Bedong, Malaysia. Maniam’s autobiographical novel, The Return, is about a South Indian family that is displaced in an alien land, British Malaya. The protagonist, young Ravi, the third generation immigrant to Malaysia, suffers for his belonging. He finds himself in state of in- between space and his trishanku experience of being neither in India nor in Malaysia which is at the very centre of diasporic trauma. His
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memory of the first and the second generation immigrants drags his identity formation into a critical phase. My purpose is to examine their struggle for assimilation and adaptation to the new land and new identity. It also explores the protagonist’s identity conflicts and his endeavor to escape from his Indian culture and how the protagonist’s English education helps him to construct his identity and how his identity formation overcomes his Indian belongingness.