“And I dance”: An Exposure to a Diverse Racism in “Dancing”, a Short Story by Neil Bissoondath

Abstract

The research paper endeavours to expose an element of diverse racism in “Dancing”, one of the short stories of Digging Up the Mountains, by Neil Bissoondath. This research paper interrogates the notion of racism in the context of diaspora with the help of the views of Bill Ashcroft and his other co-authors, B. Davidson, Paul Gilroy, etc. Neil Bissoondath's writing normally focuses on the lives of immigrants and refugees deracinated by political hostility. Moreover, Bissoondath also investigates the lives of those marginalized communities, alienated by their own culture within their own societies. However, in his story “Dancing”, Bissoondath elaborated the same point to some extent from a diverse perspective. In “Dancing”, Racism is recorded in a slightly strategic manner of the immigrant community, who deliberately manipulates the dominant social community. “Dancing” depicts how racism can be employed to exploit a social system in which tolerance towards other communities is systematized and in which any limit can be crossed and any cost can be paid, even at the cost of humanity, to violate this system. In this story, Bissoondath also narrates against the restrictions of a group or community which prevents the individual from exercising his or her own free will and as per the views of Bissoondath, an essential part of one's free will is the right to change, leaving aside a culture that subjectively not considered to be worthy of clinging to.