Abstract
On 30 June 1985, an Air India flight crashed near the Irish coast in which all the passengers and crew numbering 129 perished. This paper works with the role of the hostland vis–à–vis homeland in cases of crisis, especially one related to terror, because the planning of many militant and terror attacks often takes place outside the homeland in diasporic communities where the militants seek a footing. Who suffers, who helps and who mourns—are questions that need to be addressed. Furthermore what roles do protection, hospitality and shared grief play in imparting to the diaspora a sense of belonging to a social group across their own community, help in creating a sense of belonging and develop a feeling of oneness with the host nation? The question that still remains unanswered is where does the responsibility lie—the homeland which is the source of militancy or the hostland that does not restrict terrorist activities? The main text is an account of the histories of its making—the planning, the lax security checks, the actual crash, the salvage operation, the grief and the lingering void in personal lives put together by Blaise and Mukherjee in The Sorrow and the Terror. The account demands a contrapuntal reading as many forces come together and at least three countries are closely involved in the narrative. Any disaster no matter of what kind demands a crossing of religious and racial barriers and prioritization of human concern above politics. As terrorism is a common threat, its generation and control become international responsibilities.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
In ‘The Management of Grief’, Mrs Bhave is at the centre, a bereaved mother and wife. It is her whole relationship with the counsellor, Judith Templeton, who is appointed to help her. Judith’s interaction with Mrs Bhave is an effort to puncture her silence and understand her cultural attitudes, and together they share memories, hopes and dreams of the dead, and the blanket of loneliness gives way to communication. See The Middleman and Other Stories (New Delhi: Prentice Hall, India Private Limited, 1990).
- 2.
Blaise and Mukerjee, The Sorrow and the Terror (London: Penguin Books, 1987).
- 3.
Refer Timothy Brennan who, in his essay, offers a complex analysis of the concept of nationalism. Locating it within power on the one hand and powerlessness on the other, he comments that while in the first, it led to hegemonic control over others, and in the second, it was a reclaiming of a collectivity, lost earlier by conceding to the terms of the former rulers. Timothy Brennan. ‘The national longing for form’. Nation and Narration. Ed. Homi Bhabha (London and New York. Routledge, 1990). 44–70, 57–58.
- 4.
In fact, Jasmine the protagonist of the novel Jasmine (New York: Grove Press, 1989) goes through several transformations and gradually the past, her cultural codes and her values all dissolve through this process. Some of the passages are too melodramatic to be real as they frame murders and rapes and women being depicted hanging out their tongues like the blood-soaked one of the Goddess Kali.
- 5.
See The Sorrow and the Terror, 193 when the writers refer to a speech titled ‘Operation Balkanisation of India’ (included in The Agony of Punjab and credited as a reprint from ‘the leftist Link magazine’. The speech had apparently been delivered before 1300 delegates at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, on 27 February 1982, before the convention of the Conservative Political Action Conference and ascribed to the then U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. Though, it gave all internal evidence of Kirkpatrick’s style, careful research, revealed that the speech had been ‘concocted in Moscow, and leaked to an Indian Communist paper’ to be further disseminated (193–194).
- 6.
Obviously sympathetic, it follows the biographies of the leaders. Manraj Grewal’s book, Dreams After Darkness A Search for Life Ordinary under the Shadow of 1984 (New Delhi: Rupa, 2004). See also. Ranbir Singh Sandhu, ‘Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwala: Life, Mission and Martyrdom’. (internet reference http://www.khalistan.net/sjs_bhindranwala.html. accessesd 25/1/2009.) Singh looks more closely at the speeches, events, action and counter-action. He also analyses the role of both the state and the central governments.
- 7.
Amitav Ghosh locates the aftermath of Mrs Gandhi’s death in his personal experience of being in Delhi at the time and comments that when the state did not act, right-thinking people acted. They took out a march in defiance of the attacking crowds, pointing to this collective response necessary to living together in a multiethnic and multireligious society. These protests, Ghosh writes, ‘are the weapons with which society asserts itself against a state that runs criminally amok, as this one did in Delhi in November, 1984’ (59). See ‘The Ghosts of Mrs Gandhi’, The Imam and the Indian: Prose Pieces (Delhi: Ravi Dayal Publisher and Permanent Black, 2002) 46–63. The same volume also has an essay on ‘Diaspora in Indian Culture’ and ‘The Fundamentalist Challenge’, which dwell on the political environment.
- 8.
Anita Rau Badami, Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? (New Delhi: Viking/Penguin, 2006).
- 9.
Chelva Kanaganayakam, ‘Writing Beyond Race: The Politics of Otherness’, The Toronto Review Contemporary Writing Abroad: Race and Writing. Vol.12, No.3. 7–17.
- 10.
Himani Bannerjee, The Dark Side of the Nation: Essays on Multiculturalism in Canada. (Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press Inc., 2000).
- 11.
Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada (Penguin: 1987).
- 12.
Bose’s film works through the life of a young child orphaned in the Delhi riots and her gradual unravelling of her memories and the trauma experienced at that time through direct confrontation with the memories of the guilty … Amu. Director/Writer Shonali Bose; Performers: Konkana Sen Sharma, Ankur Khanna, Brinda Karat, 2005.
- 13.
Gulzar’s film Maachis (also scripted as a novel), works through two Sikh families in rural Punjab, pushed into fear, terrorism and retaliation through police brutality. Once branded as terrorist, there is no coming back. The only viable option is death, in or outside prison, almost always self-inflicted. Maachis: Director/Writer: Gulzar, Performers: Om Puri, Tabu, Chandrachud Singh, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Jimmy Shergill, 1996.
- 14.
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 1961, translated by Constance Farrington (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967, 1976).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Jain, J. (2017). Mid-Air Tragedy. In: The Diaspora Writes Home. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4846-3_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4846-3_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-10-4845-6
Online ISBN: 978-981-10-4846-3
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)