Abstract:

Pakistani Anglophone fiction outlines a reconstruction of marginalized indigenous culture. Native culture has faced socio-economic, political and historical hegemony from the European oppressive white colonizers for centuries, creating disillusionment among the native people. As a result the indigenous cultural ethos gets de-rooted and creates nostalgia for the lost historico-cultural roots. This research highlights how oppressed cultures do not simply exist in void rather continuously endeavor and have the potential to relocate their roots and reconstruct a positive and optimistic picture of the otherwise de-rooted ‘self’. Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist is an effort to reemphasize indigenous cultural traditions and to question the impact of the western hegemonic discursive and ideological practices. The paper establishes that Hamid consciously tries to revisit and rewrite the native Pakistani culture through his strategy of ‘returning to roots’ for the amelioration of indigenous socio-economic, political and cultural strata, hence re-roots the previously de-rooted indigenous culture.

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