Cultural Context in Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine
Described as “the foremost chronicler of the multicultural New America”, Bharati Mukherjee
constitutes her works with the life of South Asian expatriates/immigrants in the United States
and Canada. Her novel, Jasmine, explores the process of acculturation and assimilation from
different perspectives. T. S. Eliot says, "The culture of the individual is dependent upon ...
society to which that group or class belongs. Therefore, it is the culture of the society that is
fundamental". The protagonist of the novel, Jasmine, experiences cultural conflict both in and
out of her own culture. Right from the beginning, Jyoti rebels against her cultural inscriptions by
excelling in education as it gives her a way to distinguish herself from other girls of her age and
shape an identity that questions the patriarchal hegemony. She tries to move and think beyond
the obsolete rural society where she lives.
Jasmine’s family is affected by a sense of loss and displacement after the partition which made
them leave their comfortable, upper-middle class lifestyle in Lahore. They were forced to lead
the rest of their lives in a village of flaky mud huts in Hasnapur. Her parents are haunted and
plagued by the loss of their homeland as Jyoti narrates, “Marajo, my mother, couldn’t forget the
Partition Riots. Muslims sacked Our house, Neighbors‟ servants tugged off earrings and bangles,
defiled Grottoes sobered my grandfather’s horse. Life shouldn’t have turned out that way! I’ve
never been to Lahore, but the loss survives in the instant replay of my family story: forever
Lahore smokes, forever my parents flee.”
Jasmine’s parents become the victims of an involuntary exile which makes her mother distrustful
and pessimistic and her father never comes to accept the reality of living in a different land. He
tries to revive his memories of Lahore in his attire, the Pakistani radio broadcasts he listens to
and his revulsion toward anything that is not related to Lahore including mangoes, women,
music, and the Punjabi dialect of the Indians. Even though Jasmine realizes that she is never
going to see her parents’ Lahore, the trauma of this alienation repeats throughout her life in India.
Simultaneously, she imbibes the culture of the land where she was born – India, which is deeply
rooted in its tradition, particularly in its attitude towards women. Here, she experiences the first
conflict between the dominant patriarchal system and the modern life that she desires.
Jasmine’s unwillingness to go as per her grandmother’s wishes complicates the perceptions
regarding culture and gender roles. By marrying Prakash in court, she renounces the centuries-
old practice of marriage by horoscope matching. Renamed Jasmine, she shares her husband’s
dream of attaining an affluent life in the US. Prakash was a radical with an open mindset. In
contrast to the other men of the traditional culture, Prakash did not see marriage as the cultural
sanctioning of patriarchal control and enforced obedience. The tragic death of Prakash at the
hands of Khalsa Lions is the result of the threat to the multicultural polity and reality of India.
Certain sectarian fanatical Sikhs like Sukhwinder Singh considered Hindus as impure and Hindu
women as prostitutes. These Khalsas failed to understand the social and cultural heterogeneity of
India.
According to Hindu culture, a widow is destined to stay alone for the rest of her life without any
rights to material fulfillment. Jasmine who has no faith in the Oriental Hindu culture expresses
, her position in a feudalistic society when she says, “Feudalism! I am a window in the war of
feudalism”. Realising the fact that Prakash has left neither in-laws nor children to serve in her
widowhood, Jasmine gets herself out of the patriarchal society by deciding to leave for America
to fulfill her husband’s dream. She feels that Jasmine cannot exist without Prakash since he is the
one who gave her a new identity. She decides to join her husband in spirit by committing sati.
Jasmine’s rape by Half –Face after reaching the US infuses in her the destructive energy of the
Goddess Kali. Her satisfaction and calmness after killing Half-Face signifies her gaining strength
from the Goddess of Destruction and her rebirth in the host country. Bharati Mukherjee claims
that it is Jasmine’s Hindu upbringing and not America’s optimism that enables her to face the
hardship. She feels that she is no longer pure and clean to perform sati: “Lord Yama [the God of
Death], who had wanted me, who had courted me, and whom I’d flirted with on the long trip
over, had now deserted me”. In self-immolation tradition, “a woman who is about to
practice sati is not allowed to be touched by a non-Hindu”. Being touched and raped by Half -
Face, a non-Hindu, honour and chastity as a faithful wife have been tarnished: “I had protected
this sari [the white sari for widow], and Prakash’s suit, through it all. Then he [Half -Face] had
touched it. He had put on the suit, touched my sari, my photographs and Ganpati [her sandal
wood Ganpati sculpture]. She is no longer qualified to undergo the sacred ritual, as per the
Oriental culture, to prove her loyalty and fulfill her dharma as a widow.
Lillian Gordon’s renaming of Jasmine to Jazzy symbolises her entry into the American culture.
She begins to adopt the ways of American life and culture in order to survive. Gordon tells her,
“...if you walk and talk American, they’ll think you were born here. Most Americans can’t
imagine anything else”. Jasmine learns the fact that “American” does not necessarily or simply
mean born in the United States or being white. Rather, it is the appropriation or annexation of
social behaviour and cultural norms which determines what or who American is. All these
changes adapted by Jasmine show how the immigrants are forced to change themselves
drastically to be able to begin a new life in a foreign land. Jasmine as an Indian immigrant
interacts with the new world and proceeds towards the process of transformation and absorbs the
new culture.
The novel shows cultural domination, economic exploitation, and subjugation meted out towards
immigrants in the US. Asians, Africans, Chinese, and Japanese who were Undocumented were
called illegal aliens. The taxi driver who drove Jasmine to the Vadheras’ house was a respectable
doctor in Kabul. “In Kabul I was a doctor. We have to be here living like dogs because they’ve
taken everything from us… He went on about the wrongs. Bitterness seemed to buoy him, make
him special… on the streets I saw only more greed, more people like myself. New York was an
archipelago of ghettos seething with aliens”. Women from Trinidad and Barbados, like Letitia
who came in search of decent employment end up with cheap labour. The ethnic identity of
Kanjobal women from Guatemala and part of Mexico who do not speak English was relegated to
the margin.
Jasmine’s living with the Vadheras reminded her of her past. She feels alienated and suffers from
a state of meaninglessness. Shalini Yadav states, “While Jasmine creates a new identity for every
new situation, her former identities are never completely erased, for they emerge in specific
Described as “the foremost chronicler of the multicultural New America”, Bharati Mukherjee
constitutes her works with the life of South Asian expatriates/immigrants in the United States
and Canada. Her novel, Jasmine, explores the process of acculturation and assimilation from
different perspectives. T. S. Eliot says, "The culture of the individual is dependent upon ...
society to which that group or class belongs. Therefore, it is the culture of the society that is
fundamental". The protagonist of the novel, Jasmine, experiences cultural conflict both in and
out of her own culture. Right from the beginning, Jyoti rebels against her cultural inscriptions by
excelling in education as it gives her a way to distinguish herself from other girls of her age and
shape an identity that questions the patriarchal hegemony. She tries to move and think beyond
the obsolete rural society where she lives.
Jasmine’s family is affected by a sense of loss and displacement after the partition which made
them leave their comfortable, upper-middle class lifestyle in Lahore. They were forced to lead
the rest of their lives in a village of flaky mud huts in Hasnapur. Her parents are haunted and
plagued by the loss of their homeland as Jyoti narrates, “Marajo, my mother, couldn’t forget the
Partition Riots. Muslims sacked Our house, Neighbors‟ servants tugged off earrings and bangles,
defiled Grottoes sobered my grandfather’s horse. Life shouldn’t have turned out that way! I’ve
never been to Lahore, but the loss survives in the instant replay of my family story: forever
Lahore smokes, forever my parents flee.”
Jasmine’s parents become the victims of an involuntary exile which makes her mother distrustful
and pessimistic and her father never comes to accept the reality of living in a different land. He
tries to revive his memories of Lahore in his attire, the Pakistani radio broadcasts he listens to
and his revulsion toward anything that is not related to Lahore including mangoes, women,
music, and the Punjabi dialect of the Indians. Even though Jasmine realizes that she is never
going to see her parents’ Lahore, the trauma of this alienation repeats throughout her life in India.
Simultaneously, she imbibes the culture of the land where she was born – India, which is deeply
rooted in its tradition, particularly in its attitude towards women. Here, she experiences the first
conflict between the dominant patriarchal system and the modern life that she desires.
Jasmine’s unwillingness to go as per her grandmother’s wishes complicates the perceptions
regarding culture and gender roles. By marrying Prakash in court, she renounces the centuries-
old practice of marriage by horoscope matching. Renamed Jasmine, she shares her husband’s
dream of attaining an affluent life in the US. Prakash was a radical with an open mindset. In
contrast to the other men of the traditional culture, Prakash did not see marriage as the cultural
sanctioning of patriarchal control and enforced obedience. The tragic death of Prakash at the
hands of Khalsa Lions is the result of the threat to the multicultural polity and reality of India.
Certain sectarian fanatical Sikhs like Sukhwinder Singh considered Hindus as impure and Hindu
women as prostitutes. These Khalsas failed to understand the social and cultural heterogeneity of
India.
According to Hindu culture, a widow is destined to stay alone for the rest of her life without any
rights to material fulfillment. Jasmine who has no faith in the Oriental Hindu culture expresses
, her position in a feudalistic society when she says, “Feudalism! I am a window in the war of
feudalism”. Realising the fact that Prakash has left neither in-laws nor children to serve in her
widowhood, Jasmine gets herself out of the patriarchal society by deciding to leave for America
to fulfill her husband’s dream. She feels that Jasmine cannot exist without Prakash since he is the
one who gave her a new identity. She decides to join her husband in spirit by committing sati.
Jasmine’s rape by Half –Face after reaching the US infuses in her the destructive energy of the
Goddess Kali. Her satisfaction and calmness after killing Half-Face signifies her gaining strength
from the Goddess of Destruction and her rebirth in the host country. Bharati Mukherjee claims
that it is Jasmine’s Hindu upbringing and not America’s optimism that enables her to face the
hardship. She feels that she is no longer pure and clean to perform sati: “Lord Yama [the God of
Death], who had wanted me, who had courted me, and whom I’d flirted with on the long trip
over, had now deserted me”. In self-immolation tradition, “a woman who is about to
practice sati is not allowed to be touched by a non-Hindu”. Being touched and raped by Half -
Face, a non-Hindu, honour and chastity as a faithful wife have been tarnished: “I had protected
this sari [the white sari for widow], and Prakash’s suit, through it all. Then he [Half -Face] had
touched it. He had put on the suit, touched my sari, my photographs and Ganpati [her sandal
wood Ganpati sculpture]. She is no longer qualified to undergo the sacred ritual, as per the
Oriental culture, to prove her loyalty and fulfill her dharma as a widow.
Lillian Gordon’s renaming of Jasmine to Jazzy symbolises her entry into the American culture.
She begins to adopt the ways of American life and culture in order to survive. Gordon tells her,
“...if you walk and talk American, they’ll think you were born here. Most Americans can’t
imagine anything else”. Jasmine learns the fact that “American” does not necessarily or simply
mean born in the United States or being white. Rather, it is the appropriation or annexation of
social behaviour and cultural norms which determines what or who American is. All these
changes adapted by Jasmine show how the immigrants are forced to change themselves
drastically to be able to begin a new life in a foreign land. Jasmine as an Indian immigrant
interacts with the new world and proceeds towards the process of transformation and absorbs the
new culture.
The novel shows cultural domination, economic exploitation, and subjugation meted out towards
immigrants in the US. Asians, Africans, Chinese, and Japanese who were Undocumented were
called illegal aliens. The taxi driver who drove Jasmine to the Vadheras’ house was a respectable
doctor in Kabul. “In Kabul I was a doctor. We have to be here living like dogs because they’ve
taken everything from us… He went on about the wrongs. Bitterness seemed to buoy him, make
him special… on the streets I saw only more greed, more people like myself. New York was an
archipelago of ghettos seething with aliens”. Women from Trinidad and Barbados, like Letitia
who came in search of decent employment end up with cheap labour. The ethnic identity of
Kanjobal women from Guatemala and part of Mexico who do not speak English was relegated to
the margin.
Jasmine’s living with the Vadheras reminded her of her past. She feels alienated and suffers from
a state of meaninglessness. Shalini Yadav states, “While Jasmine creates a new identity for every
new situation, her former identities are never completely erased, for they emerge in specific
