Portrayal of diaspora in english and vernacular fiction: A study of the namesake and hashiye

Abstract

Diaspora is a complex phenomenon which has important economic, political, social, and religious dimensions. It can be voluntary or forcible movement of people from their native land into new regions. Diasporic discourses deal with themes like cultural dualism, racial discrimination, identity crisis, alienation, struggle for survival, nostalgia, hybridity, transnational migration, globalization and second-generation cultural gaps etc. The approach of this study is to undertake individual studies of Jhumpa Lahiri and Darshan Singh Dhir and examine the diasporic issues in their chosen works, The Namesake and Hashiye respectively. The prime object of this research is to bring into focus the major issues of the different classes of migrants by undertaking a comparative study of two novels: one published in English and the other in Punjabi; one written by a woman and the other by a man. Both Lahiri and Dhir portray the well known as well as normally concealed world of migrants in their fictional narratives. Lahiri portrays the individual and familial matters from a broadly female perspective while Dhir reveals political, cultural and familial issues. These writings encapsulate many experiences of the Indian American and Indian Britain families from changing family relationships and issues of culture to the overall challenge of navigating a new set of identity-related complications and racial abuses. The works of Dhir and Lahiri bring into focus issues related to diasporic communities and highlight some of the problems they face in host societies due to their ethnicity, race and culture.