The Subaltern and the text: Reading Arunhati Roy’s The Good of Small Things

More than sixty years have passed since Indian gainedits political autonomy, but the fact remains that women anduntouchables living in Indian society are yet to witnessfreedom in a truer sense. Women, of course, have witnessedsome improvement in their status, and now most of them aregetting education, which was previously declined to them.But their conditions remain problematized as they continueto be at the receiving ends both - in their own houses as wellas outside their domestic spheres. Untouchables, on theother hand, continue to occupy the lower strata in the socialhierarchy. Still, they are considered to be defiled creations ofthis earth having no rights for their (re)formation. PostcolonialIndia has given birth to various political parties buteven they have failed to strengthen the deplorable conditionof untouchables. Ironically, many political parties merely usethem as perfect weapons to secure their personal favoursand as many votes as possible. This increasingly paradoxicalstatus of untouchables – although they are powerless yetthey have an inherent capacity to give power to others – isone of the most contested issues, along with theempowerment of women, which lies central to the field ofpost-colonial studies.