Negotiating Identity and Belonging in Anand Mahadevan’s The Strike

Abstract

Indo-Canadian literature has emerged as a significant branch of diasporic writing that explores the complexities of migration, cultural negotiation, and identity formation. Anand Mahadevan’s novel The Strike (2006) offers a compelling portrayal of an immigrant subject struggling with questions of selfhood and belonging within a multicultural Canadian context. This paper examines how Mahadevan represents identity as fluid, fragmented, and continuously negotiated rather than fixed or essential. Through the protagonist’s personal conflicts, social marginalization, and search for emotional and cultural anchoring, the novel reflects the broader experiences of Indo-Canadian immigrants who inhabit a liminal space between homeland and host nation. Drawing on theories of diaspora, hybridity, and belonging, this study analyzes how the novel articulates the tensions between cultural inheritance and individual desire. The paper argues that Mahadevan’s narrative foregrounds belonging as a contested and evolving process shaped by race, memory, and socio-cultural displacement