Chu 1

Recasting India: Caste, Trauma, and the Politics of Transgression

in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things

A Thesis

by

Yu-Ru Chu

Submitted to the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature of

National Tsing Hua University

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Art

Written under the Supervision of

Professor Ping-hui Liao

Professor Pin-chia Feng

January 2006
 Chu 2

Abstract

Cultural plurality and heterogeneity have always been the main concerns in

postcolonial studies. Arundhati Roy’s debut novel The God of Small Things

examines India’s cultural transformation from colonial, postcolonial period to

contemporary era of globalization. Read from this trajectory, the novel represents to

us the hybrid elements of Indian culture and the oppressed, subordinate “cultural

others” that require our deep concern. In this study of The God of Small Things, my

task is twofold: (1) to re-examine the influence of the caste system in postcolonial

India and investigate the cultural conflicts/differences in relation to the narration of

trauma, history and transgression; (2) to re-think Roy’s appropriation of the imperial

language, the discursive forms and modes of representation of the novel. Overall,

this study aims to explore the “possibilities” within and beyond the postcolonial

subcontinent of India by listening to the heterogeneous voices of its peoples.

Among the characters in the novel, Velutha is prominent because his “casted

body/status” signifies the cultural difference of India from other nations. The

narration of Velutha reveals the intertwined relationship between caste and the social

divisions in India. Yet the transgression between Velutha and Ammu poses

challenges to the traditional norms and social hierarchy of India. Moreover, Rahel

and Estha’s transgression brings out issues of hybridity, gender oppression, social

taboo and incest. Apart from these characters, the narration of trauma is from

Mammachi, Baby Kochamma and Chacko. The traumatic memories of the Ipe

family remind us of India’s traumas of colonization. “The History House,” which is

a place holding small events and traumatic memories, is also the haunted house of

“her-stories.” By dwelling on the “small things” happened to the Ipe family, Roy

actually is questioning the construction of empire, the lingering effects of colonialism

and the global order in flux. In this way, Roy’s novel reveals to us the possibility of
 Chu 3

dismantling the western codes and performing postcolonial subversion through the

process of literary decolonization.

 Chu 4

摘 要
文化多元性(plurality)及異質性(heterogeneity)一直是後殖民研究中的
主要關切議題。阿蘭達蒂‧洛依的初試啼聲之作《微物之神》檢視了印度從殖民
時期、後殖民時期以至今日全球化脈動下的文化流變過程。從文化的面向來解
讀，此小說再現了印度文化的含混特質及其受壓迫、居次等地位的「文化他者」
(cultural others)，而這些正是需要我們深刻關切的議題。針對《微物之神》
所做的研究，我從兩方面進行：首先，重新檢視後殖民印度的種姓階級制度
（caste）的影響力，並探討與文本中之創傷、歷史、踰越敘事相關的文化衝突/
差異；再來，重新思考洛依對帝國語言的挪用(appropriation)及小說中所再現
的論述形式/模式。總結來說，此研究的目的在於：藉由傾聽印度子民的異質聲
音，探究後殖民印度次大陸之中及其外的諸多「可能性」。
在小說的諸多角色中，維魯沙(Velutha)有其重要性，因為他的「階級化身
體/地位」（casted body/status）指涉了印度之不同於其他國家的文化差異。
而維魯沙的敘事，也顯示了印度種姓階級制度和社會分化之間的糾纏關係。然
而，維魯沙和阿慕(Ammu)之間的踰越行為儼然挑戰了印度的傳統模式及社會階
級 。 此 外 ， 瑞 海 兒 (Rahel) 和 艾 斯 沙 (Estha) 的 踰 越 行 為 也 帶 出 了 混 雜
(hybridity)、性別壓抑、社會禁忌和亂倫等議題。除了這些角色之外，創傷的
敘事是由外婆 Mammachi、姨婆 Baby Kochamma 和舅舅恰克(Chacko)口中延續。
而此一家族的傷痛回憶，正也提醒我們印度所受過的殖民創傷。「歷史之屋」，
既是滿覆瑣碎事件與傷痛回憶的地方，也是「她們的故事」（her-stories）所
縈迴之處。藉由描繪此家族的瑣碎事件，洛依其實也是在質疑帝國的建制、殖民
主義的遺風及不斷變動中的全球秩序。這麼看來，洛依的小說揭示了一種可能
性：透過文學解殖民的過程，瓦解西方的典律和實行後殖民顛覆。
 Chu 5

Acknowledgments

For some reason, I come to Hsinchu.

For only one reason--the promise to myself--I persevere to the end.

I have to admit, “the best thinking has been done in solitude.”

The solitude in my mind, the heteroglossia in my ears…

This is not the best thinking in the world of literature.

But I hope it is the best I’ve ever done.

The greatest thanks goes to Professor Ping-hui Liao and Professor Pin-chia Feng:

Thanks for your dawning insights and careful reading.

Professor Guy Beauregard: Thanks for being my thesis committee.

Thanks for some nice teachers: Professor Hsueh-mei Wang, Professor Te-hsing Shan,

and Professor Yan-yan Hsiao.

Mom, thanks for your wholehearted support.

Dad, sorry I can’t fulfill your expectation--to pursue a Ph. D. degree.

My brothers, don’t worry about me--I am independent.

My good friends, thanks for the friendship and warm encouragement.

Thanks for the conflicts over these years which grow me up.

Thanks for the rugged road by which I’ve found a way out.

This is not a perfect world, yet there are always “possibilities.”

Every book begins with page one.

I am glad that I complete this “book.”

It is not heavy, but it carries some weight to me.

 Chu 6

致 謝 詞

我對文學的興趣，其實是源自「中文」的閱讀。大約國中時，我開始大量地
閱讀，舉凡詩集、散文、言情小說、福爾摩斯探案、世界文學名著譯本等。因為
爸爸工作的關係，煉油廠社區內的圖書館儼然成為我的秘密寶庫。每次看著腳踏
車車籃裡滿載書籍而歸，我的心情是無比雀躍的。然而，在學習「英語」十四年
之際，我提醒自己不要忘了母語（中文及台語）的重要性。因此，我寫下這篇中
文的致謝詞。
隨著論文的完成，也代表著研究生活的結束。從未想過，會拿印度的文本做
為畢業論文。但在這一年多的論文研究過程中，我了解到，任何一個國家的歷史，
絕不可能只靠一些文獻資料就一窺其全貌。像印度這樣一個曾經受過殖民統治與
創傷的國家，其子民所受到的壓迫與殘害，也非一本小說就能涵蓋。但是，在異
文化中總是有些同質性存在，透過檢視異文化的他者，我了解到自身文化中的相
似特質，更證明了帝國主義並未因殖民時代的結束而終結，反而以另一種變相的
形式在第一/第三世界之間互相抗衡與消長。
而藉由傾聽異文化的聲音，我也聽見自己心中的吶喊。在這兩年半的研究生
活中，每每在夜深人靜時，因為想到一些往事而潸然淚下。也曾經在心情低落時，
覺得自己似乎一蹶不振。「孤寂」與「繁喧」，曾是我在獨處時的心情寫照；耳
邊的千般絮絮叨叨，似不足以訴諸文字表達；而熱情，難免有被澆熄的時候，只
剩一股小火苗在心中悶燒。如果，「過去」是一面鏡子，那麼，鏡中原本模糊的
「我」的影像，已經愈來愈清晰。而論文完成後，我對文學的意義與價值，多了
許多「肯定句」，而不是「否定句」與「疑問句」。在即將踏入社會工作之際，
希望我對自己的人生也能賦予多一點的「肯定句」！
停駐清華兩、三載，最想感謝我的指導教授：廖炳惠老師及馮品佳老師，謝
謝你們的耐心指導及真知灼見，你們對我的要求，讓我深刻體會到學術研究著實
馬虎不得。謝謝柏逸嘉老師擔任我的口試委員，讓我的論文得以更臻完善。另外，
謝謝修課過程中所遇到的幾位良師們：王雪美老師、蕭嫣嫣老師、單德興老師。
因為你們，我學會了獨立思辨的能力，更在文學的場域中，找到另一扇聆聽世界
的窗。
第一次離家念書的我，慢慢學會了獨立與堅強。在這幾年中，我想感謝同班
同學惠怡：謝謝妳總是支持我，一起分享生活中的點滴。謝謝嫁到台北的芳瑜、
苗栗的惠亭、工研院的宗琳、補習班的伙伴 Lisa、台南的佩宜、正在當兵的呆
表弟、高雄的琬瑜、玉萍、靜宜、書華、佩文、屏東的芬廷等等：謝謝妳（你）
們的鼓勵和關懷。另外，特別謝謝已經移民加拿大的高中導師劉學紓老師：謝謝
妳當初沒有放棄我，妳是我心靈上的一盞明燈！最後，謝謝我的爸爸、媽媽、哥
哥及弟弟。爸、媽：謝謝你們如此疼愛家中唯一的女兒，謝謝你們為這個家付出
那麼多。
如果，這六、七年來我有那麼一些成長，我該感謝生活中的挫折及那段風風
雨雨的日子。期許，我是那幸運草，看似微不足道，卻有強韌的生命力；又像那
向日葵，在陽光中滋長，在雨中茁壯心志。

－僅將此論文獻給我的媽媽－
 Chu 7

Table of Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………... 1

Chapter One: Caste, Cultural Difference/Otherness, and Identity………………………… 16

I. Introduction………………………………………………………………………… 16

II. Caste, India, and Colonial Connection…………………………………………….. 17

III. Social Mobilization, Velutha, and Subalterns in India………………………….. 19

IV. Identity Problem and Orientalist Thinking……………………………………….. 24

V. Postcolonial Exoticism and the Novel…………………………………………….. 30

Chapter Two: Trauma, Her-/History, and Empire………………………………………… 37

I. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………. 37

II. Personal Traumas/Traumatic Memories…………………………………………… 38

III. Her-stories as Counter-narratives of His-stories…………………………………... 42

IV. History, Colonial Trauma, and India……………………………………………… 46

V. The Concept of Empire and Roy’s Political Thinking…………………………… 52

Chapter Three: Borders, Love Laws, and Transgression………………………………..... 57

I. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………. 57

II. The Symbolic Border-crossing of the River……………………………………….. 58

III. Love Laws and Transgression…………………………………………………….. 59

IV. Behind Transgression—

the Question of Hybridity and Gender Oppression………………………………... 67
Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………… 76

Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………….. 83
 Chu 8

Introduction

I. India and the Novel

India, a Third World nation with its painful experiences and traumas of

colonization, is usually mistaken as “the land of religions, the country of uncritical

faiths and unquestioned practices” (Sen xiii). Salman Rushdie has once asked,

“Does India exist?” (Imaginary Homelands 26). Here, he is questioning the very

idea of India existing as a nation. In 1987, forty years after India’s independence,

Rushdie questioned the very raison d’etre of Indian nationalism. According to

Ralph J. Crane, India has no single true identity despite that it can be found on any

map. For some people, India is a land of self-sufficient villages which signifies

desirable stability; for others, it signifies backwardness and stagnation (Ludden 272).

Despite these different viewpoints on India, Aijaz Ahmad indicates that the India of

today contains the characteristics of a capitalist country: generalized commodity

production, vigorous and escalating exchanges between agriculture and industry, etc.

(100). Here arises the question: India can not be seen as always static and

backward. Rather, India is undergoing incredible cultural transformation and

reshaping itself from a homogeneous culture into a hybrid one. In this study of The

God of Small Things, Indian multiculturalism is the central concern. Read from this

trajectory, we find that “cultural plurality” is always in flux and “globalization” does

not necessarily make the world become a single place. Specifically toward the end

of 2005, we will remind ourselves of the first anniversary of the tsunami in 2004 1

which claimed the lives of about 275,000 people and left an indelible “trauma” in

modern history. Yet via the wide news coverage of this disaster, can we somewhat

1
India was one of the nations that suffered seriously from this big disaster. The lives of South Asian
residents were disturbed by this catastrophe. (see relevant news: eg. http://www.cnn.com
http://www.un.org http://www.hindustantimes.com) Notice also the roles of mass media and the
shifting of power within and beyond nations.
 Chu 9

change our views toward these Third World nations? In Roy’s novel, she also

touches upon various issues about the effects of globalization which require our

careful scrutiny and examination. And it proves that cultures travel across borders

and they regenerate themselves within the new negotiations of space, place and

mapping. The main contribution of this study, therefore, is the endeavor in

examining the cultural transformation of India from colonial, postcolonial period to

contemporary era of globalization.

II. Arundhati Roy and Her Achievements

Arundhati Roy, whose debut novel The God of Small Things won the

prestigious Booker Prize in 1997 and makes her “the first non-expatriate Indian

author” and “first Indian woman” to win the prize, is undoubtedly a prominent figure

in literary India (Feng and Liu). Architect by training, Roy also wrote screenplays

for television and film before drafting The God of Small Things, which took her five

years to complete. Brought up in Kerala 2 , Roy has been living under its influence

since Kerala is purportedly a more democratic state than most of the other areas in

India. It is even asserted that women in Kerala enjoy relative freedom and they are

more assertive, energetic and courageous. Known as a Third World woman writer,

Roy is also an outspoken political figure, social activist, polemicist, cultural critic and

new age feminist (Reddy). In her political essays, Roy conveys radical viewpoints

on issues related to globalization, imperialism, neo-liberal capitalism, transnational

politics, environmental movements and the current state of India. At first glance, the

content of Roy’s novel may not have too much in common with her political essays.

Yet if we are careful enough, we will find that Roy has expressed her anti-war and

2
See Charley Coffey, “Kerala,” (www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Kerala.html); Amartya Sen, The
Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity. London: Penguin, 2005.
Kerala is Sen’s favorite subject of discussion.
 Chu 10

anti-imperialism thoughts in The God of Small Things. In recent years, Roy has

published several non-fiction books, such as The Algebra of Infinite Justice (2001),

Power Politics (2001), and The Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire (2004), just to

name a few. Though her critical remarks outside the field of literature draw her

acclaims as well as controversies, she has tried hard to give voice to the voiceless and

speak for those marginalized and underprivileged, domestically and nation wide.

III. An Overview of This Project

In this study of The God of Small Things, my task is twofold: (1) to re-examine

the influence of the caste system in postcolonial/modern India and investigate the

cultural conflicts/differences which are related to trauma, history and transgression;

(2) to re-think Roy’s appropriation of the imperial language, the discursive forms and

modes of representation of the novel, and by so-doing, to explore how the

dominated/colonized culture uses the tools of the dominant/colonizer to resist cultural

hegemony. Overall, the novel aims to trace the ways in which India transforms itself

and re-define its position. If Indian culture can be likened to a masala dish, Roy’s

novel represents exactly the different elements mingling together inside this dish.

By actively returning to and interrogating the legacies of India’s colonial and

postcolonial histories, Roy’s novel excavates the question of “belonging” and

“displacement”--the dilemma of belonging to more than one culture and more than

one nation. It then brings out the vexed question of India’s identity crisis. English,

which symbolizes the language of the colonizer and empire, becomes Roy’s potent

tool to dismantle the homogeneous western codes and to implement her literary

decolonization.

In The God of Small Things, Roy has constantly shown us “failed attempts at

reversing history” (Banerjee and Liles). Yet it opens up a new possibility that a

novel is at some level a documenting of history. With regard to this point, we may
 Chu 11

also ask: Who is to bear the burden of history? On who shall fall the onus of

recording it? (Banerjee and Liles). If Roy can be compared to a historical novelist,

then her role is not to “portray the past as past,” but to “include the present in the

portrayal of the past” (Crane 8). On the one hand, Roy as a postcolonial female

writer takes advantage of the imperial language to render views in constructing

anti-colonial texts. On the other, Roy seems to imply that history can never be

reversed; it can only be reworked (Banerjee and Liles). In Bernard S. Cohn’s words,

“the cultural effects of colonialism have too often been ignored or displaced into the

inevitable logic of modernization and world capitalism” (ix). Inevitably, the study of

English is “a densely political and cultural phenomenon” (The Empire Writes Back 2).

Yet we must be cautious that the development of postcolonial literatures also requires

“a questioning of many of the assumptions on which the study of ‘English’ was

based” (The Empire Writes Back 4). Therefore, Roy can be said to inhabit a hybrid

“third space,” in Homi Bhabha’s terms, where she participates in the enterprise of

weaving together personal and national events in the novel.

Among the characters in the novel, Velutha is a prominent one because his

“casted body/status” signifies the cultural difference of India from other nations.

Moreover, the narration of Velutha reveals the intertwined relationship between caste

and the social unities/divisions in India. Yet from the transgression committed by

Ammu and Velutha, a liminal space is created by them which also dismantles the

fixed boundary between national/personal, sacred/secular, moral/immoral, and so on.

Velutha’s case alerts us to the fact that under the generalized concept of “India,” there

exists many unheard voices and ignored “others/Others” that need more respect and

attention. Within subordinate communities, people are primitivised and their

collectivity is transformed into an index of heteronomy, of lack of individuaity (Lloyd

230). In Roy’s novel, she represents to us an India with plenty of the elements of
 Chu 12

hybridity, mimicry, difference and displacement. However, she also highlights the

fact that it is through the act of transgression in the novel that Indian people articulate

their own social/cultural identities and thus new potentials of heterogeneous cultures

are explored.

Furthermore, all the personal events in the novel are imbued with historical

meanings and each individual is intertwined and correlated to historical events. The

History House, which is a place holding small events and traumatic memories, is also

the haunted house of “her-stories.” To a certain extent, Roy creates a gendered

space for her female characters to narrate their own stories. In this space, women

construct the language of their own to rebel against patriarchy/empire/the colonizer.

However, Roy does not try to reverse history. Rather, by dwelling on the small

things, Roy brings out big issues from history. It is also through the act of writing

against empire that we (readers) get a chance to revise our conception of India and its

history. Most important of all, Roy’s novel reveals to us a possibility of dismantling

the western codes and performing postcolonial subversion through the process of

literary decolonization.

IV. Critical Reviews on the Novel

The novel received diverse reviews. Some recognize its rich similes,

metaphors and lyrical languages; others praise its textual subtlety and power and

claim the novel to be comparable with those of Faulkner’s and Dicken’s. On the

other hand, there are critics who despise its sexual obscenity and eroticism. In my

own reading, Roy’s novel is a brilliant achievement since it touches upon multiple

facets of human nature, human limits and boundaries. As Frederick Luis Aldama

puts it, the novel is celebrated by its storytelling inventiveness and postcolonial

revisionism. Since the narrative implicates British imperialism and Christianity as

accomplices to the oppressive caste system, the novel could be seen as “an allegory of
 Chu 13

nation, a writing back against empire, a selling out to global capitalism” (Aldama).

In Anil Nair’s view, Roy’s novel is “a deliberate debunking of the big questions:

Revolution, Change, Politics, Religion, et al” (“The Idea of Apocalypse”). She

suggests that “the sanctification of everything small can turn into the pursuit of

something big.” If this is true, it means that Roy’s novel has predicted some

violation or transgression against God.

Tracey Schwarze, on the other hand, reveals that the novel is not “to mourn the

loss of essential Indian-ness or to flog India’s colonizers.” Rather, she thinks Indian

history itself has a brutal heart--“an ancient, ordering caste system…that separates

Touchable from Untouchable.” In this case, Roy’s novel reminds us of the essence

of Indian-ness and the conflicts within different classes/castes/communities. From

the historical background, the British colonizers have had strong entanglement with

postcolonial India. Along with the influence of caste, colonial culture has shaped

what modern India is today. Therefore, the novel can not be reduced to

over-simplified interpretation on colonization or history itself.

Other than the above critics, Susan Stanford Friedman explores a wide variety

of issues such as gender, caste, violence, feminism, nationalism, transnationalism, in

her analysis of The God of Small Things. She suggests that Roy’s integration of

gender and caste into the story of the nation “demonstrates how feminist geopolitics

engages locationally…with power relations as they operate both on the nation and

within the nation” (117). By telling a traumatic love story between a Brahmin and

an Untouchable, Roy’s novel can be seen as a political allegory which connects the

nationalist imaginary between the region and the nation. In my project to re-cast

India and to re-define India’s position, Friedman’s elaboration on the concept of

“nation” provides me some stimulation and reflection. First, she reminds me the

importance and “necessity” to explore the local embedded in the global and the global
 Chu 14

in the local. Second, I agree with Friedman that “what happens within the nation” is

as important as “what happens outside the nation” (118). Since Roy’s novel

involves different time frames--the colonial period, the postcolonial years and the

postmodern period of transnational capital and development--my task in this study is

also to trace the process of India’s cultural transformation and make a connection

between personal events and national issues.

Unlike Friedman, Brinda Bose tries to interpret The God of Small Things in

terms of sexual desire and eroticism. She thinks that the characters in the novel have

consciously chosen to break social laws and die for desire and love. She suggests

that there is a “deliberate validation of erotic desire as an act of transgression” (59).

Yet it is dubious to see the pursuit of erotic desire as a capitalist preoccupation. To a

certain extent, it may be possible that “female sexuality” is Roy’s saleable formula in

entering the mainstream market. By doing so, we are likely to ignore the fact that

bodies can be used as tropes for political meanings/implications. As Bose points out,

there is a subversion of caste/class rules in the novel since Ammu is the initiator of the

sexual act. Likewise, she implies that Velutha has the tendency to be dominated by

women. In my interpretation, the transgression between Ammu and Velutha is out

of their free will and also out of desire and bodily need. Yet the emphasis here is

that transgression is one way of producing new power/strength. Since the love laws

and caste taboos can not be altered, they choose their own ways to rebel/protest

against the supreme power/authority. Similarly, the incestuous love between Rahel

and Estha is also a way of resisting against social regulations and reconstructing their

lost identity. Overall, the whole Indian society is rife with cultural codes which

pigeonhole and limit people in various ways. Yet the possibility of successfully

constructing/reconstructing human subjectivity depends on each individual and free

will.
 Chu 15

V. Postcolonial Writing and the Novel

Having said that Roy’s novel is marked by its postcolonial revisionism and

anti-imperial sentiments, now I will briefly deal with some theoretical manifestations

of postcolonial writing. As Graham Huggan suggests, Indian writing (especially in

English) is to a large extent “a transnational, diasporic phenomenon, the product of

complex collisions/collusions between East and West” (66). Therefore, the term

“postcolonial” nowadays has a wider definition. First, it denotes “an index of

resistance, a perceived imperative to rewrite the social context of continuing imperial

dominance” (Huggan ix). Second, it functions as “a sales-tag in the context of

today’s globalized commodity culture” (Huggan ix). Due to the perception that

postcolonial discourse seeks to “reinstate the marginalized in the face of the

dominant” (The Empire Writes Back 175), we need to pay special attention to those

marginalized and devoiced in the novel.

As Sara Suleri reveals in The Rhetoric of English India, “colonial trauma can be

read only in the context of an apocalyptic ‘end’ or ‘beginning’ of empire” (5).

Moreover, Nicholas B. Dirks points out in Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the

Making of Modern India that caste politics is “the most insistent resistance to social

and cultural privilege” in late colonial and postcolonial India (254). On one level,

caste may be “the most telling reminder of the postcolonial character of India’s

contemporary predicament” (Dirks 294). On another level, caste is “the chilling sign

that India’s relationship to history and tradition will necessary continue to be

mediated by the colonial past” (Dirks 294). In what follows, I will go to the

Untouchable Velutha in the novel and tease out some significant issues concerning

caste, class, social mobilization and violence.

The name of Velutha means “White in Malayalam--because he was so black”

(Roy 70). As is indicated in the novel, we know that low-caste people or the
 Chu 16

so-called Untouchables are denied the basic human rights in many ways. For

instance, Untouchables are not allowed to enter the house of higher classes. In

earlier times, Paravans are not allowed to walk on public roads, to cover their upper

bodies, or to carry umbrellas (Roy 71). Even more ironically, they have to put their

hands over their mouths when speaking, so that they can divert their polluted breath

away from those whom they address (Roy 71). Velutha, however, is more fortunate

than other Untouchables because he is a skilled carpenter and he can fix many things.

Therefore, Mammachi pay Velutha “less than she would a Touchable carpenter but

more than she would a Paravan” (Roy 74). With regard to the status of

Untouchables, Dirks indicates two questions which are worth thinking: (1) Were

untouchables really a mix of caste groups or, as ‘outcastes’? (2) Were they in fact

groups that had been placed outside the pale of both caste and Hindu society? (277).

Following Sen, “if different colors indicate different castes, then all castes are mixed

castes” (11). Like class, caste is “an ever-present feature of communal and sectarian

violence” (Sen 209) since it determines the social property and power of caste groups.

Furthermore, caste is used by the rich and the powerful as a way of maintaining and

strengthening their domination. Hence, it is the moral right and the political duty of

the poor and the deprived to use their caste identity in the struggle for their liberation

(Dirks 286).

As Dirks has mentioned, caste is not merely an ancient tradition but a modern

practice/phenomenon which shapes Indian cultures. Whether the caste forms of

hierarchy is valorized or despised by Indian people, it is still fundamental to Indian

civilization, culture and tradition. Yet Dirks reminds us that actually caste is not

some unchanged survival of ancient tradition, nor is it “some single system that

reflects a core civilizational value” or “a basic expression of Indian tradition” (5).

He furthers a viewpoint that caste is the product of a historical encounter between

 Chu 17

East (India) and West (colonial rule). That is, under the British rule, caste finds its

way of expressing, organizing, and systematizing India’s diverse forms of social

identity, community and organization. Hence, caste has become a ghostly specter

which continues to haunt the body politic of postcolonial India and keeps hovering

over many contemporary discussions about nationhood, citizenship, and modernity

(17; 276). Due to the fact that caste haunts the modern self and the national project

of India itself, some questions are raised here: Is caste good or bad for Indian

modernity? Can caste be seen as a kind of disability which hinders India’s national

movement/development? Is caste an incubus or essence? I agree with Susan Bayly

that “caste principles have often provided the means of excluding, disempowering or

subjugating others” (5). In recent times, caste has been regarded by many Indians as

“a system of oppression comparable with the racist doctrines of apartheid, or the

worst abuses of European serfdom” (6). Inevitably, caste was/is regarded by some

modernizers/reformists as backward, pernicious or “a shameful obstacle to the moral

and political regeneration of the nation” (158).

VI. A Summary of the Novel

Roy’s novel is imbued with sad tones and traumatic memories. From the very

beginning of the novel, Roy keeps on hinting that some misfortune will happen. The

atmosphere around is uncertain and ambivalent. The depiction begins with “May in

Ayemenem…,” and “Boundaries blur as tapioca fences take root and bloom” (3;

italics mine). Isn’t May a season when every living creature is supposed to be

growing and blooming? Yet Roy implicates that “The wild, overgrown garden was

full of the whisper and scurry of small lives” (4; italics mine). A few pages later, we

learn about Sophie Mol’s death and funeral. Through Roy’s sensitive and careful

observation, death has fallen on human world even before the real winter of life

comes. Actually, Roy implies that the characters live in a world where “Edges,
 Chu 18

Borders, Boundaries, Brinks and Limits have appeared like a team of trolls on their

separate horizons” and “Short creatures with long shadows, patrolling the Blurry End”

(5). Here, Roy adumbrates in the novel the possibility of breaking boundaries. In

addition, an undertone is given that the “small lives” (the former colonized people)

are incapable of changing their destinies. And their lives are de facto controlled by

the big God (the British colonizer).

Later on in the novel, we learn that Ammu has a love affair with the

Untouchable Velutha. Velutha is betrayed and beaten nearly to death by the

communist police. Likewise, Ammu tastes the bitter results of breaking love laws,

and the church refuses to bury her. From what happen to Ammu and Velutha, love

laws could be seen as an embodiment of social power/authority which convey

warnings and prohibit Indian people from committing transgressive behavior. And

Roy has emphasized again and again in the novel that love laws are “the laws that lay

down who should be loved, and how. And how much” (33). Warnings and

precautions, which are reinforced by the power/authority, make Indian people tremble

with fear. However, the permeation of fears throughout the novel also constructs the

tensions which make readers feel alert and anxious. Various fears--including “the

fear of being dispossessed” (67) and “civilization’s fear of nature, men’s fear of

women, power’s fear of powerlessness” (292)--occupy each character’s mind.

In addition to the mental state of the characters, Roy’s tone in the novel brings

us to another level of uncertainty and ambivalence--“Things can change in a day”

(156) and “Anything can happen to anyone,” “It’s Best to be Prepared” (189). Even

before we come to the tragic events of the novel, Roy has told us that “It was a time

when uncles became fathers, mothers lovers, and cousins died and had funerals” (31).

To a certain degree, Roy implies that eventually human destiny is under the

manipulation of the Big God. And human life itself is a caricature of God--“That
 Chu 19

Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cozy

and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his

own temerity” (20).

VII. Kerala as the Location of the Novel

Kerala is the state where Roy feels intimately familiar with. It is also “a

historical meeting point between cultures” (Mullaney 7). According to Charley

Coffey, foreign cultures cast more influence on Kerala than local cultures. For

instance, Kerala is hybridized in many aspects in relation to language, religion,

politics, economics, and so on. A full understanding of Roy’s novel requires us to

be well acquainted with the land and culture through which Roy weaves her tale.

Actually, Roy’s choice of Kerala is to “carve a space on the literary map for Kerala”

(Mullaney 28). As Roy confesses--“I want to drive my stake in here [in Kerala]. I

want to say that this is my place, that it deserves literature. It is very important to me

that it be real, these stars, these leaves” (Mullaney 28).

Geographically, Kerala is separated from its neighboring states and isolated

from other Indian cultures for a long time. In relation to the climate, Kerala is

marked by its monsoon rains, and it is during the monsoon season that Sophie Mol is

drowned by the powerful river. Furthermore, Roy mentions Kottayam, an area of

Kerala which is rich in agricultural production such as coffee, tea and rubber. “The

History House,” which is situated on a rubber plantation, is the place where Velutha is

tortured nearly to death. The History House in the Keralan context, therefore,

contains the legacies of former colonial dominance in relation to economics,

agriculture, and later on becomes an allegory of communist control. Speaking of

language, Coffey points out that Malayalam is the major language, and which is

spoken by 96 percent of the population of Kerala. Besides, Kerala has a high

literacy rate of more than 90%, significantly higher than any other states in India.
 Chu 20

Yet it clearly shows signs of colonial influence when, for instance, the twins are

punished by their great aunt because they speak Malayalam in private.

With regard to politics, Kerala is the first state in the world to constitute a

democratically elected communist government. It is also the first state in India to

abolish landlordism. In reality, Kerala is still under Marxist control now. Among

the characters in the novel, Velutha and Chacko are crucial because they involve

themselves in political activities concerned with communism. And Roy’s portrait of

communist movements has become a target of much comment. Moving on to the

religious aspects of Kerala, Hinduism is a dominant religion in Kerala. Yet it

coexists with other religions, such as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. At present

time, about sixty percent of the Keralan population is Hindu. Moreover, the most

obvious feature of the Hindu influence is the prevalence of the caste system in

Keralan society. Originally present in Hinduism, caste is nowadays adopted and

internalized by other religions in Kerala. Therefore, caste has become more of a

social phenomenon than a religious convention in Kerala (Coffey).

VIII. Structures of the Chapters

Given the above background information of the novel, what follows now is the

framework of this study of The God of Small Things. Chapter One investigates the

problem of cultural difference/otherness which is closely related to Velutha’s

narrative and the caste system in India. A brief introduction of the origin/history of

the caste system is given here to make readers understand why caste makes India

different from other nations in the world. It then moves on to the narrative of

Velutha in the novel and delineates the social conflicts/mobilization aroused from

caste/class struggles. Likewise, issues raised by Subaltern Studies groups and the

problems of colonial exclusion and domination should not be ignored as factors

determining India’s cultural conflicts. Centering around caste/class conflicts are the
 Chu 21

identity problems--both personal and national. It then goes on to examine India as a

target of the orientalist thinking and discussion. It tries to reveal the

misrepresentation of Orientalism and justify India’s position as an exotic oriental

nation. “Postcolonial exoticism,” therefore, is one of the themes of Roy’s novel

since she portrays in it the traditional kathakali dance, the Indian legends and rituals,

and the casted Velutha.

Chapter Two further examines the connection between trauma, her-/history and

empire. From three different trajectories (personal/national/historical), the traumatic

memories represent the shadow of history and the lingering effects of colonialism.

At first glance, personal traumas such as the death of Sophie Mol, the sexual

harassment of Estha and the death of Velutha and Ammu may put the characters in

stagnation. Yet in the end, each character is to be understood by his/her effort to get

rid of the past burden and construct their new identities through breaking social laws.

Due to the fact that history is the central bone of contention, an understanding of the

colonial history of India is essential in this part. Apart from the narration about

history in the novel, Roy lets her female characters tell their own stories. It then

questions the lack of female voices in traditional historical writing. Speaking of

history and colonialism, “empire” is a concept never seems to die down. Both in the

novel and in other political essays, Roy is taunting the construction of empire, its

disguised forms and evil influence.

Chapter Three focuses on borders, love laws and Roy’s politics of transgression.

The discussion is initiated by asking why “transgression” is significant in India. It

then moves on to the concepts of physical borders and the symbolic border-crossing

of the river in the novel. Love laws, which regulate people’s behavior and limit their

choice of love, do not prove valid in confining Indian people. From two pairs of

transgressors in the novel, the questions of sexual desire, eroticism and biological
 Chu 22

instinct become issues of our consideration. The transgression between Ammu and

Velutha poses challenge to the traditional norms and social hierarchy of India. It

also questions the so-called politically correct division within castes/classes.

Moreover, Rahel and Estha’s transgression brings out issues of hybridity, gender

oppression, social taboo and incest. The hybrid essence of the twins reminds us of

the hybrid cultures of India. The problem of gender oppression reinforces the effects

of transgression and incest in the social context of India.

The final chapter briefly traces back to the focuses of previous chapters and

examines the results of this study. Like the hybrid elements of Indian

multiculturalism, this study touches upon a wide variety of issues which are

represented in Roy’s debut novel. For Roy, the appropriation of language and

textuality is a way to resist domination since language is the instrument of colonial

control/dominance and the tool for Third World writers to “write back” against

empire. Indeed, Roy as a Third World female writer uses “english” to show her

possible resistance to the power/hegemony and the dominant language--“English.”

By doing so, Roy’s novel represents to us the “cultural otherness” in the imperial

discourse and provides us a spectrum which reflects the possibilities within empires

and the nation of India.

 Chu 23

Chapter One

Caste, Cultural Difference/Otherness, and Identity

I. Introduction

One of the traditions that distinguishes India from other nations is the

caste system. Like racism in America and apartheid in South Africa, caste is “the

sign of India’s fundamental religiosity, a marker of India’s essential difference from

the West and from modernity at large” (Dirks 5). Yet why put focus on caste instead

of other cultural phenomena/practices in the novel? Does caste carry so much

influence in Indian society? The answer is definitely positive. In a sense, the

Untouchable Velutha in the novel represents the political and social upheavals which

are tightly related to colonialism, hegemony, class mobilization, hybridity, and

identity problems in Indian society. In addition, the stigma of untouchability is so

deeply ingrained in the minds of Indian people that it may become a dangerous

juggernaut. Roy’s portrait on the caste system poses a challenge to this centuries-old

shibboleth and she expresses her disillusionment toward the social conditions of

postcolonial India where the Untouchables still face a hostile society.

Centering around caste, then, is a chain of issues which constitute the major

themes of this chapter. First, a historical background of the caste system will be

given for readers to better understand the fixed social hierarchy in Indian society. It

then is followed with an analysis of the connection between caste, Velutha and social

mobilization in the novel. Meanwhile, the situations of subalterns in India will be

manifested because they are the significant “cultural others” in Indian history.

Following the discussion of these “subordinates” comes the problem of identity.

Under the dominance and influence of colonialism, both Indian people and India have

faced some kind of identity crisis. It then moves on to the orientalist perception of

India as an exotic, mysterious nation. Yet there leaves some room for justification
 Chu 24

about whether the Orient is represented correctly in academic research and historical

documents. “Postcolonial exoticism,” one of the features of Roy’s novel, reveals to

us the function and significance of cultural translation both within and beyond

borders.

II. Caste, India, and Colonial Connection

As Allison Elliott points out, the origin of caste could be dated back to

1200 BCE. Caste comes from the Spanish and Portuguese word “casta” with the

meaning of “race,” “breed,” or “lineage.” Yet nowadays many Indians use the term

“jati” instead of the ancient ones. So far, there are 3,000 castes and 25,000 subcastes

in India and each is related to a specific occupation. These different castes are

categorized into four varnas: Brahmins--priests; Kshatryas--warriors;

Vaishyas--traders; Shudras--laborers (Elliott, “Caste and The God of Small Things”).

Outside the caste system are the Untouchables. They are considered polluted and

not to be touched. Since upward mobility is hardly seen in the caste system, most

people remain in the same caste for their whole life and marry within that caste. The

character Velutha in the novel is then an exception of caste norms since he works in

the factory owned by the Touchable and he can talk with people higher than his rank.

However, the division between the Touchables and the Untouchables is deeply rooted

in Kerala so that Velutha is regarded as a nonhuman--“If they hurt Velutha more than

they intended to, it was only because any kinship, any connection between themselves

and him, any implication that if nothing else, at least biologically he was a fellow

creature--had been severed long ago” (Roy 293).

In late 19th century, there were three different views on caste: (1) The

incubus view: caste as a divisive and pernicious force, and a negation of nationhood;

(2) The “golden chain” view: caste as varna--to be seen as an ideology of spiritual

orders and moral affinities, and a potential basis for national regeneration; (3) The
 Chu 25

idealized corporation view: caste as jati--to be seen as a concrete ethnographic fact of

Indian life, a source of historic national strengths and organized self-improvement or

“uplift” (Bayly 154). In the words of Indira Gandhi, the original idea of caste is

incorporative of the whole Hindu community, about interdependence rather than

exclusion or domination (Dirks 235). Also, Rushdie points out that “the new

element in Indian communalism is the emergence of a collective Hindu consciousness

that transcends caste and believes Hinduism to be under threat from other Indian

minorities” (31). However, caste is sometimes used to decry the backwardness of

Indian society. Besides, it is seen as a force impeding social equality and the better

treatment of women in Indian society. The debates never seem to end over the

issues about tradition, modernity, civil society, religion, politics and nationalist

ideology.

Since caste arouses many debates and controversies, the main questions

here are: Is caste good or bad for India’s development? Can caste be seen as a

scheme of social and material “disabilities”? How can India become a truly free and

independent nation if it remains a “caste society”? Bayly’s question--“To whom do

concepts of caste matter, and in what areas of social interaction?”--is stimulating and

the value of caste between past and present becomes suspect. However, we can’t

deny the fact that caste was and still is inscribed by relations of power through and

through. In caste society, power is inevitably encompassed by status. On the one

hand, caste is converted by colonial history into a special kind of colonial civil society.

On the other, caste could be seen as India’s special religious form of social

self-regulation and the reason for India’s unsuitability for modern political institutions

(Dirks 276).

Given the fact that caste is intricately interwoven with colonial history, we shall

not ignore that colonialism not only happened in the past but continues to haunt the
 Chu 26

postcolonial nation in the present. For example, the British colonizers may take

advantage of caste to control and assimilate those colonized. Nowadays in

postcolonial India, it is still possible that the dominant authority see caste as its potent

tool to demarcate the social properties and benefits between rich/poor,

powerful/powerless. If caste is a sign of the past, it is also a vehicle for the

construction of a different future. As Bayly puts it, caste should not be seen as “an

orientalist fiction” or “a shameful crime to be disguised or ignored in discussing

India’s history” (7). Rather, caste is a fit subject for historical exploration. Indeed,

caste may be a colonial hangover in modern India. Yet the challenge of the

postcolonial predicament is to find possible ways to transform history and at the same

time acknowledge the barbaric hold caste has on us all. Put simply, one of the

purposes behind a postcolonial historiography of colonialism is “to come to terms

with the weight of the colonial past without turning our backs on that past” (Dirks

302). Interesting enough, however, Dirks suggests that postcolonial history is “the

epic story of seduction and betrayal,” which is doomed to repeat itself again and again

(315). Here, Dirks seems to imply that there is no going back or time for nostalgia

for a time when tradition, identity, or civilization might be recuperated whole.

III. Social Mobilization, Velutha, and Subalterns in India

Furthermore, caste is closely linked with class mobilization and political

associations. As Bayly indicates, caste as we recognize it today has been

“engendered, shaped and perpetuated by comparatively recent political and social

developments” (4). Also, Sen reveals that “the impact of caste, like that of gender, is

substantially swayed by class” (208). So what exactly is the distinction between

caste and class? Generally speaking, “class” is referred to social and economic

criteria while the term “caste” is usually used by those noncaste or groups outside the

pale of caste. Yet this kind of classification is not without any problem since in this
 Chu 27

case, caste becomes the product of collective power or political dominance. As is

shown in the novel, Untouchables are not allowed to “touch anything that Touchables

touched. Caste Hindus and caste Christians” (Roy 71). Some people even convert

to Christianity and join the Anglican Church to escape the scourge of Untouchability.

After Independence, however, the Untouchables find that they are still not entitled to

any government benefits like job reservations or bank loans at low interest rates (Roy

71). Hence, they couldn’t enjoy the benefits like other Touchables. Officially, they

are Christians and therefore casteless. It is like “not being allowed to leave

footprints at all” (Roy 71). In this way, caste is a source of inequality and disparity,

yet belonging to a privileged caste can help people overcome barriers that hinder them

from getting a better future and promising welfares. In Grossberg’s words,

“‘belonging’ opens up the possibility of another theory of identity and otherness, of

identification and affiliation” (148). Yet ironically for those Untouchables in India,

their quest for a sense of “belonging” will not necessarily put them in the right place.

In contrast, their “displaced” positions make them different from others and their

identity is even more thwarted than before.

Take Velutha’s case for example. Despite his untouchability and poor

background, Velthutha is a great help to Ammu’s family. At first, it is Mammachi

who notices little Velutha’s “remarkable facility with his hands” (Roy 71). Apart

from the carpentry skills, Velutha has a way with machines. In Mammachi’s words,

if Velutha hasn’t been a Paravan, he might have become an engineer. Unlike the

scholarly Oxford-training Chacko, it is Velutha who maintains the new canning

machine and the automatic pineapple slicer. It is also Velutha who oils the water

pump and the small diesel generator, and so on. Increasingly, the whole family of

Mammachi depends more and more on Velutha. Yet it causes a great deal of

resentment among the other Touchable factory workers when Mammachi rehires
 Chu 28

Velutha as the factory carpenter and puts him in charge of general maintenance.

Actually, there is a rivalry between Touchable and Untouchable workers since

both sides need money to maintain their lives. In addition, Roy reveals to us that

there is a competition and struggling between the local factories, the People’s

Government and the communist party. Not surprisingly, Velutha is a member of the

Communist Party (Roy 248). And he participates actively in the communist

movements. At first glance, the communist party seems to provide political

protection for those minorities and subordinate--“They were also demanding that

Untouchables no longer be addressed by their caste names” (Roy 67). For instance,

when Comrade Pillai notices that “all the other Touchable workers in the factory

resented Velutha for ancient reasons of their own,” he “stepped carefully around this

wrinkle, waiting for a suitable opportunity to iron it out” (Roy 115). In this way, the

communist party becomes the second government/authority which monitors the social

order to see if there is anything wrong. In Michel Foucault’s terms, the disciplinary

power here is to reduce multiplicity (difference, variety) to manageable and useful

order (qtd. in Harris 269). Besides, the party even promotes workers’ benefits by

teaching them how to demand a raise, whether they succeed or not.

Given the above elaboration, the question that has to be faced here is “caste is

the natural focus of political mobilization and economic redistribution, as well as the

somewhat illicit marker of cultural identity and traditional pleasure” (Dirks 293).

Indeed, the caste consciousness is stirred by the impact of British colonialism, yet it

also results in the movement for Sanskritization, caste solidarity and caste rivalry.

As R. C. Vermani observes, due to the fact that the political evolution of Indian

society leads to caste solidarity, some leaders of specific castes find it useful to

mobilize support from caste brethren for social recognition, jobs and political favors

which is encouraged by the gradual introduction of electoral politics (137). This

 Chu 29

remark can also apply to the binary concept between “us” and “them”--“ ‘we’ are the

ones with a legitimate claim to solidarity; it is always ‘they’--one’s unworthy

rivals--who are given to so-called ‘casteism’ or ‘casteist’ values and actions” (Bayly

307). Nevertheless, there is always a potential danger in social hierarchy and

mobilization if caste is politicized or used as a source of political implementations.

Rajini Kothari, a leading political scientist in India, has warned us that “casteism in

politics is no more and no less than politicization of caste (qtd. in Dirks 286).

Therefore, it is not necessary a good thing when castes group themselves together for

political purposes. To a certain degree, the political process does not always erase

divisions within caste/class groupings. Rather, it provides new opportunities for

exploitation and the enrichment of elites. In the end, the policy of caste-based

reservations does not help solve the problems but encourages the caste-based

politicization. Ultimately, the rich and the influential get benefited most, not the

poor and the weak.

With regard to social hierarchy and class division, inevitably we need to deal

with subalterns in India. The term “subaltern” refers to “those groups in society who

are subject to the hegemony of the ruling classes,” as it is pointed out in Key Concepts

in Postcolonial Studies (215). Jawaharlal Nehru has once commented: “…no group,

no community, no country, has ever got rid of its disabilities by the generosity of the

oppressor” (qtd. in Jayawardena 73). Here, Nehru suggests that the oppressed is

usually under the manipulation of the oppressor. As David Lloyd puts it, “minority

discourse forms in the problematic space of assimilation and the residues it throws

up” (222). He goes on to argue that minorities are the underdeveloped “who have

yet to attain the capacity to participate in representative structures” but are those

“whose numbers have been systematically controlled by exclusion or genocide” (231).

Given the fact that minorities are those deprived of voices and rights, the original
 Chu 30

purpose of Subaltern Studies is to “produce historical analysis in which the subaltern

groups were viewed as the subjects of their own history” (Chakrabarty 472). Since

the subaltern is not acknowledged as the maker of his own destiny and is denied the

access to hegemonic power, the central issue of subaltern mobilizations is “a notion of

resistance to elite domination” (Chakrabarty 472).

Nevertheless, the protest/struggle of subalterns does not necessarily succeed.

Rather, subalterns are likely to be assimilated by the dominant groups. In other

words, the center domesticates the other by way of assimilation. As Gayatri

Chakravorty Spivak asserts, “intellectuals must attempt to disclose and know the

discourse of society’s Other” (“Can the Subaltern Speak?” 66). Similarly, Homi K.

Bhabha insists that “the critic must attempt to fully realize, and take responsibility for,

the unspoken, unrepresented pasts that haunt the historical present” (12). Indeed,

there are good reasons to believe that those elites can do something for the

subordinate. Here, we can take the peasant movements in India for example. As

Guha insists, “the peasants was a real contemporary of colonialism and a fundamental

part of the modernity that colonial rule gave rise to in India” (qtd. in Chakrabarty 473).

It then raises the question of the relationship between texts and power when scholars

quest for a history for the subaltern. Since historical archives are usually collections

of documents, historians of peasants and other subaltern social groups have long

emphasized the fact that peasants do not leave their own documents (Chakrabarty

478). Yet Chakrabarty believes that the illiterate are not in fact inarticulate.

Instead, they can and do express their subjectivity by showing their strong will in the

protest. The difficulty in historical documents lies in whether the truth is represented

or distorted, and to what extent. Therefore, Spivak’s suspicion is not rootless to me.

She asks: Are those who act and struggle mute, as opposed to those who act and

speak? How can we touch the consciousness of the people, even as we investigate
 Chu 31

their politics? With what voice-consciousness can the subaltern speak? (70; 80).

Here, I am not going to take issue with the question of “whether the subaltern can

speak.” Rather, there are always two forces of contention and vicissitude between

the dominator and the dominated. It is not without possibility that both the elites and

the subalterns achieve their purposes by cooperating well together. Sometimes, it is

through the complicity of both sides that they get the benefits.

Back to Roy’s novel, Velutha’s case and the issues concerned with caste are no

less important than those of the Subaltern Studies. Yet I question if there is such

study as “Can the Untouchable Speak?” Indeed, “domination and subordination of

the subaltern by the elite was an everyday feature of Indian capitalism itself”

(Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” 476). I argue here that caste conflict(s) is not

only a feature of capitalism but a product of post-imperialism. As is evident in the

novel, both the communist party and the police cast strong influence over people’s

lives. Yet it does not mean that siding with certain power/authority will guarantee

any protection. Ironically, Roy intends to highlight the misuse of power in the novel

when Inspector Thomas Mathew is described as the one who knows “whom he could

pick on and whom he couldn’t” (Roy 10). She deliberately gives capitalized words

to ridicule the police--“Police/Obedience/Loyalty/Intelligence/Courtesy/Efficiency”

(10). Besides, the inspector seems so proud of his rank and status--“He had a

Touchable wife, two Touchable daughters--whole touchable generations waiting in

their Touchable wombs” (Roy 245). However, Velutha does not get any protection

from the communist party when he is charged of raping Ammu. The police does not

even get the whole truth before they decide to give Velutha a death penalty, just the

fact that Velutha is an Untouchable is a sufficient reason. In the end, Velutha is

betrayed not only by the big authority but by his caste destiny.

IV. Identity Problem and Orientalist Thinking

 Chu 32

When speaking of Velutha, it is hard not to mention about identity problem and

the Indian identity. As Robin Cohen indicates, globalization at the cultural level has

brought about the fragmentation and multiplication of identities (169). Yet we must

notice that globalization is not a brand new phenomenon. Instead, we should see it

as “a more dramatic form of reterritorialization and multiplicity within a new regime

of capital accumulation” (Chowdhury 180). Therefore, the identity of caste groups

will not stay in a fixed situation, nor will the Indian identity. In the words of

Friedman, “identity is constructed relationally through difference from the other”

(Mappings 19). In relation to caste identity, it has to be fostered in order to combat

centuries of oppression by collective organization and political struggle (Dirks 278).

If we return to Velutha’s case in the novel, we will find that Velutha’s identity is a

flawed one because he is incapable of changing and resisting the powerful hegemony.

Moreover, he belongs to no strong community which can support him throughout the

whole hardship. Put simply, Velutha dwells in a world where privilege and

exclusion determine the survival of small lives. That is, the call of death is on

other’s hands.

Apart from Velutha’s personal identity problem, now we shall move to a bigger

framework and look into the problem of national identity of India. Sen has explicitly

told us that, “it would be hard to claim that there is some exact, homogeneous concept

of Indian identity that emerged during the independence movement as a kind of

national consensus” (348). In addition, he points out that “identity is not a matter of

discovery--of history any more than of the present--and has to be chosen with

reasoning” (353). If Velutha’s story is a reflection of the destiny of India, then both

Velutha and India are betrayed by the big authority--the former by the Communist

Party and the latter by the British colonizer. On the one hand, Velutha’s case

represents numerous “cultural others” who become the scapegoats of political bigotry
 Chu 33

and social hostility in India. On the other, India is comprised of different ranks of

people who group themselves together as “the Other” in search of their true identity

and sense of belonging. In the words of Meinhof and Galasiński, “it is only through

the Other that ‘we’ can establish our own identity, through what we are not” (8).

Nevertheless, Roy’s novel reveals to us India’s traumatized experiences in

challenging the colonial power. Eventually, India itself can be likened to the casted

body of Velutha which is seen as a site of scrutiny and surveillance of colonial

control.

As Suleri reminds us, colonial facts are vertiginous to us since they lack a

recognizable cultural plot and they fail to “cohere around the master-myth that

proclaims static lines of demarcation between imperial power and disempowered

culture, between colonizer and colonized” (3). Furthermore, she thinks “the colonial

gaze is not directed to the inscrutability of an Eastern bride but to the greater sexual

ambivalence of the effeminate groom” (16). If this is the case, then the colonization

of the subcontinent can be seen in terms of stereotypical sexual aggression: “They

seized her body and possessed her, but it was a possession of violence. […] They

never looked into her eyes, for theirs were averted and hers cast down through shame

and humiliation” (17). In this way, the rape-like crime of the colonizer not only

disempowers its own authority but blurs the identity of the colonized people. For the

invader/the colonizer, its way of cultural control will definitely be thwarted because it

cannot function as “the other to a colonized civilization that had long since learned to

accommodate a multiplicity of alterities into the fabric of its cultures” (Suleri 19). In

a similar vein, the Indian identity becomes blurred with its painful experience of

sexual aggression by the colonizer. What have been left, then, are probably the

fragmentary, distorted images of “Indian self” and its colonized people.

Having said that India may signify the gendered female body, now the focus
 Chu 34

will be shifted to western perceptions of India as a nation of the Orient. First, a

theoretical overview of Said’s Orientalism will be given to make sense of the reason

why India is in “lack of discussion” in orientalist thinking. Then, it tries to explore

the fissures of orientalist thinking which is based on western conception and

construction. As Edward W. Said points out, “the Orient had become feminized by

male writers in Europe” (“Orientalism and After” 217). In this way, the Orient is not

Europe’s “interlocutor” but its “silent Other” (“Orientalism Reconsidered” 202).

Here, an undertone is suggested that the Orient is an object of reticence of western

gaze. Moreover, it conveys a nebulous message that the Orient is deprived of

“agency” in either historical documents or postcolonial studies.

Orientalism can be regarded a praxis of the same sort as male gender

dominance or patriarchy because it relies on the contention that “the Orient was

routinely described as feminine, its riches as fertile, its main symbols the sensual

woman, the harem, and the despotic” (“Orientalism Reconsidered” 212). Therefore,

Orientals are like housewives who are confined to silence and unlimited enriching

production (212). Also, Said declares in the introductory part of Orientalism that

“Orientalism … is not an airy European fantasy about the Orient, but a created body

of theory and practice in which, for many generations, there has been a considerable

material investment” (6). Yet he also indicates that people have the wrong

impression to regard the Orient as “irrational, depraved (fallen), childlike, different”

and to think the European as “rational, virtuous, mature, and normal” (40).

In one way or another, Said has tried to clarify the misrepresentation and

misinterpretation of Orientalist thinking which is based on western construction.

Despite that Said’s Orientalism is mainly constructed to discuss Middle-East

countries and their minority ethnic groups, his theory can be applied to explain the

situation of India. As David Ludden suggests, “orientalism as a body of knowledge

 Chu 35

informed the discourse of India’s nationhood” and “political discourse on both sides

of the colonial encounter entailed the other” (269). In a general consensus,

orientalism has become “a versatile component of national discourse, an authoritative

base for India’s self-definition” (Ludden 269). Yet we must be cautious here that

Said’s Orientalism (1978) may leave some room for justification since the target

nations of his discussion have probably went through incredible transformations in the

twenty-first century.

As reviewers have recognized, to conceptualize orientalist ideas about India we

need to take factors such as language, history and colonialism into consideration.

According to Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer’s observation, “the

discourse and practice of orientalism exemplifies the postcolonial predicament of

South Asians and Westerners alike” (2). In the case of India, orientalism provides a

discursive link between the special characteristics of the colonial period and the

globalized political and social dilemmas of the present. As David Ludden puts it,

“orientalism became the template for knowing an oriental Other in contradistinction to

European capitalism, rationality, and modernity” (qtd. in Breckenridge and van der

Veer 8). Within such a schema, however, there exists a crisis that the

misinterpretation of previous documents may put readers in jeopardy. That is,

readers (East, West or global) will feel confused about which is the truth claim and

hold a skeptical view toward debates derived from Said’s Orientalism.

On one level or another, orientalism as theory has influenced a number of

political and administrative practices as well as the political life of the subcontinent.

Despite the fact that the specific politics of colonial domination is less influential in

present-day use, orientalist theory still casts its shadow over cultural politics in

postcolonial India. Here, two things have to be noticed: First, the essentialization

of the Hindu-Muslim opposition and its institutionalization in political representation

 Chu 36

is one of the most lasting and fundamental of the orientalist contributions to

knowledge about India. Second, orientalism has created the discursive space where

widely divergent understandings of South Asia had to be located (Breckenridge and

van der Veer 12). Nevertheless, a full understanding of India’s history and ethnic

conflicts should not be based solely on these two facts. Instead, we should move

beyond these orientalist construction and pay attention to what has been said outside

this field. For instance, feminists in recent decades have concentrated more and

more on orientalist documents to justify women’s positions and their subjectivity

problem. Besides, scholars of cultural studies also try to excavate what has gone

wrong in past achievements of orientalist thinking. Overall, it proves that “cultures”

will never stay in the same way but change as time goes by. Along the way of global

cultural transformation, India must have changed from time to time.

As for the link between orientalism and literature, Breckenridge and van der

Veer think that “orientalism provides a totalizing discourse on literature as the

expression of the cultural identity of Indian society that is recaptured… in cultural

nationalism” (15; italics mine). Though the use of English--as against that of

vernacular languages of India--is often seen as “unauthentic,” “unIndian,”

“westernized,” and “modern,” English itself has been naturalized in the Indian

experience with many implications and complications. For instance, Mullaney

points out that the 1980s has witnessed the second coming of the Indian novel marked

by the success of Salman Rushdie’s Booker winning Midnight’s Children (1981).

What follows then is “the crest of the new wave of interest in and criticism of the

Indo-Anglian novel” (Mullaney 77). Among the new-wave Indo-Anglian works,

Roy’s novel is a big success both at a local and international level.

To a certain degree, Roy’s novel can be seen as her personal maneuver in

challenging the accusation that “English in India is inadequate to express

 Chu 37

‘Indianness,’ that it is inauthentic” (Mullaney 20). However, Roy’s novel also

presents to us the narrative writing back against “neo-Orientalist representations” and

an allegory of nation which can be seen as “symbolic resistance to metropolitan

nation-state and neo-imperial discourses” (Aldama). Therefore, Breckenridge and van

der Veer point out that “one way out of the orientalist dilemma is to remain

steadfastly focused on the present, seen as a historical moment that owes itself at least

in part to the very heritage of orientalism that we now seek to undo” (17). Among

the neo-orientalist features of Indian tradition, Roy includes the depiction about caste,

kathakali dance, love laws, ancient legends and rituals which serve as “cultural

markers” that appear exotic to the western readers. In what follows, the focus will

be moved to whether “postcolonial exoticism” can be used as an infallible strategy in

Indo-Anglian writing and transcend itself beyond the orientalist myth.

V. Postcolonial Exoticism and the Novel

Huggan reveals in The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins that

postcolonialism itself and postcolonial studies have become cultural commodities

which turn margins into center. By examining various postcolonial works and

writers in the Third World, Huggan points out that postcolonial exoticism is a

strategy/saleable formula which promotes the entrance of Third World literatures into

the mainstream. While in any postcolonial context, exoticism is “effectively

repoliticised, redeployed both to unsettle metropolitan expectations of cultural

otherness and to effect a grounded critique of differential relations of power,” the

decision on which can enter the mainstream is still institutionalized by certain

power/authority (ix-x; italics mine). The Booker Prize, for example, is said to

endorse “the commodification of a glamorized cultural difference” by prizing

“otherness” (110). Therefore, it cannot be denied that Indian literature in English

has become a kind of “cultural translation” through which western readers get to
 Chu 38

know India.

Since postcolonialism and its rhetoric of resistance have themselves become

consumer products, the flow of cultural capital also becomes unstable (Huggan 6).

In the words of Aijaz Ahmad, “commodity acquires universality, and a universal

market arises across national frontiers and local customs, while white trade joins black

trade” (qtd. in Huggan 10). Besides, Stephen Forster points out that “the exotic

functions dialectically as a symbolic system, domesticating the foreign, the culturally

different and the extraordinary” (qtd. in Huggan 13). Yet we must be careful here

since exoticism is “a control mechanism of cultural translation which relays the other

inexorably back again to the same” (Huggan 14). To a certain extent, it may be

contradictory to say that “exoticism posits the lure of difference while protecting its

practitioners from close involvement” (Huggan 22). The central concern here is:

Does Roy successfully take advantage of the features of postcolonial exoticism and

represent an India with homogeneous elements like that in other Indian novels? To

think from a different perspective, I tend to agree with bell hooks that marginality

“nourishes one’s capacity to resist” (qtd. in Huggan 20). While most people regard

marginality as a weakness, Huggan and Spivak see in it a positive value, an

advantageous subject-position. Indeed, postcolonial studies have taken advantage of

its marginality to turn marginality into a valuable intellectual commodity. Despite

the fact that Indian writings (especially in English) seem to be products of complex

collisions/collusions between East and West (Huggan 66), Roy in the novel tries to

elucidate the marginalized status of Third World people and recollect our attention

toward their cultural heritages.

Due to the fact that postcolonial exoticism is a representative feature of cultural

difference and cultural otherness, now let us examine how traditions function as

“cultural signifiers” in India. As I have mentioned earlier, kathakali dance is

 Chu 39

incorporated into the novel as a tradition of Indian culture. According to the online

information from Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, Kathakali (katha means “story,”

kali means “performance” or “play”) is an expressive form of Indian dance-drama.

It originated in the south Indian state of Kerala almost 500 years ago and is considered

one of the oldest dance forms in the world. It is usually combined with drama, dance,

music and ritual. It is a group presentation in which dancers take various roles in

performances based on themes from Hindu mythology, like the Ramayana and

Mahabharata. Besides, a traditional kathakali performance begins in the evening

and continues throughout the night, which culminates at the auspicious hour of dawn

when Good finally conquers evil (“Kathakali”).

The Kathakali Man in the novel carries mythical meanings while at the same

time it can be associated with Roy’s role in writing. In the elaboration of Banerjee

and Liles, the androgynous body of the Kathakali Man delineates the notion of the

power of the artist or the performer. To cite from the novel--“The Kathakali Man is

the most beautiful of men. […] From the age of three it has been planed and

polished, pared down, harnessed wholly to the task of storytelling” (219).

Accordingly, “the socially low and economically impoverished Kathakali Man

embodies the power of assuming liminal undefined performative spaces” (Banerjee

and Liles). Furthermore, the Kathakali Man provides the ontological plane on which

the personal can be placed alongside the national. In this way, the performance of

the Kathakali Man symbolizes the hybrid space Roy occupies as a postcolonial

narrator. In addition, the androgynous body of the Kathakali Man implicates that

Roy attempts to transcend the limits of male-centered languages and histories. The

story Roy creates is not about kings and wars. Instead, “her-story” is concerned with

the small things which mark themselves as ways of cultural translation.

Other than Kathakali dance, there are indeed other cultural practices which
 Chu 40

require our examination to further understand the traditions of India. Like the

multiple layers of an onion, “tradition” is one of the layers we have to peel off to

know the hybrid essence of Indian culture. Is it possible to see the end of tradition?

Probably not. In the era of globalization, tradition is likely to become less rooted in

place but more informationally based. As Nezar AlSayyad puts it, tradition can be

“catalogued, packaged, imagined, and sold” (11). Postcolonial exoticism, therefore,

is the means through which tradition finds its access to cross-cultural exchanges.

Sati and dowry-murder, which are not dealt with in Roy’s novel, not only function as

cultural signifiers but the foils of neo-capitalism in India. As Francoise Lionnet

points out, “…traditions are revealed to be but the expression of power relations,

arguments of authority” (162). Traditions like sati and dowry-murder may not

vanish in India, but they are indeed used as means for cultural assimilation.

Sati, which means widow immolation, is a dreadful practice in India. In some

cases, women are coerced and sati is performed for the material gain of surviving

relatives. In other cases, sati functions as “the act confirming the stoicism of women

and as the practice that epitomizes their weaknesses” (Mani 106). Here, an issue of

“female subjectivity” is raised as whether the sati women should be considered

heroines or victims. As Lata Mani puts it, “given the definition of tradition operative

in the discourse on sati, the portrayal of the immolated widow as heroine merely

rewrites her as victim of an higher order: not of man but of God (or religion)” (117).

While in the process of salvation, women are denied any agency, nor are they subjects

or objects, but the ground of the discourse on sati. Put simply, women in fact are the

sites on which tradition is debated and reformulated. What is at stake is not woman

but tradition (Mani 118).

Also, Spivak indicates that sati is seen as a woman’s proper name in India today.

She questions if the oppressed under socialized capital have any access to “correct”
 Chu 41

resistance, and whether the ideology of sati can be sublated into any model of

interventionist practice (“Can the Subaltern Speak?” 103). Sati, therefore, is a way

of cultural assimilation as well as a feature of modern disability of India. On the one

hand, women are denied their subjectivity in the process of assimilation. On the

other, sati could be an obstacle of moving toward modernity since it is a distorted

form of myth and superstition.

Apart from sati, “dowry-murder” means “burning a bride for insufficient

dowry” (Narayan 85). In India, dowry-murders are actually the killing of women for

outright economic gain. The husband and his family murder the daughter-in-law by

expropriating as much money and material goods as they can from the women’s

family and asking the son to remarry and secure another dowry. Despite that Roy

does not deal with issues like sati and dowry-murder in the novel, she tries to suggest

by implication that Third World women are capable of resisting against cultural

assimilation. For instance, Ammu in the novel is a subversive role that refuses to be

confined by tradition and patriarchal regulations.

As Meyda Yeğenoğlu suggests, “it is through displacement that the dependence

of the subject on the other is made explicit” (7). Once the subject is deconstructed,

there is no ground left for action, no possibility of changing the order of things.

Nevertheless, displacement does not necessarily make the subject an agent, but

“reproduces the same form of the subject as fixed and fixing” (Yeğenoğlu 9). In

Luce Irigaray’s feminist deconstruction on Western phallo-centricism, woman can not

be a subject in the way Man is. Similarly, Jacqueline Rose indicates that “it is at the

level of fantasy that man achieves his identity and wholeness” (qtd. in Yeğenoğlu 46).

Put simply, it is man who places woman at the basis of his fantasy, or constitutes

fantasy through woman. Overall, the otherness of the woman only serves to secure

man’s own self-knowledge and truth.

 Chu 42

Here, let us make a connection between Indian woman and the veiled oriental

woman. As Yeğenoğlu indicates, the image of veiled oriental woman signifies

oriental woman as mysterious, exotic, while at the same time it signifies the Orient as

feminine, veiled, seductive, and dangerous. Behind the veil, there lies a presumption

of hidden essence and truth by which the Western/colonial and the masculine subject

constitute their own identity. In short, the discourse of Orientalism “is mapped

powerfully onto the language of phallo-centricism and thereby point to the

inextricable link between representations of cultural and sexual difference” (11).

Taking a step further, Yeğenoğlu suggests that the trope of veil is related to

“visibility” and “transparency” and the act of unveiling could also be seen as a

political doctrine. By setting up a barrier between the body of the oriental woman

and the Western gaze, the opaque veil seems to place the body out of the reach of the

Western gaze and desire. Yet the depiction of the Orient and its woman is like the

unveiling of an enigma which makes visible what is hidden. To a certain extent, the

veil is an emblem/symbol “through which Western fantasies of penetration into the

mysteries of the Orient and access to the interiority of the other are fantasmatically

achieved” (39). On the other hand, the veil is also a signifier of a cultural habit or

identity. Since the veiled woman is already other-ed in her own culture, she is other

to the Western subject and to the dominant male subjects of her culture.

Furthermore, the veiled woman is an obstacle in the field of visibility and control, but

her veiled presence is not that of omnipotent gaze. That is, her body is invisible to

the European observer except for her eyes and thereby she can see without being seen.

Also, in Lacan’s approach, the gaze is not seen but imagined by the subject in

the field of the other. In this way, Orientalist writing is “the European imagination at

work in the field of the other” (44). The veil attracts the eye, and stimulates one to

think, to speculate what is behind the veil. With the help of veil, the Oriental woman
 Chu 43

does not always succumb herself to the Western gaze. Rather, it is “ through the

inscription of the veil as a mask that the Oriental woman is turned into an enigma”

(44). Therefore, the veil is like a curtain which conceals and reveals--“it conceals

the Orient’s truth and at the same time reveals its mode of existence, its very being--a

being which always exists in a disguised and deceptive manner, a being which exists

only behind its veil” (48).

If Indian woman can be likened to the veiled Oriental woman, what Roy has

done in the novel is to lift the veils of Indian women and reveal the hidden truth in a

postcolonial subcontinent. Since India has its colonial background like many other

countries in the world, everything about India is like a myth/enigma that western

viewers/readers would like to explore. For instance, the various cultural practices

such as sati, dowry-murder and caste system function as India’s cultural differences

and make India more mysterious and exotic. By examining the caste/class conflicts

and the problems of social mobilization in India, Roy in reality is guiding us through a

magnificent museum. Inside this museum, there are various exhibitions which

reveal to us the evil legacy of colonialism, the brutality of political struggles, the

misrepresentation of orientalist thinking and so on. As Reina Lewis puts it, “the

representation of the Orientalized other is never one of a secure and absolute

difference” (43). In a similar vein, postcolonial studies or literatures should not base

solely on the depictions of the exotic/cultural otherness. On the contrary, we should

pay more attention to how these cultural others prevent themselves from being

assimilated by the colonial/imperial hegemony. Indeed, Roy has shed some light on

the conflictual situations and the predicament of postcolonial India. Her purpose is

not to provide solutions to these problems but to pin-point the existence of these

problems.
 Chu 44

Chapter Two

Trauma, Her-/History, and Empire

I. Introduction

“Traumatic memories” constitute important parts of The God of Small Things.

Through the naïve narration of young Rahel, a chain of tragic events of the Ipe family

are represented before our eyes. From various stages of the mental development of

the twins--naivety, confusion, loss of innocence, and stagnation--Roy’s novel has

witnessed the coalescing of history with memory. If Roy’s role can be compared

with an archaeologist’s, her task is to return to the historical archive precisely in order

to “disturb, reclaim, rewrite, reinvent, and understand one’s emplacement therein”

(Mullaney 42). Like any other kind of narrative, “history” is a way of ordering the

world and its events. However, Roy’s role as an archaeologist is not to change the

course of history but to illustrate the possibility of challenging it. Indeed, Roy’s

novel endows history with the power to shape characters’ lives, but it also encourages

readers to see history as a script “written by those in power for others to enact”

(Westman). In this way, Roy is writing against the official documents of history

while at the same time reconstructing the past through the vehicle of memory.

Historiography, however, is almost and always male-centered. As it is shown

in many imperial contexts, colonized women are rendered doubly marginal because of

their colonized gender and position (Ballantyne and Burton 411). Moreover, the

female voices in many colonial archives are portrayed as fleeting and fragmentary.

Therefore, this chapter intends to subvert the pre-dominance of his-stories (or

historical writing) by listening to her-stories first and giving female characters

chances to narrate their own stories. We will go back to India’s colonial history and

see how historical writing has been bestowed with imperial meanings in the novel.

As it is pointed out in Postcolonial Studies and Beyond (2005), “the new global reality
 Chu 45

has made the analysis of imperialism, in all its historical variants, more pressing, but

also more difficult, than ever before” (Loomba et al. 1). In the novel and other

political essays 3 , Roy has constantly conveyed the message that “empires” will never

die but continue to influence our modern lives. Therefore, an examination through

the colonial history of India will help us to dissect the modern construction of empire

in the era of globalization. By so-doing, Roy’s novel is de facto a caricature of

colonialism, imperialism and new world power/order.

II. Personal Traumas/Traumatic Memories

Having said that a novel is at some level a documenting of history, it is

essential to go through the tragic events/traumatic memories in the novel first and then

deal with the narration about history and her-stories. Since Roy’s novel correlates

personal events to national and historical events, the specific time and place of the

novel should not be ignored. In December of 1969, all catastrophes of death, love,

murder and betrayal happened to the Ipe family and it is through Rahel’s narration

that we are able to return to these events in the novel. At the very beginning of the

novel, we learn about Sophie Mol’s death and the vivid depiction of her funeral. For

both Rahel and Estha, they feel guilty about Sophie Mol’s death since they let their

little cousin accompany them on the boat trip in monsoon season. Yet the death of

Sophie Mol seems so trifling that “the Government never paid for Sophie Mol’s

funeral because she wasn’t killed on a zebra crossing” (Roy 6). Ironically, Sophie

Mol embraces her world of children instead of the cruelty of the adult world--“She lay

in it in her yellow Crimplene bell-bottoms with her hair in a ribbon and her

Made-in-England go-go bag that she loved” (Roy 6). She lies in a child-sized coffin

and keeps the stuffs she loves with her. Yet she seems to be unconscious of the deep

3
See Roy’s Power Politics (2001), The Algebra of Infinite Justice (2001), The Ordinary Person’s
Guide to Empire (2004), and also Barsamian’s The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile (2004). My
discussion about empire is from p. 53-56.
 Chu 46

bereavement of her parents. Nor does she know the following misfortune of Velutha

and Ammu due to her accidental drowning. After all, she is only nine years old.

Why does Roy keep mentioning the small things and details in the novel?

I believe that it is by inscribing on the “small things” that Roy brings out big traumas

and haunted memories of each character. Through the naïve narration of Rahel, Roy

leads us to face the real confrontation of life. It is on Sophie Mol’s funeral that

Rahel feels “fiercely vigilant and brittle with exhaustion from her battle against Real

Life” (Roy 7). Besides, Rahel’s sensitive mind and careful observation accentuate

the sad tone of the novel. First, she notices the change of color of the church dome.

Second, she notices a black bat. She thinks Sophie Mol must have noticed that, too.

Here, the church signifies a space for two important occasions in life--wedding and

funeral. The funeral at the beginning of the novel predicts some kind of misfortune.

As for the bat, it signifies bad luck and misery in life. It is in the funeral that Rahel

and Estha learn that “the world had other ways of breaking men” (Roy 8). And the

atmosphere on the funeral is that of “sicksweet”--“like old roses on a breeze” (Roy 8).

In the end, “the Loss of Sophie Mol grew robust and alive. [...] It ushered Rahel

through childhood …into womanhood” (Roy 17). Yet the trauma not only lingers on

the twins’ mind but keeps haunting the heart of Sophie Mol’s mother--“She had come

to Ayemenem to heal her wounded world, and had lost all of it instead. She

shattered like glass” (Roy 249). Sarcastically, “it is curious how sometimes the

memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of the life that it

purloined” (Roy 17). While the loss of Sophie Mol grows robust and alive, Sophie

Mol becomes a memory--“Like a fruit in season. Every season” (Roy 253).

Moving on to Estha’s personal trauma, let us begin with Roy’s portrait of

him. It is said that Estha “had always been a quiet child, so no one could pinpoint

with any degree of accuracy exactly when (the year, if not the month or day) he had
 Chu 47

stopped talking” (Roy 12). In fact, he seems to occupy little space in the world.

The world around him does not carry too much meaning. Yet there is an uneasy

octopus living inside him which squirts its inky tranquilizer on his past. Gradually,

the reason for his silence is “hidden away, entombed somewhere deep in the soothing

folds of the fact of it” (Roy 13). In Laura S. Brown’s terms, Estha has the symptom

of “pretrauma levels of denial and numbness” (109). Actually, Estha’s trauma can

be traced back to his experience of sexual harassment by the Orangedrink

Lemondrink Man in the cinema. Originally, Estha goes with his family to watch the

classic film The Sound of Music. Yet the man who sells drinks forces Estha to rub

his penis in exchange of drinks. The obscene depiction is like this--“he held a bottle

in one hand and a penis in the other. Hard, hot, veiny” (Roy 98). Though not

knowing the intention of this man, Estha is terrified into silent fear and shame by this

assault. Later on, the loss of Ammu and Velutha traumatizes his fragile heart even

worse. And these painful memories may be the hidden causes of Estha’s stagnation

in growth and his inability to live a normal life.

The tragedy of Ammu and Velutha is the worse trauma for both Rahel

and Estha. As I have mentioned earlier, Velutha is an Untouchable who should not

love woman higher than his caste. After his love affair with Ammu is discovered by

the local police authority, he is tortured with great violence. Yet the policemen

assert that “they were not arresting a man, they were exorcising fear” (Roy 293).

The brutality of the policemen is described as follows:

… the posse of Touchable Policemen acted with economy,

not frenzy. Efficiency, not anarchy. Responsibility, not hysteria.

They didn’t tear out his hair or burn him alive. They didn’t hack off his

genitals and stuff them in his mouth. They didn’t rape him. Or behead

him. After all they were not battling an epidemic. They were merely
 Chu 48

inoculating a community against an outbreak. (Roy 293)

What else can be said about Velutha’s doomed destiny? Ironically, as Chakrabarty

states, “the inhumanity of collective violence is, after all, human” (Habitations of

Modernity 142). Put simply, it is not entirely Velutha’s fault that “he lived in a

society where a man’s death could be more profitable than his life had ever been”

(Roy 267). Eventually, he is betrayed by the sly Comrade Pillai and history itself--

“The last betrayal that sent Velutha across the river, swimming against the current, in

the dark and rain, well in time for his blind date with history” (Roy 267). So what

has been left in Velutha’s life? Almost nothing since “He left no ripples in the water.

No footprints on the shore” (Roy 274).

After the death of Velutha, Ammu died alone at the age of

thirty-one--“Not old, not young, but a viable, die-able age” (Roy 154). And the

church refuses to bury her because she is a shame to everyone in Kerala. Since

Ammu ends her former marriage in divorce, she seems to worry about madness in her

life. That is, “it wasn’t what lay at the end of her road that frightened Ammu as

much as the nature of the road itself” (Roy 213). In relation to the suffering of

Ammu, it will be interesting to mention a mysterious dream of Ammu in an afternoon.

In her dream, Ammu makes a long journey “from the embrace of the one-armed man

to her unidentical two-egg twins” (Roy 208). In that dream, there are “shadows” that

only the one-armed man can see. Ammu and the man have the desire to touch each

other, but they do not do this. Strangely, the man leaves no footprints in sand, no

ripples in water. And Ammu flies through her dream on heavy, shuddering wings

(Roy 207). Here, it adumbrates that Ammu and Velutha will break the caste taboo

and be punished by their transgression. On one level, the shadows in the dream

implicate that Ammu will have her days of “darkness.” On another level, the

seduction of the female body of Ammu implies that political upheaval is not related to
 Chu 49

casted Velutha exclusively.

In addition, we know that the twins were born on a bus in a journey. Here, the

journey symbolizes the rugged road lying before Ammu. Because of Ammu’s

inter-communal marriage with Baba, the twins are considered illegitimate and less

lovable. However, what interests me is the female space of the womb and the

process of giving birth. My hypothesis is that in the process of giving birth the

womb is torn to produce life, a process which inevitably leaves layers of scars on a

woman’s body. And the scars record the physical and mental pains/traumas of a

woman. Similarly, the process of writing/creating is like the process of giving birth.

The aims of a writer are to record the painful experiences and unveil the truth behind

the curtain. Roy’s novel presents to us not only the writing of “history” but the

recording of “her-stories.” In what follows, I will concentrate on analyzing women’s

stories in the novel.

III. Her-stories as Counter-narratives of His-stories

Female characters are significant in the novel because their contrasting voices

and differing characteristics signify the hybrid essence of Indian cultures and

traditions. Moreover, their “lived experiences” implicate that Third World women

will not necessarily be assimilated to the same stereotype--obedient, tradition-bound,

irrational, innocent, and so on. In the words of Ballantyne and Burton, women are

usually denied the access to “the primary source materials that remain from imperial

and colonial archives” (4). Therefore, it is important that these female characters

have chances to tell their own stories.

Let us begin with Baby Kochamma’s story. Unlike Mammachi, Baby

Kochamma has the opportunity to receive education and she gets a diploma in

Ornamental Gardening from Rochester. She never gets married, but has a

self-indulged love fantasy with Father Mulligan. She has strong fetishism on
 Chu 50

western commodities, which is revealed in her installment of a dish antenna on the

roof of the house. Via the mass media, she enjoys the stuffs of westerners such as

NBA league games, tennis, shallow blondes and their shiny clothes. In this way, her

passion in gardening has been replaced by a more threatening and homogenous

foreign culture. Yet in reality, she lives her life backwards--“As a young woman she

had renounced the material world, …, as an old one, she seemed to embrace it. She

hugged it and it hugged her back” (Roy 23). Moreover, she is not that kind of

obedient woman since she defies her father’s wishes and becomes a Roman Catholic

(Roy 25). Strangely enough, she feels lonelier than ever when she speaks much

better English than everybody else. With regard to this, language for her enhances

the cultural difference between herself and others. And she becomes the “othered”

who needs to justify her own position.

Speaking of Mammachi and Ammu, they are victims of domestic

violence. As is revealed from the novel, Mammachi is beaten by her husband with a

brass flower vase every night--“The beatings weren’t new. What was new was only

the frequency with which they took place” (Roy 47). And the scars are accumulated

on her body--“Mammachi had raised, crescent-shaped ridges. Scars of old beatings

from an old marriage” (Roy 159). No less fortunate than Mammachi, Ammu

endures violence due to her divorce. Their family member “squeezed her knee and

gloated” (Roy 43). Since a married daughter has no position in her parents’ home

and a divorced daughter has no position anywhere at all, Ammu’s divorce

embarrasses her family and she is despised by Baby Kochamma and Chacko.

However, it is out of free will that Ammu asks for divorce. She realizes belatedly

that “the slightly feverish glitter in her bridegroom’s eyes had not been love” (Roy 39).

When she looks at herself in the wedding photos, she feels the woman that looks back

at her is someone else (Roy 43).

 Chu 51

As to Rahel, she has been living an exilic life ever since the death of

Sophie Mol and the tragedy of Ammu and Velutha. When she recalls the past, she

feels that “she has other memories too that she has no right to have” (Roy 5). When

she thinks of home, it is always “in the colors of the dark, oiled wood of boats, and the

empty cores of the tongues of flame that flickered in brass lamps” (Roy 70). In the

eyes of Larry McCaslin, there is “a sort of enforced optimism” in Rahel (Roy 20).

Here, Rahel’s pessimism is not without reason because the country she comes from is

“poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept

happening” (Roy 20). As for Margaret Kochamma, she could be a contrast to other

Indian women in the novel. Despite that she becomes the kind of girl her parents

want her to be, she clings nervously to “old remembered rules” and has no one but

herself to rebel against when facing with the Real World (Roy 229). She confesses

that old limits are pushed back and horizons are expanded only when she is with

Chacko (Roy 232). Even after their divorce, she tries to maintain a comfortable

friendship with him.

Given the above elaboration, some questions are raised: Is it proper to

make a parallel discussion between her-stories and historical writing (or

historiography)? Can each woman in the novel construct the language of her own to

rebel against patriarchy/empire/colonizer? Are patriarchy, empire, colonizer

amounted to the same thing? As is noted earlier, Roy creates a gendered space for

her female characters to narrate their own stories. Yet within this space, the order

may not be as harmonious as we imagine. First, the problems of women represent

the conflicts/turmoil of Indian society between tradition/modernity and between

colonial/postcolonial period. Domestic violence, which is imposed upon women, is

also an allegory of the violence of the colonizer. Second, these “women’s problems”

reflect upon the social milieu, which may not have changed too much even in the age
 Chu 52

of twenty-first century. For instance, women in India today have less chance to

receive education (though Kerala is an exception). And women are economically

inferior to men because they have no right to inherit lands and property from their

fathers. Moreover, women have to “save” enough dowries to get married. These

cases indicate that India is a deeply biased society.

In my observation, not all the women in the novel submit to the norms of

patriarchy. Among them, Ammu is the one who defies patriarchal norms and

transgresses the limit of her caste position to love an Untouchable man. She

disregards the social value imposed upon her by asking for a divorce. Rahel, as a

daughter of Ammu, also shows rebellious spirit throughout her life. Baby

Kochamma, on the other hand, is caught between tradition/modernity,

obedience/rebellion. She receives western education and runs a pickle factory well.

Yet she also sticks to the values of past time. She has a nostalgia for the good old

days, but she tries to change herself by embracing the western/up-to-date stuffs at an

old age. Mammachi is most tradition-bound and seems unable to change herself.

She hates Margaret Kochamma for being Chacko’s wife and tries to cover Chacko’s

affairs with factory workers because she thinks money can clarify things, separate sex

from love, needs from feelings (Roy 161).

Apart from Indian women, Margaret Kochamma represents the exotic “cultural

other” which also causes conflicts. Her “difference” from other Indian women is the

reason why Mammachi dislikes her. Yet by listening to the contrasting voices of

these women, the gap between different cultures (Indian/Indian or Indian/western)

will be either enhanced or diminished. That is, the subjectivity/ agency of these

women may be constructed wholly based on mutual understanding or reconciliation.

Since women are most of the time being ignored or absent in historiography, Roy in

the novel tries to give voice to them. As is recognized, the subjectivity of the
 Chu 53

colonized is located in the gaze of the imperial Other in colonial discourse (Key

Concepts in Post-colonial Studies 171). For women in a colonized nation like India,

they will become agents of their own only when they can articulate their identity and

tell their stories. As Friedman puts it, “identity often requires some form of

displacement--literal or figurative--to come to consciousness” (Mappings 151). And

displacement is “the move by which the desire for a sovereign, possessive, and unitary

position is itself interrupted” (Yeğenoğlu 8). Though women may not be able to turn

marginality into center, it is within the normative systems and contradictions of

hegemony that women fuel their own resistance and change. In a sense, I agree that

“the body is always an embodying of possibilities both conditioned and circumscribed

by historical convention” (Butler 272). Yet to regard the novel as Roy’s own

“gender performance” will be problematic since we are essentializing the male

centrality of historiography and pushing women to the margins. Roy’s portrait of

women’s stories in the novel, therefore, cannot be seen as her deliberate intention to

revise history or to deprive Third World men of their voices. In what follows, an

examination of India’s history and colonial trauma may help clarify Roy’s concern in

the novel.

IV. History, Colonial Trauma, and India

In the words of Michael Brockington, the vitality of the novel is trapped in the

past, while with the hope of healing through animating a wounded present. Put

simply, the novel could be seen as “an exposition of the paradoxes that exists in an

ancient land whose history was forever altered by its British colonizers” (Aull).

Moreover, the novel “suggests possibilities for postcolonial Indian identity that lie

outside the ‘History House’ and the oppressive order that it would impose on all who

step inside” (Schwarze). Knowing that “history is a critique of truth’s distortion”

(Lemert and Gillan 65), we must be careful about two questions--Who can have a say
 Chu 54

on history? Whose representation is closest to truth? Since there is no neutral,

transparent language and pure gaze in historiography, objective history can hardly

exist. As Sen remarks, “important as history is, reasoning has to go beyond the past”

(120). Also, Grossberg indicates that “the question of our present and our future is a

matter of the different possibilities or modalities of belonging” (154). In the novel,

Roy deliberately builds up a connection between personal memories and historical

events. Here, her intention is not to lament the past traumas but to trace the previous

“inscriptions” of colonial influence which have shaped what modern India is today.

In the novel, the narration of history is from Chacko, an Oxford-educated

scholar who comes back to Ayemenem to take charge of the pickle factory. Though

Chacko hates to admit, he tells the twins that they are all Anglophiles--persons “well

disposed to the English” (Roy 51). He sighs and laments about their roots: “They

were a family of Anglophiles. Pointed in the wrong direction, trapped outside their

own history and unable to retrace their steps because their footprints had been swept

away” (Roy 51). At a young age, both Rahel and Estha have learned “how history

negotiates its terms and collects its dues from those who break its laws” (Roy 54).

Here, the “history lesson” is passed on from adult to children, from generation to

generation. It seems that the marks left on history can never be erased--“History’s

smell. Like old roses on a breeze” (Roy 54).

The History House, a place where the twins gather secretly, is also a place

where “The Englishman who has ‘gone native’” (Roy 51). The ex-owner of this

house is compared to Conrad’s Kurtz and is the one who owns his private Heart of

Darkness--“Dark of Heartness tiptoed into the Heart of Darkness” (Roy 290).

However, the Englishman’s Heart of Darkness has become India’s own by 1969. As

is discussed earlier, 1969 is a specific year when all family tragedies happened. In

addition, the status of the Ipe family (Syrian Christian) is replaced by the rising
 Chu 55

communist leader Comrade Pillai. Their original life seems to collapse suddenly.

They couldn’t help recalling the past times--“Long before the Marxists came.

Before the British took Malabar, …” (Roy 33). Chacko reveals to the twins that

“history was like an old house at night. With all the lamps lit. And ancestors

whispering inside” (Roy 51). In a sense, Chacko’s story-telling of the History House

is an allegory of British colonial domination and the lingering effects of Anglophilia:

But we can’t go in…because we’ve been locked out. And when we

look in through the windows, all we see are shadows. And when we try

and listen, all we hear is a whispering. And we cannot understand the

whispering, because our minds have been invaded by a war. A war that

we have won and lost. The very worst sort of war. (Roy 52)

Later on in the novel, when Rahel goes back to the History House, she finds instead

the Heritage Hotel and a tourist playground that cashes in on the past: “Toy Histories

for rich tourists to play in” (Roy 120). The narrator comments ironically that in the

resort “History and Literature enlisted by commerce. Kurtz and Karl Marx joining

palms to greet rich guests as they stepped off the boat” (Roy 120). In this way, their

ancient stories are collapsed and amputated (Roy 121). As Friedman depicts, the

History House “morphs into a postmodern and transnational space, burying in its

playful façade the sedimented layers of desire and trauma that characterized the

erection and dissolution of colonial, postcolonial, caste and sexual boundaries” (122).

In an attempt to better understand the literary/imaginary construction on the

novel, it is essential to trace the historical and colonial backgrounds of India. As

Cohn indicates, “colonialism was itself a cultural project of control” (ix). He

suggests that the British colonizers enter a new world in India by trying to use their

own forms of knowing and thinking. However, the Indian tradition is neither fixed

nor static. Instead, it tends to focus on the role of colonial institutions in a radically
 Chu 56

transforming state and society. On the one hand, the colonial state could be seen as a

theater and a vast museum for state experimentation. In this space, historiography,

documentation, certification, and representation are all state modalities that transform

knowledge into power (xi). On the other, “colonialism produced an extent of

institutional self-mimesis in India that was completely at odds with its own

self-representation and rhetoric” (xv). Similarly, Arjun Appadurai compares India to

a museum/zoo and suggests that the position of the colonial subject will vary due to

“her gender, her closeness to or distance from the colonial gaze, her involvement with

or detachment from colonial politics, her participation in or distance from the

bureaucratic apparatus itself” (334). Furthermore, he thinks “the colonial gaze, and

its associated techniques, have left an indelible mark on Indian political

consciousness” (335).

While it is true that colonialism has tight bond with India, we must not neglect

that language is also a crucial part of the colonial project of control and command.

In Cohn’s view, “the conquest of India was a conquest of knowledge” (16). As an

invader, the British colonizer believes that they could explore and conquer the

unknown territory through translation. By establishing correspondence, they could

make the unknown and the strange knowable. Yet we must notice that “colonialism

is not a simple process of production of a new mimesis” (Yeğenoğlu 34). Colonial

cultures are always translated and become hybridized when they are inscribed to

colonized contexts and thus produce “perverse peoples who are white but not quite”

(Yeğenoğlu 34). But how do British officials convert Indian forms of knowledge

into European subjects? They achieve this goal by learning the classical languages

of India such as Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic and other vulgar languages. On one level

or another, Europeans take advantage of the critical methods of textual reconstruction

to establish the documents, records, and texts by which they organize their own
 Chu 57

history. They think that the Indians should receive a history of their own, though we

may wonder if this history is a genuine representation or not. As I have mentioned

earlier, it is through the construction of a history for India that India is seen by

Europeans as exotic, bizarre, as a kind of living museum of the European past. In a

similar vein, Roy’s novel can be likened to “a living museum” which shows us the

documents of history and colonialism.

So far as language is concerned, Crane suggests that fiction can be seen as a

representation of history. He points out that in the 19th century, literature and history

are branches of the same tree. Therefore, it is a novelist’s job to imagine the

landscape of a certain place, to invent the history of that place as well as a particular

period in the history of that place. Yet can historical facts be regarded as fiction?

Some critics refuse the point that only history has a truth claim and they assert that

“both history and fiction are discourses, human constructs, signifying systems, and

both derive their major claim to truth from that identity” (Crane 3). In a deeper

sense, the role of a historical novelist is not to portray the past as past, but to include

the present in the depiction of the past. Besides, “everything an historical novelist

adds or subtracts must be in keeping with historical authenticity” (Crane 9). Despite

the fact that Roy is not a historian, her historical discourse in the novel indeed poses a

challenge to the official version of Indian history.

Since Roy’s novel is imbued with historical consciousness and the lingering

effects of colonialism, it may be considered a palimpsestic novel. Originally, the

term “palimpsest” is related to a parchment on which new inscriptions are made after

previous marks are erased. Nowadays, the term suggests the ways in which “the

traces of earlier ‘inscriptions’ remain as a continual feature of the ‘text’ of culture,

giving it its particular density and character” (Key Concepts in Post-colonial Studies).

Here, we can not deny that historical trauma is a central issue that concerns Roy
 Chu 58

deeply. By recording the trivial events happened to the Ipe family between 1969 and

1992, Roy excavates not only the scars of this family but the inerasable marks left in

Indian history. Indeed, the colonial period ended long time ago, but the evil

influence of colonial culture continues to haunt the present lives of Indian people.

At first glance, these trivial events may not carry equal importance as the Partition of

India in 1947. Yet Roy reminds us that “hegemony” may be extended to the

situation of postcolonial India and it will be possible that India is colonized again if

there emerges any imperialized country like America.

In Chakrabarty’s manifestation, “unlocking memory and remembering is an

essential part of beginning the process of resolving, perhaps even of forgetting”

(Habitations of Modernity 143). Nevertheless, the past (history itself) should not be

seen as an obstacle preventing people from understanding the present. Instead, the

past is a good instrument to know the multiple cultures of the present. As Grossberg

implies, “the fear of history is a fear of the present; at least it raises questions about

the authority and politics of the present” (158). Also, Sen suggests that “while we

cannot live without history, we need not live within it either” (353). Despite the fact

that Roy does not concentrate on the history of Partition in the novel, she alludes to

the event through Ammu and the twins. Ammu, the mother of the twins, symbolizes

the motherland of India. Rahel and Estha are thus the splitting nations of India and

Pakistan. Both nations yearn for the love of their mother--India. Yet their

separation is a doomed destiny that they cannot change. The characteristics of the

twins--loss of language, stagnation, silence and aloofness--seem to imply that the

colonized India is incapable of making any protest and rebellion to its colonizer.

Therefore, they search for the spiritual reunion by breaking the social taboo of incest.

By so-doing, their hope of “unity” is thus fulfilled.

Moreover, Roy’s technique of intertextuality also reveals the brutal heart of

 Chu 59

empire and colonizer. In the novel, she alludes to some postcolonial/literary works

such as Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Forster’s A Passage to India, Kipling’s Jungle

Book, Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities and the film The Sound of Music. Here, a

common feature of these works is the narration and significance of history. Whether

the previous inscriptions on history are erased or overwritten, what remains as traces

of our present consciousness can not be taken away. As critics have recognized,

postcolonial literatures are cross-cultural since they negotiate a gap between “worlds.”

And this gap is where “the simultaneous processes of abrogation and appropriation

continually strive to define and determine their practice” (The Empire Writes Back 39).

Any monolithic perception in the explorations of history and memory should be

renounced so that history itself will be able to imbibe a spirit of critique and use it as a

tool to fight for prejudice.

At the same time, I have to admit that there is some difficulty in

“constructing” or “reconstructing” the history of India. Indeed, “reading” is not

enough to understand a nation’s historical developments and its complex background

in relation to politics, economics, social movements, humanities and so on. The

questions that concern me most in the process of doing this research are the following:

How many documents should I read to really understand India’s history? How can I

make sure that what I have read is the most genuine representation of India’s history?

Does any Indian dare to say that he/she understand India’s history? Whatever

viewpoint I find persuasive, there are indeed limitations in knowing any nation’s

history. This study seeks to address, with a modest hope to answer, the above

questions. Even for Roy herself, I guess she will not guarantee that everything she

depicts in the novel is based on historical facts. However, I am sure that Roy’s novel

has brought us to have a dialogue with history and a profound reflection on the

lingering effects of empire, communism and colonialism. As Crane suggests, since

 Chu 60

there is more than one legitimate way of seeing historical events, there is more than

one set of shaping influences and ideologies that can be brought to the study of any

given subject (191). In what follows, I will deal with Roy’s global thoughts

intertwined between the novel and her political essays.

V. The Concept of Empire and Roy’s Political Thinking

As Roy declares in Power Politics (2001), “as a writer I have the right to state

my own opinions and beliefs. As a free citizen of India, I have the right to be part of

any peaceful dharna, demonstration, or protest march” (103). Due to her outspoken

personality, she makes radical comments on matters such as the globalization of the

world economy, the privatization of India’s power supply by U.S.-based energy

companies and the construction of big dams which will dislocate thousands of Indian

people. She questions if globalization is going to close the gap between the

privileged/the underprivileged, the upper castes/the lower castes, the educated/the

illiterate (14). Pessimistically, globalization is not about “eradication of world

poverty” but a mutant variety of colonialism which is controlled by some invisible

empire. In a sense, globalization means standardization--“The very rich and the very

poor must want the same things, but only the rich can have them” (Barsamian, The

Checkbook and the Cruise Missile 40).

From the surface, we may have a feeling that Roy is eager to speak for her

fellow countrymen and she participates in political movements actively. Yet in

reality, she is suspicious of India’s ability to change and improve. As is manifested

in The Algebra of Infinite Justice (2001), India is still struggling with the legacy of

colonialism, still flinching from the ‘cultural insult’ even after fifty years of

Independence (198). Put simply, India lives in several centuries at the same time

and Indian people somehow manage to progress and regress simultaneously (187).

In what follows, some examples from Roy’s critical essays will be given to shed light
 Chu 61

on the predicament of postcolonial India and the modern concept of empire.

Domestically, Roy criticizes the Big Dam project that has put the lives of

thousands of Indians out of consideration. For a time, there are popular talks about

free market, reforms, deregulation in the name of encouraging entrepreneurship and

discouraging corruption. Yet it proves in the end that this is not a clean, perfect

world since corruption is always there. With regard to this, Roy points out that

“India’s redemption lies in the inherent anarchy and factiousness of its people, and in

the legendary inefficiency of the Indian state” (Power Politics 31). Though Roy has

tried to warn us that “India will not behave,” she still insists that it is the duty of an

intellectual to make connections and find ways of bringing world issues into the realm

of common understanding. As a writer, Roy also carries this responsibility on her

shoulders. She concludes that “the only thing worth globalizing is dissent” (33).

Here, what she means is not the politics of governance but the politics of resistance

and opposition.

In terms of the international affairs on the global stage, what irritates Roy most

is probably President George Bush’s politics/policies on terrorism and on other Third

World nations. As we all know it, Bush has once remarked: “You are either with us,

or against us.” What is Bush’s intention by this remark? Well, he is calling for

allies nationwide to fight for justice, or euphemistically to declare wars in the name of

justice. Not only is Roy angry at Bush’s assertion; so are the millions of viewers in

front of the TV. As Mark T. Berger points out, September 11 has crystallized “a

new concern about the unevenness of the way in which the benefits of globalization

have been disbursed” (23). Also, Zygmunt Bauman indicates that globalization has

become “a fad word fast turning into a shibboleth, a magic incantation, a pass-key

meant to unlock the gates to all present and future mysteries” (qtd. in Behdad 63).

Actually, Bush’s notion to “rid the world of evildoers” does not necessarily help solve
 Chu 62

the conflicts between nations. Instead, it imposes tremendous violence on the

citizens both in America and the nations being attacked. Eventually as Roy

mentions, “Terrorism is the symptom, not the disease. Terrorism has no country”

(Power Politics 119). Sarcastically, Bush was/is fighting not only the terrorism of

911 attack but the terrorism he produces.

With regard to the modern concept of empire, Vilashini Cooppan suggests that

“empire works not within boundaries but across them” (82). Empire is actually “the

very image of globalization” instead of the instrument that “disrupts and dissolves the

operative paradigms of postcolonial theory” (82). Since the power of empire

nowadays has no actual and localizable terrain or center, America can be seen not

only as a super-power/hegemony but a full-blown empire in the Roman and British

sense (qtd. in Cooppan 82; 97). That is, America seeks to build up its status like that

of ancient Roman empire by its military, technological, economic strength and so on.

However, America will put itself and the world in jeopardy if it continues to declare

wars in the name of justice. Here, we must not forget that history repeats itself. As

Frederick Cooper puts it, “to think through a historical process is to observe the

relationship of action and its consequences” (412). In this way, “targeting empires is

one way of making sense of world history” since in this process we will pay attention

to big structural events and changes and ask what impact they have on microprocesses

and the historical subjects who live with and through them (Ballantyne and Burton 4).

Similarly in The God of Small Things, Roy has shown her resentment toward

wars, endless wars, and destruction. From the images appearing on Baby

Kochamma’s TV screen--“wars, famines, picturesque massacres and Bill Clinton”--it

is not difficult to figure out the impact of globalization on Indian people. Memories

of wars, of course, are deeply rooted in the members of the Ipe family. In

Pappachi’s time, it is said that “enough bombs were being dropped to cover all of
 Chu 63

it…” (Roy 35). In the painful confrontation with history and memory, Chacko

couldn’t help sighing:

We’re Prisoners of War, …. Our dreams have been

doctored. We belong nowhere. We sail unanchored on troubled seas.

We may never be allowed ashore. Our sorrows will never be sad

enough. Our joys never happy enough. Our dreams never big enough.

Our lives never important enough. To matter. (Roy 52).

It seems that, the effect of wars not only deepens the traumas in their mind but denies

the dignity of human beings. Wars, which cause countless traumas and destruction,

also reveal to us that empires never seem to collapse.

As it is pointed out, the prose writings of Roy examine globalization,

imperialism, and the politics of empire (Feifer and Banerjee). The politics of

opposition she conveys in her writing and the activism she practices in real life all

have crucial influence with regard to discourses on power and resistance. As Naomi

Klein recognizes, Roy’s deep understanding of the mechanics of power is her greatest

contribution to movements against neo-liberalism and war (qtd. in Barsamian x).

Again and again, Roy has told us that “the time is past for simply un-masking empire,

it’s time to take it down, to dismantle its working parts” (xii). However, Roy

reminds us that empire is most of the time a disguised power/authority. As is

indicated in The Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire (2004), “when it comes to

empire, facts don’t matter” (108). In addition, we must be careful that ‘democracy

has become Empire’s euphemism for neo-liberal capitalism” (119). Here, Roy

suggests that in the confrontation of empire, our strategy is not only to lay siege to it,

but to deprive it of oxygen, to shame it and to mock it (77). Overall, Roy has

brought us a revelation that what is different/new is not the empire, but its

newly-made clothes. As citizens in the age of globalization, we need more wisdom

 Chu 64

to visualize the invisible architecture of modern empire and unveil the empire in

disguise.
 Chu 65

Chapter Three

Borders, Love Laws, and Transgression

I. Introduction

What makes transgression so special and worth discussing in The God of

Small Things? Why is transgression significant in the context of India? Will it be

different if there are no such social traditions/regulations as caste and love laws in

India? As I have mentioned earlier, caste regulates people of different ranks and

confines their social behavior. Velutha, a representative figure of the Untouchables

in the novel, signifies the unchangeable social taboo which is ingrained in the minds

of most Indian people. As for the love laws, they are the laws that lay down who

should be loved, and how, and how much. Yet if we do not take caste and love laws

into consideration, the transgressive behaviors of Ammu, Velutha and the twins in the

novel may not carry equal importance. For instance, transgression between a man

and a woman in the context of ancient China may imply sexual liberation from

patriarchy or gender oppression. Transgression between a white man and a black

woman or vice versa may reveal the racial conflicts between East and West.

Otherwise, this is not a golden rule to follow since each narrative of a novel represents

the undertone/allegory of a certain place, time and specific issue. In the case of India,

we have to take factors such as caste, colonial history, tradition, love laws and

political sentiments into consideration to shed light on Roy’s politics of transgression

in the novel. This chapter aims to investigate the symbolic meaning of

border-crossing, the impact of love laws/social regulations and the consequences of

breaking love laws. It also touches upon various issues such as hybridity, gender

oppression, women’s movements and feminism which are somewhat entangled with

the history and development of Indian society. By so-doing, we will get closer to the

cultural “others” in postcolonial/modern India and witness how they articulate their
 Chu 66

social identities.

II. The Symbolic Border-crossing of the River

From a geographical perspective, Roy has taken advantage of the features

of Kerala to construct her narrative of border-crossing. The Meenachal river, which

takes away the life of little Sophie Mol, signifies the potential danger of transgression

and the dooms of the Ipe family. Moreover, this river reminds each character of the

traumatic memories since on the other side of the river lies the ancient Ayemenem

house. Here, Ammu and Velutha meet secretly at night. It is also the place where

Velutha ends his life. Here, the house symbolizes the good old days of the Ipe

family when they own the pickle factory, and when the original Syrian Christian is not

yet replaced by the communist new-comers. For each member of the Ipe family, the

river is crossed and re-crossed, from generation to generation. Yet to cross the river

does not mean that they can easily leave the traumatic memories behind. Since

borders have their ways of insisting on separation while at the same time

acknowledging connection, what they have crossed is the physical borders instead of

the mental boundaries.

In addition, the river in 1969 contains different meanings from that in 1992.

Specifically, what happened to the Ipe family constitutes the bones of Roy’s narrative

in the novel. And the river records not only the history of the Ipe family but the

colonial history of India itself. In 1969, the twins go through the most painful

childhood memory because they lose their adored father figure Velutha and beloved

mother Ammu. For Margaret Kochamma, the loss of Sophie Mol turns her “passage

to India” into a bitter journey and her life is thus embedded in darkness.

Twenty-three years later, the twins reunite themselves in forbidden love and touch.

Yet the original Ipe family also goes through a downfall. The Ayemenem house has

become an empty house with ancestors whispering inside. For the young Ipe
 Chu 67

offspring, what they see is probably the darkness of history and the caricature of

British colonizer. In this way, the border-crossing of the Ayemenem house

represents the legacies of cross-cultural contact between East and West and the

lingering effects of colonialism. Put simply, Roy provides a contact zone 4 in the

novel where narratives of encounter exhibit a “contradictory oscillation” between the

establishment of firm boundaries between self/other and the transgression of fixed

borders, as Susan Friedman suggests (Mappings 154).

III. Love Laws and Transgression

Next, I will elucidate the effects of love laws and how transgressions are related

to this social regulation. As is shown in the novel, the twins have known from a

young age that they have to behave well to earn their mother’s love. They realize

that things all come with their own rewards and punishments. If they do something

wrong, Ammu and other elders will love them less. Though Ammu teaches her

children how to behave well, she is the one who violates the love laws. First, she

marries a man from different caste and religion--Ammu belongs to Malayali, Baba

belongs to Bengali; Ammu a Syrian Christian, Baba a Hindu. Therefore, the twins

are considered illegitimate and less loveable. They are provided with the care (food,

clothes, housing) but not the concern (Roy 17). Second, Ammu breaks the caste

taboo by having an affair with the Untouchable Velutha. And they taste the bitter

fruit of breaking love laws. Perhaps we may not know exactly the origin of “Love

Laws” that Roy has highlighted in the novel, yet it indicates that India is a society

with intricate cultural constrains and limits. In what follows, I will analyze the

transgressive behaviors of each character and make a connection between “big things”

4
The term “contact zone” is originally from Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and
Transculturation, London and New York: Routledge, 1992. The above sentence is my paraphrase
from Friedman.
 Chu 68

and “small things.”

Evidently, Ammu is not the only transgressor. There are other people 5 who

break the rules and cross into forbidden territory (Roy 31). Yet Ammu’s

transgression is not without symptom since she contains within herself “the infinite

tenderness of motherhood and the reckless rage of a suicide bomber” (Roy 44). And

it is this “complex” or anxiety that leads her to love by night the man her children love

by day. In Bose’s elaboration, the novel raises the question of whether there is a

viable politics in the construction of eroticism. She even questions if female

sexuality can be seen as an acceptable politics that sustains itself in the tumult of

socio-cultural fluxes. In a sense, I agree with Bose that the transgression between

Ammu and Velutha is a result of their conscious decisions. Yet I am skeptical about

her viewpoint that “the sublimely erotic experience is also the pursuit of a utopia in

which ideas and ideals,…, coalesce” (59-60) because it ignores the conflictual order

of colonial space and simplifies the erotic desire to the state of a harmonious paradise.

In Roy’s depiction on the love-making scene toward the end of the novel,

sexual pleasure in reality does not promise a bright future, nor does it construct any

viable politics on eroticism. To quote a few lines here:

At the moment that she guided him into her, she caught a passing

glimpse of his youth, his youngness, the wonder in his eyes at the secret

he had unearthed and she smiled down at him as though he was her child.

Once he was inside her, fear was derailed and biology took over.

The cost of living climbed to unaffordable heights; (Roy 318)

Knowing that their love is doomed to be crushed by the love laws, they still desire

each other by meeting secretly on the following nights. Yet they realize that they

have nothing, no future. The only thing they can do is to stick to the Small Things

5
Velutha, Rahel and Estha are also the transgressors.
 Chu 69

and let the Big Things lurk inside (Roy 320). On the road toward aging and death,

Ammu chooses to stay with oblivion and shadows since she feels like living in an

abyss. Where is their “tomorrow”? They know that things could change in a day

so they never try to find the answer.

In relation to the sexual desire between Ammu and Velutha, there are

some possibilities which are opened up by Bose in her essay. First, she points out

that the transgression is related to left-wing politics of Kerala. That is, sexual desire

is a way of articulating political language and power. In this way, Roy’s characters

choose to be political and burdened, and to die for communism and sexual act.

However, this assumption is not solid enough since Ammu does not involve herself in

political movements in the novel. As it is noted earlier, Velutha is part of the

communist party because he thinks the party could provide some kind of asylum and

protection for him. Yet in the end, we know that Velutha is betrayed by the

communist authority. Therefore, it is somewhat far-fetched to make a connection

between the transgression and the political sentiments in India.

Second, Bose indicates that there is a subversion of caste/class rules

because Ammu is the initiator of the sexual act. Yet to say that Ammu has the male

tendency to conquer/dominate Velutha will be dangerous since we are separating

them into two ranks--higher caste and the Untouchable. My suspicion here is:

How can we say that an Untouchable has no desire or no privilege to enjoy sexual

intercourse? How can we guarantee that it is not out of “true love” that they desire

each other? Hence, to regard Velutha’s transgression as revolutionary and Ammu’s

as an elitist indulgence is problematic. If we believe in this assumption, we are

falling into the pitfall of another kind of “racial discrimination.” To a certain extent,

however, Ammu’s act of transgression is a rebellion against the patriarchal love laws.

From a young age, Ammu has been denied the access to choose her own husband, to
 Chu 70

receive higher education and to participate in the family business. It is not until she

meets Velutha that she consummates her love and inner desire. Despite that

Ammu’s transgression is despised by her family, perhaps she will become the

“model” and “pioneer” for women to follow since Kerala 6 is a state where women

enjoy more freedom and human rights than those in the rest of India.

Indeed, Roy’s portrait of Ammu’s naked body and the love-making scene

arouses much controversy as whether this is an erotic novel. Yet the body images of

both Ammu and Velutha definitely convey some political implications which may not

be decoded easily. For instance, the Inspector Thomas Mathew taps Ammu’s breasts

with his baton twice in the novel. The second time is after Sophie Mol’s funeral

when Ammu comes to Thomas Mathew to prove the innocence of Velutha.

Ironically, Mathew does not think of it as a sexual harassment to Ammu but “a

premeditated gesture, calculated to humiliate and terrorize her. An attempt to instill

order into a world gone wrong” (Roy 246). In contrast to Velutha’s

“untouchability,” Ammu’s “touchability” seems to be Roy’s deliberate taunt on the

brutality and corruption of the police authority. Women’s bodies--raced, sexed,

classed or ethnicized--are seen as sites through which imperial and colonial power are

imagined and exercised. The body, therefore, is the most intimate colony and the

most unruly to be subject to colonial disciplines (Ballantyne and Burton 406-7).

In addition, Ammu in one scene of the novel looks at her naked body in front of

the mirror. She uses a toothbrush to see if it can support her breasts. Before the

prelude of the love-making, Roy describes vividly how Ammu and Velutha face each

other nakedly and then proceed to the sexual intercourse:

Her softness against his hardness. Her nut-brown breasts (that

wouldn’t support a toothbrush) against his smooth ebony chest. She

6
Refer to note 2 in p. 2 in my thesis.
 Chu 71

smelled the river on him. [...] She could feel herself through him. [...]

His hands were on her haunches (…), pulling her hips against his, to let

her know how much he wanted her. (Roy 316-17)

Here, Roy poses a question as whether this sexual intercourse is equal to eroticism.

In the words of Georges Bataille, “eroticism springs from an alternation of fascination

and horror, of affirmation and denial” (211). On one level, it is true that both Ammu

and Velutha have fears in their minds because they are breaking the caste taboo and

love laws. As is shown in the novel--“Biology designed the dance. Terror timed

it” (Roy 317). It seems that “for each tremor of pleasure they would pay with an

equal measure of pain” (Roy 317). Nevertheless, it is at this moment of bodily

contact that they temporarily forget their sins and crimes.

On another level, we must notice that Ammu and Velutha do not get married

since they are forbidden to do so. Here, marriage seems to have little to do with

eroticism. If Ammu and Velutha are a married couple, will people still consider

their sexual intercourse erotic? In general perception, marriage seems to provide the

framework of legitimate sensuality. Yet the carnal acts between Ammu and Velutha

should not be seen as merely eroticism since they are consummating their biological

needs. Therefore, Bataille’s viewpoint makes sense to me that “the transgression

does not deny the taboo but transcends it and completes it” (63). That is, both

Ammu and Velutha are aware of the existence of the social taboo. Yet they still

follow their free will and try to conquer the fears in their minds. In this way, Roy’s

novel reveals to us that human beings are not different from each other because they

all have desires and biological instinct.

Moving on to the transgression between Rahel and Estha, the depiction

begins with how they identify themselves as “twins.” Rahel and Estha are two-egg

twins but they do not look like each other because “the confusion lay in a deeper,
 Chu 72

more secret place” (Roy 4). It is said that Rahel and Estha think of themselves

together as Me, and separately, individually, as We or Us in those early amorphous

years when memory has just begun, when life is full of beginnings and no ends.

Because of the death of their cousin Sophie Mol, they live separate lives from the age

of seven. Estha is sent away to live with Ammu’s ex-husband; Rahel stays in

Ayemenem but never behaves well at school. It is twenty-three years later that they

get the chance to meet each other. Nevertheless, they have come into adulthood and

the past traumas keep haunting them. Their lives have changed during these twenty

odd years--“Their lives have a size and a shape now. Estha has his and Rahel hers”

(Roy 5)--and what remains is how to bring them together again.

Tracing back to the twins’ childhood experiences, we will find that actually

they lack a complete family which is full of love and warmth. Since Ammu is

getting out of a wrong marriage, she brings the twins back to her hometown. As a

single parent, Ammu is strict with the twins. She even warns the twins that they will

be punished and loved less if they do something wrong. Therefore, Rahel has

developed a kind of sensitivity toward “punishment” at a young age because she is

always afraid of losing love. As for Estha, he has become a silent child ever since

the sexual harassment with the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man. Due to the lack of

father figure in their lives, Ammu is the only love for them and the only person they

are afraid of losing. They also find another person to love--although Velutha is an

Untouchable, the twins see him not only as an adored father figure but an “ideal

substitute” for Ammu’s husband.

However, the things that make the twins anxious still happen. The drowning

of Sophie Mol shocks them into silent fear. The following death of Velutha puts a

shadow over their lives. Finally, the passing away of Ammu retards their growth

and freezes them in stagnation. After all, what they have lost is their beloved mother,
 Chu 73

the only one person whom they can depend upon. It seems that, people can leave

them by a snap of the finger. At first glance, these are separate events happen to the

Ipe family. In reality, these tragedies intersect with each other and they adumbrate

the cause of the twins’ incestuous love and reunion later on in the novel.

Compared with the transgression between Ammu and Velutha, Roy depicts less

about the twins’ incest. Moreover, the description on their sexual intercourse is not

as vivid and erotic as Ammu’s. At the beginning, it is Rahel who initiates the sexual

act. She sits up and puts her arms around him. She draws him down beside her.

They lie down together like that for a long time and remain awake in the dark. Then,

what happen next can not be clarified because nothing will separate sex from love, or

needs from feelings (Roy 310). For the twins, they have known each other before

life begins. Yet at some time, they feel like they are strangers as well as intimates.

The one thing they are sure is that they have broken love laws again, like what Ammu

does at the age of thirty-one. At this exact age of thirty-one, they pay a tribute to

their beloved mother by desiring each other. Here, social taboo of incest does not

prohibit the sexual activity but opens a door for human beings to commit

transgression. In other words, the transgression of the twins transcends and violates

all biological norms. And it proves again that there are some subversive powers of

desire and sexuality in a field that is abound with the politics of gender divisions and

the rules that govern them.

In relation to the transgression in the novel, Chris Jenks’s book Transgression

(2003) sheds some light on my understanding of the transgressive behaviors of human

beings. Jenks investigates in this book how human behavior is related to social

constraints and limits and tries to elucidate the problem of order/disorder in a

postmodern society. Since our society is created by constraints and boundaries and

our culture is increasingly subject to uncertainty, mobility and flux, we find it more
 Chu 74

and more difficult to determine where those boundaries lie and how they have

affected our lives. By way of introduction, Jenks gives the example of 911 in

America in 2001 to show that some line has been crossed. As Jenks indicates, to

transgress is to “go beyond the bounds, to violate or infringe, to announce and even

laudate the commandment, the law or the convention” (2). Paradoxically,

transgression is “that conduct which breaks rules or exceeds boundaries, a deeply

reflective act of denial and affirmation” (2-3). Taking a step further, Jenks questions

if transgression is merely “a post-modern version of authentic/existential action” or

“the hyperbolic announcement of identity and difference in a society where identity

and difference are paramount yet difficult to achieve” (3). Following John Jervis,

Jenks points out that transgression is not like opposition or reversal since it involves

hybridization, “the mixing of categories and the questioning of the boundaries that

separate categories” (9).

Similarly, in Roy’s novel there are questions about the hybrid mixing together

of categories and the breaking of boundaries. Though there may be some kind of

aesthetic distance between Jenks’s notion in his book and Roy’s concern in the novel,

it is true that some characters do break the “rules” (love laws and caste taboo) and

exceed “boundaries” (moral, physical, sexual, etc). The emphasis here is that India

is a society with its social problems and cultural differences like other countries in the

world. Instead of seeing the acts of transgression of the characters in the novel as

erotic, immoral, chaotic and insane, the transgressions of Ammu, Velutha and the

twins are both denial and affirmation of the existence of boundaries. Transgression

marks the social differences of their positions, though there is no guarantee that each

of them traces back his/her true identity. It is through the act of transgression that

they articulate their voices and announce their “achievement.” It is also after the

completion of transgression that new “possibilities” are made to challenge

 Chu 75

homogeneous cultures.

IV. Behind Transgression--the Question of Hybridity and Gender Oppression

Apart from the above discussion on two pairs of transgressors, now I will

address two important themes in the novel which are also related to

transgression--hybridity and gender oppression. Before I move on to these two

issues, there are some questions to be asked: How can transgressions of the

characters in the novel be associated with the situation of colonial/postcolonial India?

Dose transgression itself have any significant meaning in modern/postmodern society

of India? In an attempt to answer these questions, I need to go back to the narrative

in the novel to prove the extent to which how Indian culture has been influenced by

multiculturalism.

First of all, Ammu and Velutha belong to different castes and thus they

represent the hybrid cultures of India. Their act of transgression subverts the fixed

norms of love laws and produces a heterogeneous culture which is counterhegemonic,

resistant and interruptive to Indian culture as well as to foreign cultures of colonialism.

Moreover, Roy’s politics of transgression seems to manifest that the power relation

between colonizer/colonized, First World/Third World, center/margin can be reversed,

relocated and transgressed upon. Similar to the task of Subaltern Studies groups,

Roy’s solution is not to “abstain from representation” (Spivak, “Can the Subaltern

Speak?” 80) but to mark out what is silenced in the past.

Second, Rahel and Estha are half-Hindu hybrids whom no Syrian Christian

would ever consider marrying. Their incest challenges the notion of any pure

authority and homogeneous culture. Furthermore, the sufferings of the twins raise

questions about hybridity and identity with regard to cultural translation in

postcolonial India. As Shumona Dasgupta points out, hybridity is “a subversive

concept that resists homogenization and stagnation” (117). Following Bhabha,

 Chu 76

Dasgupta goes on to say that hybrid identities occupy an enabling third space where

“cultural in-betweenness constitutes a creative and productive site for exploring issues

of identity” (117). In addition, Friedman proposes that the hybrid “disturbs,

intervenes, unsettles, interrogates, ironizes, denaturalizes, transgresses by refusing to

‘fit’ established categories” (Mappings 89). The hybrid is capable of exceeding

limits of the normative and expected by “calling into question the inevitability of the

status quo, the power relations of the social order” (Mappings 89).

Since hybridity contains different types of mixing, the cultural formation of

India is inevitably a process of transculturation (mutual and multiple borrowing and

adaptation). With regard to this, the transgression between Rahel and Estha sheds

light on the hybrid and complex relationship between India and England. Firstly, it

opens up the possibility that there can be conspiracy, intercourse and collusion

between the colonizer and the colonized. Second, the sexual reunion of the twins

lays down an androgynous undertone that India and England are two sides of the same

coin. By desiring each other, both India and England reach a mutual consensus and

open the doors for deculturation, assimilation or co-operation. However, there

exists an ambivalent gray area that Rahel and Estha refuse to be categorized. Like

postcolonial India, they fit everywhere and nowhere (Banerjee and Liles). In this

way, hybridization not only involves fusion but the creation of a new form which can

be set against the old form and regime.

Given the above manifestation on hybridity, now I will go on to deal with the

use of languages in the novel. As is introduced earlier, one of the features of Kerala

is the hybrid condition of languages. Though Malayalam is the main language

spoken by 96% of Keralan population, English has become the foreign dominant

language in Kerala. In the novel, it is not difficult to find the influence of this

foreign language. Significantly, half of the main characters in the novel have
 Chu 77

experiences of cross-cultural exchanges. For instance, Baby Kochamma gets her

diploma in Ornamental Gardening from Rochester. Yet speaking English makes her

lonelier than ever. At an old age, she seems to renounce the Indian tradition by

embracing western things and cultures. Chacko, with his Oxford-training

background, feels pompous for marrying a white British wife. He enjoys being an

“educator” by teaching the twins how India has been traumatized by history and its

colonizer. Yet in reality, he feels suspicious about western education and his

self-positioning as an Indian. Rahel, with her aloof attitude toward life, never feels

secure and certain about her true identity whether in New York or in India. As for

Margaret Kochamma, she seems to be the outsider and keeps a distance from the local

Indian cultures.

According to Bhabha, “colonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed,

recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite”

(86). Despite that mimicry seems to be one of the most elusive and effective

strategies of colonial power and knowledge, it also represents an ironic compromise

between “self” and “other.” Paradoxically, however, the complex strategy of

mimicry produces ambivalence while at the same time enhances resemblance and

menace. Put simply, the subversive power of mimicry lies in its purpose to disclose

the ambivalence of colonial discourse and also disrupts its authority. In the novel,

the twins’ use of language reflects the postcolonial tendency to rebel against

everything English. The revolt of the twins is also the rebellion against colonial

power and hegemony. Under the influence of the Oxford-training Chacko, the twins

seem to enjoy speaking English--the language of the elite and British empire.

However, the twins speak their native language Malayalam in private, which

somewhat symbolizes their true identity. Their naughty behavior of reading English

backwards also signifies the rebellion of the colonized against the colonizer. On the
 Chu 78

one hand, mimicry appears as a strategy of colonial power and knowledge. On the

other, mimicry is “the representation of a difference that is itself a process of

disavowal” (Bhabha 86).

Having said that transgression is related to gender oppression, I want to point

out that gender oppression is not concerned with women exclusively. Rather, men

are possible to become the oppressed either in India or other nations. In the

following discussion, I will try to explore different kinds of oppression in the novel

and analyze the ways Indian society adopts to displace/depersonalize both women and

men. As Sylvia Walby indicates, gender inequality has common features in all

societies and all historical periods despite women’s differences of

ethnicity/nationality/race (236). However, to claim the universality of gender

oppression is not equal to arguing for the universal rights of women based on the

particularities of their experiences. Instead, we should try to investigate how and in

what conditions are women denied the chance to “tell the truth” and robbed of their

agency.

Among the women who suffer from gender oppression, Mammachi, Ammu and

Rahel are three representatives from three different generations. Here, I am not

going to repeat in detail what happen to these women in the novel. In contrast, a

connection between their gender oppression and the situations of “Third World

women” in a bigger social milieu will be made. Briefly speaking, Mammachi

represents the kind of traditional woman who suffers from masculine violence and

patriarchal confinement. Her living space is strictly limited in the domestic field.

She feels helpless in changing this environment and she shows no resistance to male

violence. Likewise, Ammu inherits part of her mother’s “lived experiences.” She

also suffers from domestic violence. She has to endure the belittlement of her

relatives only because she is divorced. After her love affair with Velutha is
 Chu 79

discovered, she is totally spurned and given up by her family. As for Rahel, she is

luckier because she does not have a real father to regulate her behavior. She could

be said to enjoy more freedom than Ammu and Mammachi. Nevertheless, her

childhood experiences also retard her growth toward a normal and complete

womanhood. She drifts a lot around many places in the world.

The sufferings of these women is only the tip of a big iceberg since there are

many more cases like them in Third World countries. In Feminism Without Borders:

Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (2003), Chandra Talpade Mohanty points

out that women often pay a price for daring to claim the integrity, security, and safety

of their bodies and living space (1-2). Despite the fact that borders may suggest

containment and safety, women should try to expand their visions by transcending the

physical borders. By so-doing, they will be able to acknowledge the fault lines,

conflicts, differences, fears, and containment that borders represent. More than a

decade ago (1991), Mohanty has addressed the importance of women’s movement in

India. At that time, the purpose of these women is generally to modernize earlier

patriarchal regulation of women and pay the way for middle-class women to enter the

professions and participate in political movements (“Cartographies of Struggle” 20).

However, we should be cautious here that “being female” is not equal to “becoming

feminist.” That is, we shall not assume that Third World women’s political struggles

are necessarily “feminist.” On the contrary, the questions that have to be faced here

are “women’s problems” and how to solve these problems.

In the novel, Roy does not describe any women’s political struggles or even

suggest that there should be feminism in India to save the oppressed women from

victimhood. Yet it does not mean that Roy believes women should succumb to
 Chu 80

patriarchal control and violence. Here, a fact has to be noted: Kerala 7 is a state

where women are relatively assertive, outspoken and courageous in winning over

their rights. To a certain degree, both Ammu and Rahel are all “sisters in struggle.”

And their breaking of love laws and social taboo definitely subverts the roles of

traditional women. The transgression of Ammu and Rahel could be seen as Roy’s

potent weapon to dismantle the social hierarchy and gender oppression. Besides,

Roy is challenging the monolithic notion of sexual difference which categorizes

women as a group based on their gender.

In relation to gender oppression, it is risky to assimilate the oppression of

women as a group. It will be even more dangerous to perceive Third World women

as ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, religious, domesticated,

family-oriented, and victimized. Despite the fact that women are usually

characterized as a singular group on the basis of a shared oppression, I disagree with

Mohanty’s viewpoint that “what binds women together is a sociological notion of the

‘sameness’ of their oppression” (“Under Western Eyes” 200). In this way, we are

likely to bind ourselves in the framework of western feminism and ideology to

categorize groups into binary groups such as powerful/powerless, central/peripheral,

etc. In the words of Cheryl Johnson-Odim, “gender oppression cannot be the single

leg on which feminism rests” (320). And feminism should not be limited to merely

achieving equal treatment of women vis-à-vis men. For Third World women, they

may embrace the concept of gender identity, but they must renounce any ideology

based solely on gender. In echoing Johnson-Odim, I agree that any feminist

movement will not be able to alleviate the oppression of most of the women of the

world if it does not address itself also to issues about race, class, imperialism,

capitalism, etc. Specifically in the age of globalization, no non-contradictory or pure

7
Refer to note 2 and note 6.
 Chu 81

feminism is possible to exist.

How about men’s problem of oppression in the novel? This may not be an

easy issue to address since men are no less oppressed than women in the novel. At

first glance, both Estha and Velutha are victims of patriarchal love laws and the caste

system. Yet Estha’s oppression is even more strengthened because of several things

happen in his life--the sexual humiliation by an adult, the drowning of his cousin, and

the loss of Ammu and Velutha. Throughout his life, Estha is searching for the truest

“self” that would fit him into a proper place. Yet he does not find the answers to all

life’s problems. All he can do is to muse in his silent world and solitude. It is not

until the coming back of Rahel that he reconstructs his original image. Though the

identity of Estha in the end of the story is somewhat ambivalent, the lack of father

figure for Estha has been transformed into an Oedipus complex. Here, the target of

Estha’s repressed sexual desire is not Ammu but his twin sister Rahel. Hence, what

Estha transgresses upon is not only the social taboo of incest but the moral boundary

within his mind.

As for Velutha, he is both a victim and a scapegoat of the social system and

communist authority/violence. Unlike Estha, Velutha’s mother died of tuberculosis.

Therefore, he has to be independent to support the family. Though he does not go

through so many traumas like Estha, he lives in a society where its value is based on

strict social hierarchy and political bigotry. After his affair with Ammu is

discovered, it seems that everyone is waiting for his death. In the end, he learns a

hard-earned lesson with the price of his own life. And it proves that any attempt to

challenge the supreme god/power will be a failure. Due to his socially oppressed

position, Velutha turns to Ammu for love and comfort. And supposedly his

oppression is somewhat released by the sexual intercourse with Ammu. Yet

throughout the story, we find that Veluth occupies two contradictory positions. He
 Chu 82

shows up in the pickle factory, he works hard, but he has to meet secretly with Ammu.

In one way or another, he is no less oppressed than Ammu and it proves that caste

status cannot be altered easily.

By examining the problems of gender oppression in the novel, we then realize

that there are complex traditional and historical reasons behind the strict love laws

which affect and determine the lives of each character. Though “oppression” itself

may be disguised in different ways, both the male and female characters on one level

or another oppress each other. Like the domino theory, a specific issue happens to

one person affects the following events of other people. Whether the characters in

the novel are able to fight back against the oppression, they all have to bear the burden

of their past, the shadow of history. As Anja Sundberg puts it in “Patriarchal Love

Laws: A Study of Oppression in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things,”

oppression has become the dark wader of history that keeps them confined and that

prevents them from breaking loose.

Before the end of this chapter, we need to raise two questions: Does

transgression enhance the growth of the characters in the novel or help them gain

some degree of “visibility”? Can Roy’s novel be seen as a subversive genre of

Bildungsroman? Originally, the Bildungsroman is concerned with traditional heroic

narrative with “the quest motif” of certain heroes (Feng 2). Later on, it is adopted by

modern women writers to express female awakening, self-consciousness and

self-defined identities. Yet in Roy’s novel, we do not see too many depictions of

women’s growth and development. Most female characters even go through a bitter

time in struggling for their living space and basic human rights. Toward the end of

the novel, Roy does not reveal to us whether Rahel lives the rest of her life in a

positive way. Does she still drift around and feel uncertain about herself? As for

Ammu, she dies in agony and bears little hope for future despite that she finds a lot of
 Chu 83

comfort from Velutha. Therefore, Roy’s novel can not be seen as a typical female

Bildungsroman. Rather, it leaves some room for readers to think about women’s

subjectivity/identity problems and to have a profound reflection on women’s

situations whether in India or other Third World countries.

Taken together the above discussion on borders, love laws, transgression,

hybridity, and gender oppression, Roy’s novel leads us to have a cultural encounter

with the multiple facets of Indian society--from colonial, postcolonial to modern

period. Like the jumbled colors of a kaleidoscope, what Roy represents to us is not

only the fragments of her narrative but the self-intertwined images of Indian

multiculturalism. To put it in another way, India is an intricate and complicated

society which cannot be defined with any single term. Instead of labeling India with

terms like “colonial,” “postcolonial,” “modern,” or “postmodern,” both Indians and

global citizens should try to transcend the physical/fixed borders within nations in

order to forward their own vision. The external/geographical borders stay in fixed

places, yet the internal/human borders exist within each of us. The point is how to

transcend these boundaries to see the different view on the other side of the border.
 Chu 84

Conclusion

Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with

new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story.

Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

As it is elaborated in the previous chapters, Roy in the novel takes good

advantage of the imperial language--English--to dismantle the homogeneous western

codes and work on her project of literary decolonization. Due to the fact that

“English” is the language of the British empire and colonizer, Roy in the novel invites

us to pay special attention to those who are marginalized and devoiced in the

postcolonial subcontinent. Moreover, she conveys an important message that

colonialism may be dead, yet the concept of “empire” will never vanish both at the

present time and in the upcoming future. Here, she also cautions us that India has

the potential to slough off its old skin and rid itself of “the burden of the past” by

breaking the social regulations and historical boundaries. In what follows, a

summary of the central issues of each chapter will be given to examine and close this

study of The God of Small Things.

First of all, the narrative of Velutha constitutes the focus of my discussion about

caste, cultural difference and identity problem in chapter one. Since caste is a

significant social focus for narrative and politics in the novel, it congeals itself as the

fundamental basis of the Indian social fabric under the influence of fifty years of

colonial dominance. From what has happened to Velutha, we then realize that caste

provides an ambivalent vehicle for charting out new ways of thinking about Indian

identity and modernity. On the one hand, caste has an unreliable advantage of

signaling class privileges and determining access to and exclusion from certain

resources and opportunities. On the other, it interrogates and acknowledges the

 Chu 85

cultural/social difference of the lives of both Touchables/Untouchables in India.

Other than the issues of caste and the situations of Untouchables in India,

subalterns are also closely connected with the whole issue of social mobilization.

From a historical perspective, these “subordinates” play a crucial role in the political

and nationalist developments of the construction of India. Along with the influence

of colonial dominance and hegemony, Indian culture itself has become a hybrid

“object” which can not be classified easily. As Chowdhury puts it, cultural

productions never occupy an absolute, static space (198). Instead, they will undergo

transnational crossings and present to us an interplay between longing and nostalgia,

nation and diaspora, fundamentalism and liberation, etc. Despite that Roy’s novel

cannot be categorized as a sort of diasporic literature, Roy has investigated in it

homogeneous/heterogeneous cultural productions which are valuable and significant

to the transformation of Indian cultures.

Knowing that caste is a specific “cultural difference” from other nations, I also

briefly elucidate the general perception of orientalist thinking and try to justify India’s

position as a target of discussion of the misrepresented “orient.” Here, my purpose

is not to examine the impact of Said’s prestigious book Orientalism but the

problematics within orientalist thinking. Following this, I assume that “postcolonial

exoticism” is a feature of Roy’s novel and it is this feature that western readers feel

more interested in--the mysterious kathakali dance, the Indian legends and rituals, the

casted Velutha, the intricate love laws, and so on. Apart from these exotic depictions,

sati and dowry-murder are not Roy’s concerns in the novel but they serve as cultural

markers of Indian society. Traditions--essential parts of Indian culture--have

confined and limited women’s living space in India. Women’s identity problems,

therefore, are one of my concerns in this study.

Moving a step further, I dwell upon the narrative about traumatic memories in
 Chu 86

the novel. From three trajectories (personal, national and historical), I explicate how

the characters in the novel have been haunted and dominated by traumas and history.

At first glance, the trivial events and traumatic memories of these characters may not

be as significant as the history of colonization, political movements or India’s

struggling for Independence. Yet Roy implies that India is after all constituted by

these “small lives.” That is, India cannot constitute itself as a nation with only

territory and authority. Besides, it is due to the cultural contacts of different

communities of India that multiculturalism takes root in India. Here, Roy does not

deliberately exaggerate the importance of these characters and their memories.

Rather, she traces the struggling efforts of these “cultural others” whose voices are not

heard, whose subjectivity has been distorted and misrepresented. Moreover, Roy’s

depiction about history is not only a representative strategy/politics but a solid

allegory of the ancient hegemonic power and British colonizers. Like the

inscriptions on a parchment, the lingering impacts of colonialism and imperialism

continue to haunt the present existence of India and its people.

Since historiography itself is always male-centered, Roy in the novel creates a

gendered space for her female characters to narrate their own stories. The

contrasting voices of different women (Mammachi, Ammu, Rahel, Baby Kochamma,

Margaret Kochamma) indicate that women should be involved in the process of

historical writing. As we all know it, history itself has an inseparable connection

with empire and imperialism. Roy’s narrative about women could be seen as a

charge against the construction of empire since empires are most of the time

controlled by men. Here, Roy intends to justify women’s position in India because

women are likely to be doubly marginalized in the social milieu by both patriarchal

regulation and colonial hegemony.

Speaking of empire, Roy reminds us that history, culture and colonial

 Chu 87

hegemony have always been corrupted and predicated on violence and domination.

As Suleri indicates, imperialism requires re-reading not only because empire is

abstract like capital but because empire messes with identity (7). Among the various

features of imperial oppression and control, language is the medium through which a

hierarchical structure of power is perpetuated and conceptions of “truth,” “order,” and

“reality” become established (The Empire Writes Back 7). Roy conveys in the novel

her anti-war, anti-imperialist thinking and points out that modern empire is not dead

but disguises itself with different forms. Besides, Roy is very critical on domestic

politics of India and other political issues on the global stage. She criticizes issues

such as social problems, environmental protection, the globalization of poverty,

America’s politics on Third World countries, and so on. Here, she is again

challenging the notion of the so-called “empire” or dominant hegemony that is still

wrecking its havoc on those minorities and subordinates world-wide.

Following the concerns with trauma, her-/history, and empire, my focuses are

shifted to the concept of borders, love laws in India and Roy’s politics of

transgression in the novel. In a way strikingly unlike the typical discussion on

geographical borders, I point out that there are mental/psychological borders within

the minds of the characters in the novel. As an architect, Roy constructs her space of

story-telling by manipulating the geographical features of Ayemenem and setting up

the locations for specific characters. The river, therefore, becomes the center of

memories of the Ipe family. The ancient Ayemenem house is the later deserted and

becomes History House, a space which preserves many traumas and contains

historical connotations of ancient empire and British colonizer.

Despite the fact that love laws regulate people’s behavior and restrict their

freedom in searching for love, the two pairs of transgressors (Ammu and Velutha,

Rahel and Estha) in the novel still break them and follow their own free will.
 Chu 88

Centering around these transgressions are issues about sexual desire and eroticism.

Instead of seeing transgressions as merely performances of carnal desires and erotic

consummation, I read the behaviors of these characters in a positive way. To a

certain extent, these transgressors have shown their efforts in challenging the fixed

social boundary and the invisible power/authority. Furthermore, they as citizens of

the colonized subcontinent have tried hard to reverse their own position and articulate

their social identities. Though their efforts may not be seen as successful, at least it

proves that Third World minorities have the potential and ability for rebellion/protest.

Apart from the external social rules and personal acts of violation, Roy’s

politics of transgression delineates the essence of hybrid Indian culture and the

oppression of both men and women in India. It also correlates the situation of Third

World women and their identity problems. In relation to the language use of the

twins, it opens up a possibility that colonial mimicry is not a repetition of the same

but the opening of difference and otherness of the subject. Like the pickles and jams

produced in Mammachi’s factory Paradise Pickles & Preserves, language, Indian

culture and the identity of Indian people all become hybridized. Roy’s politics of

transgression is not set up to assimilate the differences back again into the same but to

recognize the existence of hybrid cultural identity. By so-doing, Roy presents to us

the danger of colonial dominance by assimilation and suggests a way out of the

western/colonial homogeneity--to infringe and transgress upon the fixed rules and

boundaries.

In short, my main concern in this study is: Who can speak for human beings?

As is recognized in 1989 in The Empire Writes Back, the study of “English” has

become a “privileging norm” and a template for the denial of the value of the

“peripheral,” the “marginal,” the “uncanonized” (3). In other words, “literature was

made as central to the cultural enterprise of Empire as the monarchy was to its
 Chu 89

political formation” (3). Yet in 2005, which is almost two decades after the

publication of this book, can we still firmly believe in this viewpoint? My

skepticism here is: How can we make sure that the value of Third World literature

or minority/ethnic literature is incomparable with the so-called “classical” and

“canon”? Is it fair to lay judgment on which kind of literature is superior and which

is inferior?

As Sen suggests, “the diagnosis of a thought as ‘purely western’ or ‘purely

Indian’ can be very illusory” (132). In echoing Sen, any prejudice to judge a literary

work by its prize-winning record or the ethnic background of the author can be very

dangerous. The true value of The God of Small Things to me is Roy’s efforts to

justify the position of India while at the same time speaking for the subordinates in

Indian society. Therefore, it will be unwise to label Roy either as a Third World

female writer or a postcolonial female writer. Instead, we should be thankful for her

efforts in letting people hear the voices of the “cultural others” in a subcontinent

nation like India. By depicting the trivial events of the Ipe family in a small town

(Ayemenem) in Kerala, Roy makes us aware of the problems such as civil war, global

capitalism, poverty, gender inequality, the uneven distribution of educational

resources, and so on that are happening outside the borders of India which are worth

our attention in the age of globalization.

Though the issues depicted in Kerala may not be enough to represent the

process of cultural transformation of India, Roy’s novel reflects upon Indian

multiculturalism which signposts the past “lived experiences” and indicates a way

toward the future. As Krishnakumar R. observes, “Kerala provides lessons to the

rest of the country not just on the importance of pluralism but also on how far an

indigenous culture could benefit from being tolerant towards, rather than targeting,

minorities” (italics mine). In the words of Hennessy and Mohan, “a global reading
 Chu 90

of history does not seek to recover a past that has been silenced but to investigate the

cultural currency of the past in the present” (465). Similarly, Roy’s task in the novel

is not to portrait a successful “Kerala experience” 8 or to see Kerala as a perfect

model 9 for India’s progress. Rather, she presents a flawed image of postcolonial

India which requires our re-examination and gaze. Her purpose is not to deny

India’s potential to improve/change but to remind us that India is like a masala dish

with different elements mingling together inside. To really taste the flavors of this

dish, we have to examine the different layers of India such as India’s tradition, history,

colonial background, imperialism, politics, Marxism, globalization, and so on.

8
See R. Krishnakumar ,“A Kerala Experience,” Frontline. Vol.18.1 ,06-19 January 2001
(http://www.flonnet.com/fl1801/18011130.htm)
9
See George Mathew, “Amartya Sen & the Kerala ‘Model’” The Hindu. 9 January 2001
(http://www.hindu.com/2001/01/09/stories/05092523.htm). Mathew thus wrote: “Kerala’s successful
experience in development should not be confused with a Kerala model of development.
Model-based thinking is static, backward-looking, and ultimately counter-productive.”
 Chu 91

Works Cited

Ahmad, Aijaz. In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. London and New York:

Verso, 1994.

Aldama, Frederick Luis. “Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things: ‘Real’

Possibilities in Postcolonial Literature.” Humanities Retooled. 5 March

2004

<http://www.humanitiesretooled.org/index.php?sm=hrt_articles.php&modCMS

_cidd=72>.

AlSayyad, Nezar. “The End of Tradition, or the Tradition of Endings?” The End

of Tradition? London and New York: Routledge, 2004. 1-28.

Appadurai, Arjun. “Number in the Colonial Imagination.” Breckenridge and van

der Veer 314-39.

Ashcroft, Bill, et al. Key Concepts in Postcolonial Studies. London: Routledge,

1998.

---. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures.

London: Routledge, 1989.

Aull, Felice. Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database. 16 October 1997. 59th

Edition. October 2005

<http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/lit-med/lit-med-db/webdocs/webdescrips/roy117

7-des-.html>.

Ballantyne, Tony and Antoinette Burton, eds. Bodies in Contact: Rethinking

Colonial Encounters in World History. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2005.

Banerjee, Purna and Sarah Liles. “Empire Writes Back: Arundhati Roy’s The God

of Small Things.” 10 November 2002

<http://www.cwru.edu/affil/sce/Texts_2002/Banerjee&Liles.htm>.

Barsamian, David. The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Conversations with
 Chu 92

Arundhati Roy. Cambridge, MA: South End, 2004.

Bataille, Georges. Erotism: Death and Sensuality. Trans. Mary Dalwood. San

Francisco: City Lights, 1986.

Bayly, Susan. The New Cambridge History of India: Caste, Society and Politics in

India from the Eighteen Century to the Modern Age. Vol. 3. Cambridge:

Cambridge UP, 1999.

Behdad, Ali. “On Globalization, Again!” Postcolonial Studies and Beyond. Eds.

Ania Loomba, Suvir Kaul, Matti Bunzl, Antoinette Burton and Jed Esty.

Durham and London: Duke UP, 2005. 62-79.

Berger, Mark T. The Battle for Asia: From Decolonization to Globalization.

London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004.

Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge,

1994.

Bose, Brinda. “In Desire and in Death: Eroticism as Politics in Arundhati Roy’s The

God of Small Things.” Ariel 29.2 (1998): 59-72.

Breckenridge, Carol A., and Peter van der Veer, eds. Orientalism and the

Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia. Philadelphia: U of

Pennsylvania P, 1993.

Brockington, Michael. Home page. 19 February 1999. Originally published in

Aaj Magazine. January/February 1998

<http://www.sfu.ca/~brocking/writing/smallgod2.html>.

Brown, Laura S. “Not Outside the Range: One Feminist Perspective on Psychic

Trauma.” Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Ed. Cathy Caruth.

Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995. 100-12.

Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in

Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Performing Feminisms: Feminist

 Chu 93

Critical Theory and Theatre. Ed. Sue-Ellen Case. Baltimore and London:

Johns Hopkins UP, 1990. 270-82.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “A Small History of Subaltern Studies.” A Companion to

Postcolonial Studies. Eds. Henry Schwarz and Sangeeta Ray. Malden:

Blackwell, 2000. 467-85.

---. Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies. Chicago

and London: U of Chicago P, 2002.

Chowdhury, Kanishka. “Transnational Transgressions: Reading Mira Nair’s Kama

Sutra and Deepa Mehta’s Fire in a Global Economy.” South Asian Review:

Globalization and Diaspora. Ed. K.D. Verma. Vol. 24. Johnstown: U

of Pittsburgh, 2003. 180-201.

Coffey, Charley. “Kerala.” Online posting. 17 May 2000

<www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Kerala.html>.

Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. Seattle: U of Washington P,

1997.

Cohn, Bernard S. Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India.

Princeton: Princeton UP, 1996.

Cooper, Frederick. “Postcolonial Studies and the Study of History.” Postcolonial

Studies and Beyond. Eds. Ania Loomba, Suvir Kaul, Matti Bunzl,

Antoinette Burton and Jed Esty. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2005.

401-22.

Cooppan, Vilashini. “The Ruins of Empire: The National and Global Politics of

America’s Return to Rome.” Postcolonial Studies and Beyond. Eds. Ania

Loomba, Suvir Kaul, Matti Bunzl, Antoinette Burton and Jed Esty. Durham

and London: Duke UP, 2005. 80-100.

Crane, Ralph J. Inventing India: A History of India in English-Language Fiction.

 Chu 94

New York: St. Martin’s P, 1992.

Dasgupta, Shumona. “Interrogating the ‘Fourth Space’: Re-imagining ‘Nation,’

‘Culture’ and ‘Community’ in South Asian Diasporic Fiction.” South Asian

Review: Globalization and Diaspora. Ed. K.D. Verma. Vol. 24.

Johnstown: U of Pittsburgh, 2003. 116-29.

Dirks, Nicholas B. Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India.

Princeton and Oxford: Princeton UP, 2001.

Elliott, Allison. “Caste and The God of Small Things.” Fall 1997

<http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/caste.html>.

Feifer, Megan and Sukanya Banerjee. “The Politics of The God of Small Things:

The Literary Prose and Political Essays of Arundhati Roy.” N. D.

<http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/Grad_Sch/McNair/Summer04/feifer.pdf>.

Feng, Pin-chia. The Female Bildungsroman by Toni Morrison and Maxine Hong

Kingston: A Postmodern Reading. New York: Peter Lang, 1999.

---. Feng, Pin-chia and Kate Liu. World Literature in English: (De-)Colonization,

Migration and Gender Identity. Course home page. Spring 2000. Dept. of

English, U of Fu-jen. <http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/worldlit/india/roy.html>.

Friedman, Susan Stanford. Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies of

Encounter. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1998.

---. “Feminism, State Fictions and Violence: Gender, Geopolitics and

Transnationalism.” Communal/ Plural 9.1 (2001): 111-29.

Grossberg, Lawrence. “History, Imagination and the Politics of Belonging: Between

the Death and the Fear of History.” Without Guarantees: In Honour of Stuart

Hall. Eds. Paul Gilroy, Lawrence Grossberg and Angela McRobbie.

London : Verso, 2000. 148-64.

Harris, Cole. Making Native Space: Colonialism, Resistance, and Reserves in

 Chu 95

British Columbia. Vancouver: UBC P, 2002.

Hennessy, Rosemary and Rajeswari Mohan. “The Construction of Woman in Three

Popular Texts of Empire: Towards a Critique of Materialist Feminism.”

Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory: A Reader. Eds. Patrick

Williams and Laura Chrisman. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994.

462-79.

Huggan, Graham. The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins. London and

New York: Routledge, 2001.

Jayawardena, Kumari. “Women, Social Reform and Nationalism in India.”

Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World. London: Zed Books, 1986.

73-108.

Jenks, Chris. Transgression. London and New York: Routledge, 2003.

Johnson-Odim, Cheryl. “Common Themes, Different Contexts: Third World

Women and Feminism.” Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism.

Eds. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres.

Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1991. 314-27.

“Kathakali.” Art India Net. 1998-2005 <http://www.artindia.net/kathakali.html>.

Krishnakumar, R. “A Kerala Experience.” Frontline. Vol. 18.1 06-19 January

2001 <http://www.flonnet.com/fl1801/18011130.htm>.

Lemert, Charles C. and Garth Gillan. Michel Foucault: Social Theory and

Transgression. New York: Columbia UP, 1982.

Lewis, Reina. Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity and Representation.

London: Routledge, 1996.

Lionnet, Francoise. Postcolonial Representations: Women, Literature, Identity.

Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1995.

Lloyd, David. “Ethnic Cultures, Minority Discourse and the State.” Colonial
 Chu 96

Discourse/ Postcolonial Theory. Eds. Francis Barker, Peter Hulme and

Margaret Iversen. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1994. 221-38.

Loomba, Ania, et al. “Beyond What? An Introduction.” Postcolonial Studies and

Beyond. Eds. Ania Loomba, Suvir Kaul, Matti Bunzl, Antoinette Burton

and Jed Esty. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2005. 1-38.

Ludden, David. “Orientalist Empiricism: Transformations of Colonial Knowledge.”

Breckenridge and van der Veer 250-78.

Mani, Lata. “Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India.”

Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History. Eds. Kumkum Sangari and

Sudesh Vaid. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1993. 88-126.

Mathew, George. “Amartya Sen & the Kerala ‘Model.’” The Hindu. 9 January

2001 <http://www.hindu.com/2001/01/09/stories/05092523.htm>.

Meinhof, Ulrike Hanna and Dariusz Galasiński. The Language of Belonging. New

York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. Introduction. “Cartographies of Struggle: Third World

Women and the Politics of Feminism.” Third World Women and the Politics

of Feminism. Eds. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo and Lourdes

Torres. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991. 1-47.

---. Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity.

Durham and London: Duke UP, 2003.

---. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” Williams

and Chrisman 196-220.

Mullaney, Julie. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things: A Reader’s Guide.

New York: Continuum, 2002.

Nair, Anil. “The Idea of Apocalypse.” Rediff On The Net. 19 August 1999

<http://www.rediff.com/news/1999/aug/19anil.htm>.
 Chu 97

Narayan, Uma. “Cross-Cultural Connections, Border-Crossings, and Death by

Culture: Thinking About Dowry-Murders in India and Domestic-Violence

Murders in the United States.” Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions,

and Third-World Feminism. New York and London: Routledge, 1997.

83-117.

Reddy, K. Ganapathi. The Hindu. 9 April 2002

<http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/op/2002/04/09/stories/2002040900050100.ht

m>.

Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. New York: Harper-Perennial, 1998.

---. Power Politics. Cambridge, MA: South End P, 2001.

---. The Algebra of Infinite Justice. New Delhi: Penguin, 2001.

---. The Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire. London: Flamingo, 2004.

Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991.

London: Granta, 1991.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. 1978. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.

---. “Orientalism and After.” Power, Politics, and Culture: Interviews with Edward

W. Said. Edited and with an introduction by Gauri Viswanathan. New York:

Pantheon Books, 2001. 208-32.

---. “Orientalism Reconsidered.” Reflections on Exile and Other Essays.

Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000. 198-215.

Schwarze, Tracey. N. D. <http://www.cnu.edu/engl/reading.html>.

Sen, Amartya. The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and

Identity. London: Penguin, 2005.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Williams and Chrisman

66-111.

Suleri, Sara. The Rhetoric of English India. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P,
 Chu 98

1992.

Sundberg, Anja. “Patriarchal Love Laws: A Study of Oppression in Arundhati

Roy’s The God of Small Things.” 27 August 2002

<http://epubl.luth.se/1402-1733/2002/062/index-en.html>.

Vermani, R. C. Colonialism and Nationalism in India. New Delhi: Gitanjali

Publishing House, 2000.

Walby, Sylvia. “Women and Nation.” Mapping the Nation. Ed. Gopal

Balakrishnan. London: Verso, 1996. 235-254.

Westman, Karin E. “‘History in Live Performance’: Revising History’s Script in

Roy’s The God of Small Things.” Abstract. 29 September 2003

<http://www.k-state.edu/english/westmank/fall_03/abstracts.f03.html#

royabstract>.

Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 16 November 2005

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/kathakali>.

Williams, Patrick and Laura Chrisman, eds. Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial

Theory: A Reader. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994.

Yeğenoğlu, Meyda. Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of

Orientalism. New York: Cambridge UP, 1998.