Memories and Apprehensions

The term ‘diaspora’ at its inception was typically used for involuntarily displaced or exiled populations connected through their desire to reclaim/return to the homeland (for example, the Jewish, Greek and Armenian histories of displacement). With time the term has become unhinged from its past definitional prerogatives and, today, it is used to signal any ‘deterritorialized’ or ‘transnational’ group of migrants (Vertovec, 1999; Brubaker, 2005). Diasporic belonging(s) that constitute trajectories of assimilation into host societies and connectedness to the homeland – both real and imagined ² – are pertinent topics of interest. By examining diasporic lives through the lens of intersectionality, scholars have shown that diasporas are neither homogeneous nor monolithic and membership in diasporic spaces is not unconditional – instead, hidden in its belly are contentious and multilayered politics of inclusion and exclusion that often re-inscribe conservative nationalist hegemonies of race, class, religion, gender and sexuality. Queer South Asian experiences in the U.S. are testimonies to that exclusion and their activism is a defiance of that conservatism (Kukke & Shah, 2000; Gopinath, 2005; Das Gupta, 2006; Adur & Purkayastha, 2013).