Between Two Worlds: Identity, Power and Resistance in The Reluctant Fundamentalist

This blog is based on the task assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad Sir through Google Classroom on Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012), adapted from Mohsin Hamid’s novel. The task helped me explore the novel and film through the ideas of global empire, cultural hybridity, identity, power, and post-9/11 geopolitics. Through pre-watching reading, while-watching observations, group discussion, post-watching analysis, and personal reflection, I tried to understand Changez’s journey between Pakistan and America. The activity also introduced me to postcolonial concepts such as hybridity, Third Space, Orientalism, and re-orientalism. This blog brings together my observations and learning from the complete activity and reflects on how literature and cinema can help us understand complex questions of identity, culture, and global power.

Pre-Watching Activities

1. Critical Reading & Reflection:

How The Reluctant Fundamentalist Shows Global Empire

Reading the ideas of Ania Loomba and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri helped me understand The Reluctant Fundamentalist not simply as a story about one Pakistani man, but as a story about global power, identity, and politics after 9/11.

Ania Loomba’s idea of the “New American Empire” helps us see how American power works beyond direct colonial rule. In the modern world, power can operate through economics, politics, culture, media, and global institutions. This idea is useful for understanding Changez’s experience in America. He goes to Princeton, becomes successful at a prestigious American company, and feels that he is becoming part of the American system. However, after 9/11, his position changes. He is suddenly viewed through his Pakistani and Muslim identity. His experience shows that globalization can connect people while also creating unequal relationships of power.

Hardt and Negri’s Empire also challenges the simple division between a powerful “centre” and a weak “margin.” Their theory suggests that power in globalization is spread through different networks rather than belonging to only one country. This can be seen in Changez’s life because he belongs to more than one cultural world. He is Pakistani but educated in America; he admires some aspects of American society while also becoming critical of American foreign policy. This makes him a culturally hybrid character.

The novel becomes especially meaningful after 9/11. Changez’s personal identity becomes connected with larger political conflicts between America and the Muslim world. His beard, nationality, and behaviour become reasons for suspicion. Through his story, I understand that globalization does not always create equality or cultural harmony. It can also produce fear, exclusion, and conflict.

Overall, these theories help me see The Reluctant Fundamentalist as a story about how global power enters ordinary lives and shapes identity, belonging, and relationships between cultures.

Why the Timing of the Novel Matters

The writing history of The Reluctant Fundamentalist is important because Mohsin Hamid started the novel before the world changed after September 11, 2001. He began writing it in 2000, and the first draft was completed in July 2001. At that time, the story was mainly about a young Pakistani man living in New York who was successful in the corporate world but was becoming unsure about his life in America.

After the 9/11 attacks, Hamid realized that his original story could no longer remain the same. The relationship between America and the Muslim world had changed, and ideas of identity, fear, suspicion, and belonging became much more important. He therefore rewrote the novel several times and eventually included the events and atmosphere of the post-9/11 world.

This makes the novel significant because it shows how a historical event can change the meaning of a personal story. Changez’s experience represents the confusion of people who feel connected to more than one culture. The novel therefore explores not only 9/11 but also globalization, cultural identity, and the changing relationship between America and Pakistan.

Phase B: While-Watching Activities

Character Conflicts & Themes

A. The Generational Split

• Changez represents a young, modern generation that wants success, money, and a global career.
• His job at Underwood Samson represents the corporate world, competition, and financial success.
• At the same time, Changez has a connection with Pakistani culture, family, poetry, and traditional values.
• His father represents a more traditional way of thinking and values literature, culture, and respect more than money.
• Watch for scenes where Changez's professional ambitions come into conflict with his family background and cultural identity.
• The film shows that becoming successful in the Western corporate world does not mean completely leaving one's original culture behind.

B. Changez and Erica

• Erica is an American photographer and comes from a wealthy background.
• Changez loves Erica, but their relationship is not equal emotionally.
• Erica is still emotionally attached to her dead boyfriend, Chris.
• Changez sometimes feels that Erica does not see him for who he really is.
• The scene where Changez pretends to be Chris is especially important. It shows that Changez is trying to replace someone else to receive Erica's love.
• This can be connected with objectification because Changez begins to feel like an image or replacement rather than a person.
• Their relationship also represents the distance between America and Changez's own identity.

C. Profit vs. Knowledge

• Underwood Samson represents money, business, efficiency, and profit.
• Changez is trained to judge companies mainly by their financial value.
• His work teaches him to reduce complicated things to numbers and profit.
• In contrast, literature, poetry, history, and culture represent knowledge and human values.
• The Istanbul scenes are important because they bring Changez into a space connected with history, art, and culture.
• Istanbul can therefore be seen as a meeting point between business and culture, the modern world and the historical world.
• Watch how the film uses locations, buildings, clothing, and conversations to show this contrast.

2. Corporate vs. Religious Fundamentalism

A. Corporate Fundamentalism

• Changez works at Underwood Samson, a powerful American financial company.
• The company is mainly interested in profit, efficiency, and success.
• Employees are expected to follow strict rules and give complete commitment to the company.
• Changez is taught to look at companies mainly through their financial value, rather than their human or cultural value.
• The company therefore becomes a symbol of a system that can be cold and demanding.
• Watch how Changez's boss and workplace are shown. The professional environment often feels strict, competitive, and controlled.

B. Religious Fundamentalism

• After 9/11, Changez is increasingly associated with Islam and terrorism, even though he himself does not support terrorism.
• The film shows how people can wrongly connect a person's religion or appearance with extremism.
• The presence of militants and political violence represents another form of extreme ideology.
• The important point is that Changez does not belong completely to this world either.

3. Changez's Reluctance

The word “reluctant” is very important because Changez does not completely accept either side.

• At first, he enjoys the American corporate lifestyle—his job, money, clothes, and success.
• Gradually, he becomes uncomfortable with a system that judges everything through profit and financial value.
• After 9/11, he also becomes uncomfortable with the way Muslims are treated with fear and suspicion.
• However, he is not a supporter of religious terrorism.
• He wants to find his own position between these two extremes.
• His beard, his changing attitude, and his decision to return to Pakistan show his struggle with identity and belonging.
• His reluctance means that he is questioning both American corporate power and religious violence.

A. Post-9/11 Paranoia

• After 9/11, Changez notices that people in America look at him differently because he is a Pakistani Muslim.
• He feels that he is being watched and judged.
• The airport and security scenes show the fear and suspicion that increased after 9/11.
• His beard also becomes a reason for people to suspect him.
• The film shows that fear can change the way people see each other.

B. Cross-Border Mistrust

• The story moves between America and Pakistan, showing tension between the two countries.
• Americans become suspicious of Changez, while Changez becomes increasingly critical of American policies.
• After 9/11, the relationship between the West and the Muslim world becomes more difficult.
• Neither side completely trusts the other.
• This makes Changez feel that he belongs to two worlds but is fully accepted by neither.

C. Dialogue

• Much of the film is presented through Changez talking to Bobby Lincoln, an American journalist.
• Their conversation is important because they have different backgrounds and viewpoints.
• Changez explains his experiences instead of simply being presented as a “fundamentalist.”
• The dialogue allows us to see that the same event can be understood differently by different people.

D. Spaces of Ambiguity

“Spaces of ambiguity” simply means situations where we are not sure what is really happening or who is right.

• The meeting between Changez and Bobby is an important example.
• We are sometimes unsure whether Changez is telling the complete truth.
• We are also unsure whether Bobby is there only for an interview or has another purpose.
• The presence of armed men creates further uncertainty.
• The film makes us question: Who is the real threat? Who has power? Who should we trust?

Phase C: Post-Watching Activities

1. Does the film build a bridge between East and West?

The film tries to build a bridge, but it does not completely succeedThe film gives us both American and Pakistani perspectives.Changez has lived in America, so he understands American culture as well as his own Pakistani culture.His conversation with Bobby creates an opportunity for East and West to understand each other.

However, the film also shows stereotypes about Muslims, terrorism, and America.After 9/11, Changez is judged because of his religion, nationality, and appearance.Therefore, the film shows that misunderstanding exists on both sides.I think the film's main purpose is to make us question stereotypes, rather than simply creating new ones.The film does not give a perfect reconciliation, but it encourages dialogue and understanding.

2. How well does the film translate the book's monologue and ambiguity?

The novel is unusual because Changez tells the entire story while speaking to an unnamed American listener. We hear Changez's side, but we do not hear the other person's words directly.

• This creates a feeling of uncertainty.
• We have to decide whether Changez is completely trustworthy or not.
• The film cannot simply copy this structure because cinema needs visual action and dialogue.
• Mira Nair uses Bobby Lincoln as the American listener.
• The film also adds action, flashbacks, violence, music, and different locations.
• These visual elements help us understand Changez's emotions.
• However, some of the mystery of the novel is reduced because we can see what is happening.

The film successfully changes the novel's monologue into a visual story, but some of the novel's ambiguity and uncertainty become less powerful.

3. Is Changez a figure of resistance, a victim of Empire, both, or neither?
I think Changez is both a victim and a figure of resistance.

A victim:
He faces discrimination after 9/11.

• People become suspicious of him because he is Pakistani and Muslim.
• His American dream is affected by political events.
• He loses his sense of belonging in America.
• His relationship with Erica also becomes connected to his feeling of rejection

As a figure of resistance:

• He begins to question the American corporate system.
• He becomes critical of America's foreign policies.
• He leaves his successful corporate career.
• He returns to Pakistan and chooses a different path.
• He refuses to completely accept the identity that America has given him

I would say Changez is both a victim of Empire and a figure of resistance. At first, he participates in the American system and benefits from it. Later, he recognizes its problems and decides to distance himself from it. However, he is not presented as a perfect hero. His character remains complex and uncertain, which makes him more realistic.

Short Analytical Essay:

Hybridity, Third Space, Orientalism and Re-Orientalism in The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Mira Nair’s 2012 film adaptation present the complicated experience of identity after the events of September 11, 2001. The story follows Changez, a young Pakistani man who studies at Princeton University and becomes successful in the American corporate world. However, after 9/11, his relationship with America changes completely. He begins to question his professional life, his cultural identity, and America’s political power. Through the ideas of hybridity, Third Space, Orientalism, and re-orientalism, the novel and film can be understood as stories about identity, global power, cultural misunderstanding, and resistance.

The idea of hybridity, associated with Homi K. Bhabha, is useful for understanding Changez. A hybrid identity is formed when a person lives between different cultures rather than belonging completely to only one. Changez is Pakistani by birth but educated in America. He studies at Princeton, works for the American company Underwood Samson, falls in love with an American woman, and becomes part of American professional culture. At the same time, he remains connected to Pakistan, his family, and his cultural background. Therefore, Changez cannot be placed simply into the category of “East” or “West.”

The film makes this hybridity visible through its locations and images. New York represents corporate America, modernity, and financial power, while Lahore represents Changez’s family, history, culture, and political concerns. The movement between these places shows that Changez's identity is constantly changing. His body and appearance also become important after 9/11. His beard, for example, becomes connected in the eyes of others with Muslim identity and terrorism. Thus, something personal becomes political.

This leads to Bhabha’s idea of the Third Space. The Third Space is a space between cultures where identity is negotiated and created. Changez lives in such a space. He is neither completely American nor simply the traditional Pakistani man. Before 9/11, this position gives him advantages. His ability to understand American culture helps him succeed at Underwood Samson. However, after 9/11, his hybrid identity becomes a source of suspicion. He discovers that the American society that once accepted him can suddenly see him as an outsider.

The novel’s structure strengthens this uncertainty. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is written mainly as a long dramatic monologue in which Changez speaks to an unnamed American listener in Lahore. The American does not directly speak, so readers hear only Changez’s version of events. This makes the reader uncertain about what the American is thinking and whether Changez is completely reliable. The ending is also deliberately ambiguous. We are left wondering what will happen when Changez and the American separate.

Mira Nair changes this important structure for cinema. Instead of an unnamed and silent American listener, she creates Bobby Lincoln, an American journalist played by Liev Schreiber. The film therefore changes the novel’s monologue into a dialogue. Nair herself explained that the film needed to create Bobby because the American character does not speak in the novel. This adaptation makes the story more visually and emotionally accessible, but it also changes the original uncertainty.

This change is important because Lau and Mendes argue that Nair’s adaptation is more conciliatory than Hamid’s novel. The film tries to create a bridge between East and West by allowing both sides to speak. Instead of hearing only Changez’s voice, viewers see an American character who can respond, question, and react. According to Lau and Mendes, this is one of the major differences between the novel and film. The film attempts to move the story towards dialogue and understanding.

The theory of Orientalism, developed by Edward Said, provides another important way to understand the film. Orientalism refers to the way the West has historically represented the East as strange, dangerous, backward, emotional, or inferior. In the post-9/11 world, this becomes especially visible through the suspicion directed towards Muslims and Pakistanis. Changez experiences this personally. His nationality, beard, and appearance become reasons for people to look at him differently.

The film uses airports, security checks, American streets, offices, and surveillance-like situations to visually communicate this atmosphere of suspicion. Changez is no longer simply an educated professional; he becomes a person who is viewed through the Western image of the “Muslim other.” His individual identity is replaced by a stereotype. This shows how Orientalist thinking can reduce a complex person to a fixed category.

However, the film also attempts to challenge this stereotype by giving Changez a voice. He is not presented simply as a terrorist or extremist. He explains his experiences, his relationship with Erica, his professional life, and his changing feelings towards America. In this sense, storytelling becomes a form of resistance. Changez takes control of the narrative and asks the audience to listen to his side.

The concept of re-orientalism, discussed by Lisa Lau and Ana Cristina Mendes, makes the comparison even more complicated. Re-orientalism suggests that even when Eastern writers or filmmakers challenge Western stereotypes, their representations may still operate within Western expectations about the East. Lau and Mendes argue that both the novel and film remain connected to a cycle of Orientalism and re-orientalism. They observe that the film tries to bridge the East-West divide but cannot completely escape the old patterns through which East and West define each other.

This can be seen in the film’s presentation of Pakistan. On one hand, Lahore is shown as a place of family, culture, music, poetry, and intellectual life. On the other hand, political violence, militants, and fear are also important parts of the film. This creates a complicated representation. Pakistan is not simply shown as a dangerous place, but the film still has to deal with images that Western audiences may already associate with terrorism and political instability.

Changez himself is also caught in this problem. He resists American power, but his resistance can be interpreted by others as radicalism. The title The Reluctant Fundamentalist itself creates uncertainty because Changez is not a straightforward religious fundamentalist. His “fundamentalism” is more closely connected to his questioning of the corporate and political system he once accepted. He becomes critical of American capitalism and foreign policy, but he does not simply become a supporter of terrorism.

The film therefore presents resistance as complicated. Changez is both a victim of post-9/11 suspicion and a person who actively questions the system that once gave him success. His decision to leave Underwood Samson represents his rejection of a purely profit-driven identity. His return to Pakistan also represents an attempt to reconnect with his own values. Yet he remains culturally hybrid; his experience in America cannot simply be erased.

Overall, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a powerful example of how postcolonial theory can help us understand identity after 9/11. Hybridity explains Changez’s mixed cultural identity, while Third Space explains his position between Pakistan and America. Orientalism helps us understand the suspicion and stereotypes directed towards him, while re-orientalism shows that even attempts to challenge these stereotypes may remain connected to the same East-West framework.

The novel and film finally offer different forms of uncertainty. Hamid’s novel uses a one-sided monologue to make the reader question what is true, while Nair’s film creates dialogue and attempts reconciliation. Lau and Mendes therefore rightly describe the film as more conciliatory while also pointing out that both works remain caught in the continuing relationship between Orientalism and re-orientalism. Changez’s story ultimately shows that identity cannot be understood through simple categories such as “East” and “West.” In a global and post-9/11 world, identity is mixed, changing, and often shaped by unequal structures of power. His greatest resistance is perhaps his refusal to accept a single identity imposed on him by either side.

My Reflection as a Viewer of The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Watching Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist changed the way I think about identity, power, and representation. Before watching the film, I mainly thought of identity as something connected with our nationality, religion, language, or culture. But Changez’s story made me understand that identity can become more complicated when a person lives between two different cultures.

What affected me most was Changez’s experience in America after 9/11. Before the attacks, he was a successful young man who studied at Princeton and worked at a prestigious company. He felt connected to America and believed that he could build a successful future there. But after 9/11, people started looking at him differently because he was Pakistani and Muslim. His appearance, especially his beard, became something through which people judged him. This made me realize that representation can strongly influence how society sees an individual. A person can be treated differently not because of what they have done, but because of the identity others assign to them.

The film also changed my understanding of power. Earlier, I mostly associated power with governments, armies, or political leaders. Through Changez’s experience at Underwood Samson, I understood that economic and corporate systems can also have great power over people's lives. Changez becomes successful by following the company's ideas about profit and efficiency, but later he begins to question this system. I realized that global power can operate not only through politics but also through money, business, culture, and ideas.

As a viewer, I also became aware of my own role in understanding Changez. At first, I could easily have judged him because the film connects his story with terrorism, political violence, and the title The Reluctant Fundamentalist. But listening to his experiences made me question my first assumptions. The film taught me that representation is never completely simple. We need to listen to different voices before forming an opinion.

The film helped me understand postcolonial subjects living under a global empire in a more personal way. Changez lives between Pakistan and America, between tradition and modernity, and between belonging and rejection. His experience shows that people from formerly colonised or less powerful countries may have opportunities in powerful global systems, but they can still experience inequality and suspicion.

For me, the most important lesson from the film is that we should not define people through a single identity. Changez is not simply Pakistani, Muslim, Americanised, a corporate employee, or a possible fundamentalist. He is a person with many experiences and contradictions. As a viewer, I learned to look beyond stereotypes and to understand identity from the perspective of the person who is experiencing it. This has helped me see postcolonial literature and cinema not just as stories about the past, but as ways of understanding power and identity in our present global world.

References:

• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/394454061_Worksheet_on_Screening_The_Reluctant_Fundamentalist
• Hamid, M. (2007). The Reluctant Fundamentalist. London, UK: Hamish Hamilton;New York, NY: Harcourt; Oxford, Pakistan: Oxford University Press.
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Film). (2012). Directed by Mira Nair. Premiered at the Venice Film Festival.