Published Online:September 2024
Product Name:The IUP Journal of English Studies
Product Type:Article
Product Code:IJES110924
Author Name:Abi Sarkar and Sandip Sarkar
Availability:YES
Subject/Domain:Arts and Humanities
Download Format:PDF
Pages:129-241
The sense of home and belonging plays a fundamental role in an individual’s existence. In any society’s collective consciousness, this idea of home is frequently attached to nationality by birth. This complexity of home and nationality is quite analogous to that in the discourses on motherhood. National identity transcends geopolitical boundaries and is constituted by an individual’s subjective sense of home and belonging. Likewise, motherhood cannot be evaluated by the mere presence or absence of biological capacities through the hegemonic framework of pro-natal discourses. In Kunal Basu’s Sarojini’s Mother (2020), the eponymous protagonist returns to her birthplace in search of her biological mother, which leads to numerous questions about her belonging, nationality, and how motherhood is popularly perceived. This paper debunks the normative ideas about nationality and motherhood through the protagonist’s quest. It conceptualizes the novel as a revelation of the pure essence of home and motherhood and clarifies that neither the mother’s identity is dependent on the capacity to give birth nor does the idea of a nation depend on the boundaries arbitrarily drawn on the maps
Nationality plays a fundamental role in the construction of an individual’s identity. Nationality functions as a primary signifier of difference and inequality by drawing a line of demarcation between ‘nationals’ and ‘non-nationals,’ and it is eventually used as a form of subordination/domination, as the latter has to conform to the mainstream society’s norms (Favell 2019).