Nation as Imagined in Anita Desai’s Bye-Bye Blackbird

Abstract

Utilizing the concept of Nationalism this research explores various crosscurrents and undercurrents of migration, which creates adverse conditions for Indian migrants in Anita Desai’s novel Bye Bye Blackbird. In the novel characters from India migrate to England in serach of better life, education and wealth. In England they go through cultural and psychological problem. They are inferior and below the human line. They do not get education, health facility and freedom. Natural rights and fundamental rights are mere dream for them. In the midst of prejudice and other anti-migrant hassles, they do not hesitate adapt to the shifting cultural locale as a strategy of survival. The characters of the novel; Adit and Dev adopt western way of education, culture and religion as a camouflage to resist western atrocities. However they feel cultural in-between in the midst of western culture. They create imaginative community as diaspora. Key Words: Diaspora, Mimicry, Nation Hybridity, Identity, Survival, In- between-ness