Conditional Belonging and Selective Visibility: Exploring Racial Politics and Diasporic Subjectivity in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland and Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss

This article examines the “model minority” stereotype attributed to the Indian Diaspora in the United States that celebrates the remarkable professional achievements and socioeconomic contributions of the community. The article argues that the “model minority” discourse is sustained by the dominant white Euro-American structures of power mechanisms to selectively legitimize certain classes of a diaspora while marginalizing others within the same community. Through a close textual analysis of The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri and The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, this article highlights the selective visibility of the flourishing Indian diaspora as skilled capital, yet subtly withholds a fuller integration of both privileged and precarious Indian migrants. The study is informed by the frameworks of Foucauldian discourse, diaspora studies, and Critical Race Theory in analyzing the experiences of the heterogeneous Indian diaspora community, who are discriminated against on the basis of race and culture.