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@article{190616,
        author = {Dr.S.Raja Prabu and MR. G. RAJKUMAR and MRS. P. JOTHI and DR. K. MANJULA},
        title = {Exploring Identity, Love, and Social Hierarchy: A Critical Analysis of Chetan Bhagat's “2 States: The Story of My Marriage”},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {12},
        number = {8},
        pages = {1426-1430},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=190616},
        abstract = {Chetan Bhagat’s “2 States: The Story of My Marriage” offers a vivid portrayal of contemporary Indian society by foregrounding issues of regional identity, love, and social hierarchy through the inter-state romance between Krish Malhotra, a Punjabi from Delhi, and Ananya Swaminathan, a Tamil Brahmin from Chennai. The novel dramatizes the tension between individual choice and collective expectations as the couple attempts to convert a campus romance into an acceptable marriage within an entrenched framework of caste, language, class, and patriarchal norms.This paper undertakes a critical analysis of “2 States” by situating it within postcolonial, multicultural, and sociological discourses on Indian modernity, arguing that the text negotiates the competing pulls of tradition and globalization in late liberal India. Drawing on concepts of hybridity, cultural negotiation, identity crisis, and social mobility, the study examines how Bhagat’s popular narrative both reproduces and critiques structures of power such as patriarchy, regional discrimination, linguistic prejudice, and consumerist aspirations. Methodologically, the paper employs qualitative textual analysis supported by close reading of key episodes-family negotiations, rituals of marriage, workplace scenes, and intergenerational conflicts-alongside secondary scholarship on Bhagat’s fiction and on multiculturalism in Indian English writing. The findings suggest that while Bhagat’s simple, colloquial style and formulaic romantic plot align with market-driven popular fiction, “2 States” nonetheless opens a productive space to interrogate the politics of “unity in diversity,” exposing the fragility of Indian pluralism when confronted with everyday prejudice and class privilege. The paper concludes that “2 States” functions as a cultural text that mirrors the anxieties of aspirational middle-class youth, revealing how love, education, and mobility are simultaneously emancipatory and constrained by social hierarchies in contemporary India.},
        keywords = {Chetan Bhagat, 2 States, identity, social hierarchy, multiculturalism, postcolonialism, Indian middle class.},
        month = {February},
        }