The Counter-Hegemonic Voice in Indian English Novel: Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things

Abstract

Dalit Women's humiliation, feeling of discrimination and protest appear in a vivid manner in Indian literature especially in the fictions which are social narratives of exclusion. Each and every day is a bane for the Dalit woman because of the social hierarchy and the notion of caste boundaries in her life for has to live in a submissive. For a Dalit women life is a struggle in the family and society because of gender and caste. Dalit women`s lives in all ways appear to be counter-hegemonic in their attempts to fight for social justice and human rights.

The researcher has attempted to analyze the caste consciousness of Arundhati Roy’s novel in terms of its overlapping effect on social system. Researcher’s concern remains to find out how the different structures have their bearing on the characters and their social responses. The study is based on the hypothesis that Arundhati Roy’s novel effectively depicts the caste consciousness of modern India.

The present study attempts to focus on Arundhati Roy’s novel in terms of their thematic and political concerns. In addition, the study investigates the relationship between the novel and the caste system. The purpose of the present study is to find out whether the caste system and human behavior can be explained in terms of the primary membership of human beings to various communities which are defined by caste, status, income, profession, gender and education.