Postcolonial and Multicultural conflicts in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss

Abstract

The present paper aims to bring forth Kiran Desai‟s concept of multiculturalism and postcolonialism as depicted in her Booker Award winning novel: The Inheritance of Loss. The paper seeks to explore the backgrounds of social, psychological, religious, and spiritual events that steadily moulded Kiran Desai’s fictional art. The novel is a brilliant study of Indian Culture-the culture in its transitional phase. In fact, craze for the western values, manners, language, and glamorous life-style; impact of modernisation, consumerism, and globalisation is manifest in all walks of Indian life. In her narrative, Desai deftly shuttles between First and Third worlds, illuminating the pain of exile, the ambiguities of Post Colonialism and the blinding desire for a “better life”, where one person’s wealth means another’s poverty. The Inheritance of Loss is a novel about India written from the global perspective through the representation of a variety of characters from different cultural backgrounds and tracing their mental makeup different social strata in India and U.S, Desai throws light on the colliding interest in the globalized world. Despite political freedom, cultural slavery is directly manifested through these characters. Consequently, they can neither assimilate the new culture nor give up their original culture in totality. Desai has portrayed the state of homelessness, displacement ,exile, marginalization and lack of belongingness being experienced by the legal and illegal Diaspora communities and individuals in America (transnational land) as well as by the people from other states, regions and communities from India residing in Kalimpong (national land).