THE POST COLONIAL ASPECT OF ARUNDATIROY'S GOD OF SMALL THINGS

POST COLONIAL ELEMENTS IN THE NOVEL“To enter the Hybrid state exhibit on Broadway, you enter the passage. Instead of a gallery, you find a dark antechamber, where one white word invites you forward: COLONIALISM. To enter Colonial space, you stop through a low door, only to be closetted in another black space – a curatorial reminder, however fleeting, of Fanon: “The native is a being hemmed in”. But the way out of colonialism, it seems, is forward. A second word, POST COLONIALISM, invites you through a slightly larger door into the next of history, after which you emerge, fully erect, into the brightly lit and noicy HYBRID STATE”.-Anne Mc ClintockContemporary intellectual realm has been encompassed by some ‘posts’; post-colonialism, post-modernism, post-structuralism, post-coldwar, post-Marxism, post-aparthied, post-historic, even post-contemporary. Among them post-colonialism and post-modernism along with an economic term, Globalisation are undergoing severe discussions, debates and criticisms. The term post-colonialism is fully depending on colonialism, the old ‘modus operandi’ of capitalism to exploit the world population upto the end of decolonization on Globalisation, the new ‘modus operandi’ of capitalism to do the same. Now a days, the post colonialism reached at a stage in which it is recognized as a perspective or metre to understand every cultural segments.The field of post-colonial studies has been gaining prominence since the 1970s. Some other scholars date its rise in the western Academy from the publication of Edward W. Said’s Orientalism in 1978. Nomenclatures like, Colonialism, De-colonialism, post-colonialism, Colonizee, Colonized, Hybridity etc. are included in the vocabulary of post colonial studies. The terms “Colonialism” and “Imperialism” are actually, highly interrelated economic terms which characterises some stages of Capitalism, the socio-economic world system in which we are living. If we examine the history of Capitalism we can understand that there are two stages; the stage of the Laissiez- fair and Laissiez-aller Capitalism and the stage of Imperialism, the highest stage of Capitalism in which the ‘finance capital’ implies it hegemony over the world. From the beginning of capitalism since 1600s to the end of the second world war Colonialism was the modus operandi of the capitalism. So the imperialist capitalism adopted the colonialism for exploiting the world population even though it can do the same without direct colonialism just like the present day American Imperialism does. But by the early decades of the twentieth century, the earstwhile secure colonial structure began to manifest cracks and slow but definite signs of collapse. Thus the “Empire” had slipped into the decolonisation process.What is meant by decolonisation is that the earstwhile colonies had started their liberation movements and got freedom from the colonial yoke. This was happened by the strong wave of nationalism and self-determination. So the ideas ‘self-determination’ and ‘nationalism’ were pregnented with the seed of decolonization. So decolonization process involves the nationalistic liberation movement, in different forms, of the colonized countries against colonial masters [or ‘colonisers’, according to post-colonial vocabulary]. By the middle of the 20th century the process of decolonization was well underway. The end of the second world war is an convenient historical mark to place the decolonizing process.A world situation in which the colonization cannot be possible has been created by the end of the mid-twentieth century. “The British accepted”, Eric Hobsbawn says, “because ultimately they understood that there are limits on what can be achieved on the world. Equally they never attempted to establish a form of supremacy within Europe.”In this historical background we can define post colonialism as a discourse of those countries who were once colonized with those who were once colonizers. In this context we can see a shift from the special contradiction to the time contradiction. In this sense the post-colonialism is that state or condition which comes after the colonisation process has come to an end. From this perspective, it is possible to formulate the ideal of a ‘post-colonial state’ after the end of the empire, after the colonies under foreign occupation have been restored to the people who consider it their own. As a term ‘post-colonial state’ is usually used to refer those state which have got their independence following a period of subjugation. According to Asheroft et al; the post-colonial state’s formation after independence is the earliest signal of the separation of the colonized from the colonizer.One of the implication of this post colonial study was the tendency to revisit and revise the history of the state’s past and more so to undo the damage wrought by long years of colonial possession. Post-colonialism in this sense, includes the endeavour to workout an ‘image change over’. This process involves re-reading of colonial documents which were made for justifying the colonial subjugation. But Frantz Fanon, one of the props of the post colonialism exhorts that this process may be affected by a danger of over-read and read position that would not have be in focus otherwise.Post-colonial critics will argue that all situation relating to the colonial past of a country involve the politics of reading which they are only trying to unmask. Such an argument, no doubt, lies at the base of re-reading process, but it also a political cast and any rescue, restoration or revival of a nations past is, like the others that it seeks to replace, merely provisional. Thus the term post colonial addresses itself to the historical, political, cultural and textual ramification of the colonial encounter between the west and non west, dating from the sixteenth century to the present day. To Ashcroft, post colonial covers all the culture affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonialism to the present day. Post colonialism is, thus, a name for a critical theoretical approach in literary and cultural studies, but it also, as importantly designates a politics of transformational resistance to unjust and unequal forms of political and cultural authority which extends back across the twentieth century and beyond. This study now-a-day is commonly associated with names such as Edward W.Said, Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak.The Literature in English language from the Europe’s former colonies were known as “Commonwealth Literature” or “Third World Literature” in 1950s. India’s Arundhati Roay and R.K.narayan, Nigeria’s Chinua Achebe etc. were famous in this literature.Post colonialism has moved from the struggle against oppressor cultures to the struggle against oppressive native culture.Therefore neo-colonial discourse vibrates with the revolt against the binding native culture. Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things’ can be taken as a neo-colonial text highlighting the struggle for liberation not from the colonial hegemony but from ones own oppressive neo-cultural set-up. The Indian Society built on class, caste and patriarchal consciousness forms a bondage to all the characters in the novel. Arundhati Roy presents three generations of women as a protest against the double marginalization of the Indian women, on the one had by her own binding native culture and on the other by patriarchy. The first generation of women presented by Mammachi and Baby Kochamma are complacent of their subordinate existences and silently approve male sovereignty. Mammachi is the traditional subjugated Indian woman, engrossed in a monolithic ideology. She accepts female subordination most willing by bearing with “Mute resignation’ her husband’s physical violence. In Ammu’s version it is “Father Bear beat mother Bear” (180). Ammu is also so accustomed to Pappachi’s cold calculating cruelty, that she develops “a lofty sense of injustice and the mulish reckless streak that develops in someone small who has been bullied all their lives by someone Big” (181-82).Surprisingly enough, Mammachi exhibits partiality in her attitude towards her son, Chacko and daughter, Ammu. The bitterlong suffering mother fails to show any empathy to Ammu when she is forced to return to Ayemenem. On the contrary Chacko, also a divorcee finds himself in a comfortable situation in Ayemenem. Natured in an androcentric society, Mammachi is able to advocate only an unbalanced educational policy by denying higher education to Ammu as “a college education was unnecessary expense for a girl” (38), whereas Chacko is sent to Oxford. The second generation presented by Ammu and Maragret Kochamma dissipate Roy’s anger against the native faith in patriarchy. So we find them crossing all limits of sexual codes imposed by patriarchal an socio-cultural norms. Ammu’s marriage seems a savior to her after her tortuous life at Ayemenem, but to her great distress her marriage proves to be equally disastrous. Therefore she returns to Ayemenem only to be regarded as a “wretched Man-less woman” (45). Margaret Kochamma, the English wife of Chacko puts aside her meaningless relationship with him, as she gets fed up with his domineering attitude. Unfortunately her second marriage also has a disastrous end, so she returns to Ayemenem “to heal her wounded world”, but becomes “shattered like glass” like any other Indian widow. The third generation represented by Rabel, the representative of the present generation inherits the rebellion’s attitude of her mother, but like any ‘female’ in a patriarchal society, she too “drifted into marriage like a passenger drifts towards an unoccupied chair in an airport lounge” (18). She is married off to Larry and taken to Boston. But the marriage ends in a divorce, as she is just ‘a gift’ for her husband. She returns to Ayemenem with no regrets over her unhappily ended marriage. She represented the non-traditionalist, nonconservative, liberated woman.Not being fettered by the oppressive native culture, Rahel, the new woman, makes can attempt to break the shackles of the established code. She exhibits non-conformity by throwing aside her relationship with her husband, when it proves to be futile.In a patriarchal society, the woman is subjugated to mere existence with no clear identity, individuality or self-will. The woman is acknowledged for being passive timid and conventional. None of her unconventionality is applauded but regarded atrocious in an ‘andocentric’ society. A victim of the patriarchal society, ‘The God Of Small Things’ tells the story of the sufferings of Ammu, the second generation woman of the Ayemenem house. The whole narration revolves around Ammu’s sufferings which made Mohit Kumar Ray, analyzing the multiple approaches to TGST comment that it is a “feminist novel in the pity and terror that it evokes for the condition of women in a particular cultural milieu” (Dhawan 49). But Arundhati, like many other post-colonial woman, intellectuals follow a hegemonic narrativization with Subaltern being made mute, silenced and ‘disarticulated’ (Parry, 36) in the decolonized ‘Empire’. If the post-colonial discourse itself was a breakdown domination and equalize subordination, neo-colonial discourse involves a new subordination, as Spivak points out, “The subaltern cannot speak” and “the subaltern as female cannot be heard or read” (Parry, 36).The silence of the doubly oppressed subaltern woman is heard from the pickle factory where they work. The whole narrative revolves round the elite women, who become the centre and the factory women moved into the margins – The “Other”. Mammachi accommodates and adjusts to the “liberatine relationships”, Chacko has with the women in the factory and regards them as “Man’s Needs”. In the post colonial view, the victimized Mammachi, in the hands of her husband, when became powerful factory owner she victimizes the oppressed subaltern women who worked in her factory. Chacko’s clandestine relationships receive a silent approval from the mother as she constructs a separate entrance for his room, “So that the objects of his ‘Needs’ wouldn’t have to go traipsing through the house”.The passage continues thus:She secretly slipped them money to keep them happy. They took it because they needed it. They had young children and old parents or husbands who spent all their earnings in toddy bars. The arrangement suited Mammachi, because in her mind, a fee clarified things. Disjuncted sex from love. Needs from feelings. (169)If the elite women in a neo-colonial society are subjugated, the subaltern women are double subjugated. They are designated to mere sex objects. The atrocity showered on women due to class and caste discrimination takes on immense proportions as these ‘objects’ submit to the meanderings of the affluent man for the money received from Mammachi to carry on their day to day expense as their own husbands, “spent all their earnings in toddy bars”. The narrative focuses on the subjugation of three generation of elite women, whereas the subaltern women form just a minor intrusion to the whole narrative.Arundhati Roy had herself claimed that:Perhaps it’s because I’m sort of living out a feminist goal. I am a woman who has choices, who decides and then takes responsibility for the decisions. Whatsoever they are. (75)It is little wonder that Arundhati Roy, “a woman who has choices”, as she claimed, was able to present the predicament, of only elite women and unfortunately, silences the subaltern. As Spivak points out:“Sexual difference is doubly effected. If in the context of colonial production, the subaltern has not history and cannot speak, the subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow.”Therefore, the subaltern female, as Spivak strongly believes, “is positioned on the boundary between human and animal” (Parry, 39).The subaltern male in the narrative is the low caste ‘paravan’ Velutha. It is not surprising to hear of Velutha from Mammachi’s description. She recalls her days in the past when,“Paravan like other untouchables were not allowed to walk on public roads, not allowed to carry umbrellas. They had to put their hands over their mouths when they spoke, to divert their polluted breath away from those whom they addressed. They were expected to crawl backwards with broom sweeping away their footprints so that Brahmins or Syrian Christians would not defile themselves by accidentally stepping into a paravan foot-print.” (74)Velutha is supposed to have ‘a particular smell’ but he is given permission to “touch things that touchables touch” (73) because of his extraordinary skill with machines. Mammachi “with impenetrable Touchable logic” comments, “if he hadn’t been a Paravan, he might have become an engineer” (75). Ammu’s tender feelings of Velutha is not approved by Syrian Christian kin because of his paravan birth. Velutha is the subaltern male marginalized for his low-caste origin. Although a communist party worker, his low birth hinders K.N.M.Pillai’s judgement. Ultimately Velutha and not the elite Ammu, is tortured to death by the police, the “history’s henchman” (308) who see to it that he is punished for his attempt to make an upward social mobility from his existing ‘untouchable’ social status.The voice of the subaltern cannot be heard. Within the neo-colonialist narrative the master-slave dialectic still becomes an essentialist agenda. Here the elite neo-colonial intellectuals have failed to touch the consciousness of the subaltern an the neo-colonial discourse maintains absolute power in constituting and disarticulating the subaltern. Roy’s TGST can be taken as a neo-colonial text dismantling the canonical text of the European novelistic tradition in the interest of the subaltern male and female. In the silence of the subaltern in neo-colonial discourse, we can hear the inauthentic voice of the neo-colonial intellectual’s attempt to undress the subaltern.Many celebrated the novel’s story telling inventiveness and post colonial historical revisionism, the narrative seen as implicating British imperialism and Christianity as deepening the oppressive caste system. For Yogesh Sinha and Sandhya Tripathi, the novel’s blurring of fact and fiction, its play with language and its sense of truth as a “hall of mirrors” (154), both convey a post modernist sensibility and express the “experimental type of knowledge” which typify the post colonial narrative that “outwits” an “imposed western colonial impression