Alienation or Assimilation: The Problem of Indian Diaspora in the Select Novel of Bharati Mukherjee and Jhumpa Lahiri

Abstract

The migration of human beings has always been found in quest for a better life and future. Since the very beginning of the archaic world of human perception till today, the human migration has been continued in the exploration of better life, progress, prosperity, happiness and contentment but often it found only struggle and discontentment due to social, emotional or psychological disorder in the cultural background of detachment or alienation. Many branches of knowledge try to explore such migration in their terms and origination of human beings. In literature such migration comes to be studied under the head of Diaspora which deals with the literary sensibility of human beings and reveals certain features like nostalgia, homesickness, identity crisis, alienation, assimilation, cultural discourses and social upheavals that are fully responsible for the misfortunes of such migrant communities, located, dislocated and relocated without roots into the different parts of the world. The condition of such migrant people living under the umbrella of diaspora, has always been a dual state of mind which creates confusion and clashes into the sense of dislocation, alienation and other issues that these expatriates or immigrants deal with. Diasporic literature is exemplified with the perception of literature written on Diaspora or by Diaspora. The literary criteria of the diaspora, compresses the complexities and dynamic conditions of human migration: emigration and immigration. This paper explores the alienation or assimilation, the diasporic sensibility of Bharati Mukherjee and Jhumpa Lahiri in their selected novels, The Tiger’s Daughter, Jasmine and The Namesake respectively.