Multiculturalism is the phenomenon of multiple groups of cultures existing within one society, largely due to the arrival of immigrant communities.Supporters of multiculturalism claim that different traditions and cultures can enrich society; however the concept has also its critics to the point where the term “Multiculturalism”is used more by critics than by supporters. Multiculturalism occurs naturally when a society is willing to accept the cultures of immigrants also willing to accept the cultures of the land to which they have. In any actual society, people will mind and associate with those of other races or cultures while also keeping some kind of social or cultural identity. Complaints about multiculturalism usually arise when people encounter with member of another sub group but feel they are mixing too little. Criticism claims that multiculturalism promotes a tolerance of moral relativism and result in a loss of national identity. There is also the unfortunate fact that some cultures simply do not mix, and multiculturalism can sometimes lead to the development of souring sub cultures.
Multiculturalism has raised important questions about the status of minorities within the nation state, by asking whether different communities are treated as equal within the democratic country. Multiculturalism has also shown that the presence of many plural cultures and communities is not enough. Within a democracy what is necessary is that different must not be a source of discrimination. It must be acknowledged, accommodated and above all given an equal position within a democratic country. However this multicultural agenda of inter group equality must be factored along with the concern for intra group equality. Without the intra group equality it may become a hindrance to, rather than the support for the struggle for democracy. This is clearly indicated when the Ghorkha National Liberation Front, an actual polity party seeks to empower West Bengal ethnic Nepalese and once led a separatist upraising, the Ghorkha Land Movement was established by Nepalese people to seek the establishment of an autonomous Nepali state within India. This ethnic tension is still going on in the region till today where they are agitating for a separate Ghorkha Land.
Despite political freedom, cultural differences are directly manifested through the characters. They fail to assimilate new culture and give up original culture in totality. There remains the identity crisis which many of the Indians face despite multicultural reaction. The author keenly aware that she lives and writes in a divided world, which not only by nationalism and colonialism but also by gender, class and ethnic affiliation. Trying to speak to and about multiple sectors of a global reading public spread ensured divisions of ideology and identity is not easy. At the same time for an immigrant writer, someone who lives in one place but writes about another, communicating across such division is a risk.
Most of the time she merged cultural environments to creates a complex and confusing setting for her characters. The characters in the book are in one way or another displaced. They hold on to a questionable or mistaken identity and are unable to define Indian heritage, develop complexities which ruin their relationship with a keen eye for telling detail and profound wisdom, Desai weaves the weight of multicultural division and depicts the characters who live with questions of identity, alienationand exile at home as well as abroad.
The novel presents us with a three-way narrative split, relating the stories of the sixteen-year-old girl Sai, her bitter grandfather and Biju, their Cook’s son, who tries to make his way as an illegal migrant worker in New York. This narrative split provides us with an optimism from which to view two very different sides of the same issues as Biju’s negotiation of his identity as an illegal immigrant in a foreign city is constructed with the more complex situations of Sai and her grandfather who find themselves as strangers in their homeland due to their education, language and wealth. On two opposite ends of the glob these characters are at odds with their surroundings and effectually in similar position of marginality and strangeness.
It is a good narrative with the spread of globalization connecting India’s Nepal border with New York City. In spite of being set in two completely different places, the action is linked by the presence of the Judge’s Cook’s son Biju as an illegal immigrant in New York, where he keeps moving as a cook from one third rate restaurant to another, hoping somehow to produce a green card and the consciousness of the fact the Indo-Nepalese are tired of being treated like a minority. Biju stands for the young crazy men of the third world who dreams of going to west for money making. Unfortunately they sacrifice their own culture and social conventions. Through Biju, Desai explores the pain of the immigrant, the experience of the world.
Kiran Desai tries to unravel the myth about the American dream. Thus the Indians more than any in other community in the world flatter high about America is satirically brought out by the novelist in a couple of places through intimate dialogues. When Bijuexpresses his determination to leave US, after he was completely disillusioned, Mr. Kakkar convinced his mind. He says that, Biju is making a big mistake by going to India, where he is going to be treated as a servant. According to him America is always like a king and those who live in America are kingly whereas all others who are living on the other sides of the planet are like servants to that king. In a very strong expression, Mr. Kakkar tells Biju “America is in the process of buying up the world. Go back. You will find they own the business”.
Desai quite obviously is on the side of the unfortunate. Biju, whose dreams of America are shattered. He has, as the title shows, inherited just nothing but sheer loss for he thinks that it is a meaningless thing to go on dreaming about a bright future in the US. Packed in to a rat infested apartments in Harlem, Biju’s life is a juggling act and not to all far from the poverty, which his father believed that he has escaped, unlike the class of Indians who now celebrated their economic success in America. People like Biju jumped from one bad job to another. Biju is battled at nearly every turn enabled to master the sharp skills that have enabled other immigrants to get rich. When at last he flies home, Biju is immersed with nostalgia. By bringing Biju to Kalimpong, Desai heightens the connection of New York City with India by devoting a large chunk of her text to Kalimpong’s own narratives, particularly the story of the raise of the GNLF movement. In a multicultural society, neither individual is supposed to be subjected to the hegemony of national, cultural, traditions nor ethnic group is subjected to tyranny of either or dominant group within it.
A retired Gujarati Judge, who’s flash back to his Cambridge education in the 1930 s, reveals the root of his self-identity. His orphaned, teenage granddaughter Sai, her tutor Gyan, a member of the Nepali insurgency, and the Judge’s elderly cook, who pains for his son living miserably as an illegal immigrant. In such a multifaceted world, order, the voice of the margin, that is that of the minority within and of the foreigner outside began to be heard dramatically because of different social, political and cultural movements within and outside. Nepalese-Indians are traditionally marginalized, yet they are more centrally located than none-native and the foreigners.
Desai used a wide range of words and expressions that help to enrich the communicative context of a multicultural society. The use of popular slang, abuses of various regions and frequently used Indian expressions are: “Nakhara,” “Pakora”, “Huzoor”, “Mataji”, “Pitaji”, “Salwars”, “Kamalahat”, “Laddoos”, “dhotis”,“Pallu”, “Budhoo”, “Namaste”, “Ayiye”, “Beathiye”, “Khaiye”, “Chappals”, “Thamasha”, “Desi”, etc. In addition to these characteristic features of language, we may cite full length Hindi expressions in different contexts like “Bar barkartarahatahai” “rasta rook” “Gas mar rahahai” “Jai Ghorkha” etc. Desai portrays in the novel the cultural aspects of vise-a-vise the immigrant experience. Her portrayal of the characters explores the multicultural concern and immigrant experience. To suit her theme and concerns, Desai adeptly employs the experiments in the case of the language. Her creative use of English contributed to the effectiveness of the novel. Sounds are reproduced to create necessary effect, expression such as ‘the rustling of the wind and grass’, ‘the twittering of birds’, ‘the croaking of frog’ etc.
The speech of English educated upper class women in America too figures in the story through “Namaste, Kusum Auntie Aayiye, Beathiye, Khaiye”. Other devices adopted by the novelist to lend authenticity are the use of block letters to indicate high pitched voice and a deliberate omission of punctuation marks to convey a sense of breathless narration evident in the typical reeling off the menu by a waiter in a restaurant.
The novel is a compound of the life stories of the main characters and gradually discloses their lives as well as the environment in which they grew up and which shaped them. Even though all the characters are from one small town in the mountains their stories spread as far as Britain and the USA. The novel shows not only the lives of the main characters but also the development of the region with growing social unrests of Nepali nationalist who are a large Diaspora living in the region, and also the impacts of such changes on the inhabitance of the region. The beginning of the novel introduces a retired judge who lives with his granddaughter and his cook. The Judge is an old man, who a young bright man was sent to Britain to become a judge to serve the British government. However the British society of 1940s was not prepared to encounter foreign culture and young Jemubhai Patel had to face racist behavior which had devastating effect on his self-esteem.
For entire days nobody spoke to him at all. His throat jammed with words unuttered, his heart and mind turned in to blunt aching things, and elderly ladies, even the hapless blue-haired, spotted, faces like collapsing pumpkins moved over when he sat next to them in the bus, so he knew that whatever they had, they were secure in their conviction that it was not even remotely as bad as what he had. The young and beautiful were no kinder; girls held their noses and giggled. The change he went through lead in to great changes in his behavior which is well demonstrated on to relationship toward his life. The judge, after the bitter experience in his youth, despises everything Indian and clings to British customs as a sign of higher class. His granddaughter Sai was brought up in a Westernized convent after her parent’s death. At the age of seven, she moved to Cho-Oyu to live with her grandfather as he was the only living relative. Sai represents Westernized Indian upper class whose first language is English and who prefers Western tradition to the Indian ones. After her affair with her Math tutor Gyan, who is Nepali, she is confronted with his accusation to be a servant of the West. The cook who is actually called by his name only once at the end of the novel, on the other hand represents a person from a lower class that follows Indian tradition but sees the Western world as something of a higher standard and is proud of his son Biju.
Biju, the son of the cook, represents a person, who manages to leave Eastern culture and encounters the Western culture as an illegal immigrant in New York. His story shows what happens when we take people from a poor country and place them in a wealthy one. Biju does not succeeded in the Western culture as he fails to understand it. As an illegal immigrant he is also in a disadvantageous position. He does not transform his misfortune in to hatred. The experience helps him to realize that he belongs to his own culture. Biju went to USA in hope of financial success and although he does not achieve it, all his belongings are stolen on his return to India. He appreciates being his own culture, where he can understand its customs and people.
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