(Enforced) Migration, (Up)rootedeness, (In)separability and (Post)memory in The Garden of Solitude and The Infidel Next Door

Abstract

TThis article argues that expressions of postmemory—a form of relationship that a generation has with its antecedants, as proposed by Marianne Hirsch—are writ large in the descendants of the Kashmiri Pandits who fled from the Kashmir Valley in the 1990s and before then. Through a close reading of two novels by Kashmiri writers, Siddhartha Gigoo’s The Garden of Solitude and Rajat Mitra’s The Infidel Next Door, this article analyses the prevalence of guilt, curiosity and the yearning to (re)connect with a lost home that is evident amongst subsequent generations in relation to their parents’ and grandparents’ forced migration from Kashmir. We demonstrate that the idea of postmemory provides a useful framework for understanding the feelings of simultaneous attachment to and generational distance from the past.