Abstract
This article discusses three Malayalam texts written by Gulf-Kerala migrants: V. Musafar Ahammed’s (2014) Kudiyettakkarante Veedu [House of the emigrant], a collection of memoirs; Benyamin’s (2016) Kudiyettam: Pravasathinte Malayalivazhikal [Emigration: Malayali routes of exile], an anthology of essays; and Sam Pynummoodu’s (2016) Kuwait Indian Kudiyetta Charitram: Kuwaitile Indian Pravasavum Malayali Sanidhyavum [A history of Indian emigration into Kuwait: India’s Emigration to and Malayali Presence in Kuwait], a historical work. This essay introduces them as microhistorical writings that attempt to document Kerala’s diasporic history — in particular, the history of the Gulf-Keralan diaspora to which the writers belong. At the micro-level, these diasporic histories are distinguished by their multiplicity, particularity, and dialogic association. Furthermore, this essay maintains that the writings acknowledge the agential force of the migrant subject, thereby reinforcing the primacy of the migrant writer and migrant protagonists. In the course of translating subjective experiences into vivid moments of articulation, migrant memory summons a heterogeneous narrative fabric that is characterized by epistemic disjunctures and methodological shifts. Consequently, these texts present an alternative to the canonical literature (as manifested within the ambit of state and academic engagements) on Gulf-Kerala migration, thereby reinventing the dominant historical discourse and recontextualizing history in the private realm of embodied narratives.
Writers of fiction can resort to plural and idiosyncratic modes of composition to “tell” the history of a people without needing to determine which is the most standard or exact form of articulation. This paper examines three Malayalam texts written on the history of migration from Kerala to the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC): V. Musafar Ahammed’s (2014) Kudiyettakkarante Veedu [House of the emigrant], a collection of memoirs; Benyamin’s (2016) Kudiyettam: Pravasathinte Malayalivazhikal [Emigration: Malayali routes of exile], an anthology of essays; and Sam Pynummoodu’s (2016) Kuwait Indian Kudiyetta Charitram: Kuwaitile Indian Pravasavum Malayali Sanidhyavum [A history of Indian emigration into Kuwait: India’s emigration to and Malayali presence in Kuwait], a historical work.1, 2 Ahammed is a Gulf-Kerala migrant, who migrated to Saudi Arabia to work for the Jeddah-based Malayalam News Daily, where he continued for 13 years. Currently, he works as the magazine editor of Madhyamam Daily in Kerala. Benyamin (birth name Benny Daniel), on the other hand, spent 21 years in Bahrain (from 1992 to 2013) as an employee in the maintenance department of a bank. Benyamin’s Goat Days (2008; translated in 2012) introduced a regional imaginary to the grim realities of Gulf-Kerala migration. Lastly, Pynummoodu is also a migrant writer who has remained in Kuwait (since 1980), where he worked for a leading engineering company. He was at the forefront of the activities of the Kerala Art Lovers Association (KALA), a socio-cultural organization for Malayalis in Kuwait. While the texts of Ahammed and Benyamin focus on the Malayali diaspora in the Gulf generally, Pynummoodu focuses his documentation on the history of Indian immigrants in Kuwait. The texts of these three writers are driven by their respective author’s experience as a temporary migrant in the Gulf and are largely structured by an aspiration to achieve a “collective autonomy, fraternal unity and distinctive identity” for the diaspora (Smith, 1990: 181). Personal and cultural histories drawn from the available repertoire of migrant memories are narrativized with the agenda of forging a coherent identity for the migrant community. In addition to functioning as repositories that preserve the communal history of the Gulf-Keralan diaspora, these texts serve as counter-discourses characterized by a conscious attempt to write migrant-centred narratives. This essay proposes that the given texts by Ahammed, Benyamin, and Pynummoodu maintain a microhistorical quality in their composition, which ensures a counter-discursive positioning for their writing.
Particular histories through the diasporic lens
Historical narratives can be distinguished on the basis of their methodology, function, and authorship. Accordingly, official history is a branch of history that refers to: the work of historical offices that serve all branches of the federal government. A narrower usage refers to the official historical judgment of a given agency on a given historical process, all too often leaving the implication that the official view is the final view. (Trask, 1989: 47)
Official history is also understood as “authorized history, history sponsored and published by or with the support of an agency of government” (Blumenson, 1962–3: 153). This “official point of view” may “overlook or even suppress pertinent information” (153). While official history refers to the “history accounts produced by states” (Wertsch, 2000: 529), public history broadly refers to the “historical work undertaken according to the research priorities, agendas or funding capacities of another party other than being self-directed by the historian” (Dalley and Phillips, 2001: 9). Despite their mutual inclination towards employing the “historical method” and delegating a “professionally trained historian”, public and state histories differ from the history practised by an academically trained historian in significant ways. For instance, academic historians commonly cater to a purely academic audience as opposed to addressing a larger/public audience (Sheehy, 2008: 3; Wertsch, 2000: 520). For an academic historian, the pursuit of history is often an end in itself. Besides, they are commonly associated with careful scrutiny of the primary and secondary texts, or a predilection for quantitative approach, learning, and expertise, along with their employment of the “historical method” and “historical mode of thinking” (Sheehy, 2008: 3–4; O’Brien, 2006: 6–7). Given the insistence on learning and expertise, the academic historian is most often thought of as a professional with an academic career (Kelley, 1978: 19). Yet, both the professional historians and the academic historians/scholars could be guided by the determination to obtain a “factual basis for answers to research questions” (Sager and Rosser, 2015: 8). Directly or indirectly, this implies the preference for an “objective” approach while researching and developing the historical narrative.
Popular historical pursuits such as microhistories have emerged as an alternative practice to mainstream traditions. Microhistory espouses the democratic spirit of authorship by empowering the non-academic to conduct independent historical pursuits, while also promoting the representation of particular and marginal histories. According to Lara Putnam, microhistory “is often associated with a particular style of presentation — the narrative exposition of a single event or a single life — and with a particular set of topics — cultural history, in particular the cultural history of those at the margins” (2006: 615). It is the search for an answer to the “great historical questions” in “small places” (Magnússon and Szijártó, 2013: 5). With its focus “on certain cases, persons and circumstances”, microhistories permit “an intensive historical study of the subject, giving a completely different picture of the past from the investigations about nations, states, or social groupings stretching over decades, centuries, or whatever longue durée” (Magnússon and Szijártó, 2013: 5).
The diasporic literature chosen for the present study is characterized by several of the above-mentioned microhistorical features. Firstly, these texts deliberately resort to a particularist approach to telling translocal history. Consequently, the migrant histories chosen for the present study are characterized by the “possibility of multiple narratives and multiple ways of crafting these narratives” (Chakrabarty, 2000: 99). Despite employing idiosyncratic methods to develop detailed histories of the diaspora, the texts exhibit a general tendency to build history from individual experiences, interpersonal encounters, kinship patterns, and shared cultural practices. These texts also incorporate histories that would otherwise be absent or lost — since they can seldom make a claim of consequence vis-à-vis their historic status. Another microhistorical feature discernible in the migrant microhistories is the writers’ awareness that the subject possesses exclusive access to their collective history (as opposed to a history whose scope is limited by the gaze of an outsider). Thus, the migrant writer holds an undeniable stake in the (collective) project of producing a communal history that is distinct from what has already been developed by the state and academic discourses.
The particularist approach — which is emblematic of the microhistories under study — derives from the texts’ focus “nominally on a single diaspora” (Mishra, 2006: 101), as they repeatedly resort to narratives that stem from the migrant reality of the Gulf-Keralan community. The texts’ operative principle is to “[reduce] the scale of observation, often to the level of personal encounters or individual life histories” (Putnam, 2006: 615). Correspondingly, Benyamin’s essays recount the experiences of several migrants who relocated from Kerala and, in the process, influenced the language, culture, history, and literature of the state. He discusses the history of translocal migration through the stories of individual migrants who relocated from Kerala to the Gulf, North America, Europe, and Africa. The history of migration from Kerala to North America and Africa is rendered whole in the narration by incorporating the stories of M. S. T. Namboothiri and Rev. K. M. John — early migrants from Kerala, who relocated to North America and Africa respectively (2017/2016: 44–50). Similarly, Pynummoodu’s book delivers a detailed account of the early Kuwait-Indian migrants, particularly the Malayali migrants from the 1940s. Kuwait Indian Kudiyetta Charitram introduces private histories — recounted almost comprehensively at the micro-level — by restoring the easily forgotten pieces like the individual’s route of exodus, religious affiliation, living condition, and year of arrival and departure along with the family history of the individual migrant (Pynummoodu, 2016: 43–83). On the other hand, Ahammed’s memoir accentuates the interdependence and complementarity of particular histories. For instance, Ahammed relates the story of Unnikrishnan in the chapter “Daivathinte Prathichaya” [“God’s image”] in Kudiyettakkarante Veedu. The narration proceeds from Ahammed’s informal meeting with a fellow immigrant, Sethu, when the former is introduced to Sethu’s friend Unnikrishnan, thus working through the linked stories of individual migrants (2018/2014: 56–60). 3 Similarly, Noorul Ameen’s story delineated in the chapter “Mannum Vinnum” [“The earth and the sky”] is recounted by yet another immigrant named Suleiman, whose story begins much earlier in the same chapter (31–40). The microhistorian delves deep into apposite social and familial networks to inform the audience of the historical currents that accommodate crossovers and produce prosopographical histories. 4 By acknowledging the significance of particular histories, their correlation, simultaneity, and diversity, the diasporic writings under discussion resist the reduction of history into a linear and homogeneous phenomenon.
Migrant microhistories maintain a nuanced approach to documenting the past. The individual life histories perform a symbolic-cum-representative function vis-à-vis the larger immigrant population, as is illustrated in the chapter “Ennakinaredutha Kannu” [The eye claimed by the oil well] (87–94). Here, Ahammed’s engagement with the socio-historical concerns of the Gulf-Keralan diaspora commences with his narration of the severe personal predicament faced by Mushtaq Ali — a guest labourer who worked in an oil well in Qatar before he lost his eye in an explosion at the worksite (87). Ahammed met Ali at an eye hospital in Angamaly, Kerala, where Ali shares his mishap with Ahammed and informs the latter that he still expects to return to work at the same company (87). Following this episode, Ahammed introduces several writings — including those of P. T. Kunju Muhammed, Shashi Tharoor, and Ajith Nair — to discuss the broader social history of the Gulf-Kerala migration (87–94). In multiple instances such as this, Ahammed’s narration alternates between personal anecdotes — for which he resorts to the writings of fellow migrants as well — and standard documentation on Gulf-Kerala migration. Ali’s lost eye (after which the chapter is named) and his life story are symbolic of the losses and wounds — both literal and metaphoric — encountered by several immigrants in the Gulf. The abject life-world of the immigrant is accurately captured in the phrase “aatujeevitham” [goat life], which is an expression that Ahammed himself employs in the subsequent chapter (133). 5 As signalled in the above incident, singular episodes bear representative function and throw light on the numerous migrant tales that are often forgotten or lost. Furthermore, by ensuring a seamless transition from personal history to communal history and vice versa, the microhistorical style of writing helps maintain a spirited dialogue between the particular and collective histories. The “private world” and “the public world”, which usually run “along parallel lines”, now intersect in the domain of migrant microhistory (Ginzburg et al., 1993: 24).
The microhistorical writings insist that particular histories bear a representative function and overlap with the collective history of the diaspora. This is apparent in Ahammed’s remark that the story of an individual migrant (here, Abdu Rahiman) offers “an entry passage into the biographies of lakhs of Malayalis employed by the oil and gold industries in the Gulf” (48). Rahiman is a guest labourer who worked in a reception hall in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He claims that the native women who attend weddings at the hall would often lose their gold rings or bracelets while washing their hands. Supposedly, this is rarely noticed by the owner of the jewellery, due to which a fortunate immigrant worker who finds it can lay claim to it (47–8). Although Rahiman’s tale of the lost-and-found sounds a little far-fetched, the story he narrates is read as an allegory of the migrant aspirations that often fall short of the reality awaiting them. Interestingly, Ahammed employs the term “arabikkatha” [Arabian tale] to refer to such fanciful anecdotes that are circulated orally among the Gulf migrants and thrive on the cumulative desires of the numerous immigrants in the Gulf. These accounts create a romanticized version of the Gulf by “translating paucity into the golden mansions that draw from rare opportunities of prosperity” (2018/2014: 48). Rahiman is a representative of his fellow migrants who have inherited the “gene of treasure-hunters”, took inspiration from the rags-to-riches stories that are in circulation, and travelled to the Gulf in the hope of a rich reward. On the other hand, Ali’s misfortune — discussed in the previous paragraph — conveys the average Gulf migrant’s disillusionment with the “Gulf dream” (87–94). Besides, the bodily wound he suffers embodies the extended wounds on his psyche and spirit, which is further emblematic of the losses and trauma endured by the larger migrant population in the Gulf. Through microhistories such as those of Ali and Rahiman that have both allegoric and representative functions, the migrant writer documents the annals of a larger diaspora, where the “minute dimensions are redeemed by [their] representative characteristics” (Ginzburg et al., 1993: 12).
Microhistorical writings develop the history of the self from hybrid interactions that involve the other; it is a history that takes into account the intersubjective and sociocultural affiliations of the subject. Benyamin’s observation that migration in Kerala “happens through relatives, friends, and acquaintances” (2017/2016: 70) is pertinent here. Since the interpersonal relationships that predate the actual moment of migration can determine the routes of future movement (sometimes resulting in chain migration), one’s personal connections are necessarily transported from the homeland into the immigrant milieu. Amidst the dense ethnic and familial interconnections that subsist in the foreign land, the experience of a “naturalized group identity” becomes inescapable for the immigrant (Appadurai, 1996: 13). Here, the “networks of kinship, friendship, work, and leisure” coincide with those of birth, language, culture, and similar regional affiliations (Appadurai, 1996: 33). In other words, one’s sociocultural transactions are determined by one’s membership in an ethnolinguistic community. Therefore, microhistories of the diaspora frequently merge with the distinctive histories of the homeland, families, and friends. The interrelatedness of histories is particularly evident in Ahammed’s narration of Shekharettan’s and Jabir’s stories. Ahammed simultaneously introduces the stories of their Pakistani and Malayali colleagues in Saudi Arabia, namely Abdu Rahiman and Aadil, in such a way that all these stories complement each other (16–22, 52–5). Here, the private life-world of the immigrant is characterized by everyday transactions with fellow immigrants, which in turn ensures a virtual proximity to the homeland for the migrant in foreign topos. Correspondingly, Ahammed’s account of Mahmood Marai in the chapter “Saharayil Matram Pookunna Maram” [The tree that blooms only in the Sahara] establishes the hybridity of immigrant existence by narrating a relevant instance of human–nature interconnectedness. A Malayali immigrant living in the desert, Marai’s life is shaped by his interactions with the nature surrounding him in the foreign topos. His robust knowledge of the desert (despite being an immigrant from a land of dissimilar topography) earns him the title of the “perennial lover of the Sahara” (158–61). This forms a unique story of human–nature integration — a form of assimilation feasible for the guest labourer, who is otherwise forbidden from regular modes of belonging.
The rendition of Marai’s story underscores the hybrid nature of migrant histories by demonstrating how spatial identities transform personal histories and presents the constitution of the individual through his identification with a foreign territory. Likewise, Ahammed takes note of the chance encounters and the consequent (re)kindling of personal bonds that happen in airports and arrival lounges (56, 63, 95–105). Airports, motorways, and shopping malls are generally characterised as non-places that are “spaces of circulation, communication and consumption, where solitudes coexist without creating any social bond or even a social emotion” (Augé, 1996: 178). In contrast, migrant writing reinvents non-places as sites of sociality and interpersonal networking, thereby revitalizing the role of spatiality in developing lived histories. The public space is thus presented as a repository of human emotions. The spatial markers of individual histories transform these spaces to the status of an intimate symbol that reifies interpersonal relationships and individual passions. Thus, liminal spaces (such as airports) are afforded salience through the narration of microhistories that render the hybrid nature of migrant identities apparent.
Telling histories: Agency and visibility in migrant microhistories
The focus on particular histories in microhistorical writing anticipates a corollary: the formulation of agency and visibility for the migrant subject. The diasporic texts under study envision the history of migration as simultaneously (or even, primarily) being the migrant(s)’s history — “the conviction that structures of history are built, upheld and demolished by the actions of individuals” (Magnússon and Szijártó, 2013: 75). This is doubly significant in the case of Gulf memoirs, where the migrant author chronicles the lives of fellow migrants. By foregrounding the experiential element, the writers engage in a subjective intervention that is absent in several mainstream histories. In his Foreword to Kuwait Indian Kudiyetta Charitram, Gouridasan Nair describes the task of the migrant historiographer as “gathering in one canvas, the objects, memories, and experiential testimonies that are rapidly drowning into oblivion” (2016: 15). Nair further remarks that the text works with the conviction that diasporic history belongs to the numerous migrants who are “confined to the margins of normalcy” (2016: 13). Migrant histories recognize them “as active individuals” and “conscious actors”, whose histories are redeemed through a ritual of remembrance (Magnússon and Szijártó, 2013: 5). Individuals are rescued from the accident of becoming “non-persons” or from an outright “denial of their existence in the eyes of history” (Bhattacharya, 1983: 3).
Conversely, the author as an insider who assumes the role of a historiographer functions quite differently to the academic or state historian. The migrant author is located at the interstices of the Author–Subject binary, thereby assuming a phenomenological distinction that further transforms the agency of the writing individual. In microhistorical writing, the migrant author gains an opportunity to directly engage with the past, assert their individuality, and question normative approaches. Accordingly, “the agent [is] capable of shaping or modulating the interaction between itself and its environment rather than being only capable of reaping the fortuitous results of happenstance” (McGann, 2014: 219). This implies that at the micro level, “the agency of the ordinary people can be preserved” (Magnússon and Szijártó, 2013: 5).
Migrant historiographers structure their investigation through a negotiation of the possibilities afforded by their own experiences — which remain irrelevant to the academic or state historian. The former can locate themselves within the scope of the research to effortlessly fill “the gaps in the documentation to form a polished surface” (Ginzburg et al., 1993: 23). Microhistories are comparable to the cinematographic close-up, considering that a “close-up look permits us to grasp what eludes a comprehensive viewing, and vice versa” (Ginzburg et al., 1993: 26). Theorists have explained the ideology of microhistories by employing the vocabulary of vision and visibility. Accordingly, microhistorians “hold a microscope and not a telescope in their hands” (Magnússon and Szijártó, 2013: 4). Central to this scholarly accord is the unmistakable “belief that microscopic observation will reveal factors previously unobserved” (Putnam, 2006: 615). Migrant microhistories thematize the visibility of temporary migrants in their narratives, an urgent and sensitive task in the precarious landscape of Gulf migration. For instance, temporary migration to the Gulf has produced “ghost migrants” — undocumented migrants who travelled to these neoliberal economies on a Visiting Visa or an Umrah Visa, and who stay in the hope of obtaining a job (Ahammed, 2018/2014: 99; Ilias, 2018: 69). They are undoubtedly missing from official documents and state-sanctioned historical records. Their absence can be amended only with the aid of parallel histories that grant them the promise of visibility (100). Benyamin describes the predicament of several such undocumented immigrants, who camp in the heat and cold under the Kandara bridge in Jeddah, awaiting imprisonment before surrendering themselves to the police (2017/2016: 61). The appellative function of microhistories is crucial for such people, whose chronicles are missing or forgotten elsewhere. Benyamin speculates about the wider significance of migrant histories: “[I]f Malayali’s life-history is ever to be complete, the stories of those who left this land should be recorded simultaneously. Their visions too have to be shared” (2017/2016: 16). He maintains that an absence of individual voices renders migrant histories incomplete, which can be countermanded solely through a “literary inquiry” into the “real life” of the historical subject (2017/2016: 16–17).
Although the migrant microhistories under study do not entirely omit the history of female migration from Kerala to the Gulf, a critical inspection of these texts exposes their shortcoming in handling gendered realities in the context of translocal migration. Migrant women have made significant contributions towards strengthening the regional economy as well as reimagining the sociofamilial structures of Kerala, which were originally heavily conditioned by patriarchal norms. Despite this, migrant women’s history is discussed only within the confines of a chapter in Benyamin’s anthology (2017/2016: 39–42). In Pynummoodu’s book, women’s histories are incorporated within the familial biographies, appearing only as addendums to their husbands’ or fathers’ life histories (2016: 90–91). Benyamin’s essay on female emigration — “Pennirangipoya Vazhikal” [Routes of female departure] — gives a rough outline of female migration from Kerala (2017/2016: 39–42). Nevertheless, women rarely figure as the singular protagonists of their own history. Consequently, their agency is downplayed and diluted. Being early attempts in the regional migrant historiography (that have not yet been subject to significant critical mediation), these texts demand revisions and additions in order to fill the absences and rectify the deficits in representation. Nevertheless, by inaugurating a trend where the migrants are empowered to identify themselves as “active agents who form history” (Magnússon and Szijártó, 2013: 36), the texts have reimagined the preliminary scope of historiography, thereby contributing to the constitution of a counter-history.
Microhistories as counter-histories: Examining the disjunctures
Migrant microhistories reveal pertinent disjunctures — particularly in the form of procedural and thematic shifts — that typify the history of Gulf-Kerala migration. An instance of the procedural shift would be the microhistorical structuring of the narratives that are sourced from beyond the scope of official archives. In his Preface, Pynummoodu explains how he envisioned his work in an oppositional framework that challenges the epistemological hierarchies in the domain of historiography: “This migrant history is not a statistical record. Nor is it a scholarly analysis. On the contrary, it is my sincere effort aided by available documents, oral statements, and reading” (2016: 9). As he clarifies, this implies that he had to resort to the accounts offered by: (i) the surviving migrants of the first-generation diaspora, (ii) the second-generation migrants who had returned to the homeland, and (iii) the current members of the third-generation diaspora (2016: 9). The choice of a unique methodology and distinct narrative patterning that foregrounds specific life-worlds — as opposed to a macro-level analysis of the events — has to be read as a conscious strategy. The texts’ departure from a “standard” methodology and its consequent use of “what may or may not constitute historical evidence” (Chakrabarty, 2000: 99) conspicuously situate them in opposition to the normative episteme of official history. As a result, the former fashions itself as counter-history, in terms of its content as well as spirit. Mainstream history “cancels out many particulars in the existing documentation for the benefit of what is homogeneous and comparable” (Ginzburg et al., 1993: 21), whereas migrant microhistories produce a corpus of non-mediated histories that contest the hegemony of institutionalized narratives.
In their approach to history, migrant microhistorians distinguish themselves by upholding the relevance of the biographical method and by adopting the examination of everyday life. The narratives are structured in such a fashion that they focus on the “how” rather than the “what” in narration. In the context of Gulf-Kerala migration, academic and state enterprises are relatively more attentive to the vicissitudes of the Gulf-Keralan financescape, while the less explored terrains of the “lived history” remain subsumed in the networking and everyday transactions of the diaspora (141–4). The microhistorian is positively motivated to explore the social and cultural histories of the subject(s) as opposed to limiting themselves to a search for general history. At the social level, microhistories are primarily constituted through communal interactions and interpersonal relationships that transpire within and across the diaspora. For instance, Ahammed’s rendition of the stories of Mahmood Marai, Shekharettan, and Jabir (discussed above) throws light on the text’s peculiarity as an ethnohistory that is consciously rooted in the centrality of everyday transactions. The cultural anthropologist Martin F. Manalansan treats everyday life as “a site for critically viewing and ‘reading’ modernity. Unlike traditional historiography, which depends on the grand narrative of “famous men” and great events, the narrative of everyday life reveals the rich intricacies of the commonplace” (Manalansan, 2005: 148). Alternatively, the migrant microhistories pay attention to the literary and cultural productions of the diaspora while proposing the latter’s merit as a repository of untold histories (Benyamin, 2017/2016: 88–94; Ahammed, 2018/2014: 90, 107).
In order to attain a faithful representation of the complexity characterizing the diasporic life-worlds, the migrant literature invokes a synthesis of multiple and fragmentary histories. This produces a version of history marked by lacunae, disjunctures, and heterogeneity, which are not eschewed for the sake of coherence, continuity, and homogeneity. These disjunctures stem from the diversity that exemplifies the life of the diaspora. Migrant writing exhibits critical self-reflexivity in apprehending particular histories as discontinuous renditions that complement mainstream histories.
The term Gulfukaran, a ubiquitous term to refer to the (male) Gulf migrant, assumes a relatively singular and homogeneous identity for the migrant, instead of incorporating plurality and diversity. It suggests that the immigrant life-world revolves around pre-determined and uniform living standards whereas, in reality, skilled and unskilled jobs involve differential prospects with respect to the quality of life at one’s disposal. In the essay “Vilipurathulla Karyasthan” [Steward on call], Benyamin maintains that referring to the state’s Gulf diaspora under a single label is indisputably reductionist. By doing so, he argues, one conveniently ignores the experiential diversity and heterogeneity of lived reality (Benyamin, 2017/2016: 54). Benyamin resorts to particular histories to assess the distant worlds inhabited by the guest labourers, which are again determined on the basis of their class, caste, gender, and occupation. By contrasting the lives of Gireesh and Subair, who occupy the two extremes of the job spectrum in the Gulf, Benyamin shows that the everyday reality and the associated immigrant environment differ qualitatively for any two immigrants (2017/2016: 54–6). Gireesh is an architect from Kerala, who worked with Benyamin at the worksite where the latter was the supervisor. Subair is another Gulf-Kerala migrant who worked at the same worksite. As an office boy there, he used to bring tea and snacks in the afternoons on his bicycle, and he supplied them to the employees (2017/2016: 54). Benyamin adds, “They represent the dual poles of Malayali’s life in the Gulf. It is the large community that leads diverse lives between these two poles that we frequently refer to using the single term, Gulfukaran” (2017/2016: 54). He also contrasts the nature of immigration undertaken by those Malayalis who had migrated undocumented to the Gulf — early immigrants who travelled in the dhows, for instance — with the later immigrants, who migrated via safer routes. While the latter mostly included educated immigrants employed in the health and technology sectors, the former led a less illustrious life, whose life abroad was filled with “troubles and difficulties” from the moment of their arrival at Khor Fakkan shore (2017/2016: 54–6). Likewise, Ahammed discusses the wage inequalities faced by the guest labourers from Kerala in the Gulf and the consequent disparity in their immigrant experience (89–90, 99–102). Informed by their direct engagement with the diasporic life-worlds, the writers are guided by a common awareness that diasporic history is multi-layered and plural.
In addition, the microhistories hardly follow the spatiotemporal schema commonly circulated in nationalist discourses, especially the structuring of regional history around the narratives of colonial modernity and the birth of the nation. The texts do not distinguish colonial and pre-colonial migrations from post-independence migrations. For instance, Pynummoodu’s text contains references to Kuwait-Indian migrants from as early as the colonial period (2016: 43–83). Similarly, Benyamin recounts the stories of Dr Paulos Mar Gregorios, M. S. T. Namboothiri, and Rev. K. M. John, who are early migrants to Ethiopia, America, and Africa respectively (2017/2016: 44–50). Finally, Ahammed elaborates on the anecdote of Sayyid Fasal Thangal, a political exile from Malabar who was deported to Saudi Arabia during the nineteenth century (88). Such narratives indicate the presence of a regional cosmopolitanism that is seldom influenced by nationalist narrative.
Another interesting demonstration of thematic disjunctures is the paradoxical co-existence of poverty and luxury in the life of several Gulf-Kerala migrants, which problematizes any essentialized understanding of diasporic reality. For instance, the much-celebrated gifting culture — associated with the Gulfukaran’s arrival in Kerala — is mostly contingent on the migrant’s frugal living in the Gulf to save money, typically limited to labour camps and bachelor rooms in the Gulf (111, 134–6). The disparity in the living standards of the Gulf migrants in the Gulf, as opposed to their extravagance in Kerala, is perceived as a common phenomenon. The disjuncture is particularly evident in the apparent splendour of the houses they construct in Kerala while considering the simultaneous privation they face in terms of food, healthcare, accommodation, and other living conditions in the Gulf (Pynummoodu, 2016: 77–9; Ahammed, 2018/2014: 100). Within the rubric of Gulf-Keralan literature, the life-world inhabited by each migrant differs spatially and temporally, and with respect to the individual’s class or gender. The “divergent life-worlds and practices” consequently create a range of particular histories, which are characterized by “internal disjoints” despite certain shared allegiances (Mishra, 2006: 102–03).
Conclusion
In the recent past, “the writing of history has increasingly been entangled with the so-called ‘politics and production of identity’” (Chakrabarty, 2000: 97). This is particularly the case in postcolonial historiographies, where the histories of minorities and subaltern subjects — who occupy the fringes in more than one sense — are recalled to emphasize their agency and identity as historical actors. Migrant microhistories have to be located within the legacy of postcolonial and/or subaltern historiography, where the historical project is guided by an evident rationale that privileges the autonomy of the individual migrant. The microhistories are characterized by a remarkable distinction in their mode of telling history, choice of methodology, and conception of historicity. In their choice of testimonial renditions and utilization of biographies to develop personal histories of the migrants, the writers position their inquiry of migrant history outside the paradigms deemed standard and categorical by academic and state discourses. Migrant microhistories emerge as more than a platform to represent diasporic subjects and their experience (often apprehended as the raison d’être of such writings); they extend the function and scope of migrant literature to vitalize the production of a counter-discourse that involves the conscious (re)designing of one’s sociocultural history. Benyamin and Ahammed employ the term “Gulflore” (the word is used in English in the original) to denote the unique subgenre of diasporan literature written by the Gulf-Kerala migrants — writings identifiable primarily by the presence of narratives that shed light upon the radically strange and precarious world the migrant inhabits (Benyamin, 2017/2016: 88–94; Ahammed, 2018/2014: 48). Despite being texts that belong to different genres, the shared footing of migrant microhistories proposes the materialization of a regional discourse on translocal history. This article has attempted to understand these literary endeavours as part of a relevant broader project initiated by the regional diasporic community to apprehend its own origins, meanwhile situating them in the framework of microhistories and in the context of the socio-cultural disjunctures that the temporary migrant is relentlessly confronted with.
In their attempt to formulate an identity for themselves and seek an epistemological status for migrant writing, the microhistories chosen for the present study raise questions of ethical authoring, particularly in terms of the production and narration of a historical subject whose life is otherwise destined to endure the malady of temporariness. As the subjects of history record their own past in a microhistorical style, the writings promote ruptures, plurality, and diversity in the production of history while also incorporating phenomenological prospects that ensure increased visibility for the migrant subject. In conclusion, the migrant writer unassumingly heralds an exceptional moment in historiographic writing: moving beyond the prescriptive conventions of mainstream discourses by deeming the agential and experiential inherently credible.
