The Subaltern Voice in Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things”: A Postcolonial approach

Abstract

Abstract: The paper posits the presence of a prominent ‘subaltern’ voice in Arundhati Roy’s novel “The God of Small Things’ through the powerful characters of the double colonized Ammu and the ruthlessly Othered Velutha . It also attempts to demonstrate how a specific discourse with a history of colonization, patriarchy and religious instability, is responsible for the formation of many postcolonial attitudes : the most important being the hybridization of contentious social groups ( as seen in the example of Ammu and Velutha) which further triggers the condition of colonial desire through the blurring of social and cultural boundaries between the lovers and finally culminates into a unified and soaring subaltern voice : the voice of the marginal group. The paper, therefore, suggests a postcolonial reading of ‘The God of Small Things’ through exploring the concepts of Double Colonization, Hybridization and Colonial Desire as put forward by Homi K. Bhabha and Robert J.C. Young.