Confrontations with Neo-Colonialism in Indian English Novels of the 90s:

Gurcharan Das, Rohinton Mistry and Arundhati Roy.

in the anthology Postcolonial Approaches to Literature: Text, Context, Theory edited by Subashish
Bhattacharjee, Saikat Guha and Mandika Sinha, North Bengal University, AuthorsPress, New Delhi,
2015, pp.228 - 243. ISBN: 978-93-5207-118-0

- Dr. Rositta Joseph Valiyamattam,

Assistant Professor (English),

GITAM Institute of Management,

GITAM University, Visakhapatnam.

Neo-colonialism and India -

Neocolonialism refers to the use of capitalism, business globalization and cultural imperialism
by the formerly colonizer countries of the developed world to economically exploit the once
colonized developing nations. In his seminal book Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of
Imperialism (1965), Kwame Nkrumah, former President of Ghana, wrote:

“In place of colonialism, as the main instrument of imperialism, we

have today neo-colonialism . . . [which] like colonialism, is an
attempt to export the social conflicts of the capitalist countries. . .
The result of neo-colonialism is that foreign capital is used for the
exploitation rather than for the development of the less developed
parts of the world. Investment, under neo-colonialism, increases,
rather than decreases, the gap between the rich and the poor
countries of the world. The struggle against neo-colonialism is not
aimed at excluding the capital of the developed world from
operating in less developed countries. It is aimed at preventing the
financial power of the developed countries being used in such a
way as to impoverish the less developed” (Nkrumah, from the
Introduction).

Independence symbolized the liberation of India from the pro-colonial capitalist order.
However, the optimism was replaced by disillusionment as the expected socio-economic
freedoms failed to materialize, chiefly due to the neo-colonial policies of the corrupt ruling elite.
Plutocracy, rising levels of political mobilization and the vast gap between the commitments and
the capabilities of the state, have resulted in conflict between state sovereignty and popular
sovereignty.

Neo-colonialism and the Indian English novel -

The Indian English novel originated against the backdrop of British colonial rule and the
nineteenth century Indian Renaissance. Like most post-colonial writing it focused on the
nationalistic resistance to colonialism. However, as Carlo Coppola observes,

“Post-independence literature, especially fiction, was forced to

account for a perplexing reality. On the one hand freedom had
been won...... But on the other hand, writers and intellectuals
generally felt that the only change effected by independence was
the change in the colour of the exploiters’ skin. Writers varied
widely in their reactions” (Coppola 3).
To this date, Indian English novels continue to reflect how colonialism continues even after
formal independence, pitting ordinary citizens against a capitalist global economy which favours
the wealthy and the powerful.

Indian English Novels of the 90s: Dismantling the Neo-colonial discourse -

The 50s and 60s were the years of glorious nation-building despite wars with Pakistan and
China. The 70s and 80s saw political and economic crises culminating in the infamous
Emergency. Though India had gained self-sufficiency through the Green Revolution, the
domination by the neo-colonial capitalist world order run by the U.S. and Europe through the
World Bank, WTO and IMF, led to a fatal economic breakdown by 1990.

The post-1990 era is a turning point in Indian history, marked by globalization. Though
economic liberalization bailed India out of the financial morass, along with new opportunities
came new concerns. The massive economic divides and the post-modern culture shock,
alienation and existential crisis that western culture ushered in, ensured that India would never
remain the same again. Perhaps anxiety about the real perils posed by the continuance of neo-
colonialism in new avatars has never been as acute as in the post-90 era.

Post-1990 Indian English novels deserve greater analysis both for foregrounding the Indian
experience on the global stage, and attempting to rewrite post-independence history from the
viewpoint of the marginalised. These novels, according to Prof. Viney Kirpal, narrate sagas of
men and women, families and communities against the backdrop of political power-struggles,
casteism and communalism, extremist and secessionist movements, criminalization of politics,
corporate globalization and so on. They continue shocking linguistic experiments and defiance of
conventional history, focussing on multiple views, fragmented identities and social pariahs.
There is an impulse to deconstruct national history from different perspectives and liberate it
from imperialist discourses (Kirpal 56-62). During this period, while new novelists like
Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai, Manju Kapur, Allan Sealy, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Jhumpa
Lahiri, Manjula Padmanabhan, Chetan Bhagat, Aravind Adiga and others rose to international
acclaim, older novelists like Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande, Githa Hariharan,
Amit Chaudhari, Amitav Ghosh, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Vikram Seth, Vikram Chandra, Gita
Mehta earned fresh honours.

Gurcharan Das, Rohinton Mistry and Arundhati Roy -

The three remarkable texts selected for this study present a comprehensive picture of how the
novels of the nineties strike a powerful blow at the neo-colonial discourse. Famous thinker and
management guru Gurcharan Das’ A Fine Family (1990) chronicles the parallel lives of a
middle-class family and a young nation from 1947 to the 1970s. In acclaimed novelist Rohinton
Mistry’s novel A Fine Balance (1995), the Western models of urbanization and industrialization
adopted by the State in the 1960s, the dark years of the Emergency and the eighties directly
shape the lives of the underprivileged central characters. Booker Prize winning novelist and
social activist Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997) covers the period from the 60s
to the 90s. It focuses on the impact of Communist politics, feudalism and casteism on the
underprivileged and dwells upon the perils of indiscriminate globalization.

Gurcharan Das’ A Fine Family -

 Gurcharan Das’ A Fine Family narrates the struggle of India’s urban middle class from 1942
to 1983, to build a new future in difficult circumstances. The novel opens with Lala Dewan
Chand Varma alias Bauji, the eminent lawyer and charismatic patriarch of Lyallpur, and his
Punjabi joint family. Gandhi’s 1942 Quit India movement and Jinnah’s communal antagonisms
make him anxious. Though he wants the British to leave, he dreads a divided nation when the
colonial structure crumbles. By July 1947, Bauji rages at irrational leaders ordering him to
suddenly relinquish his native soil, wealth, and ties of generations to march to an alien land:

“ ‘I spit on all of you- Mountbatten, Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah. If

this is the price of freedom, I don’t want it.... Mountbatten dreams
of glory...of giving birth to two nations...Gandhi and Nehru dream
of winning freedom from the most powerful empire on the
earth...by peaceful means. Jinnah dreams of being the father...of
Pakistan.’ He wished there were more practical men in politics.
They would think like him, and look to the needs of ordinary
people.... It was the insanity of men acting in the name of higher
principles which he found hard to stomach.”(FF p.95,96)

Independence comes as a fatal blow to Bauji’s family. Their long journey from Pakistan to India
is a hellish nightmare. Bauji is shot and his youngest daughter is killed. Nevertheless, Bauji
bravely salvages his life and contributes to nation-building.

The novelist incorporates into mainstream history, the hitherto invisible middle class,
disillusioned by power-hungry Britishers, impractical native leaders and religious
fundamentalists. Gurcharan Das delineates the Anglicisation of Indians and their post-colonial
dilemma. Bauji struggles to balance the psychological scars of racism with faith in British
justice. A Manchester towel reminds him that Indians, used to being ruled by alien races, would
have to re-learn the art of self-rule. Bauji is a ‘mimic man’ who both contradicts and reinforces
colonial authority. During Partition, he becomes the ‘exile’, emblematic of the violent re-shaping
of human identities by colonialism, in this case, the single largest population shift in history.

Part Two of the novel delineates the phoenix-like rise of the Indian citizen. The 1950s and
1960s are narrated largely from the perspective of the usually subaltern female citizen embodied
in Tara, heir of her father Bauji’s resilience. Tara settled in Simla, seeks solace in Nehru’s
dreams of democracy, socialism and secularism. On his visit to Simla during the Indo-China
conflict of 1962, Bauji is enraged by the hero-worship and hypocrisy surrounding politicians and
bureaucrats –

“He was amused with the thought that when it came to power it
was remarkable how easily Indians had slipped into British shoes...
They must be secretly happy...that Gandhi was not around to spoil
things...”( FF p.200)

Simla, frozen in time, stands as a reminder of colonial life and architecture. Affluent lifestyles
continue in a nation struggling with hunger and war. While high society discusses the China war
in glittering ball-rooms, the man on the street and the ill-equipped soldiers remain insecure.

Part Three of the novel belongs to Bauji’s grandson Arjun, a socially conscious entrepreneur
in Bombay. During the Emergency, he acts in the larger public good, refusing to submit to
Congress gangsters. He is arrested and endures months of mental and physical torture. Post-
Emergency, Arjun takes to philanthrophic business activities, striking a blow at state
imperialism.

Bombay symbolizes the anti-colonial spirit of a new generation. Here, a truly cosmopolitan
India emerges, where no class, religion or caste is greater than progress. Anglicised Indians lose
their clout amid talented and vibrant youth. The Green Revolution and industrial progress
empower farmers and the middle class. But, Das also contrasts government corruption with civil
society initiative:

‘The taste of democracy becomes bitter … when the fullness of

democracy is denied; when the weak do not have the same
opportunity as the strong.’ (FF p.325)

A Fine Family is Gurcharan Das’ tribute to the sacrificing, secular, educated middle class who
shaped modern India. As Arjun muses:

“...There was little hope from the rulers.... Hope lay in the private
individual, who was liberal and educated, reaching out to the silent
and the suffering, and showing through his example how the
liberal institutions could work.”( FF p.346)
Bauji’s fine family proves that after centuries of slavery, Indians are finally ready to create their
own destiny.

Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance (1996) –

Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance narrates the lives of four citizens during the Emergency.
Mistry’s novels are

“powerful accounts of a ceaseless struggle for survival of the

marginal, the dispossessed, and the poor, pitted against a ruthless,
annihilating nation-state. They are scathing indictments of Indian
politics of the 70’s...” (Chakrabarti and Ganguly 55).
Forty-two year old Dina Dalal is the central figure of A Fine Balance, which opens in Bombay in
1975. This Parsi widow earns her living by tailoring and employs two tailors, Ishvar and Om, to
assist her. She takes in college-student Maneck Kolah as paying guest. Though cheated by life
always, hers is the never-say-die attitude of Bombay. On the day the Emergency is declared,
Dina starts a small business venture. The harsh laws enacted daily, push her to bankruptcy. She
finds solace in the warm bonds with Ishvar, Om and Maneck. When government repression
reaches its peak, they take refuge in Dina’s tiny flat. The prevailing lawlessness encourages
Dina’s landlord to harass them. The tailors victimised by the family planning scam, return
months later as mutilated beggars, while Maneck is forced to earn a living in the Gulf. Dina is
thrown out of her flat. On the other hand, ruthless capitalists like Dina’s brother Nusswan and
her employer Mrs. Gupta support the elimination of the poor and the jailing of trade unionists.

The second strand of the plot is constituted by Dina Dalal’s tailors. Ishvar Darji, the forty-six
year old dalit tailor, reaches Bombay with his seventeen year old nephew Omprakash, to escape
poverty and upper caste tyranny. The harsh Emergency laws send their lives into a rapid
downward spiral whether it is the sudden razing of their slum or being forced into bonded labour.
Back in their town, they are confronted by their old enemy, the upper-caste landlord Thakur
Dharamsi, who is now a top Congress leader and makes a huge profit out of his Family Planning
Centre. The tailors, along with hundreds of villagers, are forcibly sterilised. The Thakur forces
doctors to castrate Om. Ishvar loses his legs to gross medical negligence.

The third strand of the novel centres on Dina’s paying guest, Maneck Kolah. The idyllic life of
Maneck's family, in the northern mountains, is destroyed by politicians and multi-national firms.
The hills are denuded of forest cover; poverty and slums follow. Aggressive competition by giant
companies destroys their small family business. Maneck’s landing in Bombay coincides with the
Emergency. The reign of terror gags academicians and Maneck’s college campus becomes a
haven for political gang-wars. He has to contend with the sufferings and political murders of his
friends. The national turmoil forces Maneck's parents to send him to work in the Gulf. Rootless
and alienated, Maneck returns to India in 1984, days after the assassination of Premier Mrs.
Gandhi. He is caught up in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Upon visiting Bombay, the pathetic state of
Dina and the sight of the tailors as beggar, leads him to suicide.

Rohinton Mistry offers an insider's view of the administrative failure views the Emergency
through the eyes of the least citizens most affected by government decisions:

'... judgement has fled to brutish beasts... leaders have exchanged

wisdom and good governance for cowardice and self-
aggrandizement. ...the highest court...turns the Prime Minister's
guilt into innocence. ...things falling apart, centre not holding,
anarchy loosed upon the world...' (FB p.561-566)
Even after the Emergency is lifted, the masses suffer. The country is mired in insurgency
and separatism. Rajiv Gandhi takes over as Prime Minister in an India beset with massive
economic disparities.

The novel also depicts a nation chained by the caste system, through the story of the low caste
tailors Ishvar and Om. Hope is offered to the dalits by the Gandhian movement, but after
independence, the landlords, politicians, bureaucrats and police oppress them. The family of the
tailors is decimated for abandoning their traditional occupation and demanding voting rights.
 Mistry demonstrates how the 70s and 80s ushered in pro-corporate policies, wiping out small
entrepreneurs. The slums reveal the dark side of glamorous Bombay. In Maneck Kolah’s native
northern region, flawed policies and vote-bank politics destroys the ecosystem –

“..the mountains began to leave them. It started with roads....wide

and heavy duty, to replace scenic mountain paths too narrow for
the broad vision of nation-builders and World Bank
officials.....they condemned the flawed development policy, the
short-sightedness, the greed that was sacrificing the country’s
natural beauty to the demon of progress.” (FB p.215)

A Fine Balance reveals deep doubts about Indian democracy. In the seventies, pressures of
development and globalization led to centralization of political authority, decline of democratic
institutions and separation of the state from ethics. Mistry attempts to infuse humanity and
responsibility into governance. He ends with a tribute to the resilience of Dina Dalal and her
tailors, thus expressing and eulogizing the subaltern.

Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997) –

Arundhati Roy’s life and writing dissects the underbelly of democracy and progress in India.
She declares war on capitalist hegemonies which monopolise democracy. She fights for the
exploited peasantry, oppressed castes, tribals and masses dispossessed by multinational
corporations, dams and nuclear projects, and for those turning to Maoist insurgency to fight the
unjust system. She refused the Sahitya Akademi Award in protest against the policies of the
Indian government on big dams, nuclear weapons and economic neoliberalism.

The God of Small Things, set in Kerala of the sixties and seventies, is the tragic tale of Ammu,
a Syrian Christian divorcee (the mother of twin children Estha and Rahel), and, Velutha, an
untouchable, who commit the unforgivable sin of falling in love across the caste divide. The
novel offers a sensitive account of the intervention of unjust societal and religious traditions and
opportunistic political and police machineries in the private lives of the victimised protagonists
Ammu, Estha, Rahel and Velutha.
 Ammu, the daughter of Pappachi and Mammachi of Ayemenem House, escapes from her
chauvinistic and abusive father in Kerala, only to marry an alcoholic Bengali tea-estate manager.
When he asks her to satisfy the lust of his boss to save his job, twenty-three year old Ammu
walks out with her three year old twins. She returns unwelcomed to her home where she has
always been discriminated against. Ammu finds her soul-mate in her childhood friend, the
untouchable servant Velutha. Ammu is punished when her affair is exposed. Her lover is falsely
implicated and killed in police custody. Her family separates her beloved twins from her. She
bravely strives to earn a living so that she might live with her children. Broken-hearted and
stricken with asthma, she dies destitute and lonely, at thirty-one. The Church refuses to bury her.

Young, handsome and untouchable Velutha has a high school education and is a highly skilled
carpenter. Being a bold member of the Communist party, Velutha is generally seen as a threat. He
takes the enormous risk of reciprocating the love of an upper caste woman. Comrade Pillai, the
local Communist leader uses the chance to eliminate this rising star. The defenceless man is
brutally tortured to death in police custody. In his conscious subversion of the social order, his
moral courage and dignity, his non-violent approach and preparedness to face the consequences
of his actions, Velutha almost becomes a revolutionary.

Estha and Rahel-brother and sister, children of Ammu have a traumatic childhood, despised for
being the offspring of a broken, inter-religious marriage. Wrongly blamed for their cousin
Sophie’s death, they are told that if they do not testify against Velutha, Ammu would be jailed on
the charge of killing Sophie. Velutha's death leaves them with eternal pain and guilt. They are
separated from each other and from Ammu. While Estha ends up as a half-insane youth, Rahel
witnesses her mother’s pathetic death and ends up as a divorcee. The return of the twins to
Ayemenem House after long years is Arundhati Roy’s means of commenting on free yet neo-
colonial India. Their self-alienation and empty silence is symbolic of the oppressed:

‘...in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various
kind of despair competed for primacy.... In the country that she
came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror
of peace, Worse Things kept happening.’(GOST p.19)

Arundhati Roy satirises the self-contradictory Communist rule in Kerala which eventually
compromised more with the conventional framework of caste, society and state rather than
challenging it. The party is unable to resist corruption and offer stable administration. In North
Kerala class-based killings begin. The demands of the proletariat reflect the deep inequalities -

“...that paddy workers, who were made to work...for eleven and a

half hours a day...be permitted to take a one-hour lunch
break...women’s wages be increased from one rupee twenty-five
paisa a day, to three rupees, and men’s from two rupees fifty paisa
to four rupees fifty paisa a day. ...that Untouchables no longer be
addressed by their caste names.” (GOST p. 69)

Later, at Cochin railway station, the situation remains the same -

“Grey in the stationlight. Hollow people. Homeless. Hungry. Still

touched by last year’s famine. Their revolution postponed for the
Time Being by Comrade E.M.S.Namboodiripad (Soviet Stooge,
Running Dog). The former apple of Peking’s eye.” (GOST p.301)

The reactions of the capitalists are equally suggestive -

“Cardamom Kings, Coffee Counts and Rubber Barons...came

down from...far-flung estates...raised their glasses...sniggered to
hide their rising panic.” (GOST p. 69)

In the sixties and seventies, development in Kerala is held hostage to Communist-Capitalist

conflicts. Poverty and unemployment necessitate large-scale migration to Gulf or Western
countries.

The novelist uses Ayemenem to represent the Indian village of the 1960s and 1970s. Behind
the facade of pastoral innocence exists a complex system operated by politicians, police and
landlords who twist the laws to exploit the poor. John Updike writes,

“Treading Roy’s maze, we learn a great deal about

India.....Occidental readers who imagined that untouchability was
banished by Mahatma Gandhi will find the caste onus cruelly
operative in 1969...” (Updike 156, 158).
All the same, Velutha's character signals an inner awakening among suppressed Dalits. It is
interesting to note that, in the late 1960s and early 1970s during which the novel is set, there was
a remarkable explosion of Dalit movements and Dalit literature all over India.

The novelist boldly handles gender issues. In the rural patriarchal order, irrespective of class,
caste or religion, the position of a daughter remains the same. Arundhati Roy's heroine Ammu
epitomises the modern, educated, independent, rebellious feminine. The emancipatory Hindu
Code Bill of 1954 has no impact on Ammu’s life for she gets neither compensation from her ex-
husband nor a share in her family property. Ammu’s capitalist brother Chacko’s exploitation of
needy women is reminiscent of the relationship between white colonisers and native women.
Even the Marxist apostle of equality Comrade Pillai treats his wife as a superior servant. The
police publicly shave and brand so-called ‘prostitutes’. The Kathakali dancers in Ayemenem
temple too beat their wives.

The novel opens in the 1990s when the grown-up twins return to Kerala. By the 1990s, neo-
colonial capitalism invades Kerala and the result is skewed development, unhealthy urbanization,
profit-driven industrial and farming practices, ecological disaster and dependence on World Bank
loans. In the era of Western corporate globalisation, the ruling class facilitates the opportunistic
union of Communism and Capitalism. Ayemenem becomes an overpopulated, unplanned town,
without order or security. The first casualty is the precious ecosystem. The Meenachal river is
reduced to a drain choked with industrial waste, by a dam built in return for votes from the
influential paddy-farmer lobby. The second casualty is cultural heritage. Corporates exploit poor
natives and market the landscape in glossy tourist brochures. Ancestral villas are changed into
‘heritage’ hotels where rich tourists can play with ‘toy’ versions of history. The once revered
Kathakali performers now face starvation unless they offer truncated performances for tourists
with short-attention spans.

Finally, The God of Small Things also deals with several post-colonial dilemmas. There are
Anglophiles like Ammu’s cruel father Pappachi, a former Raj official and her Oxford-educated
brother Chacko. Chacko sums up the dilemma of the colonised when he says,

“...our minds have been invaded by a war...that we have won and

lost. The very worst sort of war...made us adore our conquerors
and despise ourselves.” (GOST p. 53)
The character of Ammu challenges the colonial representation of the average third-world woman
as ignorant and tradition-bound. She displays the independence ascribed exclusively to the
western woman. While the entire family prostrates before Chacko’s English ex-wife and
daughter, the sharp retorts of Ammu reveal her anti-racism. At the Cochin airport, the emigrants
reflect the pathos of the third world. Foreign exchange from Gulf countries, pumped in by NRIs,
deepens the social divide. Rahel’s stay in New York reveals the agony of the downtrodden in
both developed and developing worlds.

As Subhadra Bhaskaran writes,

“the novel brings out vividly the ex-colonial society’s inability to

make a complete break from its colonial past and fight against the
forces of imperialism persisting in the contemporary times”
(Bhaskaran 108).
According to Lata Marina Varghese, Arundhati Roy dismantles the imperial centre by seizing its
language and replacing it with a discourse fully adapted to the colonized place, and secondly, by
privileging the marginalised and moving them from periphery to centre (Varghese 12-21).

Summing Up-

In the final analysis, all the selected novelists try to grasp the grand narrative of India with
empathy, honesty and precision. There is rage and despair with regard to the ruling elite who are
agents of capitalist imperialism and admiration for the masses whose willpower challenges
uncontrolled powers. They advocate an inclusive nation-state with a strong moral core. They
seek to deconstruct neo-colonial power structures, to canonize and offer strategies of resistance,
of seeking justice, to the subaltern. As Arundhati Roy puts it,
"...I believe that in the coming years, intellectuals and artists will
be called upon to take sides, and this time, unlike the struggle for
Independence, we won’t have the luxury of fighting a ‘colonising
enemy’. We’ll be fighting ourselves. We will be forced to ask
ourselves some very uncomfortable questions about our values and
traditions, our vision for the future, our responsibilities as citizens,
the legitimacy of our ‘democratic institutions’, the role of the state,
the police, the army, the judiciary and the intellectual community”
(Roy 197-198).
 Works Cited -

Bhaskaran, Subhadra."Transgressions and Betrayals : An Exposition of The God of Small Things".

The Literary Half-Yearly. 41, 42.1 & 2. (Jan., July 2000 & 2001): 108-122
Chakrabarti, Paromita and Swati Ganguly. " 'Unreal City': Mistry's Grotesque Imagination".
Rohinton Mistry: An Anthology of Recent Criticism. Ed. Anjali Gera Roy and Meena T.
Pillai. Delhi: Pencraft International, 2007. 55-74.
Coppola, Carlo. "Politics and the Novel in India: A Perspective." Politics and the Novel in India.
Ed. Yogendra K. Malik. 1975. New Delhi: Orient Longman Limited, 1978. Contributions
to Asian Studies, Vol. VI. 1-5.
Das, Gurcharan. A Fine Family (FF). New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 1990. (All textual
quotations are from this edition).
Kirpal,Viney. “The Indian English Novel of the 1990s.” Indian Writing in English: The Last
Decade. Ed. Rajul Bhargava. Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 2002. 55-63.
Mistry, Rohinton. A Fine Balance (FB). 1996. London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 2006. (All textual
quotations are from this edition).
Nkrumah, Kwame. “Introduction”. Neo-Colonialism, The Last Stage of Imperialism. London:
Thomas Nelson & Sons, Ltd., 1965.
Roy, Arundhati. The Algebra Of Infinite Justice. 2001. Rev.ed. New Delhi: Penguin Books India,
2002. 197-198.
Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things (GOST). 1997. New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2002.
(All textual quotations are from this edition).
Updike, John."Mother Tongues: Subduing the language of the colonizer." Rev. of The God of
Small Things, by Arundhati Roy. New Yorker. (June 23-30, 1997): 156-159.
Varghese, Lata Marina." Dismantling The Centre: A Reversal In The Centre-Periphery Paradigm
In Arundhati Roy's The God Of Small Things And Aamir Khan's Lagaan." Indian Journal
of Postcolonial Literatures. 5. (Jan.-Dec. 2003): 12-21.