Indian English Literature in the Age of Globalisation: Identity, Migration and Cultural Change

Abstract

The advent of globalisation has significantly transformed the thematic, cultural, and aesthetic dimensions of Indian English Literature. As India became increasingly connected to global economic, technological, cultural, and migratory networks, Indian writers in English began to engage with questions of identity, displacement, belonging, hybridity, cultural memory, and social transformation in increasingly complex ways. This paper, Indian English Literature in the Age of Globalisation: Identity, Migration and Cultural Change, examines how contemporary Indian English writers negotiate the tensions between local cultural affiliations and global modernity. It explores the ways in which globalisation has reshaped individual and collective identities while creating new spaces of cultural interaction, negotiation, and resistance. The study focuses on representations of migration, diaspora, transnational mobility, urbanisation, changing family structures, and encounters between traditional and modern value systems. Indian English literature frequently presents characters who inhabit multiple cultural worlds and experience a sense of belonging that is neither completely local nor entirely global. Such narratives reveal the complexities of cultural hybridity, particularly among migrants, diasporic communities, second-generation Indians, and individuals negotiating rapidly changing social environments. At the same time, contemporary writers examine how global capitalism, consumer culture, digital communication, and Western cultural influences affect Indian social practices, relationships, aspirations, and perceptions of self. The paper adopts a qualitative and textual approach to selected works of prominent Indian English writers, including Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Bharati Mukherjee, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kiran Desai, Arundhati Roy, and Rohinton Mistry. Through a comparative reading of their narratives, the study investigates the relationship between migration and identity and considers literature as a significant space for negotiating cultural change. It argues that Indian English Literature does not simply reproduce the effects of globalisation; rather, it critically examines, questions, and reimagines the relationship between the local and the global. Ultimately, the study demonstrates that contemporary Indian English literature functions as a dynamic cultural space in which identities are continuously reconstructed through migration, memory, language, intercultural encounters, and changing social realities.