Nation as Imagined in Anita Desai’s Bye-Bye Blackbird
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Department of English
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