On 4/15/07, ravi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Toor's criticisms I think are mistaken on everything other than Roy's book. The book, IMHO, did damage in more than one way: (a) it once again exoticised India and Indian English literature. In fact giving further excuse for such phrases as "the language of the colonialist". Mahatma fucking Gandhi wrote in English, for crying out loud. I have volumes of it (moth eaten but readable) in boxes back home! (b) As Toor correctly points out, it was gratuitous both in its attempts at violating sex/societal taboos, as in attacking the CPI.
It's likely that many Westerners who loved The God of Small Things simply loved it for it fit stereotypes they already had in their minds about women in India, castes and classes in India, Communism in India and everywhere else, etc., as you and Toor say. I really don't want this to be the first -- let alone the only -- novel about India that Westerners read. But some Indian leftists got other things out of it. A lot depends on who reads it, and what the reader knows about and thinks of India, the CPI(M), etc. <http://cpiml.org/liberation/year_1998/january/books.htm> Arundhati Roy and the Left: For reclaiming 'small things' Kalpana Wilson . . . . . In terms of Roy's approach to the left, the fact that the novel focusses in on individual acts of resistance does not automatically imply, as Ahmed suggests, that the author is espousing a fully-fledged 'subaltern' theory in which wider organised forms of resistance are rejected. On the contrary, organised resistance, class struggle and the possibility of it is an ever-present backdrop to the events of the novel. For the twins and even their mother, misfits in an upper class family, its significance is half-understood - yet it is an intangible but potent source of inspiration, representing for them the potential for subversion and redressal of daily injustices which is epitomised by the somewhat symbolically drawn figure of Velutha, the young dalit carpenter, adored friend and mentor of the twins, and suspected 'Naxalite'. In one of the novel's most memorable passages, the twins travelling with their mother, uncle and grand-aunt in their 'skyblue Plymouth' car are trapped at a railway crossing in the midst of a workers' demonstration: 'The marchers that day were party workers, students, and the labourers themselves. Touchables and Untouchables. On their shoulders they carried a keg of ancient anger, lit with a recent fuse. There was an edge to this anger that was Naxalite, and new. Through the Plymouth window, Rahel could see that the loudest word they said was Zindabad. And that the veins stood out in their necks when they said it. And that the arms that held the flags and banners were knotted and hard. Inside the Plymouth it was still and hot. Baby Kochamma's fear lay rolled up on the car floor like a damp, clammy cheroot. This was just the beginning of it. The fear that over the years would grow to consume her. That would make her lock her doors and windows. That would give her two hairlines and both her mouths. Hers, too, was an ancient, age-old fear. The fear of being dispossessed'(pp69-70). Roy has described this encounter from the perspective she knows - from within the bourgeois family. But her originality lies in the way she manages to show us the interconnections between the deep contradictions within this family and those between the social class they belong to and the working people, as she gradually lays bare the tensions beneath the idyllic and nostalgic vision of a 1960s family outing to that ultimate 'clean, white' cinematic fantasy, 'The Sound of Music'. One of the central conflicts of the novel is hinted at when Rahel spots Velutha, 'Her most beloved friend Velutha. Velutha marching with a red flag' and starts enthusiastically waving to him. Standing on the car seat, Rahel grows 'out of the Plymouth window like the loose, flailing horn of a car- shaped herbivore' only to be unceremoniously pulled back into the car by her family. From this point on, the imagery of communist resistance continues to run, as one of many threads, through the narrative, with the twins' own actions at times appearing to be metaphors for wider battles of the oppressed and powerless - notably in the red flag which some of the demonstrators force Baby Kochamma to wave, and which later accompanies the twins in their plans for escape, in the illicit pleasure of visiting Velutha, and in their expeditions across the river - 'a Mobile Republic with a Puff'- to the haven of the mysterious History House, which ultimately end in tragedy. Why then has the novel provoked the outrage of the CPI(M) establishment, literary and otherwise? While one stated reason is Roy's ill-judged allegation - in a passage describing the ravages of tourism - that EMS Namboodiripad's ancestral home has been turned into a hotel where ex-communists serve as waiters, the underlying reasons are clearly broader and more complex. It seems that ironically Roy's very affinity for the left - in the form of the Naxalite movement as she perceives it - is one of these reasons. Notwithstanding Ahmed's claim that this is where the book's 'realism' breaks down, The God of Small Things is unusual in its specific and accurate location of its story at a particular point in Indian Communism's history - the period of the emergence of the ML movement from among cadres of the CPI(M) itself. Despite - or because of - Roy's concrete references to Naxalism, she has been dubbed an 'anti-Communist radical' by Ahmed while commentators like writer Ranga Rao (The Hindu 23 Nov 1997) describe her (with more sympathy) as possessing 'the non-governmental organisation spirit'. Quite apart from the continuing virulent hostility in 'official' CPI(M) circles towards the Marxist-Leninist stream, the key question here is whether the left should relinquish - or banish - the concerns which dominate Roy's book, all of which are essentially issues of power - to the domain of NGOs. Is it not the left which, even while building an organised and ideologically coherent movement, must continue to symbolise, as it does for Roy's characters, the desire of all the oppressed within bourgeois society for subversion, for turning the world upside down? Surely it is only those for whom, having gained some power within the bourgeois framework, holding on to this power has become the sole raison d'etre, who feel threatened by this, and are compelled to brand it 'anti-left'. Interestingly, Roy's critics have chosen to pass over her most coherent, though bitter, critique of Communist rule in Kerala which makes it quite clear that it is not Marxism, but the practices of the CPI(M) in that particular state, which she is at odds with. 'The real secret was that communism crept into Kerala insidiously. As a reformist movement that never overtly questioned the traditional values of a caste-ridden, extremely traditional community. The Marxists worked from within the communal divides, never challenging them, never appearing not to. They offered a cocktail revolution. A heady mix of Eastern Marxism and orthodox Hinduism, spiked with a shot of democracy' (pp66-67). Rather more attention has been given to the characterisation of Comrade K. N. M. Pillai, the local Party functionary. Roy's final verdict on Com. Pillai, who is ultimately revealed as colluding with the upper-caste backlash against Velutha to further his own Party career, is undoubtedly a harsh one, but it is consistent with her portrayal of the CPI(M)'s failure to challenge caste oppression, and in general its tendency to incorporate rather than transform existing structures of both economic and social power. Equally important to the unfolding of the novel though, are her much subtler, more devastating, and all too credible observations of the character and his interactions with others. Again, the family is the site where contradictions become explicit. 'His neat pencil moustache divided his upper lip horizontally into half and ended exactly in line with the ends of his mouth. His hairline had begun to recede and he made no attempt to hide it. His hair was oiled and combed back off his forehead. Clearly youth was not what he was after. He had the easy authority of the Man of the House. He smiled and nodded a greeting to Chacko, but did not acknowledge the presence of his wife or his mother.... Comrade Pillai took off his shirt, rolled it into a ball, and wiped his armpits with it. When he finished, Kalyani took it from him and held it as though it was a gift. A bouquet of flowers...' (p272). Pillai is trying to convince Chacko, who co-owns Paradise Pickles, of the significance of the (higher caste) workers' resentment of Velutha for having a responsible job in the pickle factory: ' "He may very well be okay as a person. But other workers are not happy with him. Already they are coming to me with complaints...You see, Comrade, from local standpoint, these caste issues are very deep-rooted." Kalyani put a steel tumbler of steaming coffee on the table for her husband. "See her, for example. Mistress of this house. Even she will never allow Paravans and all that into her house. Never. Even I cannot persuade her. My own wife. Of course inside the house she is Boss." He turned to her with an affectionate, naughty smile."Allay edi, Kalyani?" Kalyani looked down and smiled, coyly acknowledging her bigotry. "You see?" Comrade Pillai said triumphantly. "She understands English very well. Only doesn't speak" ' (p278). A political reading of a work of fiction, however, cannot simply consist of an assessment of the author's attitude to specific political parties. It must also consider where the book is positioned in relation to major social and economic forces and contemporary ideological trends. This article has only been able to hint at some of the answers to these questions. What is clear is that The God of Small Things places itself unambiguously on the side of progressive forces, on the side of those resisting the ravages of a semi-feudal, backward capitalist society which India remains, and against the oppressive values which are today being reinforced by the growth of right-wing forces accompanying globalisation. The failure of some on the left to grasp the significance of this springs partly from narrow sectarianism, but also partly from an inability to grasp the importance of patriarchy, the main focus of Roy's attack, to the reproduction of this capitalism. But it is also the case that the particular manifestations of this which are central to the novel - the oppressiveness of caste and gender, the abuse of children - are questions which are today a site of contest between the dialectical materialist approach and the post-modernist one which negates the role of a coherent analysis of real economic and social relations and structures of power in favour of a multiplicity of co-existing subjectivities. In this debate, I would argue, Roy comes down squarely - if perhaps unconsciously - in favour of a materialist approach. Thus towards the end of the book she describes with chilling explicitness the brutalisation of the dalit Velutha after 'a posse of Touchable policemen crossed the Meenachal river, sluggish and swollen with recent rain, and picked their way through the wet undergrowth, the clink of handcuffs in someone's heavy pocket'. The twins are witnesses to this: 'Blue-lipped and dinner-plate-eyed, they watched, mesmerised by something that they sensed but didn't understand: the absence of caprice in what the policemen did. The abyss where anger should have been. The sober, steady brutality, the economy of it all. They were opening a bottle. Or shutting a tap. Cracking an egg to make an omelette. The twins were too young to know that these were only history's henchmen. Sent to square the books and collect the dues from those who broke its laws. Impelled by feelings that were primal yet paradoxically wholly impersonal. Feelings of contempt born of inchoate, unacknowledged fear - civilisation's fear of nature, men's fear of women, power's fear of powerlessness. ..... There was nothing accidental about what happened that morning. Nothing incidental. It was no stray mugging or personal settling of scores. This was an era imprinting itself on those who lived in it. History in live performance.' -- Yoshie
