Özet:

This research explores the diasporic experience of Pakistani immigrants. Migration may be considered as 'a liberating region' and provide an opportunity to break away from stifling traditions. However, diasporic identity can also be marked by a sense of loss and trauma at removal, even if by choice, from one's homeland. Leaving the indigenous homeland can in some instances bring to the surface South Asia's shortcomings as well as the legacies of colonialism that cultivated divisions, based on religion through the strategic exploitation of perceived weaknesses of the colonized. Even after the end of imperialism in India, the religious divisions between Hindu and Muslim communities had become ingrained and continue to permeate the lives of post-independent generations as is evident in the novel Maps for Lost Lovers (2004). Theories presented by Robin Cohen and Arjun Appadurai about culture and diaspora support this research. The irony is that rather than taking comfort and strength from the community as a source of cohesion, the community can turn on itself, and tensions that existed in a previous homeland can be transferred to the present time and trigger disproportionate responses.

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