THE NOTION OF ‘NATION’ IN JHUMPA LAHIRI’S THE LOWLAND

Abstract

Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland has truly emerged as one of the contemporary era’s finest literary works. The narrative is deeply reflective of themes like nationhood, displacement, fractured belonging, where the idea of the nation is not fixed or heroic but intimate, contested and somewhat emotionally charged. Jhumpa Lahiri situates the novel at the intersection of postcolonial India and immigrant America, using the Naxalite movement and the Bengali diaspora to question how national ideals shape, burden, and unsettle individual lives. The nation emerges not merely as a political entity but as a lived experience that enters homes, relationships, and memories, leaving lasting marks on personal identity. Through the contrasting lives of the two brothers, Udayan and Subhash, the novel presents the nation as both a call to collective responsibility and a force of irreversible loss. Revolutionary nationalism, driven by ideals of justice and equality, collides with quieter forms of allegiance rooted in family, survival, and ethical care. As the narrative moves across generations and geographies, Lahiri reveals how migration transforms national attachment into a space of longing, ambivalence, and reinvention. The immigrant experience in America further complicates the notion of the nation, replacing singular loyalties with hybrid identities shaped by exile, adaptation and cultural negotiation. Drawing upon postcolonial and diasporic theory, this study argues that The Lowland reimagines the nation as an unstable and evolving construct, one that is continuously rewritten through memory, trauma, and intergenerational conflict. Lahiri’s novel ultimately suggests that the nation is not only imagined collectively but endured privately, where its promises and failures are carried within ordinary lives struggling to belong across borders.