Paper Details

Name: Binod Kumar Mandal
Country: India

Year: 2026
Volume: Vol-13, issue-2, Year-2026 (July-December)
Page Number: 51-58
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23154607

ABSTRACT
Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things presents caste and gender not as separate forms of discrimination but as mutually reinforcing structures that regulate property, sexuality, labour, family honour and social belonging. Set primarily in Kerala, the novel traces the destruction of Ammu, a divorced Syrian Christian woman, and Velutha, a skilled Paravan worker, after their relationship violates established social boundaries. This study examines the novel through intersectional, anti-caste, feminist and postcolonial perspectives. It argues that Roy exposes the persistence of caste within religious, familial, political and legal institutions while revealing how patriarchy depends upon the regulation of women’s sexuality and inheritance. Ammu and Velutha’s relationship constitutes a radical refusal of these structures, although the violence inflicted upon them demonstrates the capacity of dominant institutions to suppress individual resistance. Further, studies Mammachi, Baby Kochamma, Rahel and Estha to show that oppression generates complicated forms of complicity, silence and survival. Roy’s nonlinear chronology, child-centred language, repetition and linguistic experimentation function as methods of counter-history by recovering experiences excluded from official narratives. Ultimately, the novel presents resistance as fragile and frequently punished, yet indispensable to the recovery of human dignity.

Keywords: Arundhati Roy, caste, gender, social resistance, intersectionality, patriarchy, Velutha, Ammu, postcolonial fiction