Delhi, diaspora and religious consciousness: heritage and palimpsest architecture in M. G. Vassanji s A Place Within: Rediscovering India

Intangible heritage and architecture, articulate specific cultural processes and history. In Vassanji’s non-fictional narrative A Place Within: Rediscovering India, there is place-making through the lens of culture, religion, history, politics and migration. Positioning himself as a tourist to his ancestral homeland, the author makes observations that can be critiqued through the concept of ‘palimpsest’–an intriguing ‘layering’ that gesture at wider circuits of culture. This study is an examination of the diasporic consciousness, religious encounters; heritage narrative features, the tracing of overlapping cultural spheres in Delhi, aesthetic and political tensions, as represented in Vassanji’s narrative. The article is an exploration of a broad system of cultural and religious discursive constructions and practices in architecture, as suggested in the non-fictional narrative.