What does it mean to belong in the world, asks writer M.G. Vassanji in Nowhere, Exactly
'For me, belonging is important and I think for many people it is,' says the award-winning author
How, if ever, can we establish a sense of belonging?
That is a question that has long intrigued the writer M. G. Vassanji. And the topic of his latest book, Nowhere, Exactly: On Identity and Belonging. With an emphasis on "belonging."
He argues that a more fundamental and slippery endeavour than establishing one's identity is living with the feeling of belonging.
"Home is a never single place, entirely and unequivocally. It is contingent. The abstract 'nowhere,' then, is the true home," writes Vassanji.
This is particularly true for Vassanji, who calls himself perpetually homeless. He's of Indian heritage but was born 74 years ago in Nairobi, Kenya, and raised in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. After winning a scholarship to M.I.T., he moved to the United States, where he became a nuclear physicist. He later immigrated to Canada for work, eventually giving up his science career for a highly successful literary one.
Vassanji's grandparents on both sides were from the coastal state of Gujarat and were part of a large Indian migration to East Africa beginning in the mid-1800s. They were mainly small merchants. Indians arrived there before the white European colonialists.
Vassinji's family belonged to the religious community of Kojah Ismailis. Kojahs were originally practicing Hindus in India but he says they adopted Islamic mystical practices and beliefs around the 15th century after the arrival of a religious teacher from Persia. He describes it as a syncretic religion, containing elements of both Islam and Hinduism. This combination of religions in his upbringing makes Vassanji's sense of belonging even more blurry.
However, these days, he says there is a "new order" that is redefining Kojah Ismailis as purely Muslim.
"There is an attempt to purify….[that] I don't like," he says. "It bothers me because once you use that word to identify yourself, then you are put in a box."
And while Vassanji rejects all boxes, he remains drawn to the idea of belonging.
"For me, belonging is important and I think for many people it is. And for many, supposedly they would say it doesn't matter. I belong here. I live here, and that's fine. But for me, belonging is fundamental…It is my memories... And where you are born is the soil, is the ground, is the songs, the language, the echoes, the smells.
"And if you can let go of all of that, that's fine. But some of us can't," Vassanji writes.
This episode was recorded on stage at the 2024 Afterwords Literary Festival in Halifax, Nova Scotia. M.G. Vassanji spoke with IDEAS producer Mary Lynk about the range from human's need to belong, to East Africans' reaction to the Trump victory, his personal relationship with Mahatma Gandhi, and his experience of first visiting India in his 40s.
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*This episode was produced by Mary Lynk.
