VEMAIAH BEESUPOGU

The God of Small Things is the story of three generations of a Kerala Christian family, the patriarch Pappachi (a wife-beater at home though work he is a recognised Entomologist) and his submissive but yet strong wife-Mammachi, their son Chacko with a divorced English wife Margaret and his daughter Sophie, their daughter Ammu "a divorced daughter from an inter-community marriage" (GOST 45) and who is now back to live with her parents along with her son Estha in whom silence and quietness:   sent its stealthy, suckered tentacles inching along the insides of his skull, hovering the knolls and dells of his memory, dislodging old sentences, whisking them off the tip of his tongue. It stripped his thoughts of the words that described them and left them pared and naked. (GOST 12) and his 'dizygotic twin' Rahel "who didn't know how to be a girl"(GOST 17), Rahel 's grand-aunt Baby Kochamma, Kochu Maria etc. Past and present are aesthetically int...

The last two hundred years have seen the emergence of a new consciousness and a new identity among the 200 million people who have been considered “outcaste” or “untouchables”. Today they call themselves Dalits, a new name they have coined for themselves, and demand aggressively their share in the shaping of the destiny of the nation. It is not a mere name or title, in fact it has become an expression of hope and identity.   The term Dalit in Sanskrit is derived from the root dal which means to split, break, crack and so on. When used as an adjective, it means split, broken, burst, destroyed, crushed. It is said that Jotiba Phule(1827-1890), the founder of the Satyashodhak Samaj, a non Brahmin  movement in Maharastra, a social reformer and revolutionary, used this term to describe the outcastes and untouchables as the oppressed and broken victims of the Indian caste-ridden society. It is also believed that it was Dr. B.R. Ambedkar who coined the word first.   Th...

 Literature has the power and ability to construct and protect the cultural space of various communities. It also plays a vital role in providing more opportunities for self realization of any community by providing necessary information about the cultural, history and customary practices. The greater tradition could be visualized, imagined and witnessed through an effective literary presentation. This leads to the self realization of one’s cultural identity which will make the individual to hold the culture and other identity at the top. It is being adopted as a strategy for social change and social movements by the people in power, since literature possesses a greater value in the political dynamics of any state. These days discussions are going on the problems of marginalised groups of people all over the world-their social, ethnic, economic and cultural problems. Marginality with all its aspects is indeed a major problem to be reckoned within the world. By and large, mos...

Contemporary Indian writing can be seen as a record of the changing Indian society with various social, political, religious and even technological factors in the background, acting as catalysts. However, there have always been a few issues in every society including ours which never received treatment or even mention in the mainstream literary works. The growing popularity and interest in Dalit literature is an answer to this challenge of representing the 'unrepresentable' in society. Recently, writers and activists are opening up for public debates on issues of caste, identity and the politics of Dalithood, its manifestation and representation in public life and literature.   The onset of globalization in India enabled dalits to raise the issue of discrimination based on caste in international forums. Dalit activists and intellectuals made out a case for recognition of caste-based discrimination in India as being similar to racial discrimination in the west, in the w...

Chinua Achebe has emerged as the doyen of modern African writing in English with the publication of his first major novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), which has been acclaimed by the world as ‘a classic in modern African writing in English”, is a worthy archetype of the novel which shows the tragic consequences of Africa’s encounter with Europe.   The novel captures the spirit of the African society during the transitional period. It delineates the encounter between the tribal i.e. Igbo culture and the British culture necessitated by the historical force of colonialism. The values and ideals of African culture are presented elaborately and contrasted with the British and Christian culture. In the novel the Carys, and Conrads of Colonial Africa are represented by the District Commissioner whose own version of the story of imperial conquest is to be told in a book entitled, “The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger” (p.187) a book in which Africans are to be rep...