Diasporic Consciousness and Transgenerational Histories in South Asian Narrative

Abstract

South Asian narratives are deeply shaped by layered histories of colonialism, partition, migration, and cultural continuity, resulting in literary expressions where individual consciousness is inseparable from collective and transgenerational memory. This article explores how South Asian writers represent consciousness as a historically embedded phenomenon, transmitted across generations through memory, trauma, silence, and 
storytelling. Drawing on postcolonial theory, memory studies, and narrative psychology, the study examines how novels, short stories, and autobiographical narratives articulate inherited experiences of violence, displacement, and identity formation. The paper argues that transgenerational histories function not merely as thematic content but asstructuring principles of narrative consciousness, shaping voice, temporality, and subjectivity. By situating personal interiority within broader socio-historical frameworks, South Asian narratives challenge Western individualistic models of consciousness and foreground relational, communal, and historical modes of being.