ABSTRACT
This chapter considers globalization era family fiction from India, namely Kiran Desai’s Booker prize winning novel The Inheritance of Loss (2006), braiding various issues such as the migration of labor, socioeconomic inequality, and local resistance movements. Encompassing three critical moments in Indian history – the colonial period, the postcolonial era and post-1990s economic liberalization – The Inheritance of Loss oscillates between temporal and spatial frames that arguably mimic the vast movements of migrant and gendered labor across the globe. The novel’s dual focus on Sai, the adolescent female protagonist growing up amidst an armed insurgency in Northeast India, and Biju, an illegal immigrant in New York, complicates the very idea of individual mobility in the globalization period. The chapter traces the arrival of globalization in India as heralded by the 2004 government campaign of “India Shining”. By examining the ignored aspects of insurgency and displaced labor, the chapter highlights how Desai dismantles globalization’s claim of newness and emphasizes the residual social asymmetries that are intensified in the Indian context and beyond.
