ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes Vassanji's travel book as the record of a highly nuanced exploration of roots. It highlights how his relationship with India gradually develops: he characterizes his visit to Gujarat not as the ultimate goal of his journey but rather as a significant transit point for him. Vassanji's favorable impression of India is strengthened by its uncanny resemblance to his homeland, East Africa. His keen interest in syncretistic traditions has a decisive influence upon what he perceives in modern India. Vassanji's primary purpose in traveling to India is to explore and develop his relationship with the ancestral land, not to affirm his Indian roots by pinpointing the origin of his diasporic background. He recognizes that religious and ethnic conflicts have been so divisive that they have even determined the structure of urban space. The religious heterogeneity of the Gujarati Khojas explains why Vassanji has a strong aversion to the conflicts between Hindus and Muslims.
