Arundhati Roy, the world-renowned novelist and political essayist from India, is a dominant voice against injustice perpetrated against the marginalized in the country. For her, the marginalization of women is part of a process through which social oppression is unleashed upon the weak. Roy got the prestigious Booker prize for her debut novel, The God of Small Things. The fiction brought out the unjust politics of caste and gender discrimination inherent in an orthodox society. However, after her first fiction, Roy shifted gear to non-fictions that she continued to write for almost two decades. Roy got engaged in more serious political debates and became a powerful critic of corporate globalization. In 2017, Roy published her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. In it, Roy offered a journalistic review of all the sociopolitical events of the post-Independent India. This chapter examines that the women protagonists in Roy's fictions extend solidarity to others who are in the margins because, according to Roy, feminism should be a powerful force against oppression in general.
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More than two decades ago, Arundhati Roy could understand that instead of glorifying the Big and the mega-narratives of Power and Progress we should pay heed to the small tragedies of the people living in the edges. By undermining the mega narratives Roy introduced a counter argument to the majoritarian, orthodox and patriarchal system, which had been in vogue. Roy is a powerful voice against marginalization of the Dalits, Adivasis and other ethnic minorities in India. As a woman writer, she is equally vocal against the politics of gender-based discrimination inherent in society. Gendered marginalization is one of the dominant themes in her writings. Roy thinks it to be the same unjust process through which social oppressions perpetuate. Roy came to the limelight with the publication of her epoch-making debut novel The God of Small Things in 1997. The novel was much acclaimed for its universal theme, linguistic inventiveness, non-linear storytelling and multiple narratives. The fiction was translated in more than forty languages and Roy herself became a phenomenon as she won the Booker Prize for it in 1997. However, Roy shifted gear to non-fictions after it and plunged into intricate political debates over issues like nuclear detonations, democracy, development, privatization, displacement, terrorism, genocide etc. Roy shows that these apparently disjointed matters are inter-connected and outcomes of the capitalist agenda of global and local oppressive regimes.
In 2017, Roy’s much-awaited second novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness came into publication. Roy takes us beyond the broken walls of Old Delhi where the ghettoized Muslims recall their past glory, and to the war-torn valleys of Kashmir that reverberate with the sound of Azadi (freedom) repeatedly. In this novel, Roy has offered a journalistic review of the political events of India since Independence. Roy has dealt with some major gendered issues like transgender identity, Dalit woman identity, homosexuality, motherhood etc. Roy is keen to understand that in every war, massacre, pogrom and displacement, the women suffer most. Fascism and fundamentalism affect them the most. In Roy’s fictions, the women, though vulnerable to atrocity defy power with their calm dignity and freedom of spirit. They take initiative to transgress borders and refute social norms. They are mysterious, singular and strong as well as fearless to take unusual decision. This paper attempts to analyse that the women protagonists of Roy extend solidarity to other marginalities, as it is Roy’s contention that Feminism should offer powerful resistance against oppression in general. Marginalization means exclusion−exclusion from social, political and economic decision-making. In a way, gendered marginalization is associated to capitalism. Capitalism is rooted in human greed for power and wealth and it needs a continuous process of exclusion to concentrate more wealth in fewer hands. According to Roy, every movement of present time should join hands with the other to dissent against power. Along with Roy’s fictions, my paper refers to Roy’s non-fictions also for a fuller understanding of the topic.
In The God of Small Things, Roy (1997) brings out the complex politics of gender and caste discrimination in Ayemenem, a village in Kerala during the 1960s. While telling out the family history of the Ipes, Roy narrates the socio-political history of Kerala, its religious plurality and the rise and growth of the Communist Party in Kerala. Kerala is one of the progressive states of India. Having been raised in Kerala Roy knows that the society there is a complex mix of parochialism and progressiveness (2009a, p. 31). Roy’s brunt of criticism in the fiction is the Communist party and the leaders who are mostly from upper-caste communities and are extremely prejudiced against women and bottom castes. The image of Roy’s own childhood, the setting of Ayemenem and the influence of her mother Mary Roy are very dominant in The God of Small Things.
Roy’s mother Mary Roy, a Syrian Christian from Kerala had married a Bengali, a manager of a tea garden in Assam. However, she got separated from her alcoholic husband and returned to her paternal house in Ayemenem, unwelcome. Arundhati Roy was born in Shillong but raised in Ayemenem. Roy says about her childhood:
…I thank god that I had none of the conditioning that a normal middle-class Indian girl would have. I had no father, no presence of this man ‘looking after’ beating or humiliating our mother occasionally in exchange. I had no caste, no religion, no supervision. (2009a, p. 34)