Ritual, Migration, and the Rebirth of Self: Cultural Identity and Spiritual Negotiation in Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine and Desirable Daughters

Abstract

This paper explores how Bharati Mukherjee redefines cultural self-identity, spirituality, and indigenous practices in her novels Jasmine (1989) and Desirable Daughters (2002). Through her protagonists, Mukherjee examines how migration transforms not only geography but also interior life, where ritual and spirituality function as instruments of psychological renewal and moral agency. The study demonstrates that in both novels, Mukherjee’s heroines navigate displacement through the adaptation of indigenous practices into modern contexts. Their reinventions are at once personal and philosophical, articulating a diasporic theology of transformation that fuses the sacred and the secular. Drawing from postcolonial and feminist theories—especially the works of Stuart Hall, Homi K. Bhabha, and Victor Turner—this paper argues that Mukherjee’s fiction stages a redefinition of identity as a ritual of becoming, emphasizing hybridity, liminality, and the continuous negotiation between inherited and adopted spiritual forms.