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Postcolonial India's Uncertain Condition: Mimicry, Rebellion in The God of Small Things
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy is a novel about a tragic and traumatic experience in an Anglophile family in Ayemenem, India. While the British colonizes the India, the Indian elites always get the higher education in England or America. Nowadays India is an independent country, but the postcolonial Indian elite still behave like the colonizer, the British rather than themselves, the Asian Indian. The Indian elites admire, respect, and imitate the British cultures even teach their younger generation to learn the colonizer’s language, English and the British lifestyles. But it is ambivalent. On the one hand, the Indian elites prefer to behave like the British people, but on the other hand they can’t abandon the caste system which is deeply ingrained in the Asian Indian culture. Hence, it leads to a double result; that is the Indian elites not only contempt their family member who doesn’t get the education but also despise the untouchable person and the subaltern people. The postcolonial Indian elite's behavior makes the postcolonial India become an uncertain and hybrid condition. In addition, this book named as The God of Small Things, I would like to articulate “Small Things” as the rebellions are rose by the subaltern people. In this proposed research, I would like to utilize the postcolonial theorist, Homi Bhabha’s theory on mimicry and hybridity to elaborate the postcolonial Indian uncertain condition. I also refer to the rebellions could be regarded as the subaltern people against the postcolonial Indian elites.
At first, I would like to talk about the postcolonial Indian elite’s behaviors on imitating the colonizer, the British. There are three Anglophile characters. They are proud, arrogant, and self-centered. For example, the twins’ uncle, Chacko who has studied in the Oxford, often read aloud. “He didn’t care whether anyone was listening to him or not. And if they were, he didn’t care whether or not they had understood what he was saying” (Roy 54). In my view, it shows that Chacko is confident and proud that he has studied in the Oxford. It also reveals that Chacko intends to force other people to hear what he speaks in a loud voice. The postcolonial Indian elites always behave as the British through watching the English TV programs, wearing the Western costumes, driving the English car, and etc. For example, the twins’ maternal grandaunt, Baby Kochamma watched “The Bold and The Beautiful and Santa Barbara . . . loved their shiny clothes and the smart, bitchy repartee” (Roy 27). The twins’ grandfather, Pappachi also persists in wearing a “well-pressed three-piece suit even in the stifling Ayemenem heat, every single day” (Roy 49). For instances, Chacko unconsciously “Quoted long passages from the books he had read before for no any apparent reason” in any time (Roy 38). It reveals the literary texts which Chacko has read to disturb his real life. Even they insist on teaching their younger generation to learn and speak the colonizer’s language, English. For instance, if the twins, Estha and Rahel meet a new English word, Chacko will request the twins look up the Reader’s Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary to learn the meaning of this new English word in their conversation. According to Rajeev. G on his essay “Arundati Rai’s The God of Small Things – A Post-Colonial Reading,” “Such an ardent obsession with the imperial language and codes is typical of post colonial community, where an involuntary subservience to the imperial hordes and an ingrained devotion to their modes and customs typify their psyche” (G 3). In his view, the postcolonial Indian elites cannot help but imitate the colonizer’s culture because India has been a British colony in the past. There is no denying that the colonized people, the Asian Indian are affected by the colonizer, British. As Edward Said states in Bhabha’s essay “Of Mimicry and Man,” “Mimicry represents an ironic compromise” (Bhabha 86). Baby Kochamma establishes a rule to force the twins, Estha and Rahel must speak in English. If Baby Kochamma catches the twins speaking in Malayalam in their private conversation, the twins will write this lines “I will always speak in English, I will always speak in English” in a hundred times (Roy 36). According to Miriam Nandi, the reason on the postcolonial Indian elite Baby Kochamma forces the twins to speak in English is:
Baby Kochamma’s injunction to speak in English is an echo of a much older imperative imposed on educated Indians during the colonial regime. . . . read as an allegory for the Anglicization of the Indian upper class and a critique of the epistemic violence inflicted in order to establish English as their dominant idiom. (178)
I would like to use Homi Bhabha’s theory on mimicry to explore their behaviors:
Mimicry is, thus the sign of a double articulation. . . . Mimicry is also the sign of the inappropriate, however, a difference or recalcitrance which coheres the dominant strategic function of colonial power, intensifies surveillance, and poses an immanent threat to both ‘normalized’ knowledges and disciplinary powers. (86)
In my view, Bhabha’s insights on mimicry are totally different from other theorists. Bhabha thinks both the dominant colonial culture and the colonized, indigenous culture could articulate through the mode of mimicry. In Bhabha’s view, “The success of colonial appropriation depends on a proliferation of inappropriate objects that ensure its strategic failure, so that mimicry is at once resemblance and menace” (Bhabha 86). In my own interpretation, owing to the colonized people; that is, the postcolonial Indian elites not only imitate the colonizer’s culture but also mix their culture makes the dominant position of colonizer’s culture is damaging take place. The position of dominant colonizer’s culture is no longer stable, invulnerable. The colonizer’s culture still exists in the postcolonial country, but it has mixed with the indigenous culture. As Bhabha observes, “What emerges between mimesis and mimicry is a writing, a mode of representation, that marginalizes the monumentality of history, quite simply mocks its power to be a model, that power which supposedly makes it imitable” (Bhabha 87). As Bhabha’s view, I would like to mention that Roy’s novel, The God of Small Things is a practice of mimicry. In her narrative, The Indian writer Roy writes her stories in two languages, English and Malayalam. The narrative style is fragmented, repetitious and temporal hybrid. Some character’s names are bilingual, such as, the twin’s grandaunt, Baby Kochamma and the twin’s half-breed cousin, Sophie Mol. In this case, Kochamma and Mol are Malayalam but Baby and Sophie are English. Even if Roy uses the colonizer’s language, English to write her story more than the Malayalam, she creates something hybrid and challenges the traditional narrative styles in English literature. As Bhabha states, “It is a desire that reverses ‘in part’ the colonial appropriation by now producing a partial vision of the colonizer’s presence; a gaze of otherness” (Bhabha 88). In Bhabha’s view, the product of colonial mimicry is different from the colonizer’s culture. It also challenges the superiority of colonizer’s discourse.
Secondly, I would like to talk about symbol of hybrid in this novel. There are two symbols of hybrid to reveal that the postcolonial Indian condition is uncertain and hybrid. The first symbol is banana jam, a product, produced by the Mammachi’s factory, Paradise Pickles & Preserves. The banana jam is banned by Food Products Organization because “According to their specifications it was neither jam nor jelly. Too thin for jelly and too thick for jam. An ambiguous, unclassifiable consistency” (Roy 30). The bananas jam is similar to the postcolonial Indian uncertain condition; that is the Indian elites not only imitates the colonizer culture but also keeps the indigenous culture, the caste system. The postcolonial people have been affected by the colonizer; they can’t categorize them as the traditional Asian Indians. According to Bhabha on his essay “Signs Taken for Wonders,” “Paradoxically, however, such an image can neither be ‘original’－by virtue of the act of repetition that constructs it－nor ‘identical’－by virtue of the difference that defines it” (Bhabha 107). Another symbol is the name of Mammachi’s factory. Before Chacko returns to Ayemenem, the Mammachi’s factory has no name. I would like to mention that the procedure for naming Mammachi’s factory:
At first Chacko had wanted to call it Zeus Pickles & Preserves, but that idea was vetoed because everybody said that Zeus was too obscure and had no local relevance, whereas Paradise did. (Comrade Pillai’s suggestion －Parashuram Pickles－was vetoed for the opposite reason: too much local relevance). (Roy 58)
In this case, the name of Mammachi’s factory suggests that the postcolonial Indian condition is hybrid; both too much colonizer’s relevance and too much local relevance are forbidden. In Bhabha’s view, the postcolonial India condition is ambivalent:
The colonial presence is always ambivalent, split between its appearance as original and authoritative and its articulation as repetition and difference. It is a disjunction produced within the act of enunciation as a specifically colonial articulation of those two disproportionate sites of colonial discourse and power. (107)
Besides, I would like to talk about the twin, Estha and Rahel only focus on the sound of the English word and creates some words are hybrid while they are imitating/ learning the colonizer’s language, English. For example, “Prer NUN sea ayshun” instead of the English word, pronunciation. In Nandi’s view, “The twins undermine the authority and hegemony of the English language by using it as a source for their own creativity. They disregard the established meaning of English words” (Nandi 179). As Bhabha observes, “Hybridity . . . creates a crisis for any concept for authority based on a system of recognition: colonial specularity, doubly inscribed, does not produce a mirror where the self apprehends itself; it is always the split screen of the self and its doubling, the hybrid” (Bhabha 114).
What’s more, I would like to talk about the rebellion are risen by the subaltern people against the postcolonial Indian elites. Why does the caste system still exist in the postcolonial India? Why are the postcolonial Indian elites unwilling to abandon their local culture, the caste system? Why the subaltern people try to rise to rebellion against the elites? What are the result subaltern people expect for? I think the reason is the interests. The caste system ensures that the upper castes are rich, get the privileges, and have enough money to get the higher education from the colonizer’s country. After the postcolonial elites get the higher education, they will regard them superior than the other people. They will contempt, despise, and exploit even bully the poor people. But the caste system also guarantees to the misfortune for the lower castes and untouchable people. Unlike the elites, the subaltern people don’t have much money to get the higher education from the colonizer’s country; don’t have any chances to change their destiny. Hence the subaltern people must try to struggle against the symbolic system and the elites. There are three incidents about the rebellion are risen by the subaltern people. But I would like to utilize the definition on the ‘subaltern’ and ‘elite’ from one of the Subaltern Studies group, Ranajit Guha’s essay “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India” first. According to Guha, the term ‘subaltern’ means that “The demographic difference between the total Indian population and all those whom we have described as the ‘elite’. Some of these classes and groups such as the lesser rural gentry, impoverished landlords, rich peasants and upper- middle peasants” (Guha 44). In Guha’s view, the term ‘elite’ means:
Dominant groups, foreign as well as indigenous. . . . The dominant indigenous groups included classes and interests operating at two levels. At the all- India level, they included the biggest feudal magnates, the most important representatives of the industrial and mercantile bourgeoisie and native recruits to the uppermost levels of the bureaucracy. (44)
The first occurrence is the Orangedrink Lemondrink man. The twins, Estha and Rahel go to Abhilash Talkies and watch the film, Sound of Music with their grandaunt, Baby Kochamma, and their mother, Ammu even though they have watched this film many times. While they are watching the film, Sound of Music on the movie theater, suddenly a voice appears. It is the boy, Estha who is singing the English song. And his voice disturbs the audience twice. So Estha is required to leave the movie theater right now by his mother, Ammu. So Estha sings the English song in the Abhalash Talkies Princess Circle lobby. But unfortunately at that time there is a man who is sleeping behind the Refreshments Counter. The man, the Orangedrink Lemondrink man is disturbed and angry to Estha. The man requests Estha must buy a drink because he disturbs his nap. But Estha refuses and replies that ‘“No thank you,’ . . . ‘My family will be expecting me. And I’ve finished my pocket money” (Roy 102). And the Orangedrink Lemondrink man is angry and responses that ‘“Porketmunny?’ . . . ‘First English songs, and now Porketmunny！Where d’you live? On the moon” (Roy 102)? In my view, the Orangedrink Lemondrink man is very angry and jealous to Estha because he doesn’t have any chances to learn the colonizer’s language, English; doesn’t have any pocket money when he was a child. The Orangedrink Lemondrink man decides to ask a question to Estha where are you live? After the Orangedrink Lemondrink man knows the truth: Estha lives in Ayemenem and his grandmother owns Paradise Pickles & Preserves, he intends to treat a drink to Estha but Estha must tell something about his grandmother. The man lies to Estha to ask him to come behind the counter. Estha is naive so he tells to the Orangedrink Lemondrink man about the factory and the products from Paradise Pickles & Preserves in details. While Estha is drinking the Lemondrink, the man hands his phallus to Estha and forces Estha to masturbate him. After the masturbation, the Orangedrink Lemondrink man requires Estha must finish his drink. The Orangedrink Lemondrink man said that ‘“You mustn’t waste it.’ . . . ‘Think of all the poor people who have nothing to eat or drink. You’re a lucky rich boy, with porketmunny and a grandmother’s factory to inherit. You should Thank God that you have no worries. Now finish you drink” (Roy 105). In my own interpretation, it reveals that the subaltern people are suffered unlike the elite. It also shows the condition: the disparity between the rich people and the poor people in the postcolonial India. So the Orangedrink Lemondrink man forces Estha to hold his penis could regard as the rebellion against the postcolonial elite. Due to the English song Estha sing which disturbs the man’s rest time; this rebellion also suggests that the subaltern people opposes to the colonizer’s language and culture. Nandi argues that “The Orangedrink Lemondrink Man is what Julia Kristeva has termed ‘abject’ . . . The abject has to do with the disruption of systems, orders and morals and is therefore also connected with especially hideous crimes, such as, for instance, sexual abuse of children” (Nandi 183).
The second incident is the Marxist’s march. On their way to the Abhilash Talkies, there is a Marxist march takes place. Through her grandfather, Pappachi’s car, the Plymouth’s window, the girl Rahel sees her most beloved friend, the untouchable person, Velutha “marching with a red flag.” In that march, the marcher includes “party workers, students, and the labourers themselves. Touchables and Untouchables” (Roy 69). There are the marcher’s demands including the work hour for the paddy workers “from seven in the morning to six-thirty in the evening and permits to take a one-hour lunch break,’’ both the man and woman’s salaries must be increased, the Untouchables no longer be addressed by their caste names (Roy 69). According to Guha on his essay “The Prose of Counter- Insurgency,” the rebellion regards as:
A sort of reflex action, that is, as an instinctive and almost mindless response to physical suffering of one kind or another (e.g. hunger, torture, forced labour, etc.) or as a passive reaction to some initiative of his superordinate enemy. Either way insurgency is regarded as external to the peasant’s consciousness. (47)
In my own interpretation, rebellion could articulate as a chance to change the destiny of the subaltern people. No matter how the result is successful or not, through rising the rebellion, the subaltern people may make a voice and reveals how they are suffered in the society. Why they are angry? What they are longing for? In Roy’s story, she doesn’t tell us what is the result of this march. Is this march successful? Do the marchers get the result as their expectations? But Roy handles the subaltern person: the marcher harasses the postcolonial Indian elite, Baby Kochamma. Suddenly, the man with a flag turns his attention to Baby Kochamma and asks her name, but she doesn’t response. So the man tells other Marxist “She has no name. What about Modalali Mariakutty? . . . Modalali in Malayalam means landlord” (Roy 80). And then the man gives Baby kochamma his red flag and orders her to hold the red flag and wave the red flag. Even the man orders Baby Kochamma say the local language, Malayalam which Baby Kochamma hates. Baby Kochamma cannot but say the Malayalam “Inquilab Zindabad” as the man orders. In my view, this man’s harassment to Baby Kochamma is successful. It also reveals that the subaltern people would rather choose their local language, Malayalam than the colonizer’s language, English as a tool for opposing to the postcolonial Indian elites. The condition is very tricky because the postcolonial elites prefer to choose the colonizer’s language. In contrast to the postcolonial Indian elites, the subaltern people prefer to choose the local language.
The third transgression is the untouchable person, Velutha and the upper caste, Ammu’s forbidden love. When Ammu found Velutha with a red flag in the march, Ammu is impressed by his sexy body: “in a white shirt and mundu with angry veins in his neck. He never usually wore a shirt” (Roy 71). According to Strehle’s Transnational Women's Fiction: Unsettling Home And Homeland, Ammu is inspired by that march and determines to transgress the order of caste system:
For Ammu, this moment marks the beginning of interest, as Velutha brings his masculine anger to public and political action. He is recostumed for the march, in which differences of caste and class among party workers, students, and laborers are made invisible, thus suggesting altered conditions in which their union might be possible. (141)
Strehle argues that “Ammu chooses Velutha’s body as the focus for her rebellion against the order of her social world because, like her own body, his is heavily policed by Hindu caste proscriptions” (Strehle 142). Roy portrays Velutha’s love affair with Ammu in a romantic and sexual way. “Ammu, naked now, crouched over Velutha, her mouth on his. He drew her hair around them like a tent. . . His neck. His nipples. His chocolate stomach” (Roy 336). Strehle argues that “With the lovemaking between Ammu and Velutha, the text violates the very core of caste prohibitions, which erect rigid separations between polluting and upper caste bodies” (Strehle 152). But unfortunately, Ammu is locked into her room after Mammachi and Baby Kochamma hear about their forbidden love between Velutha and her from Velutha’s father, Vellya Paapen. Even Velutha’s love affair with Ammu results in the fact that Velutha must be responsible to Sophie Mol’s death. Although the rebellion: Velutha’s love affair with Ammu is failed, Roy writes “Tomorrow” at the end of this book to show her attitudes on the rebellion; that is Roy keeps the positive attitude toward Velutha’s love with Ammu. As Strehle says “If reciprocal passionate desire can be fulfilled between a woman of good family and an outcaste Paravan, the version of home/land protected in India for centuries crashes into dust. This hope speaks in the novel’s last word, “Tomorrow” (Strehle 152).
To sum up, the postcolonial Indian condition is uncertain and hybrid. In Bhabha’s view, there are double articulations between the colonizer’s culture and the indigenous, the Asian Indian culture in the postcolonial India. Due to the caste system is ingrained in the India, the subaltern people must try to struggle and transgress against the symbolic order. I would like to mention that Roy’s novel The God of Small Things not only makes the subaltern people could articulate through rising rebellions but also challenges the dominant position of English literature through writing and her creative narrative styles, such as fragmented phrases, repetition, temporal hybridity.
Works Cited
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Print.
G, Rajeev. “Arundati Rai’s The God of Small Things – A Post-
Colonial Reading.” The Indian Review of World Literature in English 7.2 (2011): 1-7. July 2011.Web. 10 Jun. 2013.(http://worldlitonline.net/arundhati-rai-s-the.pdf).
Guha Ranajit, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, eds. Selected Subaltern Studies. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. Print.
Nandi, Miriam. “Longing For The Lost (M)Other: Postcolonial Ambivalences In Arundhati Roy's The God Of Small Things.”Journal of Postcolonial Writing 46.2 (2010): 175-186. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 2 Jun. 2013.
Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. London: Harper Collins Publishers, 1997. Print.
Strehle, Susan. Transnational Women's Fiction: Unsettling Home and Homeland. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 5 Jun. 2013.
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy is a novel about a tragic and traumatic experience in an Anglophile family in Ayemenem, India. While the British colonizes the India, the Indian elites always get the higher education in England or America. Nowadays India is an independent country, but the postcolonial Indian elite still behave like the colonizer, the British rather than themselves, the Asian Indian. The Indian elites admire, respect, and imitate the British cultures even teach their younger generation to learn the colonizer’s language, English and the British lifestyles. But it is ambivalent. On the one hand, the Indian elites prefer to behave like the British people, but on the other hand they can’t abandon the caste system which is deeply ingrained in the Asian Indian culture. Hence, it leads to a double result; that is the Indian elites not only contempt their family member who doesn’t get the education but also despise the untouchable person and the subaltern people. The postcolonial Indian elite's behavior makes the postcolonial India become an uncertain and hybrid condition. In addition, this book named as The God of Small Things, I would like to articulate “Small Things” as the rebellions are rose by the subaltern people. In this proposed research, I would like to utilize the postcolonial theorist, Homi Bhabha’s theory on mimicry and hybridity to elaborate the postcolonial Indian uncertain condition. I also refer to the rebellions could be regarded as the subaltern people against the postcolonial Indian elites.
At first, I would like to talk about the postcolonial Indian elite’s behaviors on imitating the colonizer, the British. There are three Anglophile characters. They are proud, arrogant, and self-centered. For example, the twins’ uncle, Chacko who has studied in the Oxford, often read aloud. “He didn’t care whether anyone was listening to him or not. And if they were, he didn’t care whether or not they had understood what he was saying” (Roy 54). In my view, it shows that Chacko is confident and proud that he has studied in the Oxford. It also reveals that Chacko intends to force other people to hear what he speaks in a loud voice. The postcolonial Indian elites always behave as the British through watching the English TV programs, wearing the Western costumes, driving the English car, and etc. For example, the twins’ maternal grandaunt, Baby Kochamma watched “The Bold and The Beautiful and Santa Barbara . . . loved their shiny clothes and the smart, bitchy repartee” (Roy 27). The twins’ grandfather, Pappachi also persists in wearing a “well-pressed three-piece suit even in the stifling Ayemenem heat, every single day” (Roy 49). For instances, Chacko unconsciously “Quoted long passages from the books he had read before for no any apparent reason” in any time (Roy 38). It reveals the literary texts which Chacko has read to disturb his real life. Even they insist on teaching their younger generation to learn and speak the colonizer’s language, English. For instance, if the twins, Estha and Rahel meet a new English word, Chacko will request the twins look up the Reader’s Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary to learn the meaning of this new English word in their conversation. According to Rajeev. G on his essay “Arundati Rai’s The God of Small Things – A Post-Colonial Reading,” “Such an ardent obsession with the imperial language and codes is typical of post colonial community, where an involuntary subservience to the imperial hordes and an ingrained devotion to their modes and customs typify their psyche” (G 3). In his view, the postcolonial Indian elites cannot help but imitate the colonizer’s culture because India has been a British colony in the past. There is no denying that the colonized people, the Asian Indian are affected by the colonizer, British. As Edward Said states in Bhabha’s essay “Of Mimicry and Man,” “Mimicry represents an ironic compromise” (Bhabha 86). Baby Kochamma establishes a rule to force the twins, Estha and Rahel must speak in English. If Baby Kochamma catches the twins speaking in Malayalam in their private conversation, the twins will write this lines “I will always speak in English, I will always speak in English” in a hundred times (Roy 36). According to Miriam Nandi, the reason on the postcolonial Indian elite Baby Kochamma forces the twins to speak in English is:
Baby Kochamma’s injunction to speak in English is an echo of a much older imperative imposed on educated Indians during the colonial regime. . . . read as an allegory for the Anglicization of the Indian upper class and a critique of the epistemic violence inflicted in order to establish English as their dominant idiom. (178)
I would like to use Homi Bhabha’s theory on mimicry to explore their behaviors:
Mimicry is, thus the sign of a double articulation. . . . Mimicry is also the sign of the inappropriate, however, a difference or recalcitrance which coheres the dominant strategic function of colonial power, intensifies surveillance, and poses an immanent threat to both ‘normalized’ knowledges and disciplinary powers. (86)
In my view, Bhabha’s insights on mimicry are totally different from other theorists. Bhabha thinks both the dominant colonial culture and the colonized, indigenous culture could articulate through the mode of mimicry. In Bhabha’s view, “The success of colonial appropriation depends on a proliferation of inappropriate objects that ensure its strategic failure, so that mimicry is at once resemblance and menace” (Bhabha 86). In my own interpretation, owing to the colonized people; that is, the postcolonial Indian elites not only imitate the colonizer’s culture but also mix their culture makes the dominant position of colonizer’s culture is damaging take place. The position of dominant colonizer’s culture is no longer stable, invulnerable. The colonizer’s culture still exists in the postcolonial country, but it has mixed with the indigenous culture. As Bhabha observes, “What emerges between mimesis and mimicry is a writing, a mode of representation, that marginalizes the monumentality of history, quite simply mocks its power to be a model, that power which supposedly makes it imitable” (Bhabha 87). As Bhabha’s view, I would like to mention that Roy’s novel, The God of Small Things is a practice of mimicry. In her narrative, The Indian writer Roy writes her stories in two languages, English and Malayalam. The narrative style is fragmented, repetitious and temporal hybrid. Some character’s names are bilingual, such as, the twin’s grandaunt, Baby Kochamma and the twin’s half-breed cousin, Sophie Mol. In this case, Kochamma and Mol are Malayalam but Baby and Sophie are English. Even if Roy uses the colonizer’s language, English to write her story more than the Malayalam, she creates something hybrid and challenges the traditional narrative styles in English literature. As Bhabha states, “It is a desire that reverses ‘in part’ the colonial appropriation by now producing a partial vision of the colonizer’s presence; a gaze of otherness” (Bhabha 88). In Bhabha’s view, the product of colonial mimicry is different from the colonizer’s culture. It also challenges the superiority of colonizer’s discourse.
Secondly, I would like to talk about symbol of hybrid in this novel. There are two symbols of hybrid to reveal that the postcolonial Indian condition is uncertain and hybrid. The first symbol is banana jam, a product, produced by the Mammachi’s factory, Paradise Pickles & Preserves. The banana jam is banned by Food Products Organization because “According to their specifications it was neither jam nor jelly. Too thin for jelly and too thick for jam. An ambiguous, unclassifiable consistency” (Roy 30). The bananas jam is similar to the postcolonial Indian uncertain condition; that is the Indian elites not only imitates the colonizer culture but also keeps the indigenous culture, the caste system. The postcolonial people have been affected by the colonizer; they can’t categorize them as the traditional Asian Indians. According to Bhabha on his essay “Signs Taken for Wonders,” “Paradoxically, however, such an image can neither be ‘original’－by virtue of the act of repetition that constructs it－nor ‘identical’－by virtue of the difference that defines it” (Bhabha 107). Another symbol is the name of Mammachi’s factory. Before Chacko returns to Ayemenem, the Mammachi’s factory has no name. I would like to mention that the procedure for naming Mammachi’s factory:
At first Chacko had wanted to call it Zeus Pickles & Preserves, but that idea was vetoed because everybody said that Zeus was too obscure and had no local relevance, whereas Paradise did. (Comrade Pillai’s suggestion －Parashuram Pickles－was vetoed for the opposite reason: too much local relevance). (Roy 58)
In this case, the name of Mammachi’s factory suggests that the postcolonial Indian condition is hybrid; both too much colonizer’s relevance and too much local relevance are forbidden. In Bhabha’s view, the postcolonial India condition is ambivalent:
The colonial presence is always ambivalent, split between its appearance as original and authoritative and its articulation as repetition and difference. It is a disjunction produced within the act of enunciation as a specifically colonial articulation of those two disproportionate sites of colonial discourse and power. (107)
Besides, I would like to talk about the twin, Estha and Rahel only focus on the sound of the English word and creates some words are hybrid while they are imitating/ learning the colonizer’s language, English. For example, “Prer NUN sea ayshun” instead of the English word, pronunciation. In Nandi’s view, “The twins undermine the authority and hegemony of the English language by using it as a source for their own creativity. They disregard the established meaning of English words” (Nandi 179). As Bhabha observes, “Hybridity . . . creates a crisis for any concept for authority based on a system of recognition: colonial specularity, doubly inscribed, does not produce a mirror where the self apprehends itself; it is always the split screen of the self and its doubling, the hybrid” (Bhabha 114).
What’s more, I would like to talk about the rebellion are risen by the subaltern people against the postcolonial Indian elites. Why does the caste system still exist in the postcolonial India? Why are the postcolonial Indian elites unwilling to abandon their local culture, the caste system? Why the subaltern people try to rise to rebellion against the elites? What are the result subaltern people expect for? I think the reason is the interests. The caste system ensures that the upper castes are rich, get the privileges, and have enough money to get the higher education from the colonizer’s country. After the postcolonial elites get the higher education, they will regard them superior than the other people. They will contempt, despise, and exploit even bully the poor people. But the caste system also guarantees to the misfortune for the lower castes and untouchable people. Unlike the elites, the subaltern people don’t have much money to get the higher education from the colonizer’s country; don’t have any chances to change their destiny. Hence the subaltern people must try to struggle against the symbolic system and the elites. There are three incidents about the rebellion are risen by the subaltern people. But I would like to utilize the definition on the ‘subaltern’ and ‘elite’ from one of the Subaltern Studies group, Ranajit Guha’s essay “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India” first. According to Guha, the term ‘subaltern’ means that “The demographic difference between the total Indian population and all those whom we have described as the ‘elite’. Some of these classes and groups such as the lesser rural gentry, impoverished landlords, rich peasants and upper- middle peasants” (Guha 44). In Guha’s view, the term ‘elite’ means:
Dominant groups, foreign as well as indigenous. . . . The dominant indigenous groups included classes and interests operating at two levels. At the all- India level, they included the biggest feudal magnates, the most important representatives of the industrial and mercantile bourgeoisie and native recruits to the uppermost levels of the bureaucracy. (44)
The first occurrence is the Orangedrink Lemondrink man. The twins, Estha and Rahel go to Abhilash Talkies and watch the film, Sound of Music with their grandaunt, Baby Kochamma, and their mother, Ammu even though they have watched this film many times. While they are watching the film, Sound of Music on the movie theater, suddenly a voice appears. It is the boy, Estha who is singing the English song. And his voice disturbs the audience twice. So Estha is required to leave the movie theater right now by his mother, Ammu. So Estha sings the English song in the Abhalash Talkies Princess Circle lobby. But unfortunately at that time there is a man who is sleeping behind the Refreshments Counter. The man, the Orangedrink Lemondrink man is disturbed and angry to Estha. The man requests Estha must buy a drink because he disturbs his nap. But Estha refuses and replies that ‘“No thank you,’ . . . ‘My family will be expecting me. And I’ve finished my pocket money” (Roy 102). And the Orangedrink Lemondrink man is angry and responses that ‘“Porketmunny?’ . . . ‘First English songs, and now Porketmunny！Where d’you live? On the moon” (Roy 102)? In my view, the Orangedrink Lemondrink man is very angry and jealous to Estha because he doesn’t have any chances to learn the colonizer’s language, English; doesn’t have any pocket money when he was a child. The Orangedrink Lemondrink man decides to ask a question to Estha where are you live? After the Orangedrink Lemondrink man knows the truth: Estha lives in Ayemenem and his grandmother owns Paradise Pickles & Preserves, he intends to treat a drink to Estha but Estha must tell something about his grandmother. The man lies to Estha to ask him to come behind the counter. Estha is naive so he tells to the Orangedrink Lemondrink man about the factory and the products from Paradise Pickles & Preserves in details. While Estha is drinking the Lemondrink, the man hands his phallus to Estha and forces Estha to masturbate him. After the masturbation, the Orangedrink Lemondrink man requires Estha must finish his drink. The Orangedrink Lemondrink man said that ‘“You mustn’t waste it.’ . . . ‘Think of all the poor people who have nothing to eat or drink. You’re a lucky rich boy, with porketmunny and a grandmother’s factory to inherit. You should Thank God that you have no worries. Now finish you drink” (Roy 105). In my own interpretation, it reveals that the subaltern people are suffered unlike the elite. It also shows the condition: the disparity between the rich people and the poor people in the postcolonial India. So the Orangedrink Lemondrink man forces Estha to hold his penis could regard as the rebellion against the postcolonial elite. Due to the English song Estha sing which disturbs the man’s rest time; this rebellion also suggests that the subaltern people opposes to the colonizer’s language and culture. Nandi argues that “The Orangedrink Lemondrink Man is what Julia Kristeva has termed ‘abject’ . . . The abject has to do with the disruption of systems, orders and morals and is therefore also connected with especially hideous crimes, such as, for instance, sexual abuse of children” (Nandi 183).
The second incident is the Marxist’s march. On their way to the Abhilash Talkies, there is a Marxist march takes place. Through her grandfather, Pappachi’s car, the Plymouth’s window, the girl Rahel sees her most beloved friend, the untouchable person, Velutha “marching with a red flag.” In that march, the marcher includes “party workers, students, and the labourers themselves. Touchables and Untouchables” (Roy 69). There are the marcher’s demands including the work hour for the paddy workers “from seven in the morning to six-thirty in the evening and permits to take a one-hour lunch break,’’ both the man and woman’s salaries must be increased, the Untouchables no longer be addressed by their caste names (Roy 69). According to Guha on his essay “The Prose of Counter- Insurgency,” the rebellion regards as:
A sort of reflex action, that is, as an instinctive and almost mindless response to physical suffering of one kind or another (e.g. hunger, torture, forced labour, etc.) or as a passive reaction to some initiative of his superordinate enemy. Either way insurgency is regarded as external to the peasant’s consciousness. (47)
In my own interpretation, rebellion could articulate as a chance to change the destiny of the subaltern people. No matter how the result is successful or not, through rising the rebellion, the subaltern people may make a voice and reveals how they are suffered in the society. Why they are angry? What they are longing for? In Roy’s story, she doesn’t tell us what is the result of this march. Is this march successful? Do the marchers get the result as their expectations? But Roy handles the subaltern person: the marcher harasses the postcolonial Indian elite, Baby Kochamma. Suddenly, the man with a flag turns his attention to Baby Kochamma and asks her name, but she doesn’t response. So the man tells other Marxist “She has no name. What about Modalali Mariakutty? . . . Modalali in Malayalam means landlord” (Roy 80). And then the man gives Baby kochamma his red flag and orders her to hold the red flag and wave the red flag. Even the man orders Baby Kochamma say the local language, Malayalam which Baby Kochamma hates. Baby Kochamma cannot but say the Malayalam “Inquilab Zindabad” as the man orders. In my view, this man’s harassment to Baby Kochamma is successful. It also reveals that the subaltern people would rather choose their local language, Malayalam than the colonizer’s language, English as a tool for opposing to the postcolonial Indian elites. The condition is very tricky because the postcolonial elites prefer to choose the colonizer’s language. In contrast to the postcolonial Indian elites, the subaltern people prefer to choose the local language.
The third transgression is the untouchable person, Velutha and the upper caste, Ammu’s forbidden love. When Ammu found Velutha with a red flag in the march, Ammu is impressed by his sexy body: “in a white shirt and mundu with angry veins in his neck. He never usually wore a shirt” (Roy 71). According to Strehle’s Transnational Women's Fiction: Unsettling Home And Homeland, Ammu is inspired by that march and determines to transgress the order of caste system:
For Ammu, this moment marks the beginning of interest, as Velutha brings his masculine anger to public and political action. He is recostumed for the march, in which differences of caste and class among party workers, students, and laborers are made invisible, thus suggesting altered conditions in which their union might be possible. (141)
Strehle argues that “Ammu chooses Velutha’s body as the focus for her rebellion against the order of her social world because, like her own body, his is heavily policed by Hindu caste proscriptions” (Strehle 142). Roy portrays Velutha’s love affair with Ammu in a romantic and sexual way. “Ammu, naked now, crouched over Velutha, her mouth on his. He drew her hair around them like a tent. . . His neck. His nipples. His chocolate stomach” (Roy 336). Strehle argues that “With the lovemaking between Ammu and Velutha, the text violates the very core of caste prohibitions, which erect rigid separations between polluting and upper caste bodies” (Strehle 152). But unfortunately, Ammu is locked into her room after Mammachi and Baby Kochamma hear about their forbidden love between Velutha and her from Velutha’s father, Vellya Paapen. Even Velutha’s love affair with Ammu results in the fact that Velutha must be responsible to Sophie Mol’s death. Although the rebellion: Velutha’s love affair with Ammu is failed, Roy writes “Tomorrow” at the end of this book to show her attitudes on the rebellion; that is Roy keeps the positive attitude toward Velutha’s love with Ammu. As Strehle says “If reciprocal passionate desire can be fulfilled between a woman of good family and an outcaste Paravan, the version of home/land protected in India for centuries crashes into dust. This hope speaks in the novel’s last word, “Tomorrow” (Strehle 152).
To sum up, the postcolonial Indian condition is uncertain and hybrid. In Bhabha’s view, there are double articulations between the colonizer’s culture and the indigenous, the Asian Indian culture in the postcolonial India. Due to the caste system is ingrained in the India, the subaltern people must try to struggle and transgress against the symbolic order. I would like to mention that Roy’s novel The God of Small Things not only makes the subaltern people could articulate through rising rebellions but also challenges the dominant position of English literature through writing and her creative narrative styles, such as fragmented phrases, repetition, temporal hybridity.
Works Cited
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Print.
G, Rajeev. “Arundati Rai’s The God of Small Things – A Post-
Colonial Reading.” The Indian Review of World Literature in English 7.2 (2011): 1-7. July 2011.Web. 10 Jun. 2013.(http://worldlitonline.net/arundhati-rai-s-the.pdf).
Guha Ranajit, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, eds. Selected Subaltern Studies. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. Print.
Nandi, Miriam. “Longing For The Lost (M)Other: Postcolonial Ambivalences In Arundhati Roy's The God Of Small Things.”Journal of Postcolonial Writing 46.2 (2010): 175-186. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 2 Jun. 2013.
Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. London: Harper Collins Publishers, 1997. Print.
Strehle, Susan. Transnational Women's Fiction: Unsettling Home and Homeland. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 5 Jun. 2013.
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