Cultural Ethics In Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things”
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Abstract:
Arundhati Roy’s the God of the Small Things is rich in cultural values of India in the time after the colonialism. It includes the Phenomena of caste and gender bias. The system of cast in India has big impact to the position of people in society. It becomes an important consideration when someone wants to make relationship with other peoples. My paper will focus on the cultural values regarding caste and gender bias depicted in the novel besides the caste, gender is also an important consideration in arranging the position of men and women in the society. The gender rule in India is influenced very much by the cultural teachings. The rule had made the possibilities for men to dominate the women and for the people who break the rule, there will be some negative consequences from the society like what happened to Ammu.
Keywords : Cultural ethics, gender, caste, Dalit, Values.
Introduction :
Arundhati Roy is one of the few writers who is keenly interested in the socio-political Issues. Her novels are globally acknowledged and she is the second Indian novelist to have bagged the prestigious Booker Prize. Her novel, The God of Small Things captures many social Values of Indian society. Set in a small town Ayemenem near Kottayam in Kerala, the novel describes clearly the culture of Indian society and it is a story of caste exploitation at the center of which is the forbidden love between Ammu and the untouchable Velutha. The caste and the gender bias are the cultural values seen reflecting through this novel. My paper focuses on these cultural values of Arundhati Roy‟s The God of Small Things.
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”. Arundhati Roy‟s presentation of Dalits In her novel The God of Small Things is constantly blended with irony. People well placed in the society attempt to be kind and sympathetic to them but their deep rooted prejudices and the fear of losing their supremacy undermine their professed liberal or revolutionary aims. Yet why put focus on caste instead of other cultural phenomena in the novel? Does caste carry so much influence in Indian society? The answer is 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 untouchability is so deeply ingrained in the minds of Indian people that it may become a dangerous judgement. 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.
About Author : Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy was born in 1960 in Kerala, India. She studied architecture at the Delhi School of Architecture and worked as a production designer. She has written two screenplays, including Electric Moon (1992), commissioned by Channel 4 television. She lives in Delhi with her husband, the film-maker Pradip Krishen.
The God of Small Things, her first novel, won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997. She is also the author of several non-fiction books including: The Cost of Living (1999), a highly critical attack on the Indian government for its handling of the controversial Narmada Valley dam project and for its nuclear testing programme; Power Politics (2001), a book of essays; and The Algebra of Infinite Justice, a collection of journalism. The Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire was published in 2004. She has since published a further collection of essays examining the dark side of democracy in contemporary India, Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy (2009).
Arundhati Roy was awarded the Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom in 2003. Her latest book is The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017), her second novel. It was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and, in the US, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Caste and identity:
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.” ( Elliott 29)Yet nowadays many Indians use the term “Jati” instead of the ancient ones. So far, there are 3,000 castes and 25,000 sub caste in India and each is related to a specific occupation. These different castes are categorized into four varnas : Brahmins- priests; Kshatriyas -warriors; Vaishyas—traders; Shudras—laborers. 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 touchable 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 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).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. 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 post colonialnation in the present.
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 is portrayed in the novel, untouchables are not allowed to “touch anything that Touchable touched. Caste Hindus and caste Christians” (Roy 71). Some people even convert to Christianity and join the Anglian church to escape the untouchability.
After Independence, however, the untouchables find that they are still not entitled to any government benefits like job reservations or bank loan sat low interest rates (Roy 71). Hence, they couldn't enjoy the benefits like other touchable. 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. 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.
Despite his untouchability and poor background, Velutha is a great help to Ammu'sfamily. At first, it is Mammachi who notices little Velutha's "remarkable facility with husbands" (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 retires 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 struggle 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 Pillainotices 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 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 (in Harris 269). Besides, the party even promotes workers' benefits by teaching them how to demand a raise, whether they succeed or not.
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 ” (Roy 10). Besides, the inspector seems so proud of his rank and status—“He had 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.
When speaking of Velutha, it is hard not to mention about identity problem and the Indian identity. If we 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 there is a bigger framework and the problem of national identity of India to look into. If Velutha's story is 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 and social hostility in India. Nevertheless, Roy's novel reveals to us India's traumatized experiences in challenging the colonial power. Eventually, India itself can be likened to the tasted body of Velutha which is seen as a site of scrutiny and surveillance of colonial Control.
Post Modern Theory :
Roy deals with the classical material of the tragedy of the Kochammans in the Modern context to show the erosion of values and degradation in present day society. The members of the family are introverts; Baby Kochamma, Ammu, Chacko and Pappachi are unable to come to terms with their complexes. They struggle against the Outer world, and the defeat renders them confused and frustrated. The sense of failure expresses itself in dehumanizing others around them. The Kochamma family has a history of poor relations between its male and female members. Ammu’s mother, Mammachi, for example, is severely beaten and abused by her husband and she becomes the victim of his anger and frustration whenever he faces a failure in the outside world. He leaves little room for Ammu to grow as an independent and confident individual.
In “The God of Small Things” the conflict exists at individual and societal levels, and people are helpless to resolve these levels of friction. Velutha, the outcaste can never co-exists peacefully with the “touchable” communities for as long as the stigma of untouchability is attached to him and countless others like him. “Velutha is “highly intelligent” an excellent carpenter, but he Is also “The God of Loss”, “The God of Small Things”- He left no footprints in sand, no ripples in water, no images in mirror”(265).”
In contrast to Velutha, Chacko can get away with his debauchery-or his “man’s needs” as his mother terms it because he is a “touchable”. Roy has justly put the issue when she says, “Change is one thing. Acceptance is another” (279). The society presented in the novel is patriarchal. On the one hand we have a group of characters Manmachi, Baby Koachamma and Kachi Maria the cook, who perpetuate the division of caste race and gender. On the other hand, Ammu and the twins, Rahel and Estha, consciously and unconsciously resist these hierarchies.
Ammu the biggest victims of the system, is an archetypal image of a daughter marginalized in a patriarchal society. “Perhaps Ammu, Estha and Rahel were the worst transgressors. They all broke the rules. They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tempered with laws that lay down who should be loved how and how much” (31). The novel is a critique of the “grand values” big things governing the Indian society and mentality.
What Jean Francois Lyotard, the French philosopher and literary theorist considered to be a mark of Post Modernism was that all values become debate topics and the ones who are likely to win and legitimate their viewpoints are likely to be those detaining power, be it financial or State-granted. The significant feature about Roy’s novel is that although characters like the twins Estha and Rahel or Velutha and Ammu do seen to possess a Post Modern Perspective on issues that are generally considered of high value by the Indian society and the caste system, since their actions fall into the realm of sin, proving their affinity for “small things” rather than the generally accepted grand ones.
Those who are in power can have the final word-like in the case of Velutha’s condemnation to death ultimately for nothing but having an affair with Ammu. The Indian society presented by Roy values the big things like political affiliations, marriage, whole caste system. However the author manages to direct reader’s attention towards the “small things” like the activities of small creatures, day to day habits and little pleasures, sins and emotions that society reject as inadequate. The repression of such small things results in their recurrence under more unusual secretive and even violent forms.
Such as Estha’s being molested as a child by the Orange drink Lemon drink man or the twins making love at a certain point in their adult life out of "hideous grief" for the lost of their mother. There are indeed all condemned acts not only by state authorities, but also by any of the religious authorities in Ayemenem and most parts of the world. But what Roy does is give very detailed and even beautifully written descriptions of even such episodes (like for instance, the incest scene). And because "Post Modern knowledge is not simply a tool of the authorities, it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable", we can view the unusual aspects and phenomena in this novel from this perspective. One could also say that this "incommensurable may be related to the idea of "small things".
Cultural Declaration:
Arundhati Roy draws special attention to the fact that a family which swears by male supremacy and which entrenches its familial code in the past is bound to come woe sooner or later. The sacred façade of marriage either lacks harmony or comes crumbling down in such an imbalanced familial set-up. In Arundhati Roy’s fictional world, man and woman remain only islands and fail to shape up as continents, because their relationship lacks mutual love, understanding and adjustment. Pappachi – Mammachi relationship is ridden with jealousy, violence and hatred. Neither the external appearance of the “beautiful…Unusual, regal” (Roy 166).
Mammachi nor her talent as a successful business woman succeed in ensnaring Pappachi. On the contrary her flourishing business and growing popularity intensify his Jealousy and desire for vengeance. The edifice of their marriage survives, but its spirit crumbles totally when Pappachi, warned against beating, withdraws all communication with his wife. The novel has some autobiographical traits Arundhati Roy seems to identify with Rahel who like the author is an architect by profession Ammu and her tragic travails are fictional adaptation of the various kinds of social ostracism that Arundhati Roy’s mother had to suffer due to her rebellious outlook. She too, like Ammu was separated from her husband.
The resemblances between The God of Small Things and its author’s life are obvious and all pervading and have only too often been pointed out in popular articles. But fictionalizing “real” life-which is history exercise; the pain and lays the ghosts of the past; in the artistically successful work, the novelist at once recovers the past and is released from it. It would be doing The God Small Things an injustice, therefore, to read it only as an account of Roy’s childhood and her relationship with her famous mother and not - so - famous brother, as “a unique conflation of history and discourse, of veritable fact and aesthetic fabulation”, the autobiographical novel enables its author “to reassess his or her past and to reinterpret a plethora of racial, sexual, and cultural codes inscribed on personal consciousness … transforming experience fictive fabulation, the author can rein scribe an alienated and marginal self into the pliable body of a protean text” (Henke 210-211).
This is one of Roy’s most striking achievements in The God of Small Things: They all broke the rules. They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. The above quotation points to the central theme in The God of Small Things- the theme of broken laws. Roy is not only critiquing the deep-rooted caste system in India, but the entire patriarchal structure and its concomitant devaluing of women. The novel has been aptly described as “one of our protest novels, radical and subversive and attacks several holy cows. In its taboo- breaking too, it goes farther than what has been attempted” (Lahiri 112).
The God of Small Things can undoubtedly be called the book of the decade is the much discussed The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. The Booker citation describes the novel as one written with extraordinary linguistic inventiveness. Roy reveals a child’s vision of the adult world in this novel in one sense, she herself being an “unprotected child in some ways”. The novel can be said to be about several other things. Those interested in politics can claim that it is a satire on politics – communist establishment, to be more specific. One can call it a protest novel which is radical, subversive and taboo – breaking.
Still another way may be that it tells the story of a family. Those worried about religion can certainly give a religious tone to it. An anti-establishment dimension can also be given to the novel if one wishes to do so. The book has in it a strong position taken against the way the “Untouchables” are treated in the society. New York Times has made the following comments on Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s children which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 1981; The Literary map of India is about to be redrawn…. Midnight’s Children sounds like a continent finding its voice, an author to welcome “to world company”.
Seventeen years later Arundhati Roy has brought the honour again, this time to a small state in the south of the country and, of course, to the country at large. The God of Small Things depicts the socio- political milieu of Kerala during the sixties. It is all about atrocities against the small things childhood and youth, women-young and old, and the untouchable. Though at the center-stage Roy places Velutha who is crushed to death. It can clearly be said that Roy follows the footsteps of Rushdie both in stylistic experimentation and content of the novel, which is appears, is asure way to success. Rushdie’s Mid nights’ Children inspired and encourages the Indian novelist in English to experiment, explore and record the Indian experience in English.
The God of Small Things throws light upon hierarchical structures of power, and oppression at various levels in patriarchal societies. Arundhati Roy explores how these differences of caste, class, gender, race, function through social institutions and the way they affect huuman interactions and relationships. The story which encompasses three generations is seen through the stream of consciousness of Rahel who has witnessed the tragedy which over took the Ayemenem house. Several years later she returns to the house because her twin-brother Estha is Re-returned’. She relieves mentally the events of her childhood.
Various happenings- historical, social, and political have meshed together to create one tragedy. The victimization of the weak has been common-place in human history. All patriarchal societies see women as secondary human. However, caste and class differentials generate hierarchies among women. Untouchables or Dalits women are the most deprived of all. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things is a polysomic novel which can be interpreted at several levels. It may be said that the novel is a satire on politics attacking specifically the Communist establishment. It may be treated as a family saga narrating the story of four generations of a 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. The novel gives good dividends if studied from the viewpoint of childhood experience. In terms of stylistic experimentation, it is the boldest novel of the Nineties as The Midnight's Children was of the Eighties.
The God of Small Things throws light upon hierarchical structures of power, and oppression at various levels in patriarchal societies. Arundhati Roy explores how these differences of caste, class, gender,’ race, function through social institutions and the way they affect human interactions and relationships. The novel really created a stir when it first appeared and when it specially fetched the prestigious Booker Prize for literature. The theme of the novel, indeed, touched the hearts of all critics across the world while its language annoyed their concept of standards.
However, like Mulk Raj Anand in his Untouchable, Arundhati 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. In this way, Roy using her lively original language, sensitive poetic style, deep feelings, shocking emotions and a novel approach, has really achieved a mark of eminence in helping us to overcome ‘man’s inhumanity to man’. The God of Small Things enacts the external drama of confrontation between the powerful and the powerless. The author has desisted from making a woman’s powerlessness as the central crisis. Both, men and women are projected as a victim or a tyrant. It must be admitted that a women’s loss of power is treated very sympathetically, and yet, there is no obsession with women’s ineffectual condition in society. The psychological, economic and social problems that play a major role in the novel, devastate men and woman alike.
It is a modern novel in its theme and the treatment of the theme, a post modern novel in its knotting and knitting of narrative threads, manipulation of expressive literary forms and creative ’play’ with words, a feminist novel in the pity and terror that 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. In fact the novel is eminently amenable to multiple approaches and interpretations.
Patriarchy :
Ammu, the tragic central character of the novel faces humiliation, insult, and misbehavior first by her father then by her husband and afterward by her family members and society. The Narrator gives a sympathetic picture of her growth from childhood to adolescence, to the experience of marriage, to a sympathetic and loving mother, and to rebel wife who challenges the hypocritical moral stand of a patriarchal family. Starting from childhood Ammu had to face a lot of trials and tribulations, despite being a highly educated man, Her father fails to give love and affection to his daughter and enjoys thrashing his daughter with the ivory handled baton.
Ammu was denied the opportunity to study further for her father considered education for girls an: “unnecessary expense” (GOST 38), while her brother Chako gets the opportunity to go to Oxford for higher studies. She becomes frustrated by sudden obstruction of education and unpleasant atmosphere at home and wished to leave Ayemenem, and thus liberating herself from “the clutches of her ill tempered father and bitter, long-suffering mother” (GOST, 38).
Eventually, she meets a young man while she was spending her summer vacation with a distant aunt in Assam and she agrees to marry him as “she thought that anything, anyone at all, would be better than returning to Ayenemenem” (GOST 39). Her marriage ends up as a failure because her drunkard husband attempted to offer her to his boss, Mr. Hollicks in order to secure his job. But Ammu shows an impressive sense of self-respect as she refuses to compromise and walks out of her marriage when he physically assaulted Ammu and children. She comes back to Aynemenem from which she tried to escape now as an unwelcomed person along with “two young children and no more dreams” (GOST 42).
Ammu and her children become a burden for her family and legally “Ammu as a daughter had no claim to property” (GOST 57). On the other hand, Ammu’s brother Chako a divorcee like her remains the rightful inheritor of the family property as he is a man. Being a divorcee she has been ostracized by the society, and Baby Kochamma’s view: a married daughter had no position in her parent’s home. As for a divorced daughter….she had no position anywhere at all (GOST 45-46) highlights society’s general view regarding Ammu. Due to the hypocrisy of the ‘Male Chauvinist’’ society and neglect and injustice of her family. Ammu slowly turns into a rebel and begins smoking and had midnight swims. Ammu’s repressed existence forces her to violate the established norms of society and starts an affair with a low caste Paravan, Velutha, a fellow sufferer because of his low class status in society.
. Her mother who facilitates her brother’s illicit relationship with factory women saying it as “a Man’s needs” creates hurdles in her relationship with Velutha and she has to pay a high price for it as it resulted in Velutha’s death, separation of twins and finally her life. When she approaches police to get justice for the death of Velutha, Inspector Mathew harassed her, and this shows how patriarchy works at the administrative level, and also reveals women’s position in the society. Ammu meets a tragic death at the age of thirty- one in a grubby hotel room with nobody to help her. Even death cannot put an end to her humiliation, “The church refused to bury Ammu. On several counts” (GOST, 162), and Chacko hires a vanto transport her body to the electric crematorium, and nobody except Rahel and Chacko attends her funeral. Ammu had a tragic life tortured and abused by the police, her family, and society. Even though victims themselves women like Mammachi and Baby Kochamma in have internalized the biased notions of the prevailing patriarchal systems, and along with the male chauvinists they are also responsible for Ammu’s tragedy.
Ammu’s daughter Rahel who belongs to the third generation is far different in temperament and attitude from other females in her family, and also rebels against the injustices of patriarchal society. She becomes the symbol of the emancipated and liberated woman who likes to live according to her own whims and fancies confronting all the traditions, customs, and laws delineated to suppress women. Even Rahel has suffered a lot due to the patriarchal society; starting from her birth, she is deprived of love and affection first by her father later by her family in Ayemenem House.
She has undergone through traumatic experiences in her childhood and has witnessed her mother’s unendurable sufferings and miseries in the Ayemenem House, and also seen her mother’s body reduced to ashes. She hardly forgets the agony of Baby Kochamma’s making them instrumental to the death of Velutha. After the dejected death of Ammu her only support, she becomes helpless and become more neglected by her maternal uncle, grandmother, and grandaunt. She leads a lonely life after her mother’s death, and nobody in the family cared for her wellbeing, and as a result of these adverse circumstances and excessive negligence she earned to be patient and becomes reckless, daring and independent.
She married Larry McCaslin, a Research Scholar in Architecture from Boston and although not a male chauvinist she divorces him when she understood the futility of their relationship. Due to the optimism in her, she leads a confident life in her own way and has awareness about the destructive consequences of going against the orthodox society for she has seen the tragedy of her mother. Well aware of these consequences, she has done something more dangerous in society’s moral eyes than what her mother does. At the age of thirty-one, she dares to have an incestuous relationship with her brother which society never accepts. Roy presents Rahel as a liberated Indian woman who doesn’t care about the patriarchal structure and here lies the victory for women which Rahel wins.
Through the portrayal of Rahel Roy finds optimism in the liberation of women from patriarchal dominance. Trough this novel Roy lashes out at the patriarchal society which inhibits female freedom and thus by giving her a subservient role adds to her misery. Alice Walker in her novels portrays the pain and struggle of black people and in the novel, The Color Purple she deals with the brutality of oppression faced by the Afro-American women. The Color Purple can be regarded as a woman’s novel in terms of theme and narrative strategies, and chiefly that of lesbian writing. In the novel, Walker explores themes like gender discrimination, racial discrimination, sexism and rape and also shows how gender discrimination can influence black women’s subjectivity and lead them into dejection.
Black men being the margins of white society, black women become margins of the margins and become slaves of white and black men. Even though the novelist’s primarily concerned with the misery of black women she also examines the influence of racism in black people's social and personal lives. The novelist severely criticizes the brutality of the male dominant society and provides black female characters an opportunity to defend themselves in the patriarchal system and obtain individuality and social role. The novel underlines the fact that through sisterhood women can realize their dreams, follow them in society and achieve them.
Impact of religion:
Roy’s novel The God of Small Things has many themes but the most important one is religion. She has taken as a background of the novel is Ayemenem village where the majority was being followed by Christianity. The aims to focus on the theme of religion and its impact on society through the characters in the selected novel of Arundhati Roy. There is various methods of approach are based on three dimensions:
() how religion disturbs the life of a divorcee from inter-caste marriage.
(2) How it affects the lives of innocent children of the broken family and
(3) how religion looks at the low caste or the untouchable man.
Finally, it would like to focus on how religion is a device in the hands of authoritative people.
Let’s talk about religion. What is religion? Why is religion needed? According to the Oxford dictionary, religion is a set of faith and preparation, and is a worldwide social phenomenon that completely alarms almost all living beings. Religion is also accepted as one of the strongest sources and means of social control. Religion helps to form the personality of an individual and thereby it shapes social life. It conveys the sense of social value in the mind of people. Moreover, religion explains that man’s love and services to God will be existent only if he loves and serves humanity.
In The God of Small Things, Roy’s has discovered the ugly faces of the powerful hands who hide under the so-called liberal faces of theirs, they are the real culprits who are the cause for the innocent’s victim: love laws made in mythological times stratified people into castes and are passed down throughout the various layers of Indian history and exist in the postcolonial present. Roy repeats this mantra of the “Love Laws” and it echoes throughout the novel as a reminder of a past that haunts the present, suffocating the emergence of the new. Religion has always been in the hands of the upper-caste people in India. For instance, a woman is controlled by a patriarchal society. On the other hand, upper-caste people used to order the untouchables. In both places, one can see people surrender without a question if they try to raise their voice they have to suffer.
This novel has been set up in Ayemenem, a small village in Kerala, where Christianity is a common religion. The story is about the period when Marxism started blooming in Kerala. The marginalized people have actively participated in the activities of the party. In this scenario, Ammu, the protagonist and her two children meet Velutha. The small things efforts to live a normal life are rumpled in the name of religion. Through the gradual development of the story, one can understand that the authoritative people of society are nowhere disturbed by the marginalized or poor people. But their skills were used only for their benefit.
At the time Ammu divorced her husband and returned with her twins, unwelcomed by her parents in Ayemenem, in the same place from where she had tried to run away a few years ago. After her divorce, she has no place in her father's home. She and her twins are considered a burden even by her mother and brother. Frustration seems to have made her reckless. She starts behaving strangely. She has faced many insults and abuses right from the beginning. Her attractions are desirable but they invariably curse destruction and disaster.
She became virtually untouchable at her house, in her family and the society, because she married a Hindu Bengali man. Christian religion believes that marriage is a gift from God that should not be taken for granted. Christian marriage is a solemn and public covenant between a man and a woman in the presence of God. Those in troubled marriages are encouraged to seek counselling and restoration because most divorces are neither necessary nor unavoidable. But in the case of Ammu, she alone decided on her marriage and divorce.
A divorced woman is not considered a virtuous woman. While her brother, Chacko, has returned from Oxford, he has divorced his wife, but no one talks about him. He lives happily, he also breaks family norms and does not even care to take his parent’s permission to his marriage. He did inter-caste marriage, it is acceptable by his family and society at all times and by all means. He always insults Ammu by saying to her children “Ammu had no Locusts stand I” (57). She spends her time in the front veranda, and back veranda, a hot river and pickle factory in Ayemenem for relief.
There is no equality shown in the family. Ammu first breaks the love law, as a divorced daughter of the Syrian Christian family and she is neglected to the edge of the social norms and greedy for affection. She finds him a substitute father. They receive sympathy from Velutha, while repairing the boat, making fishing rods or instinctively colluding in the conspiracy of their fiction. The caste or religion does not pollute the children who easily identify themselves with Velutha, a social outcast like them. Ammu discovers a kindred heart in him. She likes the "living, breathing anger that he houses under his cloak of cheerfulness against the smug, ordered world she rages against" (176).
Baby Kochamma “disliked the twins … because they were Half-Hindu hybrids whom no self-respect Syrian Christian would ever marry” (67-68). This shows that cultural and religious antagonism and also religion become part of the cultural background. So, Estha and Rahel are induced by Baby Kochamma. If they don’t lie that Velutha kidnapped them, they will have to go to the “three different Jails” (301). She has given them a choice to select Velutha or Ammu. Religion plays a vital role in the life of small children, Estha and Rahel, who had been forced to become false witnesses against their friend Velutha. All that happened Velutha disobeyed Love Laws and suffered terribly to die at his altar.
Velutha’s story can be understood as a metaphor in the life of Jesus Christ. Like Jesus Christ, Velutha is a very good carpenter, he breaks non-violent. He dies saving others, saving the status of Ammu and her family. He knew that surrendering his life was too big a cost for this purpose. But he embraces it willingly. When he is taken to the police station, Rahel sees that the nail of his right thumb has been painted red. This shows the blood of Jesus Christ which was shed for others. As a punishment for the lovers, Velutha has to lose his life all because of his religion. Estha and Rahel were separated. Ammu should leave the Ayemenem House. They were not allowed to join the funeral of Sophie Mol because of their hybridity. Ammu died in a grimy lodge in Alleppey at the age of thirty-one. Church authorities refused to bury Ammu’s body in a Cemetery.
Thus, God created man, man invented religion for the benefit of society and to live happily, and government laws are meant for the help, safety and growth of people of all the religions without discrimination but unluckily the upper-caste people use religion for their own will. But Religion destroyed humanity.
Relationship in The God of small things :
India has been described as the “country over our shoulder”. To what extent does Arundhati Roy both explain and exploit the culture of Kerala for the English reader in ‘The God of Small Things’? In ‘The God Of Small Things’, as the reader we are introduced to a culture that we will ultimately struggle to understand because the values within a country such as India are so very different to the principles and ethics that we are brought up upon, as a Western reader.
The book itself is written by an Indian, is about Indian culture and therefore it is fair to assume that we will be introduced to new ideas and ways of life throughout the book. One critic believed that “The God of Small Things rapidly reveals its disinterest in trying to encapsulate India” and that it“ completely immerses in one community ‘s, one family’s universe. “[1] And on the whole it is hard to disagree.Most characters in the novel suffer some form of heartache and pain, which is an attempt by Roy to show that although the death of Sophie Mol, the death of Velutha and the family decay are relatively small things to the rest of the world, their impacts on those surrounding them are far greater and damaging. I believe Indian culture and its constraints do have much more of a bearing on life Compared with the western world (a credible generalization), and that prejudices and social bigotry is inherent in everyone; but what I believe Roy to be exploring is how people face these barriers and react to them.
“The book is not about what happened but about how what happened affected people” [2]. I think that it is wholly implausible to expect an author to entirely enlighten English readers to the Indian traditions, but what Roy does is open up our minds to small things in a small community; thus containing these apparent ‘flaws’ to a specific set of people. Whether we as readers take it as a fundamental generalization for Indian society as a whole remains to be seen. It is the relationship between Ammu and Velutha that dominates the story.
Furthermore it is enhanced by the fact it goes against all the ancient rules and regulations of the caste system. What makes the eventual death of Velutha that more tragic is that the relationship between he and Ammu is one that is borne from true love and not simply a marriage/relationship forced upon yhem by the regulations of the country, “they had nothing. No future. So they stuck to the small things”[3]. Throughout the book we see a number of relationships that cannot match up to the depth of love that is abundant in the relationship between Ammu and Velutha.
We have Mammachi and Pappachi; a woman subject to years of abuse from the husband and the Rahel/ Larry McCaslin, Chacko/ Margaret marriages all of which did not last. Putting the whole caste system to one side it could be argued that the Ammu and Velutha relationship is the only one that we,as western readers see as conventional. And yet, ironically, in the eyes of all those around Ammu and.Velutha this relationship is one that can never be approved of. “They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much."
To understand the anger and backlash that comes from the relationship between Ammu and Velutha we must look at what, through 'Indian' eyes, the relationship actually meant. The caste system is important in Hindu tradition, dating back to 1200BC and the term literally means 'race' or 'breed'. This system dictated who had what jobs, and it was the untouchables who had to do the menial jobs,"Untouchable jobs, such as toilet cleaning and garbage removal, require them to be in contact with bodily fluids. They are therefore considered polluted and not to be touched. "[5].The love laws are a whole "nexus of beliefs, rules, practices... "[6] that govern human sexual behavior. They are not laws that people must abide by- the country has moved on- but the whole tradition and 'nostalgia' associated with such beliefs do govern to some extent reactions by people with others. I think that Roy intended not to give an outright rejection of the caste system, but simply to show that it is embedded in Indian culture. In Roy's novel, "The God of Small Things", the characters of Ammu and Velutha, an Untouchable or Paravan, break the laws of India's caste system.
Conclusion :
WORKS CITED
[1]. Dr. Praneet Jagge . Caste and identity in Arundhati Roy’s The God of small things. IJPS. 2016.
[2]. Pandian, I.D.Arundhati Roy: Life and Work, Bhaskar publication, 2009.
[3]. Punter, David. “Arundhati Roy and the House of History.” Empire and the Gothic. Eds.Andrew Smith and William Hughes. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
[4]. Roy, Arundhati, The God of Small Things. New Delhi. India Ink Publishing Co, Ltd, 1997.
[5]. Roy, Amitabh. The God of Small Things: A Novel of social Commitment, Atlantic, 2005.
