Indianness in the Selected Poems of Nissim Ezekiel

Author(s)	Dr. Jitender Singh
Country	India
Abstract	This paper examines the construction of “Indianness” in the poetry of Nissim Ezekiel (1924–2004), a foundational figure in Indian English poetry. Despite his Jewish background and Western modernist training, Ezekiel’s work articulates a distinctly Indian sensibility through its engagement with urban and rural life, Indian English, superstition, family ethics, and postcolonial identity crises. Through close readings of selected poems—“Background, Casually,” “Night of the Scorpion,” “Goodbye Party for Miss Pushpa T.S.,” and passages from “The Unfinished Man”—this study argues that Ezekiel’s Indianness is not rooted in ethnic purity or religious orthodoxy but in a conscious commitment to stay in India, to portray its social realities, and to forge a hybrid cultural identity that synthesizes Jewish, Western, and Indian elements. Drawing on postcolonial theories of hybridity and identity, the paper demonstrates how Ezekiel’s poetry negotiates alienation and belonging, ultimately affirming that his “backwards place” is India, where he chooses to belong and to write.
Keywords	Nissim Ezekiel, Indianness, Indian English poetry, postcolonial identity, hybridity, alienation, “Background, Casually,” “Night of the Scorpion”
Field	Sociology > Linguistic / Literature
Published In	Volume 8, Issue 2, March-April 2026
Published On	2026-03-30

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