Mixed voices: post/colonial biographies and transnational identities

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article aims at showing the relevance of family biographies to a social history of transnational identities. It focuses on individuals from four generations of an extended family of South Asian descent – all of them outstanding in their chosen fields. The path of an Indian psychiatrist working in early twentieth-century colonial India crosses with that of an eminent Indian philologist and language instructor based in Berlin when he marries the latter’s daughter. The life trajectories of these individuals were shaped by broader political circumstances such as colonialism, two world wars, decolonization and the partition of India. They were also Parsis, belonging to a minority community known for its cosmopolitan outlook, western education and economic success. The psychiatrist’s two daughters went their own different ways – one, settling in Pakistan married to a Muslim and becoming a renowned postcolonial poet and professor of English literature in Karachi. The other, travelling the world, spent most of her professional career in Germany and gained repute as a documentary film-maker and director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation. The paths of the Parsi poet based in Pakistan, Maki Kureishi, and of her nephew Hanif, of Pakistani descent and domiciled in Britain, do not cross.The sources used include poems, novels, newspapers, official correspondence, government proceedings and personal communications.