Anand's Untouchable

The book contains the stories of first and second generation Indian immigrants, as well as a few stories involving ideas of otherness among communities in India. The stories revolve around the difficulties of relationships, communication and a loss of identity for those in diaspora. No matter where the story takes place, the characters struggle with the same feelings of exile and the struggle between the two worlds by which they are torn. The stories deal with the always shifting lines between gender, sexuality, and social status within a diaspora. Whether the character be a homeless woman from India or an Indian male student in the United States, all the characters display the effects of displacement in a

The White Tiger is a novel, in which Aravind Adiga deals with the issue of class and caste difference. The narrative attempts to highlight struggle and exploitation of the common and poor strata of society of India. It is in that sense it is a realistic novel identifying and reflecting over the burning issues of the society. Through the psycho realistic narrative the author presents the gloomier picture of the rural life at the protagonist’s native, Laxmangarh. The protagonist is an aspirant of becoming entrepreneur, narrates his past in a conversation with an interlocutor, a Chinese premier, Mr. Wen Jiabao. Balram’s past reveals his poverty and unemployment at his native. He also narrates his village life style and growing need of financial security to his family for which he shifts to the Light i.e. city, New Delhi. After migrating to an urban area he is exploited by overburdened work in the Stork’s family where he performs all sorts of house work alongside his main duty of chauffeur. But through this struggle he finally plans to overcome his status. He believes and propagates the socialist ideology. The paper explores and criticizes the capitalistic ideology having more self centeredness and utilitarianism which has its repercussions of class and caste conflict, unequal distribution of wealth and exploitation.

Indian culture and society experienced drastic changes during the middle of the twentieth century. The country experienced rapid development of its urban centers, agrarian lifestyles were replaced by commercialized industries, and old social norms were replaced by new, British-influenced values. Many of those changes are depicted in Kamala Markandaya’s 1954 novel, Nectar in a Sieve. Written only seven years after India achieved independence, Markandaya’s novel chronicles the life of Rukmani, the book’s narrator. Rukmani recounts the story of her marriage, the lives of her children, and the hardships she endures in life, which include the death of her husband and the deaths of several of her children. This essay will discuss the impacts of modernity on Indian culture and society in the middle of the twentieth century, and it will show how these impacts were depicted in Markandaya’s novel. Ultimately, Markandaya’s novel shows how rapid changes in Indian culture and society caused serious challenges for many Indians and forced many Indians to abandon traditional lifestyles.

An example of this is the idea prevalent in certain parts of the society that the colonizers, even though violators of human rights themselves, in many circumstances had also civilized the country by abolishing brutal practices like the ‘Sati’ and by having offered a scathing critique of the oppressive Indian caste system, helped in removing it. What remains hidden behind this myth is the fact that the colonizers had not only in their early days of invasion and in their ‘oriental spirit’ as Doniger points out, remained oblivious to the brutal act of Sati and intended not to interfere with Hindu practices but also throughout their rule propagated the ideas of caste distinctions. These distinctions based themselves not only on the existing Hindu caste system but also on the fact that certain sections of society were more loyal to the colonizers than others. The caste based division in the Indian Army (formed during the British rule) that manifests itself in the name of the various regiments also further establishes this idea.

This paper focuses on the ‘subaltern’ community in the post colonial society. Adiga’s The White Tiger throws a ray in the downtrodden and oppressed in the modern world. Adiga being the mouth piece of the deprived, lonely and alienated section of the society through his character Balram. He represents Balram as the white tiger which is the rare kind of animal who has the matchless intellectuality being born in the dark side of India. For Adiga Darkness refers to the oppressed community which is the majority in india and light as the so called well to do in the society. The aim of the paper is to bring into focus the major section of people in India who are the have-nots.

Aravind Adiga’s debut and Man Booker Prize winning epistolary novel, ‘The White Tiger’, is a chronicle of the underbelly Balram, whose quest for freedom is a microcosm for the underclass and its life of struggle in 21st century, globalized India. Class antagonism and social stratification is an integral part of this society and ‘The White Tiger’ provides a brutally realistic exposition of the downtrodden through the first-person narrator, Balram Halwai, who is a strong voice of the underclass. This essay attempts to analyze how Adiga depicts the oppressed underclass in the context of a deeply divided India, characterized by a fierce class war, exploitation, and expanding globalization.

It is illegal for foreigners to take the Indian rupee out of India, yet, the British robbed the Indians of their wealth, and pushed them into poverty. India was a wealthy country with its rich heritage and culture. From India’s sprawling palaces covered in gold, and semiprecious stones adorned the floors and walls, to the markets filled with a multitude of indulgences, the British were mesmerized with it all. The Indians welcomed the British, but they failed to realize the hidden enemy behind the mask. Soon the treacherous British applied the mantra of ‘divide and rule’ to control the region. A classic rags to riches story, England used India as a means of pulling themselves out of

Abstract: The nineteen-thirties were the most confused years in Indian history. It was the time of Indian thrash about for sovereignty and everyone was effected by the blow of this even poetry, drama and novel too. So Anand could not stay uninfluenced by it. He suffered a lot so this made him abhorrence imperialism. He was conscious of the sufferings of our community from dearth and nastiness. No one in India had yet written the classic on this suffering effectively because the realities were too rudimentary for a writer like Tagore. Mulk Raj Anand an immense Indian novelist draws our consideration through his immortal characters Munno and Bakha, from existent civilization. As a novelist he speaks on pragmatism, variance, humanism and exploitations. Anand wrote about real natives whom he knew quite intimately. Mulk Raj Anand awakens social principles by his works. He arouses compassionate sensation of readers for the subjugated and under-privileged, who suffer a lot.

One image which is given in the text is obviously the fact that Indian people and society ignore the slums and street children and fear the streetchildren with no space and caning (l. 40 to 47). This fact is also given in the coursework, with the text “Outsiders“ by Meher Pestonji. In this text the poor people are ignored by the rich Parsi and are worse than dogs.

Before analysing Mukherjee’s novels citically, it is important to survey and review the critical works on Bharati Mukherjee and her fictional work. The present chapter provides a general review and assessment of critics on Mukherjee's fiction. In Bharati Mukherjee: A Perspective, Sushma Tondon examines her three novels entitled Tiger’s Daughter, Wife and Jasmine. She also analyses her collections of short stories entitles Darkness and The Middleman and Other Stories. She concludes that in her novels Mukherjee has made a concerted effort to conceptualise the image of the immigrants. She portrays the immigrants who assert their claim to an American identity by struggling heroically to reinstate themselves successfully in a new cultural space. Some of Mukherjee's characters strive to find a niche and get for them a second chance to build their lives on the alien land. As an artist in immigrant tradition, Mukherjee tries to redefine the process of migration in a novel way. As shown in her later novels, immigration for some of the post-modern and post-colonial characters is an opportunity to redefine their own identities. After analysing all her fictional work,

Aravind Adiga effectively captures the true image of modern India through the story of the fictional character Balram Halwai. The novel takes the reader through the struggles of class that exist in India at a time when the country is undergoing rapid modernization and globalization. The novel contradicts the exotic image of India that is generally represented in literature (for example, the stories of Rudyard Kipling.) Instead the novel familiarizes us with the complications that have emerged in modern India in the last-half century – post-independence and the abolition of untouchability.

In the town of Mayapore, the English lived in the civil and military cantonment. It was another world from the Indian side of town, divided by the invisible line of difference in cultures. The English found the native Indians distasteful, crude and ignorant. Both sides were carefully segregated, the "whites" preserving their sense of home in exile. In the wake of this superiority in thought and feeling amongst the English, the British government in India fell into an authoritarian rule. "The British raj could do anything....anything that offended was an offense. A man could be imprisoned without a trial" (JIC, p. 126). Ronald Merrick was the epitome of such sentiments. He flaunted his authority and his anti-Indian feelings. These feelings seem to be summed up in his persecution of Hari Kumar, whom "he had already chosen, chosen as a victim. For Merrick was a man unable to love. Only was he able to punish" (JIC, p. 155). It was through the association of Miss Manners with Hari that caused him to become part of the triangle, which was the undoing of all three. Merrick's attitude is representative of English attitudes towards the Indians in general, one of complete superiority, "an adamant guardian of the British cantonment's privilege and physical isolation, and the white man's biological purity and superiority" (Jewel SG

In the novel The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, the reader notices the differences between the modern American view of politics and society between the politics and society in the novel. This novel takes place in the southwestern part of India in a town called Kerala and is focused on the wealthy family of the Syrian Christian Ipe family of Ayemenem. Within this family, many of them have problems in their lives and as a result, go to the house once their problems have taken a turn for the worse. A major theme of this story is the society of India and the caste system that is in place. Some characters that were majorly affected by the caste system are a woman named Ammu and her two children, Estha and Rahel along with an Untouchable named Velutha. Besides the caste system Ammu and her children must worry about the social system and the outcomes of actions that are not socially acceptable. Another recurring theme of this novel is the change in political stances in the country of India and how it affects the characters. Since the Ipe family is wealthy, they own a factory called “Paradise Pickles and Preserves” and some character struggles revolves around the fact that there is a motion for a change in politics. Although the novel can be understood on its own, it makes it more understandable if the reader learns about the political history of India and an understanding of the caste system. Besides the political history and caste system the view on gender in the country of

Feministic approach towards a text has developed a multitude of ways to unpack literature in order to understand its essence. Scholars commonly known as Feminine Critique sought to divorce literary analysis away from abstract diction-based arguments and instead tailored their criticism to more “grounded” pieces of literature like plot, characters, and so on and recognize the implicit misogyny of the structure of the story itself. My paper on The Disparate Treatment of Patriarchy in ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge ' and ‘The Mahabharata’ throws a feministic light in Thomas Hardy 's and Ved Vyas 's works. Through my paper I want to particularly highlight the treatment of patriarchy given to the female protagonists. I want to highlight the different manners of their treatment or response towards patriarchy and how even their being belonging to different origins and literary periods does not improve the status of female characters in literature. My work will mainly focus on the take of the female protagonists in the given situations and the different manners in which they deal with it. I also want to emphasize the status quo of women in the society that we 've grown out of and in the present scenario. The paper is entitled The Disparate Treatment of Patriarchy in ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge ' and ‘The Mahabharata in which I’ve tried to bring into light the different manners of treatment of patriarchy by the female protagonists in both the aforementioned

No aspect of Indian history has excited more controversy than India 's history of social relations. Western indologists and Western-influenced Indian intellectuals have seized upon caste divisions, untouchability, religious obscurantism, and practices of dowry and sati as distinctive evidence of India 's perennial backwardness. For many Indologists, these social ills have literally come to define India - and have become almost the exclusive focus of their writings on India.