ABSTRACT
As I shall show in Chapter 7, it is not invariably true that diasporas require homelands in a strict territorial sense, though they normally include a notion of ‘homeland’ or a looser idea of ‘home’ in their collective myths or aspirations. Indeed, a homeland is imbued with an expressive charge and a sentimental pathos that seem to be almost universal. Motherland, fatherland, native land, natal land, Heimat, the ancestral land, the search for ‘roots’ – all these similar notions invest homelands with ‘an emotional, almost reverential dimension’.1
Often, there is a complex interplay between the feminine and masculine versions of homeland. In the feminine rendition, the motherland is seen as a warm, cornucopian breast from which the people collectively suck their nourishment. One Kirgiz poet fancifully claimed that the relationship between homeland and human preceded birth itself: ‘Remember, even before your mother’s milk, you drank the milk of your homeland,’ he wrote.2 Suggesting the same metaphor, the biblical Promised Land was said to be ‘flowing with milk and honey’.
