Analyse A House for Mr. Biswas as a diasporic allegory.

The ship . . . is the first of the cultural units in which social relations are rep sited and renegotiated. For the old, exclusivist Indian diaspora, the ship I produced a site in which caste purities were largely lost (after all the crossing of the dark ocean, the kalapani, signified the loss of caste) as well as a new I form of socialization that went by the name of jahaji-bhai (ship-brotherhood). Social interactions during these lengthy sea voyages began a process that led to the remaking of cultural and ethnic identities, to a critical self-reflexivity of the kind missing from the startified and less mobile institutions of the homeland. (Mishra, 195)

For most of these immigrants who had rarely travelled out of their villages, prior to this voyage, it took time to comprehend the restrictive implications of indenture. When it did, these people, most of whom carried the Rumcharit manas and the Gita with them as talisman, the experience of indenture was likened to a long exile similar to Rama’s vanavasa, out of which they would emerge purer than before.