International Journal of English and Literature (IJEL) ISSN 2249-6912 Vol. 3, Issue 1, Mar 2013, 63-68 TJPRC Pvt.

. Ltd.

SOCIETAL CONTEXTS IN THE WRITINGS OF ARUNDHATI ROY

JAYA DWIVEDI1 & SWARNITA SHARMA2
1

Assistant Professor, NIT, Raipur, Chattisgarh, India

2

Research Scholar, NIT, Raipur, Chattisgarh, India

ABSTRACT
Arundhati Roy the first women to win Booker prize, came into realm of literature in 1997 by her debut work The God of Small Things. Besides her novel, she has written many other essays and articles upon different social themes, but with similarities that in each new work the issue raised are for the people, of the people and to the people of India. In this paper we are trying to discuss the various societal issue raised by her, in her novel and other writings.

KEYWORDS: The God of Small Things, Social Themes, Societal Issue INTRODUCTION
Suzzana Arundhati Roy is the first Indian woman to win the Booker Prize. She came into the realm of literature in 1997. Born in Shilong, where her father was employed as a tea-planter, her early childhood was spent in a village, Ayemenem (Aymanam), a few kilometres from kottayam in central Kerala. The theme of her first and Booker Prize winning novel The God of Small Things, revolves around this village. Arundhatis life was full of struggle and sufferings. After a few years of her birth, her father, divorced his wife, therefore little Arundhati had to come back to Ayemenem with her mother. Her mother, Mary Roy, broke the tradition by marrying a Bengali and then divorcing him. She also made history by fighting for the provisions of the Christian Succession Act and in this connection, even went to the Supreme Court. The favourable ruling allowed an equal share with her siblings in her fathers property. Arundhati was thus the product of a broken home. The Ayemenem house was dominated by the traditional patriarchal clutches. The men in and around the house were conservative in their outlook. This phenomenon can be beautifully seen in the novel where Ammu, who represents her mother, Mary, who had to undergo many trials and tribulations in a suffocating patriarchal society. In Roys writing, we do not find either commitment to the earlier period or even amused narration of the trials of the middle class, trying to write on the post traditional outlook with fast emerging realities of modern India. Roy has stretched the English language in all direction. She is praised by Booker committee for her extraordinary linguistic inventiveness. She is a writer who has given a new meaning to the Indian writing in English. Besides her novel, she has written many other essays and articles upon different themes but with similarities that in each new work the issue raised are for the people, of the people and to the people of India. The God of Small Things has instinctive qualities of Indian Ethos, the narrative ,the plot, the theme and the characters unfold the web of Indian emotions, events, incidents, conflicts psychological probing, societal laws, political perspectives, history, caste distinction, gender determination and manipulation of love laws (who should be loved and how and how much), suffering and hypocrisy. In short, it is three dimensional picturization of the Indian society regarding this Ms. Roy says: A lot of the atmosphere in The God of Small Things is based on my experience of what it was like to grow up in Kerala [. . .] I grew up in very similar circumstances to the children in the book my mother was divorced1

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By the means of her characters she has tried her best in bringing out the social conditions of man and woman of different strata and has aptly and beautifully portrayed class antagonism, class exploitation; exposure of the ostentation and hypocrisy, Marxism, patriarchal domination and callous police administration; the problem of love laws, a forbidden relationship between a untouchable and touchable, and above all a highly debated theme of incestuous relation between the twins. As the treatment of the theme by the novelist is the three facet affair, a personal story slowly develops into a wider conflict in which are involved the individuals identity for supremacy and social demand. The personal story thus is used as a springboard to explore social change in India in all its complex manifestations. Untouchability, prevalent in India, is subtly underlined. It is to be noted that tabooed relation of Ammu with Velutha, an untouchable; doesnt sound shocking to a westernized urban sensibility, but a traditional caste mentality, particularly in India, is apt to be shocked by such transgression. Ammu challenges the love laws and establishes an illicit relation with Velutha an untouchable, who is another sufferer. He symbolically stands for The God of Small Things, he is an expert mechanic and craftsman, perhaps this is why Mammachi employs in her factory to do a carpenters work. But the workers employed in the factory are not happy to see Velutha as a carpenter. Velutha is also seen taking part in political activity and fighting for the cause of Marxism. The twins are very fond of him and are highly impressed by his craftsmanship. He, it appears is constructed as a type of noble untouchable. Ammu in her dream imagines him The God of Loss. but tragedy occurs when he longs to see the new world of wonder: In that brief moment, Velutha looked up and saw things that he had not seen before. Things that had been out of bounds so far, obscured by historys blinkers. Simple things. For instance he saw that Rahels mother was a woman. That she had deep dimples when she smiled [. . .] He saw too that he was not necessarily the only giver of gifts. That she had gifts to give him too2 Thus we see that Velutha, The God of Loss, takes no cognizance of social conventions and restrictions and thus comes in conflicts with history and tradition without any chance of success. On the other hand, Ammu who antagonizes her family by marginalizing herself socially is maltreated by the governing body of the family, when her nocturnal rendezvous with Velutha is discovered and the drowning of Sophie Mol was wrongly associated with her illicit affair and she is asked to leave the house. The impact of caste system can be felt even among the Christian community in India. Christians in India, join the Anglican Church to escape the scourge of untouchability. They are promised to be given food and money, perhaps this is the reason they are known as Rice Christian. later on, however, they realize that they had jumped from the frying pan into the fire, After Independence, they found no reservation or bank loans at low interest rates, because officially they are Christian and therefore casteless.3 Arundhati Roy in one of her interview says: Fiction for me has been a way of trying to make sense of the world as I knew it; it is located very close to me, this book. It is located in the village I grew up in. If I had to put very simply, it is about trying to make connection between the smallest of things and the biggest ones and to see how they fit together4 Thus, the central theme of The God of Small Things is the confrontation between The Big Man, the trees and the Small Man the shrubs In other words, the book shows maladjustment between The God of Big Things (Pappachi, Baby Kochamma, Mammachi, Chacko, Comrade Pillai and Inspector Thomas Methew) and The God of Small Things (Ammu, Velutha, Rahela, Estha Sophie Mol). It is to be noted here that the term tree and shrubs are highly suggestive. Both the trees and the shrubs contribute to nature. Trees are well protected and well fed. They can bravely face heavy rains, but the advantage of the shrubs is that they grow easily and without much care; but the trees in comparison need somewhat more

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care to grow, moreover they grow in specific climate. Thus, through this beautiful connotation the author has successfully tried to arouse our sense of pity and catharsis for the shrubs. The novel makes scathing attack on the patriarchal notion of touchable society, the high caste Hindu and their hypocrisy, ostentation and cruelty. It presents a realistic view of dalit and deserted; their tireless efforts to seek an Identity in an absolutely cruel and callous society. Roy adds another difference between human beings in the Indian society that is, the difference between the man and the woman by the means of her novel. She had shown how women are oppressed by the males, even of their own family. She portrays the social status of an Indian woman which is full of many ups and downs and the ifs and buts through the story of Ammu. Life offers little choice for a woman like Ammu who yearns for happiness. The narrator portrays a detailed picture of protagonists childhood to adolescence, to the experience of marriage, to a sympathetic and loving mother, to rebel wife who challenges the age old hypocritical moral stand of a patriarchal family. The story in the novel is not much different from the present condition prevailing in India. Even today, in some areas of India many parents pray to god to have a baby boy instead of a girl. Girl, if born, are concerned as a curse to the family and are treated badly and inhumanely by their relatives. They are forced to live under the will of a male. It can either be their father, brother or husband or anybody but not someone of their own choice, and if the woman revolts her future will be similar to Ammu, the protagonist of Roys novel. Lines by Shashi Deshpande suitably describe the condition of a woman which Arundhati Roy too imparts to her readers: As a child they had told me I must be obedient and unquestioning. As a girl they told me I must be meek and submissive. Why? I had asked, because you are a female you must accept everything, even defeat with grace because you are a girl they said. It is the only way, they said for a female to survive.5 The novel, thus symbolically gives a detailed picture of life and society in their cultural pattern. It shows transgression of rule in the worlds of small things, which make the life of the shrubs miserable and more sinned than sinned against. The novelist has boldly exposed the dark aspect of the patriarchal domination of a traditional society and it seems she has given her facet support to Shrubs struggle against what Leela Dubey holds the view, Superior seed can fall on an inferior field but an inferior seed cannot fall on a superior field.6 Arundhati Roy also point outs in her novel the Indian attraction towards the English culture, language and people, when she describes how her characters try to master the language and send there children to proper English colleges in Chennai. In that sense they are the living proofs of the success of Macaulays civilization mission. Further Chacko who long ago just managed to pass his exam at Balliol College of Oxford is praised by his family members as he has succeeded in marrying Margaret, an English girl, though his marriage was unsuccessful and the girl has deserted him. Besides her novel, Arundhati Roy has also authored numerous articles and essays on topics such as militarism, ecology, activism which have been appeared in publications worldwide. Of course Indianness peeps from her writings, the themes on which she writes, the characters she creates, and above all, the modification of the English language. Ms. Roy explores the politics of writing and the human and the environmental cost of development in power politics. Roy challenges the idea that only an expert can speak out on such matter as the privatizing of Indians power supply by Enron, and the construction of monumental dams in India which dislocates millions of people. Because of her vocal activism and criticism of the government, she has faced several legal challenges. Roys non-fictional works too are steeped in the present socio-political conditions of India. In her essays, she has thrown light upon current problems of India as in War in Peace. She has presented her worries about the terrorism spreading over in India and appeals to the political parties to stop encouraging the terrorists in these words:

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It is important for the Government and politicians to understand inexorably manipulating this huge raging human feeling for their own narrow purposes, may yield instant result but eventually and they have disastrous consequences.7 In her other essay titled, The Greater Common Good, she has put forward the topic of livelihood of the tribal community particularly, the tribal living in the edge of the Narmada Valley. She has accused the Government for their plan of building Sardar Sarovar Dam in Narmada Valley, without considering the people who have lived there for thousands of years. Ms. Roy also gives the description of Kashmir, of the morass of political venality and opportunism, the callous brutality of the security forces, of the osmotic intricate edge of a society saturated in violence. In Darkness passed, Arundhati Roy has written about the condition of the political parties prevailing in India, while commenting upon the two major political parties the Congress and BJP she says: We know that on every major issue beside overt Hindu nationalism, nuclear bombs, big dams and privatization the Congress and the BJP have no major ideological differences. We know the legacy of the Congress led us to the horror of the BJP still, we celebrate because surely darkness has passed or has it?8 She also writes about the misuse of POTA in these words: Under POTA regime, torture tends to replace investigation in our police station thats everything from people being forced to drink urine, to being stripped, humiliated, given electric shocks burned with cigarette butts and having iron rods put up into their anuses to being beaten till death. Under POTA you cannot get bail unless you can prove you are innocent.9 In Democracy, she describes communal rage between the Hindus and the Muslims. Last night a friend from Baroda, called weeping. It took her fifteen minutes to tell me what the matter was, it was not very complicated only that Sayeeda, a friend of hers, has been caught by a mob, that her stomach had been ripped open and stuffed with burning rags only that after she died some one curved OM on her forehead. Our prime minister justified this as apart of the retaliation by outraged Hindus against Muslims terrorists who burned alive 58 Hindu passengers on the Sabarmati express in Godhra.10 She not only describes this outrage, but also appeals to the people asking that in which Hindu scripture it is preached to kill people or in which particular words of Quran it is written that the people should roasted alive. In The End of Imagination, she speaks of the dangers of a nuclear bomb. She says, If there is a nuclear war our foes will not be China or Pakistan, our foe will be the earth herself. The very elements, the sky, the air, the land, the wind and water, will be terrible.11

CONCLUSIONS
We have discussed the Indian themes, characters, scenes, etc. Upon which Roy had written, in addition, we also find an Indian touch in her way of writing. Thus we can say that Indian-ness is the ink of Arundhati Roy. Although, in her writings she has covered a wide variety of the topics viz. American-Afghan war, the loneliness of Noam Chomsky, Nelson Mandelas life work, but primarily, she is an Indian writer, writing for and about the Indian problems, culture, society, climate, emotions and its relation with the world. Through her works Ms. Roy has not only presented the major social, political and cultural life of the Indians, Her works justify, The place where you born lives

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REFERENCES
1. 2. 3. 4. Roy Mary: 1997. October, 27. Issue cover story an interview to M.G. Radha Krishnan in India Today P.17. Roy Arundhati: 1997. April, 14. The God Small Things, Random House; India ink. P.176-77. Roy Arundhati: Ibid P.74. Roy Arundhati: 1997. October, 26. For me language is a skin on my thought, an Interview to Alice Wilber in The Week. P.46. 5. 6. Deshpande Shashi: 1983. Roots and Shadow, Bombay: Sangam Books; P.176. Dubey Leela: 1996. Caste and Women in M.N. shrinivas ed.caste; Its twentieth century avatar. New Delhi, Viking Penguin India. P.11. 7. 8. Roy Arundhati : 2004 may War in Peace, cited from www.outlookIndia.com/article.aspx?213547-1 Roy Arundhati: 2004.may,14 Darkness Passed cited from www.outlookIndia

.com/full.asp?fodname=20040514& fname=roy&side=1&pn=2 9. Roy Arundhati: 2004.may,14 Darkness Passed cited from www.outlookIndia

.com/full.asp?fodname=20040514& fname=roy&side=1&pn=2 10. Roy Arundhati: 2002. May, 27 Democracy (whos she, when shes at home). Cited from

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20020527&fname=column+Balbir+(F)&sid=1&pn=3 11. Roy Arundhati: 1998.August, 3 End of Imagination, cited from http://www.outlook India

.com.article.aspx?205932-1