The Shadowy Picture of Dalits: A Study of
Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things
Sahadev
Roy
State
Aided College Teacher
Department
of English
Dewanhat
Mahavidyalaya
Cooch
Behar, West Bengal, India
&
Ph.
D. Research Scholar
Department
of English
O.P.J.S.
University
Churu,
Rajasthan, India
Abstract:
The word Dalit was used for the first time by
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the framer of Indian constitution and a leader of the Dalit
Movement. As per the Anti–Untouchability Act of 1955, under Article 17 of the
Indian constitution “Untouchability” has been abolished but unfortunately it
still haunts and blackens the life of thousands of people in India. Arundhati
Roy in her “Booker Award” winning debut novel has focused her attention on this
issue too. The title itself speaks about the God of small things who is in fact
no one else but the paravan, ‘Velutha’ who suffers brutally because of the
ghastly evils of casteism. The novel also depicts the inhuman treatment meted
out to man-made Dalit ‘Ammu’. The story unfolds itself through the innocent but
all recording eyes of Rahel, one of the twins of Ammu and shatters us out of
our complacency to view the things as they actually stand. In this paper an attempt
has been made to analyse the deplorable condition of the untouchables and
man-made untouchables in the Indian Society.
Keywords: Dalit, Man-Made Dalit, Rice-Christians,
Paravan, Morality, Patriarchy
Arundhati Roy’s award winning highly stylized debut novel
The God of Small Things can be
analysed in different ways. Some critics find it post-colonial novel deeply
imbued with psychological analysis of its characters, some other term it as
autobiographical narration of author’s own story but above all this novel
serves as a vehicle to sensitize the people about the inexorable humiliation
and penury of Dalits. The story is a sensitive perception of innocent but all
recording eyes of Rahel, one of the twins of Ammu –the female protagonist of
the novel. However, the narrative, the plot, the theme and the characters, as
they unfold themselves represent an intricate knotting and knitting of many
emotions, events, incidents, conflicts, psychological probings, societal laws,
political perspectives, history, caste distinctions, gender discrimination,
arbitrary manipulations, love laws, hate, madness, joy, sex, incest, suffering,
pity, frustration, memories, dreams, hypocrisy, selfishness–all combating for
our sympathy with the furious energy of cats in a sack. We know from the
beginning that some tragic event has happened, yet we are not sure about it.
The story keeps on jumping from one event to another and the narrative keeps on
moving backward and forward in action but it is finally towards the end that we
come to know about what had actually happened.
In this paper an attempt has been made to analyse the
ghastly evil of casteism as it exists in the Indian society and devastates the
life not only of the untouchables but also of Man-Made untouchables. The story
line is not simple. The novel narrates the story of a high ranking government
officer, Pappachi, a sadist who enjoys beating his wife, of his submissive
docile and unprotesting wife Mammachi, who cries at his funeral not because she
loved him but because she was used to him, of his frustrated sister Baby
Kochamma, who has accepted the fate of a wretched Man-Less woman and thereby
lives her life backwards and Chacko. Chacko is an Oxford Rhodes Scholar and he
marries Margaret, an English woman, a representative of the colonizers, who divorces
him because she wanted space and his daughter fair skinned, blue- eyed Sophie
Mol, a true product of syncretism who also rejects her father. The story is
also a tragic tale of the have nots, Estha and Rahel-Ammu’s twins – a hybrid of
Bengali father and Syrian Christian mother and Velutha – a subaltern, a Dalit,
who dared to love her.
According to Mihir Desai the word Dalit means, “burst,
split, scattered, dispersed, broken, torn asunder, destroyed, crushed”. The
word was used for the first time by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the framer of Indian
constitution and also a renowned leader of Dalit movement. Though
untouchability has been abolished in India through Anti-Untouchability Act of
1955 but unfortunately it still haunts and blackens the life of thousands of
people in India.
Roy in her novel has faithfully revealed the miserable
plight of Velutha, the untouchable who dared to love Ammu, a Syrian Christian
by birth, but actually a social outcast, a Man-Made Dalit and has highlighted
the obnoxious consequences that they had to face for tampering “with the laws
that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much” (Roy, 31). Arundhati
Roy takes us back in History and we are informed that Syrian Christians of
Kerala are actually converts from higher castes, “by and large, the wealthy,
estate-owning feudal lords” (Roy, 66). Some of the untouchables also converted
to Christianity and joined Anglican Church but this conversion was just a false
paradise for them which brought separate Churches, separate services, separate
priests and a new name, “Rice-Christians”. Infact, nothing had changed. The
existing dichotomy between the upper caste and the untouchables was still
there. Kelan, Veutha’s grandfather was one of them. Now these were the days
when Paravans were not allowed into the house,
They were not allowed to touch anything that
touchables touched, Caste Hindus and Caste Christians … Paravans were expected
to crawl backwards with a broom, sweeping away their footprints so that
Brahmins or Syrian Christians would not defile themselves by accidently
stepping into a Paravan’s footprint. (Roy, 73-74)
Infact, the Paravans were forced, “to put their hands
over their mouth when they spoke, to divert their polluted breath away from
those whom they addressed” (Roy, 74). In a deeper sense, untouchability is not
only restricted in not touching a person, but it has moved deeper into the
psychology of the people of higher castes. Thus we find Kochu Maria, the high
caste cook of the family adorning herself with thick gold Kunukku earrings so
that the people may believe, “that despite her petty cook’s job (seventy five
rupees a month), she was a Syrian Christian, Mar Thomite? Not a Pelaya, or a
Pulaya, or a Paravan. But a touchable, upper caste Christian (into whom
Christianity had seeped like tea from a tea bag) (Roy, 170).
Vellya Paapen, father of Velutha is referred to as an,
“Öld world Paravan” by the novelist, who is full of gratitude towards the Ipe
family because Reverend E-John Ipe had given him the land on which his hut
stands and Mammachi, the generous one has “organized and paid for his glass
eye” when he had lost it in an accident. His elder son Kuttapen is uneducated
and has been paralysed from chest downwards because of an accident. Kuttapen is
infact a “good , safe , Paravan” because his physical immobility has paralysed
his mind too, where entry of progress and new ideas is prohibited. But Velutha,
the younger son of Vellaya is a non-conformist. Thus, his own father is
critical of his behaviour,
Perhaps it was just a lack of hesitation. An
unwarranted assurance. In the way he walked. The quiet way he offered
suggestions without being asked. Or the quiet way in which he disregarded
suggestions without appearing to rebel. (Roy, 76)
Even the Touchable factory workers of Paradise Pickles
and Preserves hate his rehiring in the factory. Velutha also joins
Travancore-Cochin Marxist Labour Union and participates in its procession with
a red flag in his hand and here he is recognized by Rahel, though Ammu and Estha
express strong doubts about his presence probably because of the presence of
Mammachi and Chacko. This event, though it seems to be a minor one, plays a
significant role in shaping the destiny of Ammu and her twins and Velutha.
Ammu virtually an “untouchable” of the family suffers
from no pangs of conscience in falling for another untouchable of the society.
She breaks down age old conventions of morality and takes on a lover who
exposes her to her inner soul. Besides this, Velutha is the only one who is
affectionate towards her twins – Estha and Rahel. Thus forbidden relationship
becomes the only way to achieve selfhood for the oppressed marginalized and
defense less people. However, “Superior seed can fall on an inferior field, an
inferior seed cannot fall on a superior field” (Dube, 11). So, the
transgressors are made to pay heavily for breaking down age old love laws which
laid down that “who is to be loved and how.”
Chakravati has aptly described the situation,
When the lower caste man dares to fall in love or
enter into relationship, or elope with and marry a higher caste woman, he is …
subject to the collective power of the upper castes who will stop at nothing to
punish the transgression ... since a woman’s sexuality is still under
patriarchal and caste control… these killings have the explicit consent of
community, especially that to which the woman belongs. (qtd in Chakravarti,157)
Now, the irony of the situation is that this rendezvous
has been witnessed by none other than Velutha’s father Vellya Pappen and so
much so is his guilt for his untouchable son having touched Ammu that he feels
that it is the beginning of the end of the world. He goes to Mammachi and
returns her his sticky glass eye. “He said he did not deserve it and wanted her
to have it back” (Roy, 254).
He stared straight ahead with his mortgaged eye. He
wept with his own one. One cheek glistened with tears. The other stayed dry…He
trembled his own body like a man with malaria. Vellya Paapan told Mammachi what
he had seen. He asked God’s forgiveness for having spawned a Monster. He
offered to kill his son with his own hands. To destroy what he had created.
(Roy, 77)
Now again duplicity of the society is revealed when
Mammachi who had willingly conceded to her son’s “Man’s Needs” and infact, she
had even paid the objects of his need because, “a fee clarified things” is
totally disgusted by her daughter’s illicit relationship. Baby Kochamma comes
very close to vomiting when she comments. “How could she stand the small
haven’t you noticed? They have a particular smell these paravans” (Roy, 257).
Now, the Patriarchy must punish both the woman who has,
“defiled generations of breeding” (Roy, 258) and the Paravan who has
transgressed into the forbidden territory. The defenders of the society must do
something to, “inoculate a community against an outbreak”. Thereby a conspiracy
is hatched and not only the police, the communist leader but the twins are also
made a partner to it. Thus, Velutha’s excruciating ordeal as a Dalit begins and
ends with his death.
Blood spilled from his skull like a secret. His
face was swollen and his head looked like a pumpkin, too large and heavy for
the slender stem it grew from. A pumpkin with a monstrous upside down smile.
Police boots stepped back from the rim of a pool of urine spreading from him,
the bright bare electric bulb reflected in it.” (Roy, 319-20)
However Ammu’s punishment is not yet over. Chacko - her
brother the patriarch of the family takes no time in informing her, “what is
your is mine and what is mine is also mine” (Roy, 57).
And further still, “Get out of my house before I break
every bone in your body” (Roy, 255). Ammu is parted from her twins and damned
as a whore dies all alone in a dilapidated hotel at a viable-die-able age of
thirty one surrounded by no one else but her own fears. Church burial is denied
to her and therefore, she had to be cremated at the Electric crematorium “where
nobody except beggars, derelicts and the police custody dead are cremated” and
she is reduced to Receipt No-Q498673. As for the twins their life is ruined
forever. The brutal murder of Velutha,
… left behind a hole in the Universe through which
darkness poured like liquid tar. Through which their mother followed without
even turning to wave goodbye. She left them behind, spinning in the dark, with
no moorings, in a place with no foundation. (Roy, 191-92)
Estha who was forced to falsely implicate Velutha in
charges of abduction – stopped speaking while Rahel could never find conjugal
bliss.
Thus we can conclude by saying that in this novel
Arundhati Roy has realistically portrayed the scenario that is faced by the
untouchables and the Man- Made untouchables in the Indian society. Laws have
been passed and claims are made that untouchability has been abolished but its
threads are so intricately woven in the Indian Psyche that it will take years
before its actual eradication from Indian society.
Work Cited
Chakravarti, Uma. Gendering Caste:
Through a Feminist Lens. Stree, 2006.
Dube Leela. “Caste and Woman,” Caste:
Its twentieth Avtar, edited by M. N. Srinivas. Viking Penguin India, 1996.
Juneja O.P. Post-Colonial Novel:
Narrative of Colonial Consciousness. Creative, 1995.
Nubile, Clara. The Danger of
Gender. Sarup, 2003.
Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things.
Penguin Books, 1997.