AustLit

I am honoured that Professor Neelima Kanwar invited me to write a brief 'Foreword' to this new, exciting collection of essays on Australian literature by Australian and Indian critics. There is by now a long-standing , fine tradition of Indian engagement with Australian literature. One of my own earliest published essays appeared in the The Literary Criterion , edited in Mysore by one of the founding figures in this tradition, C. D. Narasimhaiah, a Special Australian Literature Number from 1980 (Vol. XV, nos 3 & 4). This collection of essays was itself a follow-up to an earlier special number on Australian literature published in the Literary Criterion in 1964 and released in Australia by the Jacaranda Press in 1965. Since that time many more Indian writers and critics have engaged with Australian literature, while a smaller number of Australian critics such as Paul Sharrad and Bill Ashcroft have maintained an ongoing interest in Australian-Indian critical perspectives over several decades. Collaborations such as the present volume have brought a new richness and diversity to 'Indo-Australian Perspectives'.' (Introduction)

'Contemporary Australia, a pluralistic society majorly comprises of diverse, Indigenous/Aboriginal people, people from British colonial past and an extensive diaspora from varied countries and cultures. These three give Australia a distinct flavor of being multi- ethnic and multi-cultural nation, a nation which is a home to many- a place to live and belong. However, this ironically has contradictory perceptions as well. The Aboriginal, the Fourth world people, have for long felt estranged/ homeless in their own land. They question the very being of being an Australian; the white/British descendants experience a new outlook amidst new cultural contents and diaspora with their tales of departure and arrival ponder over Who am I? Where am I? To whom and where I belong to? These interrogations reflective of socio-political encounter amongst cross-cultural and inter cultural domains also pose strong existential queries around ethical framework. Australian society today, hence, stands at a threshold negotiating its identity as a nation - nation at present occupied with its own past more than ever before so as to come as its own.' (Introduction)

In this paper, Richard Nile attempts to 'locate Flesh in Armour within the context of a different taboo subject - the treatment of the dead in war.'

'In the Beginning

I am an emigrant from Britain and immigrant to Australia. My father was born in Argentina to British parents, my mother in England. Until university I recall shuttling between at least sixteen places of residence in twelve cities in five countries, due to the vagaries of my parents' work, divorce and our subsequently reconfigured family life I have a strong sense that 'belonging' can be made as well as inherited; that I belong where I am at any given moment, as much as where I come from originally. ' (Introduction)

'This paper demonstrates how the pedagogic process of teaching and learning the works of Judith Wright (with two select poems as samples) in a post-graduate English literature classroom in India, can broaden the learners' understanding of literature...' (57)

'The post-war Australian literature offers multitude in terms of ethnicity. The talk of Aborigines, the stories of the whites, the psychological state of a migrant mind, the idea of home, the civilization and savagery, superiority and inferiority, rationality and sensuality, these all share the pages of Australian literature…' (75)

'Australia is a multicultural nation, having different ethnic groups and communities with different origins, languages and traditions. The process of immigration to Australia began with colonialism and later different immigration policies continued it. It began around eighteen hundred when settlers from the United Kingdom including Ireland came to Australia, as it is put in some of the records, 'A number of European explorers sailed the coast of Australia, then known as New Holland, in the seventeenth century. However, it was not until 1770 that captain James Cook charted the east coast and claimed it for Britain. The new outpost was put to use as  penal colony transportation ended in 1868,,,' (Australian history of multiculturalism web) (93)

This paper attempts to create a dialogue 'between the local and the cross-cultural aspects of marginality and may help evolve pedagogical methods to engage with, if not emancipate, the underprivileged in the classroom'. (114)

'This paper is an analysis of the characters in Patrick Whites' A Fringe of Leaves. Bansal states : 

'This paper seeks to unravel Ennen's consistent formulation and reformulation of her identities from her childhood to her stay with the Aboriginals and later with Jack Chance, an escaped convict. It further shows how the novelist's concern with history is not fetishized or partisan but an impartial one where a character plunges into both the worlds and leaves it to the readers to find out which one is more humane. It would further explore the issues of belongingness and nostalgia in terms of Ellen Roxburgh's shifts in locale.' (130)

In this paper, Ramanuj Konar explores the portrayal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australian children's literature.

Priyanka Shivadas explores 'how cultural memory is constructed or recalled in literary narratives fro a people such as the Noongar who were historically uprooted from their past.' (166)

'Indigenous literature of Australia initially descended from the folklore, which was transmitted in the form of storytelling. This storytelling tradition is significant in the lives of Aboriginal people. Hence, it was considered essential by the elders of the Aboriginal communities to pass on this knowledge to their next generation. Because of various reasons a lot of stories were forgotten. There's been a need for restoring the lost tradition and indigenous people took the initiation towards raising awareness concerning the preservation of their cultural heritage.' (180)

'This paper studies the relationship between Aboriginals and settlers in two novels by Aboriginal writers - That Deadman Dance (2010) by Kim Scott and Carpentaria (2006) by Alexis Wright and one by the British writer Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines (1987) to reveal how the geopolitics of cultural location of the author influences issues of representation and perspectivism in these novels...' (201-202)

'In Diaspora literature, most 'homes' are constructed through the memories of the migrants - the idea of the belonging to someplace stable. In relation to this, Manfred Jurgensen (1986) has argued that ethnic writers are ‘monocultural writers whose creative imagination remains restricted to a native culture (home) in exile...’ 

'As an immigrant woman who has lived in Australia for more than 30 years, I am interested in the stories women tell of their experiences of living in a 'safe' country. As a writer, I am intrigued by the response of 'women like me' to fictional representations of our 'selves' and our bi cultural 'belongings. Using the specific responses of a reading group comprised of Indian and Iranian women, this paper shows that the boundaries between analytic and reflexive research are permeable and the researcher also becomes implicated in her own research.' (244)

'Today, the ethnic minority and integration discourse of the 1980s and earlier, has been replaced by the diaspora dialogue. This has led to a significant paradigm shift in all facets of studies connected with communities who have left their native countries ans settled in new ones. Australia, with its multiethnic population has its own share of narratives of estrangement and belonging.' (277)