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Identity Politics of South Asian Enclaves
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ethnicity does not rule everything in an ethnic enclave, and that, in
forming their group identity, the desi youth may be as much
influenced by their gender perspective as by their cultural
traditions.
If, as Abrahamson argues, “[t]he existence of a subculture
generally presupposes an emotional attachment to a group” (2006:
4), the sense of belonging to different subcultural groups portrayed
in
Londonstani
defines South Asian diasporic identity in terms of
its internal diversity in an enclave, rather than in opposition to the
white British society, or in the dichotomy between the perpetrator
and the victim. Moreover, through the example of Jas, the novel
shows that “races integrate, not just over time, but as the
subculture matures”
(Graham, 2008a).
Thus, set in the ethnic
enclave in Hounslow, where desis interact mostly, but not simply,
with desis, the novel, instead of representing a monolithic ethnic
community, brings to the fore the intergenerational, religious, and
gender differences of the desis, henceforth highlighting the
inadequacy of ethnicity as the basis of multicultural policies. This
also explains very well the aforementioned issue of “inauthenticity”
as a central theme of the novel. In
Londonstani
, inauthenticity not
only refers to the faked or performed gangster identity of the desi
rudeboys, who pretend to live in a ghetto, but, more importantly,
it underlines the fact that there is no authentic or essentialist South
Asian or desi identity.
The multiple statuses with which the desis in the novel
identify themselves can also find evidence in their use of patois,
which furthermore entails an analysis of the way the organization
and the nature of the enclave have generally changed with respect
to transnationalism in an age of globalization. This also serves as a
good example to illustrate that, “to be successful in an era of
globalisation and super diversity,” interculturalism would also have
to recognize “the dynamic nature of difference and that it includes
wider geo-political and international components” (Cantle, 2012:
168). In the novel, except for Jas, who, in his inner thoughts, or at