Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake in the light of Stuart Hall's essay on "Cultural Identity and Diaspora."

Abstract

Transnational migration, the movement of human populations between states, is growing and has been changing in nature since the Second World War (Soguk, 1999, p. 207; Doty, 2003, p. 3). Until the 1960s, 80 per cent of immigrants to the United States (US), Canada and Australia originated from other industrialised countries, but by the end of the 1980s, 82 per cent of migrants were from “developing” countries (Doty, 2003, p. 3). This shift is mirrored in the migration patterns to other areas of the global North, such as the European Union (EU) (Ibid, p. 3). With a significant number people of migrating from former colonies to former colonial metropoles, there is a sense of symmetry with previous movements of people in the opposite direction during the colonial period (Persaud, 2002, p. 56). The Indian English fiction has not only opened and enriched the countries reservoir of knowledge and new ideas but also played an important role in its progress, prosperity and an intellectual mind set of the people.