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This paper is an effort to look into the dilemma of name and sense of identity and belongingness
of the characters as immigrants in The Namesake, the novel written by Jhumpa Lahiri. The fact
that Jhumpa Lahiri is the child of Indian immigrants and that she also crosses borders when she
migrates from England (where she was born) to America, makes her both a migrant and Diaspora
writer. She writes on the Indian Diaspora and narrates stories that reveal the inconsistency of the
concept of identity and cultural difference in the space of Diaspora in her works. The Namesake
discusses the term ‘diaspora and its role in the present era, the major issues of cultural dislocation,
multiculturalism, struggle for identity and belongingness.
.H\ZRUGV: Diaspora writing, Immigrants, identity, Indian Diaspora, Cultural dislocation.
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A Diaspora is a large group of people with a similar heritage or homeland who have since moved
out to places all over the world. Diaspora and Diaspora studies hardly fit to the limiting powers of
definitions and theories.
‘Diaspora’ has its roots in the Greek word Diaspeirein - "to scatter about, disperse".
Dia means "about, across" and Speirein means "to scatter.
Earlier, Diaspora was used to refer to citizens of a dominant city who immigrated to a conquered
land with the purpose of colonization, to absorb the territory into the empire. That is why there are
a lot of arguments between scholars as to what ‘Diaspora’ and ‘Diaspora studies’ mean. Diaspora
is located between cultures, between majority and minority, nation and non-nation, citizen and
foreigner, original and hybrid.
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The Indian Diaspora is a general term to describe the people who migrated from India.Migration
has taken place due to historical, political and economic reasons including higher education, better
prospects and marriage. However, the migrated Indian community has showed greater sense of
adjustments, adaptability, mobility and accessibility. During the ancient times a large number of
Indians migrated to other parts of Asia to spread Buddhism and to trade. During the British period,
a major lot of Indians migrated due to misery, deprivation and sorrow to the U.K. Africa and
U.S.A. Migration was also in wave in the nineteenth century in order to flourish to the developed
economies like the U.K., U.S.A. Australia etc. It was a major wave as it gave rise to immigration
either to study or settle and it goes on till present date following the footsteps of the succeed lot.
The situation today is that the Indian diasporas are a well-known success story in the in the U.K.,
U.S.A. and Europe. In the Namesake, Gogol's parents Ashoke and Ashima belong to this wave of
immigration to the United States whereas Gogol is a product of the contemporary success story of
the Indian Diaspora in the United States.
Coming across two cultures, the first impression for a migrant is that of homelessness. As the
strong Indian roots does not allow him to mix and acculturate at once. Therefore, the Diaspora
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Indian is like the banyan tree following the traditional Indian way of spreading strong roots of
affection. He spreads out his roots in several soils as that of the motherland and the one where he
migrates. He constantly tries to nourish from one when the rest dry up. Far from being homeless,
he has several homes, and that is the only way he has increasingly come to feel at home in other
land. The sense of homelessness every immigrant suffers is genuine and intense; but in recent
times it has been seen that this concept has been minimized and made less intense through their
social networking .Earlier immigrants suffer intense homelessness due to lack of communication
means. They had letters either to write or to receive to connect with family in homeland. The letters
receive at a long interval. Land line telephones were a luxury in India in the 1980s.Therefore an
immigrant cannot avail the facility unless it is there in homeland.
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Diaspora Indians on foreign land expressed themselves best through creation of literature. Earlier
it was possible only when a non-resident Indian come to the homeland and tells about his life and
struggle for settlement. Writers of Indian Diaspora wrote on loss of identity, feeling of alienation,
sense of adjustments, adaptability, and mobility and let the world be acquainted with the position
of migrants on a foreign land. Literature of the Indian Diaspora constitutes a major study of the
literature and other cultural texts of the Indian Diaspora. It is also an important contribution to
Diaspora theory in general.Looking at the Diaspora literature in a broader perspective it is seen
that such literature helps in understanding various cultures, breaking the barriers between different
countries, globalizing and spreading universal peace. Good fiction embellishes facts and adds
interesting layers to hold readers' attention and makes people aware about the contemporary
society. Diaspora writing raises questions regarding the definitions of 'home' and 'nation'.
Literature, as a product of culture thus becomes the source by which we would come to know
about the global scenario and multiculturalism. It is also important to question the nature of their
relationship with the work of writers and literatures of the country of their origin and to examine
the different strategies they adopt in order to negotiate the cultural space of the countries of their
adoption. This literature works as a channel to strength the bonds between India in relation with
the other countries at large.
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The Diaspora features of homelessness, dislocation and alienation are well represented through the
character of Ashima in The Namesake... In The Namesake, Ashima, leaves her home country
(India) for America after her marriage with Ashoke. After settling there, she feels lonely in the
deserted area. It is a hired apartment where she begins her life. The life style of the owners of the
apartment is different from her Indian way of life. She passes the whole day alone in the apartment
as Ashoke, her husband is busy with his studies. In India, her life was filled with a number of
relatives but in the U.S.A. she finds no one to communicate .When she becomes pregnant not a
soul to give her suggestions. If she had been in India she would have been accompanied by so
many elder ladies to take care of her during the pregnancy period. When she gives birth to Gogol,
she cries because only she and her husband are there to take care of the baby. Feelings of loneliness
make her depressed and emotionally upset. She could not find any solace from the new society:
For being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy – a perpetual
wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a
parenthesis in what had once been ordinary life, only to discover that that previous life has
vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a
foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same
combination of pity and respect. (49-50)
About the Diaspora writing Jasbir Jain says, "Language and cultures are transformed as they come
into contact with other languages and cultures. The writers who have concentrated on the Indian
Diaspora are V. S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Anita Desai, Bharati Mukherjee,
Rohintan Mistry, M. G. Vasanji, Bapsi Sidhwa, Kiran Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri etc. They have tried
to write in detail the issues of the immigrants like the identity crisis, racial and cultural conflicts,
sense of belongingness, loneliness and alienation. The history of immigration is the history of
alienation and its effects. It is but a reality that for every freedom (life in a new land) won, a
tradition (that of home land) is lost. For every second generation assimilated, a first generation in
one way or another spurned. For the gains of goods and services, a better life style, an identity gets
lost, and uncertainty found. The sense of the loss of the identity is the grass root of Diaspora
writings.
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S. Naipaul first tried for Diaspora writing through his collection of short stories. It lays the
foundation for subsequent narratives of the Diaspora. As a Diaspora writer, Rushdie transcends
mere geographical and physical migration dealing with spiritual alienation and rootlessness. The
subject of Anita Desai, a remarkable novelist and proponent of a feminine sensibility, has been
solitude and alienation. She usually has dealt with personal lives of people in general and women
in particular. Bharati Mukherjee’s childhood memories harkens her time and again. All the same
it is necessary to realize the importance of cultural encounter, the bicultural pulls which finally
help in the emergence of the new culture. Diaspora writing elaborates issues such as
marginalization, cultural insularity; social disparity, racism, etc. as the migrants are in a dilemma
whether they should remain with old values with least interaction with the majority, or break the
barriers and get assimilated with the attracting new culture. Confronting between the attractions of
home and those of the new, the migrants have a constant conflict with his self. His old world is
complete with myth and tradition; the new world order is flourished with thirst for freedom and
independence.
The Diaspora writers turn to their homeland in their writings for various reasons. Literature should
remain the faithful representation of contemporary society. So, it is the moral duty of the Diaspora
writers to remain faithful while mixing the facts with fiction in their writings. They would be
considered, to some extent the flag bearers of the history of their time. Majority of the Diaspora
writers write about their own experiences, the problems they face while settling on the new land.
The Writers of Indian Diaspora, as William Safran observes: "Continue to relate personally or
vicariously, to the homeland in one way or another, and their ethno-communal consciousness and
solidarity are importantly defamed by the existence of such a relationship" (Paranjape, 2001)
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The chief characteristic features of the Diaspora writings are the quest for identity, uprooting and
re-rooting, insider and outsider disorder. Diaspora led to flourish literature. Diaspora writers were
initially more autobiographical with references to the narration of self. At a later stage they turned
toward scholarly writings with studies on Diaspora. Tololyan makes a distinction between these
two types of writing by explaining that there are two discourses, named the emic Diaspora and the
etic Diaspora. The emic Diaspora refers to the Diaspora that talk about themselves
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(autobiographical), while the etic refers to scholarly works on Diaspora. He further states that,
“[t]he self-study of diasporas produced representations and various forms of self-knowledge,some
embodied in quotidian practices, some in public performances and others in oral and written
archives and the thriving native language press of groups such as the Armenians and the Chinese”.
He is of the opinion that Diasporas in the emic discourse generally keep making selfrepresentations by referring to their selves in English. The other matter that is significant in
Diaspora studies, according to Tololyan, is the aspect of representation: “Who represents
diasporas—the community itself or scholars— matters.
The Diaspora production of cultural meanings occurs in many areas, such as contemporary music,
film, theatre and dance, but writing is one of the most interesting and strategic ways in which
Diaspora is supposed to dislocate the twofold ways of local and global and might raise issues of
national, racial and ethnic formulations of identity. Diaspora writing has created a great significant place between countries and cultures. The quest
for identity or roots marks the Diaspora writing. Terry Eagleton writes in, The Idea of Culture
(2000) that the very word culture contains a tension between making and being made. In order to
construct new identities of Diaspora writing theories are generated which further confer boundaries
that relate to different metaphors. This movement causes the dislocation and locations of cultures
and individuals harp upon memories. Diaspora writers live on the margins of two countries and
create cultural theories. The terms ‘Diaspora’, ‘exile’ alienation’, ‘expatriation’, are synonymous
and possess an ambiguous status of being both a refugee and an ambassador. The two roles being
different, the Diaspora writers attempt at doing justice to both. As a refugee, he seeks security and
protection and as an ambassador projects his own culture and helps enhance its comprehensibility.
In spite of these kinds of differences most Diaspora writings reveal certain features that are
similar. We might call ‘Diaspora’ as social form, ‘Diaspora’ as type of consciousness, and
‘Diaspora’ as mode of cultural production. Majority of works discuss individual/community
attachment to the homeland and the urge to belong in the settled land and as a result of this they
reveal a hybrid existence as stated by Lau: “They are people who are as multi-cultural as they are
multi-lingual. They do not regard themselves as fully belonging in either culture, and have
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practically evolved a sub-culture peculiar to themselves. They try to take the best from both worlds,
but suffer the sense of hybridity and cultural entanglement.”
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Jhumpa Lahiri’s fiction is autobiographical and frequently writes of her own experiences and of
her parents, friends, acquaintances, and others in the Bengali communities with which she is
familiar. Lahiri examines her characters' struggles, anxieties, and biases to explain the details of
immigrant psychology and behavior. What Jhumpa Lahiri probably means to explore through her
work is the fact that the distinction between human cultures is man-made. Her writing is
characterized by her "plain" language and her characters, often Indian immigrants to America who
must find the way between the cultural values of their homeland and their adopted home. Her
abilities to convey the oldest cultural conflicts in the most immediate fashion and to achieve the
voices of many different characters are among the unique qualities that have captured the attention
of a wide audience.
Born in London, Lahiri moved to Rhode Island as a young child with her Bengali parents. Although
her family lived in the United States for more than thirty years, Lahiri observes: “The way my
parents explain it to me is that they have spent their immigrant lives feeling as if they are on a river
with a foot in two different boats," she relates. "Each boat wants to pull them in a separate direction,
and my parents are always torn between the two. They are always hovering, literally straddling
two worlds." She has experienced that her parents retain a sense of emotional exile and she herself
grew up with conflicting expectations.
It is very much appealing that Jhumpa Lahiri is the child of Indian immigrants and that she also
crosses borders when she migrates from England, her birth place, to the U.S.A. and became an
American citizen. In the Namesake, Lahiri’s experiences of growing up as a child of immigrants
resemble that of her protagonist, Gogol Ganguly. Immigration became blessing in disguise as that
makes her a Diaspora writer. In the Namesake, she reflects on the Indian Diaspora and creates a
narrative that reveals the inconsistency of the concept of identity and cultural difference in the
space of Diaspora. Jhumpa makes her characters very humble and down to earth as well. Lahiri
belongs to the second generation of Indian Diaspora whose ongoing quest for identity never seems
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to end. Her characters bespeak the glory of common life, “I know that my achievement is quite
ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first.
. . . As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.” (Lahiri, IOM
198).
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The Namesake depicts the life and struggles of Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, two first-generation
immigrants from West Bengal (Kolkata), India to the United States, and their American-born
children Gogol and Sonia.
Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, immigrants in America welcome their first baby boy into the world.
They require giving their son an official name to be on birth certificate and in order to be released
from their hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts. So they must break with Bengali custom and
Ashoke has got this one covered. He names their son Gogol, after the Russian novelist. Apparently
Gogol saved Ashoke's life when he was injured in a train crash in India, back in 1961. Gogol for
him means books of the author and not the man himself.
The Ganguli’s eventually move to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they raise Gogol and, a few
years later, their daughter Sonia. Growing up, Gogol gradually realizes that his name is quite
unusual, and he really doesn't like that. He doesn't like that at all. Annoyed by the Bengali customs
of his parents, Gogol totally embraces American popular culture. Gogol Ganguli knows only that
he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name.
Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with
conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. She reveals the defining power of
the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents and the means by which we slowly,
sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves. The summer before he leaves to attend college at
Yale, he officially changes his name to Nikhil. Gogol is no more. Everyone but his family calls
him Nikhil.
Over the course of the entire novel, Gogol has rebelled against his name. When his father gives
him a book of short stories by Nikolai Gogol for his fourteenth birthday, Gogol tosses it aside.
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Places and names are not important here. It is the cultural environment that counts. Gogol and
Sonia in particular feel the enticing pull of American culture, convincing their traditional parents
to "celebrate, with progressively increasing fanfare, the birth of Christ, an event the children look
forward to far more than the worship of Durga and Saraswati" (3.59), and leaning towards
Caucasian romantic partners as they grow older.
At the end of the novel, Gogol does not remain anti-Gogol anymore. He has started to come to
terms with his Indian-American identity. He doesn't try to ignore Bengali custom, and he doesn't
envy the American ways of his ex-girlfriends. He is saddened by the fact that his mother is going
to India soon, the loss of his family home, and finally, the loss of the personal, familial side of
himself that the name Gogol came to represent. It is in this spirit that Gogol finally opens his
father's gift and begins to read. The novel probes into the inner psyche of characters and brings out
stirring and teasing sense of identity by clash of cultures.
The narrative technique is that we don't get the story in chronological order. Memories appear in
the novel as they occur to the characters, so we get a sense of how the past and the present connect.
For example, the story begins in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1968, but Ashoke's memories of
his train accident in 1961 do not appear until a few pages later in the novel.
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The title The Namesake reflects the struggle of Gogol Ganguli, son of Ashoke and Ashima, Indian
immigrants to the U.S.A. to get identity in the culture where he is born and brought up with his
unusual name. Names do have some meaning in India. A lot of practice is done when a child is
named in India. An Indian child generally carries two names, a pet name and an official one. Pet
names are for the family and neighbors and acquaintances. They carry or may not carry meaning.
But official names are kept with a lot of care and practice.
Ashoke Ganguli gives the name Gogol after the Russian author whose book or a page once had
been served as a savior of his life. He named his son Gogol for three reasons. Ashoke and his wife
are waiting for the official name to come from India as to follow Bengali tradition. They have not
thought of any name/s up till the birth of the baby as they are becoming parents for the first time.
They are required to give one name in order to be written on the birth certificate before they release
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from the hospital. Indian system never demands such emergency as compared to the systematized
American system. So Gogol name is selected. They might think of it as a pet name. At that time
the parents were also not aware that it is going to be the official name in future and that Gogol
himself will have problems with the name in future. ‘Gogol’ never fits as an Indian or American
name. As a child Gogol is used to of his this name so much so that when his parents wished his
name Nikhil to be his official name when he starts schooling that he is reluctant to accept the new
name and the parents got letter from the school authority that he should be called Gogol.
About the controversy of name of Gogol, Lahiri says in an interview, "But I think that for the
child of immigrant, the existence of two names kind of speaks so strongly for the very predicament
of many children of immigrants. On the other hand, the problem for the children of immigrants those with strong ties to their country of origin - is that they feel neither one thing nor the other.
This has been my experience, in any case. For example, I never know how to answer the question:
"Where are you from?" If I say I'm from Rhode Island, people are seldom satisfied. They want to
know more, based on things such as my name, my appearance, etc. Alternatively, if I say I'm from
India, a place where I was not born and have never lived, this is also inaccurate. It bothers me less
now. But it bothered me growing up, the feeling that there was no single place to which I fully
belonged" (Book Browse, 2007).But as a teen he wishes to change his school. After changing the
name, there is only one complication: "He doesn't feel like Nikhil. Not yet.... But after 18 years of
Gogol, two months of Nikhil feels scant, inconsequential" (Lahiri, 2004).
He feels sandwiched between the country (India) of his parents and the country (U.S.A.) of his
birth. His father has migrated to the U.S.A. to make a career at MIT and in due course he had
settled there. He had always tried to follow the Indian traditions, customs in America and had
found Indian, Bengali friends. The parents tried to maintain ties with their home country and tried
hard to inculcate the values of the home country in their children. Gogol is fascinated more of the
life style and society of the country of his birth. But the country of his birth also does not accept
him entirely and he keeps struggling for cultural identity which sways between two countries.
Gogol finds himself quite a stranger to both of the countries - in India he is an American and in
America he is an Indian. Gradually, he starts knowing the uncommon nature of his name which
creates problems with his identity when he grows up. Gogol does not understand the emotional
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significance of the name. He does not like to be known by a name which is neither Indian, nor
American, nor even first name. The name becomes a problem for Gogol, because he feels
uncomfortable with the Russian name. It makes him to detach himself from his family members.
When he grows up he changes his name to Nikhil and feels comfortable to mingle with others. He
can now live life in his way. He goes far from home for further studies where everyone knows him
with his new name. He feels he has gained a new identity and slowly he gains contact with some
girl friends. But this too leads to a sense of loss of identity and later when his father dies, his
attachment with his home renews. The novel concludes on the day of a send-off party to Ashima,
where Gogol finds the book which his father presented to him during one of his birthdays and
looks at the name Gogol. The novel focuses on the problems between first and second generations
of the Diaspora community, cultural clash and mainly on the identity problem faced by the
Diaspora community.
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In the Namesake, the question of identity plays a vital role. Jhumpa Lahiri was born as Nalanjana
Sudeshana. But as Jhumpa was found easier to pronounce, the teacher at her pre-school started
addressing her Jhumpa. In the course of time it became her official name. Jhumpa Lahiri tries to
focus on the issue of identity what she had faced in her childhood. The problem of Gogol’s name
symbolizes the problem of his identity. He wants to be connected to the strange names in the
graveyard when the students were taken to the graveyard for the project. He wants to relate himself
with American locale but his name hinders his way to be recognized as an American. Nikhil
replaces Gogol when he enters Yale as a freshman. Here nobody knows his earlier name. He feels
relief and confident. No one knows him as Gogol but Nikhil. His life with new name also gets
changed. His transformation starts here. He starts doing many activities which he could not dare
to do as Gogol. He dates American girls. He shares live in relationship. His way of life, food
everything changes. But a new dilemma clutches him. He changes his name but “he does not feel
like Nikhil” (105). Gogol is not completely cut off from his roots and identity. He tries to reject
his past but it makes him stranger to himself. He fears to be discovered. With the rejection of
Gogol’s name, Lahiri rejects the immigrant identity maintained by his parents. But this outward
change fails to give him inner satisfaction. “After eighteen years of Gogol, two months of Nikhil
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feels scant, inconsequential.” (105) He hates everything that reminds him of his past and heritage.
The loss of the old name was not so easy to forget and when alternate weekends, he visits his home
“Nikhil evaporates and Gogol claims him again.” (106).He was Gogol when his parents call him
on phone. He tries to put a wall between his past and his present, but it is not easy.
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The immigrants are those who grow up in two worlds. They are culturally displaced for one or the
other reason and therefore the question of identity remains a difficult issue. Jhumpa Lahiri believes
that for immigrants (the first generation people), the challenge of exile, the loneliness, the constant
sense of alienations, the knowledge of and longing for a lost world are more explicit and distressing
than for their children.
Culture suggests the arts, customs and institutions of a society, state or nation. It helps to
distinguish certain people of a society, state or nation from other group of people of a society, state
or nation.Certain elements constitute markers of identity of a particular culture like food, clothes,
language, religion, music, dance, myths, legends, customs, individual community, rites of passage
and others. These are retained, discarded or adopted differently at different times and places; but
a feeling of oneness, a tug of the roots persists even after several years and sometimes centuries.
’ The Namesake’ provides different models of life among people representing distinct cultures and
worldviews. Lahiri emphasizes not only the immigrants who leave home to make a new home in
the United States but also the endless process of coming and goings that create familial, cultural,
linguistic and economic ties across national borders. Her characters live in between, straddling two
worlds, making their identity transnational. Cultural change is a major problem faced by the
diasporic community especially by the first generation people. When they try to settle in a new
place, they find several changes in the new society. It shocks them and they try to cling to their
homeland culture by following it strictly. In The Namesake, Ashima and Ashoke find many
Bengali friends and try to create their own community there. Often they used to throw parties to
their friends in order to meet them. They wait eagerly for such gatherings. They try to restore their
traditions by preparing Indian food, inviting Brahmin for rituals and so on. As Wieviorka states,
when a Diaspora community is “constantly rejected or interiorized while only wanting to be
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included, either socially or culturally, or when this group or this individual is racially
discriminated, and demonized under the argument of a supposed cultural different” then the
individual or the group is embarrassed and this eventually “leads to a self-definition and behaviors
based on this culture and, eventually, racial distinction.”
In The Namesake, characters are constantly making comparisons between Indian and American
life. For Indian immigrants such as Ashima and Ashoke, many aspects of American culture are
foreign to them, and they also feel like strangers in American society. As immigrants, Ashima and
Ashoke create their own hybrid culture, a blend of American and Bengali elements. They struggle
to maintain certain Indian traditions, while adapting to American customs, such as Christmas, for
the sake of their children. Indian-American characters such as Gogol and Moushumi often feel
foreign in both India and America, as though they're lost in between the world of their parents and
the world in which they were born. They often feel like tourists, only, unlike most tourists, they
have no chance of a homecoming. They, initially try to adjust with the new culture and society
into which they have moved. A sense of alienation, loneliness and feeling of loss are inextricable
for them particularly when news from India comes on phones. Even though they face external
problems of identity crisis, their own inner problems like loneliness and alienation cause more
suffering to them. They do not mingle with others in the settled society. Their friends are Indians
and Bengalis. But at the same time they are not willing to follow the new land’s culture completely.
At times, even when they live in the settled land for a long time, they still consider it as another
country. They celebrate Hallow in or Christmas but because of their children. Their food on such
occasions is all the time Indian. But the second generations like Gogol and Sonia are affected
psychologically. Gogol's acceptance of his Indian-American identity is reflected in his gradual
acceptance of his name and its history. The reason is that from the moment of their birth, they were
brought up in the settled country and they consider it as their home country and wanted to follow
its culture and tradition as their own. The Namesake describes the cultural dislocation in detail.
When Gogol mentions his stay in a room for three months, it upsets Ashima. When Gogol and
Sonia reduce their visits to their parents, Ashima suffers a lot: “Having been deprived of the
company of her own parents upon moving to America, her children’s independence, their need to
keep their distance from her, is something she will never understand” (166). The practice of
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cultural difference between parents and children of the Diaspora community cannot be stopped by
either of them because they both are born and brought up in different cultures and in societies.
Most of the second generation Diaspora, on the other hand, accept the land in which they are born
as their homeland. They are not happy about the way their parents live. It leads to several kinds of
misunderstandings between both generations .Edward Said rightly describes the concept of
cultures as something distinctive, representative of an exclusive to a certain group or nation in
Culture and Imperialism (1993) so as to understand the basic problem with such terms. In The
Namesake Ashima celebrates all the Hindu festivals and at the same time Western festivals for the
sake of her children. It shows the mingling of both the cultures. Ashima and Ashoke are not
bothered about Gogol’s relationship with the White girls. However, when it comes to marriage,
Ashima wishes her son to be married off to a Bengali girl. Said writes: Culture is a concept that
includes a refining and elevating element, each society’s reservoir of the best that has been known
and thought, as Mathew Arnold put it in the 1860’s Arnold believed that culture palliates it does
not altogether neutralizes, the ravage of a modern, aggressive, mercantile and brutalizing urban
experience....In time culture comes to be associated , often aggressively, with the nation or the
nation or the state, this differentiates ‘us from them’ almost always with some degree of identity,
and a rather combative one at that....(xii) (Said:1993).Today's fiction celebrates hybridity. A
globalised culture has now evolved and it must combat with the world of heterogeneous societies
who do not wish to leave aside their historical particulars which give them uniqueness.
&RQFOXVLRQ
The Namesake deals with the life of Ganguli family between the two different worlds: the Bengali
and the American. They represent the world of Bengali immigrants who while maintaining the
customs of their homeland struggle to assimilate into main stream American culture. Lahiri
stresses the fact that for Diaspora people 'home' is a very flowing concept which changes its
meaning along with the prevailing mindset of the person. Question of identity has remained a
source of conflicts and has led to wars in history. But it is more important for those who are grown
up in two worlds simultaneously. In short, the novel is a guide of experience for immigrant
population of Indian Diaspora.
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Through Namesake, Lahiri sends a crystal-clear message to people who are quite keen on dreaming
of settling with strong aspirations for a better future on a foreign land without realizing that this
displacement demands greater adaptability in terms of both climate and culture. The dilemma of
name cannot be solved by the name on record. The identity of the individual, which is consistently
affected by society, is something one has to discover through a process of reflections and
negotiations. The question of identity never affects when one is born on his mother land. He is a
son of a father who has a social status. He grows up among the same people and society. He never
bothers about his identity even if he goes to other city. If the same child is born on a foreign land,
the question of identity starts hammering. He is like an alien on a new land. He is identified as an
immigrant as he differs from the natives. The immediate sign of difference is the skin color. He
struggles to get an identity as a second generation.Diaspora, is therefore, a scattering of the seed
in the wind, the fruits of which are a new creation and a fight to survive. .Diaspora is all about the
creation of new identities, spaces for growth, resolution of conflicts and a new culture Every
Diaspora movement holds a historical significance, as it carries within itself the core of the nation’s
history. Diaspora is a journey towards self-realization, self-recognition, self-knowledge and selfdefinition. There is an element of creativity present in the Diaspora writings and this creation
stands as a compensation for the many losses suffered. The principle of Struggle to Acculturate in
the Namesake simultaneity displays 'the core' human predicament in the countries of the West and
the East. Indian Diaspora writings help in many ways and is a powerful network connecting the
entire globe. Diaspora literature helps in the circulation of information and in solving many
problems too. It helps to re-discover the commonality and inclusiveness of India.
The Namesake works as a channel to strength the bonds between the different states of India and
of
India
in
relation
with
USA
and
the
other
countries
at
large.
Indian philosophy describes that the world is a family. In this context multiculturalism should be
considered as amalgamation of various cultures, achieving the great ideals of world peace,
harmony, and universal fraternity. Gandhiji also believed in the same principles, never wanted to
be bound by walls and limitations. Same way, the efforts of Gujarat government has initiated to
attract the world to come and invest throughVibrant Gujarat Festival, Industrial Meet with the
NRIs. At the same time, it tries to spread Indian cultural heritage into the second and successive
generations of the diaspora by celebrating kite festival etc. The process of globalization has not
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only unsettled people and cultures but has created new identities and affiliations in terms of both
conflicts and collaborations.
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5HIHUHQFHV
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