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This study examines Prajwal Parajuly’s The Gurkha’s Daughter, a collection of short stories, through Stuart Hall’s theorisation of identity as a process of “becoming” and Homi K. Bhabha’s notions of Third Space, Mimicry, and Hybridity. The paper argues that Parajuly situates his characters in a condition of unsettlement across India, Nepal, Bhutan, and America, thereby dramatising their marginalised identities. These identities are not defined by a fixed, inherent essence; instead, the characters’ shifting positions within broader historical, social, and political power dynamics continuously construct them. The postcolonial, globalised world places these characters in a state of flux as they navigate statelessness alongside barriers of gender, class, and caste. Even when they are granted agency, it remains restricted, shaped by socio-political forces that govern their lives. These characters do not fully belong to the settings of the narratives. Instead, they inhabit a third space where cultural identities, nationalities, and languages intersect and compete. Instances of mimicry within this third space reveal the characters’ desire to approximate the dominant culture, thereby often destabilising its authority. The study contends that the resulting hybridity is not empowering but disorienting; the characters’ identities are compelled to undergo painful negotiations within structures that continue to marginalise them. Reading Parajuly through the twin lenses of Hall and Bhabha reveals that the author resists the essentialisation of Gorkha identity, instead presenting it as an unresolved, ongoing process within the wider currents of postcolonial politics.
Divya Pradhan. “The Unbearable Heaviness of Unbelonging: Exploring the Gorkha Identity in Prajwal Parajuly’s The Gurkha’s Daughter.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 4, August 2026, pp. 1149-1169. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n4.71.
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