The art of fiction: Indian diaspora's gift to Malaysian fiction-writing descendants of other diasporas

Abstract

In 1921, S. Radhakrishnan wrote in The Hindu View of Life, ‘China and Japan, Tibet and Siam, Burma and Ceylon look to India as their spiritual home’. Today, many Malaysian descendants of nineteenth-century Chinese and Ceylonese diasporas continue to look to India for spiritual, intellectual, and literary inspiration. This paper discusses three contemporary, English-language novels by Malaysians of non-Indian descent which are informed by Buddhist/Hindu philosophical ideas of fiction and reality, shaped by narratological strategies found in Indian philosophical discourses and epics, and inspired by the Indian tradition of using literary fiction to expose the fictional nature of received ideas and ideologies mistaken for reality in and by society. Published in 1981, 1994, and 2010 respectively, the novels provide an historical insight into how three representatives of Malaysia's non-Indian, ethnic minorities respond to the ethnicized ideas and ethnocentric ideologies that have dominated Malaysian life since the 1970s.