Colonial Power and Melancholic Distance
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In 1901 six British colonies broke away from the motherland to become "White Australia," and began limiting the movement and economic activity of South Asian migrants while also stepping up the concentration and disfranchisement of Aboriginal people. The 1905 Aborigines Act made marriages involving Aboriginal people subject to the commission's approval. This was related to colonial eugenicist policies wherein officials forcibly relocated Aboriginal "half-castes" (Aboriginals with one white parent) to reservations and partnered them with white men in order to facilitate the genocide of Aboriginal groups. This is why Lallie's marriage to Akbar Khan is ruled illegal, because she had been slated for removal from her home. Thus we see how the eugenicist policies of the time, in combination with the perceived undesirability of Muslim (or Muslim-seeming) South Asians, complicated even the most intimate of relationships. Quite a bit later and across the globe, Rajiv navigates a tough relationship with his Guyanese and Bhojpuri heritage, as mediated by his father's staunch belief in assimilation, and his grandmother's Bhojpuri music. His Aji set off a melancholic longing within him, to remember her songs and to learn her language. The pain he felt was not so much his father's shame but rather the loss of never fully grasping the Guyana of his Aji or the India of his maternal grandparents. He tries to bridge the gap by learning Hindi but is faced with his family's homophobia, and his father's strict, West-facing mindset. Through sexuality, family dynamics and language Rajiv must confront his difference relative to his elders, a hallmark of young adulthood but one made all the more complex by his particular situation. Nonetheless like most melancholics he muddles through, trying to honor himself and his elders while also dealing with conflict as it comes.