MULTICULTURALISM AND IDENTITY CRISIS IN BHARATI MUKHERJEE S NARRATIVES OF DIASPORA

Abstract

A sizable segment of world s population wedged between different socio-political and cultural domains, between homes, and between different loyalties, is uprooted and lives in diasporic communities in America and other countries across the globe. As the culture of immigrants native country and the new country is often contrasted, this results in mutations, fractured identities and adjustment issues due to multiculturalism. Bharati Mukherjee, the most eminent Indian diaspora writer of immigrant experiences has been preoccupied with India, Canada and America and her forte lies in channelizing her submissive protagonists journey of life from dismal place of origin to assertive individuals in the glorified adopted land. Mukherjee s personality and outlook of life was moulded and transformed by the culture of the country of her birth. Since her migration to Canada and later to America, she has been earnestly engaged in re-conceptualizing the idea of diaspora as a process of gain instead of loss . Having experienced the nuances of duel culture in East and West she has most wonderfully depicted in her fiction, the inner turmoil and sufferings of the protagonists as they try to settle down in the foreign land from alienation to their assimilation in the new land. They find themselves crushed between the pulls of ancient and the modern, keep evolving and emerge as conquerors like the gold passing through a heat furnace due to their indomitable spirit. This research aims to analyse her protagonists undying zeal which enables them to triumph the trauma suffered due to cultural clash, evolve, strive for self realization and construct a new identity in an alien land, thereby finally taking control of their destinies. It also aims to establish the fact that the protagonists of Mukherjee s works have been able to forge a new stronger identity by the amalgamation of two different cultures newline