LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 21:4 April 2021
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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A Searing Comment on Caste Discrimination in
Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things

Dr. Y. Kusuma Kumari

Abstract

Arundhati Roy established herself as a post-colonial writer with the publication of her debut novel, The God of Small Things. She, like other post-colonial writers, tries to throw light on the cultural colonialism that prevails even after the colonial period. The minds of the Indian people are colonized in a most dangerous way and the decolonization of minds is one of the aims of the post-colonial writers. One of the worst results of post-colonialism is its influence on the upper classes in the colonial countries. The upper class people, in the earlier colonial countries, place themselves in the position of the colonizer and develop a ‘big brotherly’ attitude towards the lower classes and the weaker sections of the society. Women, untouchables, and Dalits belong to the category of the ‘other’ and they are cut off from the mainstream of life. Roy becomes the post-colonial voice of the oppressed to speak out the various atrocities encountered by women and the Dalits.

Keywords: Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things, Dalits, Paravan, hypocritical, Marginalization, Untouchability, Discrimination

Arundhati calls a spade a spade in her inimitable characteristic way and she does not indulge in preaching, but merely holds, the mirror up to nature and reality in order to evoke powerfully, the image of the suffering class. The novel can be interpreted at several levels. It may be said that the novel is a satire on politics attacking specially the communist establishment in Kerala. It may be treated as a family saga narrating the story of four generations of a Syrian Christian family. It may also be treated as a novel having religious overtones. One may also call it a protest novel which is subversive and taboo breaking. It may also be treated as a love story with a tragic end. In terms of stylistic experimentation, it is the bold novel of the nineties.

Roy’s fresh perspectives on an age old tradition, created waves as rebellion against the social injustice meted out both to the downtrodden and to the women. It is a feminist novel in the pity and terror it evokes for the condition of women in a particular cultural milieu, a political novel in its criticism of the hypocrisy of the communist party, an autobiographical novel in the way the facts of the author’s life have been distilled into a verbal artifact and so on, a novel of Dalit consciousness as it deals with the ravages of caste system in south Indian state, Kerala portraying the miserable plight of the untouchables.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Dr. Y. Kusuma Kumari
Assistant Professor, Department of English
GITAM Deemed to be University
Visakhapatnam
kusumsurendrat.bw@gmail.com
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