From Subjugation to Emancipation in Select Works of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Abstract

Diaspora is a global phenomenon which denotes the communities of displaced or relocated people who moved from their homelands to new lands for social political or economic reasons Diaspora means to scatter like seeds or dispersion Greek for spread or Galut Hebrew for exile and in the study of cultural movements it refers to a loss of homeland a shifting of population from one locale to another The term diaspora is used to refer to many people or ethnic population forced or induced to leave their traditional ethnic homelands to other parts of the world William Safran applies the term diaspora to expatriate minority communities which have dispersed from an original centre to two or more peripheral or foreign regions who retain their myths about their homeland and feel alienated in the new land Hence the word embodies the notion of a centre a locus and a home from where the dispersion occurs It invokes the images of multiple journeys to find out a secure root elsewhere Other terms used in sim