Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake belongs to the Indian Diaspora Literature that explores various issues like identity, multiculturalism, alienation, dislocation, cultural consciousness and so on. The novel is a true reflection of the complex lives of people who have been uprooted from their native land and have made a new life in a foreign country. Herself being a second generation Indian-Americans the author Jhumpa Lahiri delineates the themes of immigration, collision of cultures, crisis of identities, adaptation of cultures, sense of exile that unfold to disclose the dilemma and difficulties of the expatriates in their uprooted lives throughout her Interpreter of Maladies (1999), The Namesake (2003), The Unaccustomed Earth (2010) and The Low Land (2013). The novel The Namesake recounts the story of two generation migrants from India to America and depicts the struggle of their identity crisis. The paper aims to find out this crisis and pangs of Diaspora through the characters portrayed in the novels. It also tries to analyze whether the protagonist Gogol Ganguli who grows up both Indian and American finds and alternative identity in the shrinking global community.

Sustaining a healthy sense of self-identity is crucial for our individual and collective well-being. Following the emergence of feminism, the concept of ‘identity’ has been conjoined with ethics, politics, and representation. Feminist discourses have challenged the fundamental categories of male-centric thought, including those of subjectivity and identity-formation. Poststructuralist feminism has marked any attempt to form an identity in natural-eternal, oppositional, and/or hierarchical terms as phallogocentric, and thereby problematic. But concomitantly, the provisional, fractured, anti-humanist subject-in-process also seems inadequate as a sustainable subject-category, especially for women. The goal for contemporary feminist theory is, therefore, to explore a non-binary, non-phallogocentric (feminine) perspective. ‘Feminine’ in this context does not mean the antonym of ‘masculine’, but refers to a non-binary, non-hierarchical approach based on simultaneity and fluidity. It is simultaneously an onto-epistemological position and a politico-ethical stance, where the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ facilitate mutual (un)learning, cohabitation, and reconfiguration. The present paper discusses how French feminist thinker Hélène Cixous explores the poetics and politics of the feminine in her celebrated essay, “The Laugh of the Medusa”. The research methodology followed is that of qualitative analysis from a feminist theoretical perspective. Writing in an interdisciplinary and non-generic style, Cixous argues for a ‘feminine writing’ which subverts the repressions of a patriarchal culture. Cixous unites the feminine, the ‘feminist’ and the ‘female’ in the figure of the ‘New Woman’—a sexual-textual ‘self/s’ whose awareness of multiple belongings and ceaseless becoming allows ‘her’ to remain porous to the other. It is a subjectivity predicated not on ‘either/or’ but ‘both’ – embodied but plural, gender fluidic but resembling a woman’s sexual drives and pleasures (jouissance), coherent but polymorphous. Cixous thereby inaugurates an ethical subjectivity and a liberating self-expression, particularly for women.

This article revisits Edward Said’s Humanism and Democratic Criticism (2004) in order to argue that in this book and elsewhere in his works, Said tries to promote a vision of humanism, a philosophical school often maligned by so many radical thinkers including Michel Foucault. Written in the aftermath of the tragic events of 9/11, Said’s book, this article argues, not only helps us rethink the relationship between the East and the West, it also helps us bridge the disconnect between the University and the community. Foregrounding Foucault’s opposition of land and body or sovereignty or power, this article shows how Said refutes Foucaultian post-structuralism’s obsession with power at the expense of land and space in order to imagine a vision of a humanist world which is still political, still capable to engaging with difference and otherness.

This paper investigates the identity crisis and the situation of Indian diasporic community living in the United States as portrayed in The Namesake (2003) by Pulitzer Prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri. In the backdrop, this study also examines the striking similarities between Gogol Ganguly, the protagonist of the novel, and Akaky Akakievich, the protagonist of the short story The Overcoat (1842) by Russian author Nikolai Gogol. From an initial observation on the plot, it is clear that the naming of Gogol Ganguly, otherwise called Nikhil, becomes a mess which eventually creates a divided sense of identity in the character. He simultaneously becomes an Indian, a Russian, and an American or none of these. He belongs to everywhere and nowhere. Thus, his sense of belonging becomes ambivalent, and we see that he subscribes to none of his apparent identities fully. Hence, Jhumpa Lahiri’s use of different identities for Gogol functions as an overcoat for his dominant Indian identity, which neither gives him sense or sensibility like the protagonist of the mentioned short story. Overall, this paper tries to study the identity crisis and diasporic condition of the Indian people in the US from a critical postcolonial perspective.

PanditaRamabai Sarasvati was an exceptional feminist scholar who focused on issues concerning women's rights and emancipation within the historical context of the nineteenth century India. In this scenario, she was determined to disregard all of society's conventional obstacles and give up her own life's affections and illusions to save the defenseless, innocent, and miserable widow from terrible agony. She had become an her audaciousness, creativity, and perseverance. She firmly believed that w empowerment and proper education were very essential in forming a progressive and advanced society. In this instance, education for women was more significant than providing education for men. Her religious or spiritual reason for doing right ( her to a deeper and more profound connection with Christ. She gained extensive and valuable experience during her visit to Britain and America, and on her return to India, she vigorously undertook the activities to set up the Mukti Mission f enrichment of widows. This present research paper endeavors to emphasize various reformist measures committed by her concerning women and even areas beyond this.