IDENTITY IN MARGINS: MAHARASHTRIAN MARWADI OR MARWADI MAHARASHTRIAN

This paper shows how the Marwadi identity is not something derived from any one location and it looks at how it gets constructed in the very act of migration of the community. It deals with the question of how even if there is no one same place the semantic construction of the term ‘Marwadi' throughout the country, wherever the community is found is similar. For the purpose of this paper the researcher has taken the frame of a novel in Marathi by Dr. Girish Jakhotiya Eka Marwadichi Goshtha, an autobiographical fiction by a Marwadi settled in Maharashtra, to analyze the community. The misconception that others have about the community and the community has about its own self and its links with the past are elaborated upon in this paper.