NARRATING THE NEW INDIA: GLOBALIZATION AND MARGINALITY IN

POST-MILLENNIUM INDIAN ANGLOPHONE NOVELS

A dissertation submitted to the

Kent State University College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

by

Swaralipi Nandi

August, 2012
 Dissertation written by
Swaralipi Nandi

B.A., University of Burdwan, 2002

M.A., University of Hyderabad, 2004
M.Phil, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2006
Ph.D., Kent State University, 2012

Approved by

Babar M’Baye Co- Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee

Masood A Raja Co- Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee
Tammy Clewell Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee
Judy Wakabayashi Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee

Accepted by
Robert W. Trogdon Chair, Department of English
John R.D. Stalvey Dean, College of Arts and Sciences*

ii
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS……………………………………………... iv

INTRODUCTION: Globalization and Indian Literature…..…………...1

CHAPTER 1: Globalization and Postcolonial Studies...……………… 32

The Lacuna of Postcolonialism……………………………… 34
Literature Review and Methodology …………………………. 60

CHAPTER 2: The Homo œconomicus: Rags- to-Riches Stories and the

Self-Made Man ... ………………...………………..……………………. 70
The White Tiger and the Self Made Man………………………. 72
Q&A and the New Subject of Reality TV…………………........112

CHAPTER 3: The Neoliberal City: Urban Space, Noir Fiction and

Criminal Subject …………………………………….…………………… 138
The Divided City in The Story of My Assassins……….……… 142
Crime Fiction and the Panopticon in Sacred Games……….…. 179

CHAPTER 4: “The People of Apokalis”: Globalization, Environment and

the Marginal ………………………………………………………… ..214
Corporations and the Environment in Animal’s People………..216
Global Conservation and Marginal Groups in
The Hungry Tide………………………………………………. 254

CONCLUSION: Summarizing Marginality under Globalization…….. 288

WORKS CITED……………….……………………………….…….. 308

iii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am greatly indebted to my dissertation directors, Dr. Babacar M’Baye and

Dr.Masood A. Raja for their guidance and support at every stage of this dissertation.

They have been the sources of constant encouragement; and working with them has been

a great learning experience.

My sincere gratitude to my committee members, Tammy Clewell and Judy

Wakabayashi, for their dedicated reading, suggestions and comments; and to James

Tyner for serving as the moderator for my defense. Thank you to all of the librarians,

students, university staff, and colleagues who aided my research, especially Dawn Lashua

and Christine Strock. Thank you Kent State University for making my study abroad

experience worth it; and special thanks to the Office of Global Affairs for handling my

immigration formalities with such cooperation, even in my absence.

My special thanks to my Kent State friends and to Sayantani, Sohomjit, Amrita,

Jihasa, and Esha, who took active interest in my work; engaged in productive discussions

on the topic and contributed with valuable suggestions, materials, and motivation for

work.

I am most grateful to my family, especially my parents in law, Sukumar Das and

iv
Ratna Das, and my brother, Akashnil for their constant support and encouragement. No

word of gratitude is enough for my parents, Anadi Nandi and Uttara Nandi, whose love,

inspiration and determining influences have guided me throughout my life.

Finally, and most importantly, thanks to my husband Sayan Das for being my

rock. If I have successfully staged the dissertation, it’s only because of your tireless

efforts and support behind the scenes. I could not have done this without you.

v
 INTRODUCTION:

Globalization and Indian Literature

“I’ve been asking colleagues in several departments and disciplines whether

they’ve ever come across the term “neoliberalism” and whether they know what it

means. A small number acknowledged having heard the word; a very much

smaller number ventured a tentative definition. I was asking because I had been

reading essays in which the adjective neoliberal was routinely invoked as an

accusation, and I had only a sketchy notion of what was intended by it…I thought

I’d better learn more.”

--Stanley Fish, “Neoliberalism and Higher Education”

In his article “Neoliberalism and Higher Education,” Stanley Fish expresses his

bewilderment with the term ‘neoliberalism’ that he seems to have come across quite

frequently in many recent publications. Fish’s puzzlement with the term reveals two very

important facts about literary studies today. Firstly, the term ‘neoliberalism’ has become

a significant theoretical concept in academics, especially in social sciences and

globalization studies, to discuss the social, political and cultural developments of our

times. Secondly, this is still a relatively new term in the field of literary studies applied to

interpret the literatures of a post-globalized world. ‘Neoliberalism’ is a political and

economic philosophy specifically associated with the processes of economic

1
 2

liberalization and globalization of the free market, which constitutes the reality of our

contemporary world. Since the concept is more appropriate in interpreting the political

and economic policies of the participating globalizing nations, the use of the term in

literary studies might raise pertinent questions as to how do we integrate ‘neoliberalism,’

as a socio-political-economic philosophy, into the analysis of literary and cultural texts?

How can the field of postcolonial literary analysis be revised through an engagement with

the materialist aspects of globalization and interdisciplinary interventions? This

dissertation seeks to answer some of these questions through a reading of selected

Anglophone novels of post-liberalization India, which are also representative of the new

trends in postcolonial literature.1 The novels I read closely in this project are novels that

depict the local realities of a new, changing, and globalized India that is in the process of

metamorphosing itself under the forces of economic globalization.

Attempting to study the new literatures of India, this dissertation aims to pursue three

primary objectives:

i) To analyze the novels’ representation of the new modes of neoliberal

subjectivity and citizenship in post-liberalized India

ii) To study the new socio-economic settings of the novels that reflect the

structural changes taking place in India after liberalization

1
I use the term ‘post-liberalization’ to denote the specific period of Indian history
after major economic changes towards free trade, increased foreign investment,
open markets and neoliberalism were implemented in 1991 by the then Finance
minister Manmohan Singh. These economic policies officially marked the
transition of India’s economic and political system from a proto-socialist model
conceptualized by Nehru, to a model that more prominently leans towards many
capitalistic policies, if not a complete conversion to capitalism.
 3

iii) To analyze the representation of the underclass in the novels and theorize on

the perception of marginality in post-liberalized India

Through the above objectives, this project contributes to the recent developments in

postcolonial studies regarding the concept of globalization. As the late twentieth century

globalization becomes an important theoretical notion in postcolonial studies—whereby

‘globalization’ has been included in the list of core postcolonial concepts by the pioneers

of postcolonial theory, Ashcroft, Griffith and Tiffin, in their recent Postcolonial Studies

Reader— it is imperative that we understand the new changes in the postcolonial nations

of the global South through the specific lens of economic globalization2. To explore the

central debates of globalization, this dissertation looks at novels on a variety of themes on

current Indian realities, especially focusing on how the material and ideological aspects

of economic globalization affect the marginal subjects within the nation. I study novels,

like The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga and Q&A by Vikas Swarup, that portray

protagonists from the socio-economically marginalized sections, who rise up to immense

financial success in the new India, proclaiming globalization as an emancipatory power.

Contrarily, the other novels I focus on, like The Story of My Assassins by Tarun Tejpal

and Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra, tell stories of protagonists from the underbelly of

the neoliberal city; and their consequent dispossession and criminalization in the process

of current urbanization. Finally, the third group of novels that I study, namely Indra

Sinha’s Animal’s People and Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide, brings up the crucial

2
Almost a substitute to the term “Third World”, which has now become obsolete
and politically incorrect, the term “global South” refers to the developing and
underdeveloped countries of the world, most of which are erstwhile colonies, and
are incidentally located in the Southern hemisphere of the globe.
 4

debates about environment in the context of globalization, and depict how global forces

affect the local people and the Indian environment. In a nutshell, this dissertation

attempts to analyze the conventional postcolonial issues of power and marginality but in

the context of a contemporary world reshaped by the forces of global capitalism.

To understand the ‘new’ Indian fiction on globalization it is important to look at

some of the major characteristics of the contemporary Indian novels that are distinctively

different from the earlier postcolonial novels, which are commonly associated with the

canonical Indian fictions of pre-Rushdie novelists like Mulk Raj Anand, R. K Narayan,

Raja Rao, Kamala Markhandya, Rushdie, and the post-Rushdie writers like Sashi

Tharoor, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Arundhati Roy and Amitav Ghosh. The new Indian novel

marks a distinct change of trend from the earlier ones. In an article on the Frankfurt Book

Fair of 2006, Sonia Phalnikar asserts that “as India takes center stage at the Frankfurt

Book Fair, it's not the Salman Rushdies, Arundhati Roys and Vikram Seths, but a new

generation of authors writing in English who are making waves. The article goes on to

describe how several European and American publishers agreed that India was “the

flavor of the season,” a nation whose literary popularity derives not so much from the

prominence of the famous Indian English novelists already raging the global book

markets, but more from the growing interest in India as an emerging economic power.

This is certainly a movement beyond the Pre-Rushdie fiction, Rushdie’s novels

and the works of the post-Rushdie generation of writers who mainly wrote about

colonialism, partition, the newly emerging postcolonial nation state, the issues of national

identity and the atrocities of the Emergency period. In contrast to those earlier novels, the
 5

contemporary Indian novel in English has now moved to capture the new tremors caused

by the overwhelming influx of the global capital and policies of free trade after 1991,

which are restructuring every aspect of the Indian life with increasing intensity. As

Phalnikar’s article asserts, the new literature of India is “an acknowledgement of the

country's growing economic clout and its embrace of global capitalism -- a fact that has

also caused upheaval in its chaotic cities and social fabric.” Consequently, the changing

social conditions of India have also led to a significant transformation in the aesthetic

representation of India in the Indian novels, whereby the new Indian novels diverge from

Rushdie and Roy in the latter’s inclination to project Orientalist images of Indian

exoticism.3 The article cites Peter Ripkin, head of the Frankfurt-based “Society for the

Promotion of African, Asian and Latin American Literature”, who observes that the

recent Indian works in English strongly depart from the earlier novels that present a

“stereotypical image of oriental wisdom” as well as differ from the novels of social

critique and rural themes that characterized the work of earlier Indian Anglophone writers

such as Mulk Raj Anand and R. K. Narayan in the 1970s and '80s”.

In this context, Rana Dasgupta’s article titled “A New Bend in the River”

provides an excellent discussion of the recent Indian writing in English. Dasgupta’s

article attempts a detailed study of the new direction Indian writing in English has taken

over the past few years. Asserting that the new Indian novel no longer hinges on

narratives of “family sagas” or “the colourful celebrations of Indian language and

3
For a critique of Indian postcolonial novels catering to Orientalist images of
India, see Graham Huggan The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margin, Sadia
Toor, Padmini Mongia “The Postcolonial Indo-Chic”
 6

sentiment,” Dasgupta observes the emergence of the metropolitan novel that focuses on

the dynamics of urban existence in a contemporary post-globalized India. Taking the

examples of Vikas Swarup’s Q&A, Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger, Mridula Koshy's If

It Is Sweet and Palash Krishna Mehrotra's Eunuch Park, Dasgupta observes that the new

Indian novel captures the complex economic, cultural and political changes happening in

post-liberalization India and the various characters grappling with those tumultuous

changes. In all, Dasgupta argues, it brings out a bleak picture of reality asserting that

Indian novels from the last five years have become increasingly dark and cynical. Most

of the novels portray lives lived on the edge amidst exploitation and violence, and people

struggling for their survival. Dasgupta finds such a dark world as morally abysmal too:

“There is not even any room for moral judgment because the world is so sick - and its

protagonists, spiritually lost, have no comment on the terrifying reality they discover.

Respite and tenderness are found rarely and usually, as in Koshy's and Mehrotra's

collections, in uncanny, provisional relationships.” In the penultimate para of his article,

Dasgupta goes on to proclaim that “these writers are not particularly concerned anymore

by their country's colonized past: they are preoccupied instead by its expanding, imperial

future, and they are looking to find meaning and direction for the whole careening,

tormented joyride” (“A New Bend in the River” ). The emergence of the new Indian

novel is thus a metonymy for the emerging new India itself, which has claimed

significant attention in the global political-economic arena as one of the fastest growing

economies in the recent years. The Indian novel no longer portrays the social world of
 7

Narayan and Rushdie precisely because the Indian reality has changed drastically over

the decade.

Though widely varied in their themes and contents, the ‘new’ novels of India, or

what I term as the post-millennium novels, still share some basic features. Firstly, these

novels are what Paul Jay calls as the “post-postcolonial writing” (borrowing the term

from Mohsin Hamid) ---- texts that are “in many ways demonstratably different from

what we might call the classic postcolonial texts, for, while they allude in some way to

the legacy of colonialism, they pay more attention to the effects of contemporary

globalization than they do to the imperatives of postcolonial state making” (96). While

some of the texts I study here, like The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh, depict

globalization as an ongoing process of colonialism, these novels no longer focus on

colonialism and the Emergency as central historical points for their narratives, hence

breaking the long trajectory of post-Rushdie novels.4

Comprising of a whole generation of late twentieth century Indian writers—

including Rushdie and others who have been recognized as stalwart figures of Indian

fiction in English—the post-Rushdie group of writers have mostly highlighted on the

Emergency period under Indira Gandhi (1975-77) as the pivotal point in their novels.

4
The Emergency of India is a period of 21 months, between 26th June 1975 to 21st
March1977, when the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, declared a state
emergency under article 352 of the Indian Constitution that allowed the Prime
Minister to assume absolute control over the nation’s governance, and lead to a
suspension of elections and civil liberties. Marked as one of the most
controversial period of independent India, this period is often criticized for
dictatorship, massive crackdown on political opposition, thwarting of fundamental
rights, random arrests, and severe censorship of media. Most Indian novelists
have opposed the Emergency in their writing.
 8

Thus from Midnight’s Children by Rushdie to The Great Indian Novel by Shashi

Tharoor, from Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance to Nayantara Sehgal’s Rich Like Us,

from Manohar Malgaonkar’s The Garden Keepers to O.V. Vijayan’s The Saga of

Dharmapuri, Indian novels in the 1980s-90s—which included some of the most well

known works of Indian Anglophone fiction—were predominantly narratives set in the

context of the Emergency. As Pranav Jani points out, the Emergency period and the

emergence of the nation state as a repressive, neo-fascist body made the English-novelists

dismiss the nation as a “potential site for fulfilling the promises of decolonization”(7).

This consequently led to a moment of turning away from the nation to a cosmopolitan

and transnational consciousness in Indian novels. Thus a critique of the nation state,

which constitutes one of the most important thematic motifs of the postcolonial Indian

novel, is often inspired by and is encapsulated in the moment of the Emergency. Jani

argues that the later novels that offer a resistive narrative to the various repressive

mechanisms of the contemporary nation states, even in the context of neoliberalism,

exemplify a continuing trajectory of the post-Emergency turn in Indian writing: “the

ongoing inequalities in postcolonial India since then, brought about by the neoliberal

strategies of development, communalist politics, and heightened militarism that were

engendered in the early 1980s, have only served to deepen the postnational turn among

Indian novelists working in English” (7).

However, though Jani reads the contemporary novels as a continuing train of the

same genre of post-Rushdie novels, a disjuncture can be seen between the novels of the

1980-90s and the novels that have started to emerge since the turn of the century, year
 9

2000 onwards, that specifically narrate a post-liberalization India and acknowledge the

overwhelming presence of the process of globalization. Significantly enough, though the

liberalization of India occurred in 1991, it is only after almost a decade that we see the

‘new’ genre of novels emerging, hence my use of the term post-millennium novels. The

post-millennium novels—like Transmission by Hari Kunzru, Inheritance of Loss by

Kiran Desai, Q&A by Vikas Swarup, The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh, No God in

Sight by Altaf Tyrewala, The White Tiger and Last Man in Tower by Aravind Adiga,

Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra, The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri, Animal’s People

by Indra Sinha, The Story of My Assassin s and Valley of Masks by Tarun Tejpal, The

Templegoers by Atish Tasser—portray a metamorphosing India. This is an India

grappling with the forces of neoliberal globalization, new notions of identity and

citizenship, remapping of the landscapes according to the need of the market, new modes

of global capital flow, changing economic structure of the nation, the rapid rise of the

middle class and the expansion of the free market, and the free flow of consumer goods

and unskilled labors across transnational boundaries. In both their themes and settings,

these novels capture the changing dynamics of the late twentieth century.

The ‘new’ Indian novel also shows a change in the way it shifts the spotlight from

the struggles and contestations of the middle class or elite characters to highlight the

inner lives of the underclass populations. Post-Rushdie Indian novels have long been

associated with middle class or diasporic cosmopolitan elitism, whereby some of the

canonical names of Indian fiction in English have hailed from what is commonly known

as the Stephenian group of novelists—referring to the ‘elite’ group of writers like Amitav
 10

Ghosh, Sashi Tharoor, Upamanyu Chatterjee and others who had attended Delhi’s

privileged institution of St. Stephen’s College. Consequently, the various aspects of

postcolonial condition in literature—questions of nationhood, hybridity, migration,

violence of the nation state—were more often than not mediated through the elite, often

diasporic, cosmopolitan narrator. Thus as characters like Chatterjee’s elite bureaucrat

Agastya, Ghosh’s intellectual diasporic characters like Tridib and Antar, Mistry’s middle

class clerk Gustad, Arun Joshi’s disgruntled diasporic Sindi Oberoi, Adarsh Vakil’s

carefree ‘beachboy’ Cyrus and Arundhati Roy’s melancholic Esther—hailing from a rich

and upper caste Syrian Christian family— dominated the literary scene with the particular

angst of their privileged, yet tormented existence. The Indian novel in English, as Leela

Gandhi points out, “tends to imagine the nation as and through the middle-classes and

their sensibilities”. Thus Gandhi asserts:

The interesting-ness of the middle-classes is, of course, historically and culturally

variable. So also, the Indian babu has changed considerably over time to become,

over the last couple of decades, more and more mobile, affluent, globalised,

metropolitan etcetera. Inevitably, he now wants this self image to be consolidated

and confirmed in the novels he reads and sometimes writes. It could be said, a la

Anderson, that he wants and is able to fictively imagine the nation as the

embodiment of his aspirations.

Marking a shift from this middle class world view, the tensions and praxis of the new

India in literature are mediated through fictional characters from the marginalities of

society. As Rana Dasgupta aptly puts it, the English-speaking middle class characters
 11

“are no longer in possession of Indian truth. They may still be the protagonists, but events

must force them out of their orbits if they are to discover anything real - for reality is

produced by other groups and classes”. Instead, it is the underclass characters who take

the center stage in the fictions, not only because the volatile social conditions of the 21st

century India consist of unfamiliar and new complexities that can no longer be contained

in an elite-centric fictional world, but also because the arguments for both neoliberal

globalization and anti-globalization justify themselves through their emancipatory effect

on the marginal communities. Consequently, the figure of the marginal becomes an

important subject both in the narratives that glorify the neoliberal ideology, as well as in

fictions that critique and resist globalization. This dissertation primarily focuses on the

representation of the poor and marginalized groups in the fictions that signify the way

neoliberal globalization affects the lowest margins of society—both in terms of the way

the figure of the marginal subject is co-opted in the rhetoric of neoliberal success, as well

as the way an emphatic critique of globalization is portrayed through the victimization of

the marginal.

Being aware of the polysemic nature of the terms ‘marginal’ and ‘marginality’, I have

used the words specifically to denote the socio-economically deprived, underprivileged

and poverty ridden groups of society. I find Moni Nag’s definition of marginality most

apt for my project, whereby I denote marginality in the sense of exclusion from both

‘receptive’ and ‘active’ participation as Nag describes the terms: “Marginality is meant in

a double sense—1. as a lack of receptive participation of goods and services (society is

here conceived as a seat of social resources and benefits; and 2. as a lack of active
 12

participation in the decision making process ” (226). Subsequently, I use the term

‘marginal’ to signify the lower fringes of society in terms of class, caste and indigeneity,

geopolitical location, and in terms of exclusion of certain groups from access to economic

resources and political power. The novels in this study reveal a variety of representations

of the socio-economically marginalized characters, which embody some of the central

debates of contemporary globalization.

To gloss over some of the important theoretical terms that form the crux of the

discussions in this project, ‘globalization’ is one of the most complex terms to define.

Primary among its definitional problems is its occurrence over multiple historical phases,

for ‘globalization’ per se is a centuries old process that can be traced from the

geopolitical expansion of the Greek and Roman empires to the 19th century exploits of

European colonialism that embraced almost the whole world. Globalization can also refer

to various forms of transnational movements, ranging from a movement of goods,

culture, capital, people, and even ideas and information. However, the concept of

globalization in this dissertation refers to the specific historical period of economic

liberalization that has started in late 20th century. I reiterate what Susan George asserts

regarding the term globalization: “Let us first make clear that the word ‘globalisation’ on

its own is virtually meaningless. Like its precursor, the word "development", it needs an

adjective to escape from a convenient conceptual fuzziness. The adjective used here will

be ‘neo-liberal’. This means that ‘globalisation’ is another name for late-

twentieth/twenty-first century capitalism, qualitatively different from previous

incarnation.” The age of contemporary globalization, also known as neoliberal

 13

globalization, thus can be said to have roughly begun around the 1978-80 when several

nations adopted new monetary policy of free market and open trade. David Harvey draws

a comprehensive timeline for the emergence of the worldwide socio-economic changes,

focusing on some of the major “epicenters” of this turning point—Deng Xiaoping’s

liberalization of a communist-ruled economy in China in 1978; Margaret Thatcher’s

economic policies for Britain in 1979 that curbed trade union power and promoted

privatization, free trade and less regulations on businesses; and Ronald Reagan’s

economic reforms for United States in the 1980s that promoted “policies to curb the

power of labour, deregulate industry, agriculture, and resource extraction, and liberate the

powers of finance both internally and on the world stage” (Harvey 1).

If Thatcherism and Reaganism represented particularly aggressive programs of

neoliberal restructuring in the geopolitical locales of USA and Britain during the 1980s,

more moderate forms of neoliberal politics was propagated all over the world, including

the non-Western peripheries mostly through the efforts of USA and other G-7 states.

Subsequently, the GATT, NATO, and IMF increasingly globalized neoliberalism and

institutionalized the extension of market forces in the global South through structural

adjustments and fiscal policies. The immense impact of neoliberal globalization has thus

permeated all over the globe. Harvey offers a comprehensive summary of the process:

There has everywhere been an emphatic turn towards neoliberalism in political-

economic practices and thinking since the 1970s. Deregulation, privatization, and

withdrawal of the state from many areas of social provision have been too

common. Almost all states, from those newly minted after the collapse of the
 14

Soviet Union to old style social democracies and welfare states such as New

Zealand and Sweden have embraced neoliberalism…Furthermore the advocates

of the neoliberal way now occupy positions of considerable influence in

education…in the media, in corporate boardrooms…in key state institutions…and

also in those international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund

( IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) that regulate

global finance and trade. Neoliberalism has, in short, become hegemonic as a

mode of discourse (3).

India also joined in the bandwagon of economic liberalization in 1991,when the then

Finance Minister Manmohan Singh made major changes in the economic policies,

transforming the country from a proto-socialist, mixed economy advocated by India’s

first Prime Minister Nehru, to a neoliberal economy that allowed more Foreign Direct

Investment and lesser regulations on global trade. The move was initiated by India’s

economic crisis prior to 1991, which required a bailout from the International Monetary

Fund.5 The IMF in return demanded drastic economic reforms from India which would

finally lead the country to join the drive of economic globalization. Rupal Oza charts out

the major changes that the liberalization of India ushers in, mainly pertaining to a

significant shift from a “socialist growth model to capitalism” (11) to an emergence of

5
Rupal Oza points out that athough the process of liberalization was officially
implemented in 1991, the changing trends in Indian economy and society had
already started by the mid 1980s, especially in Rajiv Gandhi’s 1985 budget that
sought to “emulate the tiger economies by creating a new India” (11).
Consequently, as Oza asserts, Rajiv Gandhi became the first icon of ‘modern’,
neoliberal India (12).
 15

the consumer goods economy. Chief among the changes were a relaxation for the foreign

direct investment, a certain “foreign technology fetishism” (Hansen 140) or the aspiration

for a sense of modernity through foreign goods and technology, and the spectacular

growth of the consumer goods market, whereby “television, scooters, and refrigerators

become icons of mobility” (Oza 12). These changes were specifically directed to the

advantage of the elite and the upper middle classes who displayed, as Salim Lakha

asserts, “an insatiable propensity to consume as a consequence of rising incomes and a

greater variety of goods offered through an increased exposure to global forces (251).6

On the cultural front, advertisements, newspapers, media, TV, films all started generating

incessant images and attitudes about the new ‘modern’ middle class lifestyle. The state

television network Doordarshan was suddenly in company of multiple privatized cable

networks and internet was readily available, leading to an unprecedented exchange of

information or what Appadurai famously calls as the “global cultural flows” (33). India

also saw a significant Information Technology (IT) boom which generated an abundance

of highly skilled yet inexpensive middle class labor for the global economy, putting the

country right in the middle of the rhetoric of ‘third world growth’ propelled by

globalization.7 The liberalization of India, as several studies show, has thus brought

6
Oza gives an important reminder that the concept of “middle class” in the
context of India is quite ambiguous, since the difference between the lower and
the upper middle class is seen “not only in income levels but also in education and
access of resources”(12). In the absence of a proper definition, Oza identifies the
middle class as consisting of “the petty bourgeoisie of traders, small businessmen,
and those in service occupations” (12).
 16

immense changes in India’s socio-economic structure, mainly pertaining to the rapid rise

of the middle class, the restructuring of the urban space, increased flow of global

commodities in Indian markets, the IT growth, changed governmental policies for the

poor and an increasing growth of the private sector according to norms of neoliberalism

(Oza ; Gupta ; Chopra ; Scrase and Scarse; Ruparelia and et all).

Thus, the nature of contemporary globalization can be fully understood only through

the guiding doctrine behind economic globalization--‘neoliberalism’ and the various

policy changes it advocates. Harvey points out that as an economic policy neoliberalism

“proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual

entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by

strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade” (2). Taking its origin from the

root ideology of nineteenth century “liberalism,” which lays utmost importance on the

concept of freedom whether be it in civil society or in economic realms, neoliberalism

advocates for a freer, more competitive and equally unregulated market .8 Consequently,

7
The Pro-globalization rhetoric recurrently invokes the benefits of globalization
especially for the poor countries or the ‘third world’. For impassioned articulation
of this rhetoric see IMF’s Flemming Larsen’s op-ed “Globalization and the Poor
Countries”; David Dollar’s “Growth is Good for the Poor”; Jagdish Bhagwati’s
In Defense of Globalization (2004)
8
Attempting to explain neoliberalism, Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo Garcia
aptly traces its roots to classical liberalism: “Neo" means we are talking about a
new kind of liberalism. So what was the old kind? The liberal school of
economics became famous in Europe when Adam Smith, an Scottish economist,
published a book in 1776 called The Wealth Of Nations. He and others advocated
the abolition of government intervention in economic matters. No restrictions on
manufacturing, no barriers to commerce, no tariffs, he said; free trade was the best
way for a nation's economy to develop. Such ideas were "liberal" in the sense of
no controls. This application of individualism encouraged "free" enterprise,"
 17

the process of globalization and the opening up of national borders became the ideal

process through which the ‘free’ flow of capital, goods and labor could be ensured as

even the smaller, developing nations, could be hurled in the market. Central to the

neoliberal philosophy is the idea of capitalism on a global scale, whereby the

contemporary globalization has often been associated with terms like ‘global capitalism

or ‘capitalistic globalization’.9

While neoliberalism is primarily an economic vision concerning matters of the

financial system, propagated by Chicago School economists like Hayek and Milton

Friedman, it also exerts immense influence on the political sphere and in the shaping of

the government policies. Contrary to the idea of complete non-interference of the state in

the market in “liberalism”, neoliberalism rather demands participation of the state,

provided it serves as a supporter of the market. As Harvey points out, the role of the state

is to create and preserve a framework that favors the market: “The state has to guarantee,

for example, the quality and integrity of money. It must also set up those military,

defences, police and legal structures and functions required to secure private property

rights, and to guarantee, by force if need be, the proper functioning of markets” (2). Thus,

instead of demanding the limitation of the state, neoliberalism involves the state as an

ally in its goal to implement market principles. Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo Garcia’s

‘free’ competition -- which came to mean, free for the capitalists to make huge
profits as they wished.”
9
William Avilés defines global capitalism or capitalistic globalization as
synonymous with economic globalization-- “the accelerating internationalization
of capital, technology and spread of capitalist production lines on a global level”
(11).
 18

summarization of the main points of neoliberalism shows the immense changes it brings

not only in the economic context but also in social and political contexts. For Martinez

and Garcia, neoliberalism attempts to impose five main paradigms--

a) “The rule of the market — Liberating ‘free’ enterprise or private enterprise from any

bonds imposed by the government (the state) no matter how much social damage this

causes”. It also means deunionization of workers and the elimination of worker’s

rights to maximize profit

b) Reducing public expenditure for social services, such as health and education, by the

government and cutting the safety net for the poor

c) Deregulation, minimizing the government regulation for the sake of profit

d) Privatization of the nation’s seminal infrastructures like water, electricity, banks,

hospitals, roads etc that were earlier owned by the state

e) Elimination of the concepts of “public good” or community and substituting it with

individual responsibility.

It should however be noted that neoliberalism in India differs to a certain extent from its

Western counterpart, mostly in terms of the second point listed by Martinez and Garcia

about government aid. As Partha Chatterjee points out, though India has increasingly

moved towards adopting neoliberal policies that promote rapid growth of corporate

capital, the state has not completely withdrawn the government aids and assistance

programs for the poor, precisely because of the electoral politics in India.10 The political

10
A similar observation is put forward by Akhil Gupta and Aradhana Sharma
where their study of two programs for rural women in India lead them to conclude
 19

society in India—consisting of a large number of voters from the rural, poor and

underprivileged groups—have constantly expected and demanded a continuation of the

government aid policies that had been facilitated for the poor since India’s Independence.

Neoliberal changes in India, according to Chatterjee, therefore shows a triumph of the

political society that has been successful in negotiating aid from the welfare state, which

has also complied to the demands of its electoral population specifically because leaving

these marginalised populations without state support would mean running “the risk of

turning them into the ‘dangerous classes’ ”(62). The socio-political implication of the

government aid for the poor however highly debated. Though many scholars like

Chatterjee and, Gupta and Sharma agree that these interactions between the Indian state

and its subaltern citizens create an accountability of the government towards its people

that can hold the potential for immense political agency for the common, poor man, it

still remains to be seen how these welfare programs can be converted into tropes of real

political action to subvert the unequal growth under neoliberalism.

The omnipresence of neoliberalism is perhaps its greatest power which, though

started as Adam Smith’s economic propositions and their implementation in the

economic policies by Thatcher and Reagan, has infiltrated the microcosm of individual

human existence in every sphere of life. Therefore, trying to define neoliberalism, W.

Larner says that neoliberalism is more than a set of economic policies; it is a form of

political-economic governance. “Neo-liberal rationality, while foregrounding the market

that “in a postcolonial context with high rates of poverty and a neoliberal
economy with high rates of growth, what we witness is not the end of welfare and
its replacement with workfare but the simultaneous expansion of both kinds of
programs” (277).
 20

is not only, even primarily focused on the economy; rather it involves extending and

involving market values to all institutions in social action, even as the market remains a

distinctive player” (7). Since it fiercely promotes the growth of the capital, many

thinkers see neoliberalism as a mode of unfettered exploitation of one class by the

other—and often of one nation by the other—that echoes the tenets of the mercantile

economic exploitation of the process of colonialism. Calling neoliberal globalization

imperialistic, J.W Smith argues that neoliberalism is only a variant of the earlier

mercantilist imperialism, though the two terms create an illusion of difference. Smith

asserts that “in reality the same wealth confiscation went on, deeply buried within

complex systems of monopolies and unequal trade hiding under the cover of free trade”

(126). Therefore for Smith, it all comes down to the question of who has control over the

resources and profits of the trade, for global trade has resulted in, as he argues, the

“siphoning of the world’s wealth to imperial centers of capital today just as they did

when the secret of plunder by trade was learned centuries ago” (126). Thus in term of its

methods and objectives many scholars identify neoliberal globalization akin to a new

form of colonialism.

Thus, connecting globalization with the history of imperialism, famous

postcolonial thinkers like Ashcroft, Griffith and Tiffin conceptualize globalization as a

new form of colonialism, with its imperial center in US instead of Europe. As they assert:

The key to the link between classical imperialism and contemporary globalization

in the twentieth century has been the role of United States. Despite its resolute

refusal to perceive itself as ‘imperial’…the United States had, in its international

 21

policies, eagerly espoused the political domination and economic and cultural

control associated with imperialism…the operation of globalization cannot be

separated from the structures of power perpetuated by European imperialism (92)

Similarly, identifying economic globalization as a “latest wave of colonialism,” Anna

Manzo comments that the multinational corporations of capital rule over the nation states,

whereby a country’s national, state and local policies regarding crucial areas like health,

taxes, public expenditure, finance and even biotechnology are dictated by the

corporations. Moreoever, Manzo points out “Supra-national institutions such as the IMF,

World Bank, and World Trade Organization are working to further negate national

sovereignty through emerging global legal infrastructures… allowing the formation of

unprecedented monopolies . On a similar note, global capitalism has been variously

referred to as a synonym or extension of terms likes “neocolonialism” (taking its cue

from Che Guevera’s 1965 speech in Algeria 11) and “neo-imperialism” signifying its

similarities with the colonial imperialism and its exploitative ways.12

In a similar vein, Hardt and Negri also define the globalization of capitalist

production as the new “Empire”, describing the immense scope of its power (xi). Hardt

and Negri emphatically assert the repressive powers of The Empire—“The Empire we are

11
Che Guevara uses the term at “At the Afro-Asian Conference in Algeria"
speech to the Second Economic Seminar of Afro-Asian Solidarity in Algiers,
Algeria on February 24, 1965 asserting: "As long as imperialism exists it will, by
definition, exert its domination over other countries. Today that domination is
called neocolonialism."
12
Referring to the new spate of actual colonial acquisition of territories by
Europe, USA and Japan towards the end of the nineteenth/early 20th century.
 22

faced with wields enormous powers of oppression and destruction” (xv). Yet, unlike

Ashcroft, Griffith and Tiffin’s theorization of the US as the imperial center of

globalization, the new “Empire” for Hardt and Negri does not necessarily preclude

specific geopolitical, metropolitan centers of power.13 Rather, important in their

theorization is the concept of Empire as a diffused and amorphous entity—“it is

decentered and deterritorialized” (xii) says Hardt and Negri, which echoes the

Foucauldian notion of decentralized power, whereby the Empire is much more

disseminated beyond the centers of Western power. The Empire is thus ubiquitous—it

reaches the remotest corners and spreads to the grass root levels of global existence,

affecting the lives of the marginal communities the most.

The contemporary Indian novels analyzed in this project portray the material

effects of neoliberal globalization on the lives of the common, underprivileged people in

a variety of ways. The fictional representation of globalization in the context of marginal

entities can be mapped through three main emerging thematic trends: Firstly,

globalization is portrayed as a positive change for the marginal communities in many

novels of contemporary India. Manifest through the theme of rags-to riches stories, which

emerge as a recurrent plot in a number of current Indian novels, novels that project the

positive side of globalization narrate stories of the main protagonists hailing from socio-

13
As Hardt and Negri explicates: “The concept of Empire is characterized
fundamentally by a lack of boundaries: Empire’s rule has no limits. First and
foremost, then, the concept of Empire posits a regime that effectively
encompasses the spatial totality, or really that rules over the entire “civilized”
world. No territorial boundaries limit its rule. Second,…From the perspective of
Empire, this is the way things will always be and the way they were always meant
to be”(xiv).
 23

economically marginalized sections of the Indian society and achieving fascinating

financial success, primarily through the new opportunities opened up by liberalization.

Novels like The White Tiger and Q&A tell stories of marginal protagonists Balram

Halwai and Ram Mohammad Thomas respectively, both of whom climb the social ladder

with immense alacrity. Balram Halwai is born to an impoverished family of a daily wage

laborer in a backward, poor village of rural India, while Ram Mohammad is born as an

orphan and spends his childhood struggling for his existence, working as a child labor.

Significantly, both are able to transcend their inherited impoverished conditions and find

miraculous monetary success, specifically through the open economy and the influx of

global capital of post-liberalization India. Balram and Ram’s stories of success are thus

the testimonies of the success of neoliberal globalization, which is portrayed as an

emancipating force for the lowest strata of the Indian society. However, the novels do not

portray Balram and Ram’s success as a natural consequence of economic liberalization;

rather both the protagonists embody crucial values of ideal neoliberal subjectivity that

propel their success. The protagonists thus make it to the top precisely because they play

according to the rules of neoliberal capitalism, and act as the model citizens of the new

economy. The novels are therefore important ideological manifestos of neoliberal hope,

which promises success to all those who imbibe the ideology of neoliberalism in their

lives and personalities.

Apart from the tales of the poor man’s astounding success, a common theme in

post-liberalization Indian novel is that of the life of the underbelly in the urban space. The

trope of the city emerges as a focal point in many fictions that capture the conflict and
 24

flux of the new, metamorphosing India. Liberalization of India, among its many effects,

has brought in a restructuring of the modern city according to the tenets of neoliberal

urbanism. Consequently, the neoliberal city has witnessed a growing

compartmentalization of the urban space into the binaries of what David Harvey calls as

“the micro-states of the rich and the poor” (“Neoliberalism and the City” 12), whereby

the city is reconfigured to privilege the elite and marginalize the impoverished. A number

of novels set against the backdrop of the cities thus depict the life and victimization of the

underclass in the city space. Novels like Tarun Tejpal’s The Story of My Assassins

portray how more and more public spaces are taken over by private entrepreneurship—

converting the urban landscape predominantly into spaces of market-based consumption

and leisure—and the way privileged classes gain priority over the contours of the city

while the socio-economically marginal groups face exclusion and dispossession from the

cityscape. Consequently, securing the city for the free market calls for state administered

disciplinary techniques of social control that safeguard the neoliberal reconfiguration of

the spaces, limit their access and implement exclusion, and most importantly

conceptualize forms of regulation to police the population. Through the lives of the five

criminals hailing from the margins of the society and the world of the middle class

journalist narrator, The Story etches a polarized geography of Delhi that has been

restructured as a global city of entrepreneurship, leisure and consumption; and one that

spatially quarantines and disciplines the ‘potentially dangerous’ poor, marginal and

homeless groups through various methods of eviction, incarceration and surveillance.

Concurrently, the theme of surveillance is manifest in more subtle forms in Vikram

 25

Chandra’s novel Sacred Games, where the ideological tenets of neoliberal surveillance

are embodied through aesthetic techniques in the novel form itself. The narrative

technique of Sacred Games embodies a fictional panopticon that conflates criminality

with the marginal subject and renders him an object of discourse and consequent

disciplining. The contemporary resurgence of the novels that depict the criminal

underbelly and the dark side of the glossy metropolitan cities signify the interest in the

unknown threat of the socio-economic margins, which are often construed as potentially

dangerous groups in the urban space, and thus subjects of curiosity, apprehension and

vigilance.

Besides the novels on neoliberal subject and the global urban space, a third

category of novels that I analyze invoke the theme of environment and the victimization

of the marginal communities—an issue that constitutes one of the most voiced concerns

against globalization. Novels like Animal’s People by Indra Sinha and The Hungry Tide

by Amitav Ghosh portray how the peripheral subjects are affected when globalization

reshapes the environment, whether in terms of environmental deterioration or

conservation, and consequently influences man’s unique relationship with nature. Indra

Sinha’s novel narrates the plight of Bhopal’s poor and sick residents struggling for a safe

environment and basic human rights even after two decades of the massive industrial

disaster in 1984, and depicts how multinational corporations form an unholy nexus with

the nation state to exploit the resources of a developing nation and yet evade corporate

responsibility when a disaster ensues, leaving the poorest citizens of the country as its

worst victims. Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide on the other hand describes how global
 26

environmentalism and ecotourism become menacing forces that evict and displace the

third world poor, dispossessing them consequently from the very natural resources on

which they depend for daily subsistence. Both the novels portray the silencing of the

marginal groups as potential factors in the decision making process about the local

environment, which is often affected by global forces that leave the local marginals as

hapless, unacknowledged victims in the meta-project of globalization. These three

thematic categories of contemporary Indian fiction depict how the figure of the marginal

is variously represented in post-liberalization Indian novels, invoking the varying effects

of globalization on the peripheries of society.

However, to analyze the politics of representation of the marginal subjects in the

literary texts of post-liberalization India, as well as the current resurgence of Indian

literature that depicts the lives of the marginal under globalization, one needs to go

beyond the thematic issues of the texts to understand the ‘ideology’ of neoliberalism in

the Marxist sense of the term and the way literary texts corroborate and resist it. One of

the most significant characteristics of the neoliberal Empire, Hardt and Negri point out, is

that it not only regulates economic exchange but also seeks to directly to rule over human

nature (xvi). Similarly, Foucault points out in The Birth of Biopolitics that neoliberal

ideology “has to intervene on society so that competitive mechanisms can play a

regulatory role at every moment and every point in society and by intervening in this way

its objective will become possible, that is to say, a general regulation of society by the

market” (133). Thus, as neoliberalism seeks to realign the society in accordance to an

economic grid, it requires the state and other institutions to “govern” the populations as
 27

active and yet ‘willing’ participants of the market—producing as Foucault terms it as “a

permanent consensus of all those who may appear as agents within these economic

processes, as investors, workers, employers, and trade unions. All these economic

partners produce a consensus, which is a political consensus, inasmuch as they accept this

economic game of freedom” (84).

Since neoliberalism hinges strongly on disciplining of populations into ideal

subjects for the market regime, it is imperative that we look beyond just the politico-

economic policies of the state into other modes of mass control, especially through

cultural forms, analyzing how neoliberalism might operate as an “ideology” in the

Marxist sense of the term. Raymond Williams cogently sums up the notion of ideology

through its three distinct characteristics:

i) a system of beliefs characteristic of a particular class or group

ii) a system of illusory beliefs—false ideas or false consciousness—which can be

contrasted with true or scientific knowledge

iii)The general process of the production of meanings and ideas (54)

Ideology thus becomes a repressive system to maintain social order and transform

individuals into the role of what Althusser terms as the complying “subject”. Here I want

to quickly recapitulate the two seminal concepts on ideology— Gramci’s notion of

“cultural hegemony” and Althusser’s notion of the “Ideological State Apparatus”—to

situate my discussion of neoliberalism as an “ideology” for the new global order.

Analyzing how dominant groups exercise power over society, Gramsci formulates the

notion of “hegemony” (12) that signifies what Boggs sums up as “the prevailing
 28

consciousness that has been internalized by the population [so that] it becomes part of

what is generally called 'common sense' so that the philosophy, culture and morality of

the ruling elite comes to appear as the natural order of things (39) .14Althusser takes

Gramsci’s ideas further to theorize on the specific organs of the system of ideology.

Thus, taking the context of capitalistic societies, Althusser denotes the state and many

social institutions are essentially “repressive” and ones that control the citizens’ desires,

preferences, beliefs and thoughts. For Althusser, the ideological state apparatus (ISA)

controls its citizens also through the domain of ideology which operates through

apparatuses working in other “private” institutions of social existence: namely religion,

education, family, law, trade unions, communication and culture (143).15 The

transformation of the ‘individual’ into ‘subjects’ of ideology through Ideological State

14
Gramsci asserts that Central to the system of hegemony are the two forms of
control—the “Political government” which constitutes the "apparatus of state
coercive power which 'legally' enforces discipline on those groups who do not
'consent' either actively or passively” and the “social hegemony” that generates
“spontaneous consent” from the “great masses of the population to the general
direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group” (SPN 12).
15
For Althusser, the ideological state apparatus (ISA) is distinct from the other
politico-governmental state apparatuses—consisting of direct state intervention
through the “public” bodies of “the Government, the Administration, the Army,
the Police, the Courts, the Prisons”. Together they contribute to the same result—
“the reproduction of the relations of production, i.e. of capitalist relations of
exploitation. Althusser asserts that “ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in such a way
that it ‘recruits’ subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all), or
‘transforms’ the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all)” by the
operation that he calls as “interpellation or hailing, and which can be imagined
along the lines of the most commonplace everyday police (or other) hailing: ‘Hey,
you there!’”(174).
 29

Apparatus constitutes an effective mechanism of regulation by the capitalistic state,

serving as agents of economic “exploitation and repression” (133).

Along these lines, the ideological tenor of neoliberalism as a “common sense” in

the Gramscian sense of the term has been reiterated by various scholars like David

Harvey and Saadia Toor, Duggan, Rachel Turner and others. David Harvey points out

how neoliberalism has come be a “common sense” in contemporary society, propagated

through “powerful ideological influences circulated through the corporations, the media,

and the numerous institutions that constitute civil society—such as universities, schools,

churches and professional associations” (40).16 Taking these notions of ideology in the

context of neoliberalism, the cultural apparatuses of ideology like literature assumes

immense significance. As Raymond Williams calls literature “actively ideological” (45),

it is pertinent to analyze the postcolonial Indian novel in the age of globalization to assess

the way literary texts conceptualize and embody the ideologies of neoliberalism, or

critique them in emphatic resistance to the oppressive realities of globalization. Thus, to

analyze the new postcolonial literature of India, we must deconstruct the ideological and

material aspects that define neoliberal globalization, and explore the specific ways those

aspects are represented in the literary texts.

16
Gramsci defines ‘common sense’ as such: “Its most fundamental characteristic
is that it is a conception which, even in the brain of one individual, is fragmentary,
incoherent and inconsequential, in conformity with the social and cultural position
of those masses whose philosophy it is. At those times when a homogeneous
social group is brought into being, there comes into being also, in opposition to
common sense, a homogeneous - in other words coherent and systematic -
philosophy. (419)
 30

Chapter Division:

This dissertation is divided into four chapters, and a concluding discussion.

The first chapter discusses the theoretical framework and analytical

methodologies for this project. Placing my project as a part of the materialist turn in

postcolonial studies—which seeks to take a new turn from the cultural focus of

postcolonialism to the materialist realities of the globalized world--I justify my project as

a valuable contribution in providing a model in actually applying theories of globalization

to read contemporary postcolonial literature that has moved beyond the traditional

debates of colonialism and the nation state to respond to the more recent changes brought

in by economic globalization in the nations of the global south.

In the second chapter, I read the novels of rags-to-riches story, exploring how the

marginal subject is constructed as a powerful testimony of the success of neoliberal

globalization through a detailed reading of Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger and Vikas

Swarup’s Q&A.

The third chapter seeks to explore the novels of the oppressive disciplining of the

marginal subject, especially in a neoliberal urban space. I read two urban novels—Tarun

Tejpal’s The Story of My Assassins and Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games, set in the

contemporary metropolitan cities of Delhi and Mumbai.

The fourth chapter focuses on the theme of environmental issues in contemporary

India in the context of the victimization of the marginal groups through the two novels—

Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People and Amitav Ghosh’ The Hungry Tide.
 31

Finally, I summarize the various notions of the marginal subject that I discuss

throughout the project and conclude how post-millennium Indian novels depict the

effects of globalization on the lives of the common, underprivileged people that

correspond to the ways the marginal subject is appropriated and controlled in the real

post-globalized world.
 CHAPTER 1

Globalization and Postcolonial Studies: Towards A New Direction in Literary

Postcolonialism

I certainly think there is a post-post-colonial generation. I'm sure a lot of voices

you're seeing coming out now are people who never had a colonial experience.

We don't place a burden of guilt on someone who's no longer there. So it's like,

what are we doing with where we come from, and how can we address issues

here. It's our fault if things aren't going well. That's a very different stance than a

lot of what's come before.

--------Mohsin Hamid, “The Chronicle Online”

As I set out to discuss the new literature of a postcolonial nation like India in the context

of the socio-political-economic realities of contemporary globalization, the question

arises as to where can I place my work in the field of postcolonial studies? How does the

project seek to contribute to the growth of the field? How can this dissertation project

new ways of understanding contemporary postcolonial literature and embody the new

models of literary analysis in the field of postcolonial studies as a response to the

changing dynamics of postcolonial societies and nations in the era of global capitalism?

In terms of its theoretical orientation, this dissertation seeks to place itself as a part of the

32
 33

materialist turn in postcolonial studies—a revision of the earlier cultural focus of

postcolonial thinking towards an emphasis on the material realities of globalization as

well. Thus the global turn in postcolonial studies takes the discipline beyond the

postcolonial issues of culture, identity and hybridity that had been the central concerns of

postcolonialism for quite some years and focuses on issues like transnational capital flow,

the economics of inequality, the restructuring of the nation state, migration of labor,

structural marginalization of the poor and the minorities, neoliberal ideologies and

policies. Consequently, my dissertation not only explores how the current postcolonial

literatures thematically respond to the issues of globalization, it also seeks to analyze

literature through what Graham Huggan lists as the three most important characteristics

of the new postcolonial critical framework—namely, a renewed vigilance of capitalistic

networks, an intersection with other disciplines other than English literary studies and a

focus on the questions of marginalization within the context of the nation state

(“Interdisciplinary” 241). My dissertation is an exploration into the global turn in

postcolonial studies—both in terms of the new literary works from the non-Western

world as well as the new critical frameworks that address the concerns of the postcolonial

nations in the modern day globalized world.

 34

The Lacuna of Postcolonialism:

To fully place my work as a part of the materialist revision of postcolonial

studies, it is important to first discuss the materialist critique of postcolonialism that has

been a central debate in the field for the last two decades.17 One of the major criticisms of

postcolonial theory has been its failure to address the power dynamics of the

contemporary globalized world, a critique largely emanating mostly from the Marxist

critics of postcoloniality who urge for a materialist reading of the post-colonial condition

and globalization, rather than just a cultural interpretation that is primarily reached

through the paradigms of poststructuralism.18 Thus, while the cultural critics of

17
A branch of Marxist criticism, materialist criticism, as David Murphy
succinctly sums up, “is concerned with analyzing the cultural text within its
historical context. In its most enlightening and complex forms, materialist
criticism highlights the social, cultural, political, economic and gender issues—
that is the ‘material’ realities—with which the text engages and which in turn
have shaped the text (181). Materialist critics and postcolonial cultural critics
have assumed contrary positions in a long trajectory that dates back to their
differential interpretation of the colonial process itself. Again while
postcolonialism takes a cultural turn through Edward Said’s Orientalism, the
debate between materialist critics and cultural postcolonialists have been invoked
in the contrasting positions regarding Fanon vs Aime, between critics Eagleton vs
Said, and between Bhabha vs Ahmad.

18
Postcolonialism’s anti-colonial stand, primarily reached through the binaries
between the colonizer and the colonized and evident in the early work of Fanon,
Memmi and Mannoni, became redundant in later postcolonialism that was deeply
influenced by the interrogations of binaries in poststructuralistm.
Postcolonialism’s post-structural turn is epitomized by Bhaba’s concept of the
hybridity, “‘hybridity' which is commonly defined as “the creation of new
transcultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonization” (Ashcrost,
Griffith, Tiffin 118). Thus the binaries of the Self and the Other, the colonizer and
the colonized, the oppressor and the oppressed were overshadowed by the
concepts of in-betweenness, contact zones, cultural amalgamation,
multiculturalism, which distinctly aim more at paradigms of synthesis and
 35

postcolonialism like Bhaba and proponents of cultural globalization like Arjun

Appadurai—who is widely cited in postcolonial theory—celebrate the transnational flow

of culture and the erasure of boundaries as something emancipatory, the materialist critics

argue for a more critical reading of globalization in terms of the capital flow and socio-

economic dynamics. Materialist Marxist critics and postcolonial cultural critics have

assumed contrary positions in a long trajectory that dates back to their differential

interpretation of the colonial process itself. David Murphy succinctly summarizes the

long history of materialist critique of postcolonial studies, which he points out, revolves

around three major criticisms:

a) Postcolonialism’s deep alliance with poststructuralism that “focuses on textual

issues instead of historical issues” and reads colonialism through the paradigm of

representation rather than any other form of socio-economic exploitation

b) Postcolonialism’s conceptualization of the migrant as the “archetype of a

postcolonial identity” that prioritizes the notions of hybridity, ambivalence and in-

betweenness, and is essentially based on the postcolonial elite

c) The temporal ambiguity of postcolonialism that celebrates the contemporary

world as an emancipatory space for the free flow of culture and borderless-ness,

whereas the materialist critics interpret current globalization through their

concerns for neocolonialism (183)

exchange rather than polarities. Consequently, this also marks the alienation of
postcolonialism from political concerns of anti-colonialism to a cultural concerns
of identity and cultural diversity
 36

The long standing dispute between the two fields has often resulted in fierce critiques and

disavowals of each other, with the contestation reaching its peak in the context of

contemporary globalization. While neither Marxist materialism nor Postcolonialism is a

theoretically flawless, self-sufficient critical framework capable of addressing the various

complexities of globalization exclusively on its own, the intersection of the two has led to

a mutual enrichment of both the fields. Consequently, postcolonialism must continue to

revise itself to embrace the materialist contexts along with the cultural ones, in order to

address the crisis and power dynamics of transnational capital and neoliberal

underpinnings of the contemporary globalized world.

One of the earliest and significant materialist critiques of postcolonialism comes

from Ella Shohat in her seminal essay “Notes on the Postcolonial.” Among Shohat’s

many critiques of the term postcolonial, one important issue she raises is that postcolonial

scholarship seems to consider colonialism as an event of the past, failing to address the

continuing legacy of colonialism through “neocolonial” economic globalization and

military occupations of the contemporary day and age. Her impassioned critique is worth

quoting at length:

As a signifier of a new historical epoch, the term "post-colonial," when compared

with neo-colonialism, comes equipped with little evocation of contemporary

power relations; it lacks a political content which can account for the eighties and

nineties-style U.S. militaristic involvements in Granada, Panama, and Kuwait-

Iraq,…The "post-colonial" leaves no space, finally, for the struggles of

aboriginals in Australia and indigenous peoples throughout the Americas, in other

 37

words, of Fourth World peoples dominated by both First World multi-national

corporations and by Third World nation-states. (105)

Shohat’s objection against the concept of postcolonialism is primarily a problem of

temporality. For Shohat, the notion of the “colonial” in postcolonialism is completely

disjoint from the contemporary imperialistic ventures or military interventions of “Anglo-

American free-trade hegemony” (104), evident through instances of the U.S militaristic

interventions in Iraq, Panama, Granada to protect its oil interests in the Gulf, or the Trade

Liberalization Treaty in Mexico—which Shohat identifies as “new forms of colonialism,

i.e neocolonialism” (107). Thus, postcolonial studies, as Shohat points out back in 1992,

had failed to take into account the forces of transnational capitalism that has started to

restructure the world in a way that it can no longer be understood solely through the

paradigm of the earlier colonialism. In fact, as Shohat recounts, the resistive potential of

the concept of postcolonial has been significantly eroded for while the conservative

members of Shohat’s college curriculum committee at CUNY strongly resisted any

language that referred to issues like “imperialism” and “neocolonialism,” they were

apparently “visibly relieved at the sight of the word “post-colonial’” (99) which seemed

less threatening to the contemporary hegemony.

Shohat’s criticism is taken a step further by Arif Dirlik in his famous article “The

Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism,” whereby he

not only asserts, along Shohat’s line, the inadequacy of postcolonial studies in the

contemporary context of global capitalism, but goes further to argue that “postcoloniality

is the condition of global capitalism” (356). Dirlik strongly contends that the world has
 38

moved beyond the conditions of colonialism and transformed into a “global capitalist

network” (349) headed by transnational corporations. The changes are more than

evident—capitalism has been decentered nationally, production has been

transnationalized, and most importantly, “the narrative of contemporary capitalism is no

longer historically specific to Europe (350), whereas postcolonial thinking is still

centered on Europe as the center of its theorizations. Thus, for Dirlik the Eurocentric

model and the paradigm of colonialism that form the crux of postcolonial studies are

utterly inadequate to address the workings of the contemporary globalized world. Dirlik’s

target is specifically the postcolonial critics in Western academia whose increased

visibility and academic respectability, Dirlik asserts , are affirmed precisely because the

concepts of postcolonial criticism resonate with the global consciousness of “capitalistic

world economy” or “global capitalism”(330). For Dirlik, the primary problem is not only

that the postcolonial critics are “silent” in the context of contemporary capitalism (331)

but also that postcolonialism, as an academic discipline, plays a proactive role in

diverting the attention from contemporary power dynamics of global capitalism. It does

so, Dirlik argues ,by “throwing the cover of culture over material relationships”(347) and

by constructing a privileged postcolonial identity that rejects class relations and by

prioritizing “local interactions” over “global structures” that shape them, thereby

proposing the hybridity or “in-betweenness of the postcolonial subject” (Dirlik 336).

Consequently, Dirlik argues, postcolonialism itself is a theoretical endeavor to cover up

for the crisis of global capitalism: “To put it bluntly, postcoloniality is designed to avoid

making sense of the current crisis and, in the process, to cover up the origins of
 39

postcolonial intellectuals in a global capitalism of which they are not so much victims as

beneficiaries” (353).

Dirlik’s claim of the complicity of the postcolonial critics with the forces of

global capitalism echoes the famous indictment by A. K. Appiah in his essay "Is the Post-

in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?” where Appiah asserts that “postcoloniality

is the condition of what we might ungenerously call a comprador intelligentsia: a

relatively small, Western-style, Western-trained group of writers and thinkers, who

mediate the trade in cultural commodities of world capitalism at the periphery” (348).

Taking the case of Nigerian artworks that circulate in the global market, Appiah contends

that the postcolonial-postmodern theorization of the global flow of culture as a

celebratory process of exchange and dissolution of binaries also signifies how these fields

of study “are remarkably insensitive to, not so much dismissive of as blind to, the issue of

neocolonial-ism or ‘cultural imperialism’ ” (348).

Most of the criticism against postcolonialism as an ineffective tool to understand

globalization stems from this critique of postcolonialism as too deeply entrenched in

postmodernism. The crux of the issue lies in postcolonialism’s emphasis on ‘hybridity,’

which is identified as an essentially postmodern concept and celebrated as a condition of

globalization. One of the most vocal voices against hybridity has been that of Aijaz

Ahmad, who in his famous essay “The Politics Of Literary Postcoloniality” critiques

postcolonialism for its insistence on postmodernism—a paradigm he describes as nothing

but “apocalyptic anti-Marxism”(110). Ahmad’s objection to the postmodern leanings of

postcolonial studies concerns its three major thematic concerns: a) “the theme of
 40

’hybridity’, ’ambivalence’ and ’contingency’, as it surfaces especially in Bhabha’s

writing but also much beyond; (b) the theme of the collapse of the nation-state as a

horizon of politics; and (c) the theme of globalised, postmodern electronic culture, which

is seen at times as a form of global entrapment and at other times as yielding the very

pleasures of global hybridity”. Thus, for Ahmad, while the nation state increasingly gains

in importance and continues to play a significant role especially in the context of state

control over transnational finance, the celebration of globalization of culture through

global electronic media is to foreground the “structural offensive of capital,” or

“imperialist ideology” the when substantial proportions of the global population” are

deprived of “conditions of bare survival, let alone electronic literacy and gadgetry” (13).

For Ahmad thus, the postcolonial critic claiming cultural hybridity, which he terms as

“carnivalesque” (13), assumes an essentially elite position. Thus, the privileged migrant

who can “live a life of constant mobility and surplus pleasure” is totally dissociated from

the class struggles and local resistances (13). Ahmad not only declares postcolonialism as

incapable of addressing the crisis of contemporary global capitalism, he also echoes in

Dirlik’s line of argument, that the postcolonial cultural critics are themselves consumers

and producers of interchangeable, commodified cultures that represent the “depthlessness

and whimsicality of postmodernism - the cultural logic of Late Capitalism”—in

Jameson’s superb phrase”(17).

In a similar way, Slavoj Zizek too rejects the critical framework of

postcolonialism that seeks to prioritize the question of cultural difference over other

material aspects of power hierarchy, whereby “we learn that the root of postcolonial
 41

exploitation is our intolerance toward the Other and, furthermore, that this intolerance

itself is rooted in our intolerance toward the "stranger in Ourselves," in our inability to

“confront what we repressed in and of ourselves” (195). Consequently, as Zizek argues,

prioritizing this multicultural model transforms the politico-economic struggle into

“pseudopsychoanalytic drama of the subject unable to confront its inner traumas”, an

approach that dangerously neglects the “global capitalist coordinates” (195). Again, for

many like Lawrence Grossberg, this neglect of global capitalism actually amounts to a

complicit alliance with it. As Sabine Milz points out, Grossberg asserts that “the

postmodernist faith in difference and hybridity as forms of agency and emancipation may

appear ironic precisely because it plays into the power field of neoliberal globalization,

whose decentered structures and logics of power deconstruct the very notions of the

modern subject and the modern nation-state challenged in postmodern (-postcolonial)

critiques” (28). Grossberg’s argument of the implicit connection between

multiculturalism and neoliberal ideology is also something that Walter Benn Michaels

also points out, asserting that the neoliberal novel diverts the attention from economic

issues to issues of cultural difference, asserting cultural equality as the highest form of

emancipation: “What the neoliberal novel likes about cultural difference is that it

sentimentalizes social conflict, imagining that what people really want is respect for their

otherness rather than money for their mortgages”. The eclipsing of the material by the

cultural as discursive categories in postcolonialism has been the central critique against

the otherwise fecund discipline.

 42

However, it is not only the Marxist critics who point out these crucial gaps in

postcolonialism as an efficient critical framework for the contemporary world.

Postcolonial literary critics and supporters, who emphatically place themselves within the

field of postcolonial studies and defend many of its contributions as valuable, also

recognize this lack and the need for the consequent revision of the discipline. Thus,

though defending postcolonialism against the critiques of Ahmad and Dirlik, they do

agree on the fact that the field needs to address its lack in terms of the changing material

realities of globalization. For example, as a cultural theorist Stuart Hall defends

postcolonialism with the claim that all the recent developments of our modern world—

like the power politics of Gulf War—can be understood through the context of

colonialism, as a crisis of the struggle for decolonization (244). Hall strongly objects the

strict periodization of the post-colonial history into a separate period of global capitalism,

that both Shohat and Dirlik seem to argue for, and instead applauds postcolonialism for

rupturing the meta-narratives of European modernity through a more radical intervention

of colonialism that also offers important insights the moment of current globalization as

well. Thus citing Dirlik’s criticism Hall contends that all the contemporary issues of

economic globalization that Dirlik lists in his essay as ignored by the postcolonialists —

the “new international division of labor,” “de-centering of capitalism nationally,” “the

transnationalization of production” (Dirlik 350); “the weakening of boundaries,” the

homogenization of culture (Dirlik 353)—are themes that are often dealt by the ‘distinct’

theoretical paradigm of postcolonial studies. In spite of his impassioned advocacy for

postcolonialism, Hall too asserts that traditional postcolonialism has failed to address the
 43

issues of the contemporary world. However for Hall, the problem with postcolonialism is

not so much its cultural framework as it is a question of restricted temporality—since in

spite of being theoretically sophisticated to potentially address the crisis of the

contemporary world, postcolonialism has been undermined by the shortsightedness of the

postcolonial intellectuals who have mostly restricted themselves to the historical period

of colonialism in their writings, instead of exploring the ideas of postcolonialism in other

contemporary contexts. For Hall, this has been “seriously damaging” (257) for the field,

and he asserts that Dirlik is justified to call for a critical assessment in postcolonial

studies as a “genuine theoretical need” (258).

A seminal postcolonialist, Ania Loomba follows Hall’s line of argument in

defending the importance of postcolonial discourses. Arguing that subaltern discourses,

narratives of colonized people, women and other minorities “revise our understanding” of

the grand narratives of “colonialism, capitalism and modernity” (249), Ania Loomba

asserts that “capitalism, as it was theorized by traditional Marxism” alone cannot be an

adequate model for explaining the complexities of colonialism (249). Loomba then

asserts, contrary to Dirlick’s plea for a critical framework based on capitalism, the

importance of postcolonialism as an intervention to understand the peripheries of the non-

Western world. Echoing Hall’s indictment that the postcolonial marks a critical

interruption into the grand narratives of Europe, including Marxism, Loomba asserts that

“global narratives” seem to swallow the complexities while postcolonialism offers an

understanding of the same narratives though the context of the “local and the

marginalised”(249). However, having said that, Loomba also articulates the need of
 44

situating postcolonial discourse in the current context of globalization. Loomba agrees

with Dirlik on the point that postcolonial intellectuals do not pay serious attention to the

operations of global capitalism today (250) and asserts that “whether this neglect is due to

disciplinary training and affiliations of postcolonial critics…there is no doubt that neither

local nor global cultures, neither nation nor hybridity, can be thought about seriously

without considering how they are shaped by economic systems” (250). Thus Loomba

emphatically asserts that if postcolonial studies has “to survive in a meaningful way it

needs to absorb itself far more deeply in the contemporary world and the local

circumstances within which colonial institutions are being moulded into the disparate

cultural and socio-economic practices which define our contemporary ‘globality’ ” (257).

In another defense of postcolonialism, Kalpana Sheshadri-Crooks critiques

Ahmad’s criticism for its contradictory arguments and its reductive assessment of

postcolonialism. Arguing that a stability of class and national identities, that Ahmad

seems to urge for, might not be possible in this “age of total capitalist penetration” (62),

Crooks commends postcolonial studies for its very “amorphousness that permits it to be

simultaneously self-critical and oppositional”(66). Simultaneously she rejects Marxism as

a self-sufficient discipline with “some sort of ready-made grid that can be imposed upon

social realities”. Rather she argues “Marxism is itself a highly conflictual discourse

whose terms and concepts must be constantly negotiated if they are to be made useful”

(65). Thus for Crooks, the crisis of postcolonial studies (she does admit that there is a

melancholy and incoherence from within the field) is not a question of its amorphousness

but rather an inability to theorize on the notion of the marginality, which misleadingly
 45

aligns postcolonialism with the project of multiculturalism and concerns of cultural

marginality, instead of a socio-political one—“it is imperative to see how the agenda of

postmodern criticism again embarrasses “postcoloniality” by once more characterizing it

as the discourse of the margin (as the space of otherness), by placing it at the vanguard of

cultural and political critique” (53).

However, most other postcolonial critics concur with the materialist critics in

reproving postcolonialism’s too deep entrenchment with postmodernism, which renders

postcolonialism an ineffective framework to conceptualize globalization. Milz rightly

notes that other notable essays such as Simon Gikandi’s “Globalization and the Claims of

Postcoloniality” and Simon During's “Postcolonialism and Globalization: Towards a

Historicization of Their Inter-relation” attest to the same ideas that “while globalization

and postcoloniality have become two major paradigms for expounding the global spread

of capitalist culture, the relationship between the two has remained unclear and

ineffectual, mostly because of first world postcolonial study's postmodernist penchants”.

Citing the case of two Guinean boys whose dead bodies were found in a cargo

plane when they were trying to flee away to Europe, Gikandi comments that concepts of

‘hybridity’ and ‘difference,’ that “comes directly from the grammar book of postcolonial

theory,” (628) project a celebratory narrative of globalization that is different from the

dystopic “material experiences of everyday life and survival” (632) of the poor in the

poorer nations. Thus as Gikandi points out, the postcolonial celebration of cultural

hybridity through the figure of the comprador “émigré elite” (644) eludes the more

critical crisis of globalization for the common, marginalized poor—“the globalization

 46

that they had in mind when they became stowaways on the European plane was different

from that espoused by postcolonial theorists. The boys were neither seeking cultural

hybridity nor ontological difference. Their quest was for a modern life in the European

sense of the world; their risky journey from Africa was an attempt to escape both poverty

and alterity” (631). Thus for Gikandi, it is these lived material realities of globalization

that postcolonialism fails to take into account in its exclusive quest for non-binary,

transnational, postmodern cultural identities. While Gikandi credits the likes of Bhaba

and Appadurai for constituting a cultural practice based on difference and hybridity that

undermines the grand narrative of European modernity (633), he points out the glaring

flaws of postcolonialism in its exclusive over-emphasis on literary and artistic images

rather than on other socio-economic parameters of understanding globalization:

the emphasis on culture in postcolonial theory hinders the recognition of the

global experience as a structural experience (produced out of the complex

interaction of politics, economics, the social, and the like). As long as

globalization is conceived as a cultural rather than a structural experience, it

functions as what Roland Robertson has called ‘‘a site of social theoretical

interests, interpretative indulgence, or the display of world-ideological

preferences’’; considered as an aggregate of local experiences in displacement

rather than a structure patterned by causal relationships, the culture of

globalization cannot account for ‘‘the global-human condition (644)

Similarly, discussing postcolonialism under the two contrary rubrics of “critical

postcolonialism” and “reconciliatory postcolonialism,” (385) Simon During asserts that

 47

by setting out notions like “hybridity, mimicry, ambivalence” that intermingle the

colonized into colonizing cultures, postcolonialism has become more “reconciliatory

rather than a critical, anti-colonialist category”(386).19 During critiques the naïve

assumptions of postcolonial approach to celebrate the flow of culture as a resistive and

emancipatory process, asserting the deep nexus between culture, capital, the global

market and “economically-directed political interests” (388), whereby culture itself

becomes a commodity, as well as an ideological tool of interpellation into the global

economy. For During, the question is less that cultures are in mélange, but rather he is

more concerned about the political economy behind the flow of cultures: “under what

structures and pressures are cultural agents all around the world making choices what to

communicate or export, what to import and graft, when to shift cross-border allegiances

and target new markets/audiences, and when to reshuffle their own cultural repertoire to

exploit, bolster, shrink or transform their traditions and heritages?” (388). During thus

completely rejects the “reconciliatory postcolonialism” of the canonical postcolonial

literary critics—caustically assaulting it for assuming a position that seems to portray

colonialism with a “happy ending,” where the world has supposedly been unified and de-

spatialized and colonial repression has become obsolete (392). Rather, During focuses on

“critical cosmopolitanism”—which though in some ways is reductive in its

conceptualization of a fixed “West” that no longer exists in the age of transnational

19
During distinguishes between critical and reconciliatory postcolonialisms,
asserting “that the former seeks radical alternatives to modernity based on non-
Western traditions and lifeways, while the latter works to reconcile colonized
peoples to colonialism”(385)
 48

capitalism—nevertheless recognizes that globalization does not put an end to local ethnic

and colonialist struggles but rather continually re-articulates and re-places them in a more

dispersed world system (402).

Among many other critics who seek an amendment of traditional postcolonialism

through materialist revisions, Benita Parry constitutes another important name. Parry

avowedly places herself within the field of postcolonial studies and assigns considerable

importance to the reading of the literary texts along with the theoretical discussions.

Parry’s major contribution to the field, Postcolonial Studies: A Materialist Critique,

argues for a materialist revision of the “myopic perspective of postcolonial studies” (3)

into an inclusion of social and experiential paradigms of contemporary globalization.

Like most materialist critics, Parry reproaches the linguistic and cultural turn in

postcolonial studies that alienated the discipline from the historical, political and social

interpretation of colonialism and its concomitant aftereffects. Parry’s critique is chiefly

directed towards the trend of colonial discourse analysis and the triumvirate of

postcolonial theory—Said, Bhaba and Spivak—who by rejecting the binary oppositions

of power between the colonizer and the colonized project only a discursive and

representational mode of resistance reached through a deconstructivist reading of the text.

Thus for Bhabha, Parry points out, the ‘hybrid moment’ is reached only through the

deconstructivist act of locating ambivalence and disjunctures of the colonialist text which

displaces the ‘authorizing presence’ (“Signs taken for Wonders” 25); while for Spivak

(“Can the Subaltern Speak?”) the colonized subaltern is subjected to an epistemic

violence and forever relegated to silence, who again can be retrieved only through an
 49

deconstructivist reading. Parry argues that these approaches of prioritizing the discursive

paradigm over the material undermine the social praxis of people who are still engaged in

“colonial struggles against contemporary forms of neocolonialism” (26). Projecting an

alternative practice of approaching literature, Parry thus refers to Abdul Jan Mohamed’s

essay “The Economy of Manichean Allegory” for its reading of colonial literature in an

alternative way—whereby it serves “a necessary reminder that colonialism was a protean

phenomenon and its discursive violence inseparable from material and institutional

force”(28).Simultaneously, asserting that Marxism is not necessarily at tandem with

questions of culture, Parry calls for a model of critical framework, borrowing from

Jameson, that seeks to “grasp culture in and for itself, but also in relationship to its

outside, its content, its context, and its space of intervention and of effectivity” (Jameson

47, qtd in Parry 5).

The materialist critiques and reconsiderations of postcolonialism thus claim that

though postcolonialism has made valuable contributions in theorizing the cultural

dynamics of the colonizing process; in positing a critical framework that transcends the

grand Eurocentric narratives and in proposing a more nuanced notion of non-binary

identities, the field of postcolonial studies has failed to recognize the influence of the

global circulation of capital power. This however does not spell the end of

postcolonialism as a relevant field of critical enquiry. Not only is postcolonialism

indispensible in addressing the complexities of the non-Western, erstwhile colonies that

cannot be effectively theorized solely by the related fields of culture studies, area studies

or Marxism, postcolonialism has been one of the most intellectually fecund fields that has
 50

constantly questioned itself as a discipline, embraced a wide variety of concerns and that

which refuses to impose a strict, reductive methodological framework on the reading of

the texts. It is its very amorphousness and broad scope to address multiple issues

concerning power, in manifold variety of ways that makes postcolonialism a discipline

with immense potential to address the crisis of contemporary globalisation. Works like

Postcolonial Studies and Beyond by Ania Loomba, Suvir Kaul and et all, strongly

proclaim the immense possibilities of critical explorations and interdisciplinary work one

can explore through postcolonialism. As one of the essays in the volume by O’Brien And

Imre Szeman boldly asserts—“no other critical practice has foregrounded the links

between cultural forms and geopolitics to the degree that postcolonial studies has over the

past four decades” (8). Subsequently, the editors of the volume sends out a clarion call

for a new turn in postcolonial studies to make it more relevant as a critical field in the

contemporary era of globalization. The editors see postcolonial studies reasserting its

vocation through an exploration of the “contemporary shape of neoliberal global

institutions” and an understanding of “the wide ideological and intellectual spectrum that

has begun—very recently—to align itself with the global juggernaut” (13) mainly by

shifting the attention to the USA model of neoliberal globalization. Simultaneously, they

remind us that postcolonial studies, along with its focus on a decentralized network of

capital and power, also needs to maintain its “historical awareness of imperialism” (14),

which can contribute valuable insights into analyzing the processes of neocolonialism.

The future of postcolonial studies is thus not of obsolescence but rather of a revised and
 51

more sentient critical thinking grounded both in the dynamics of culture as well as the

materialist concerns of lived experiences.

It is also important to mention here that a materialist turn in postcolonialism does

not necessarily imply a) a total rejection of the cultural, experiential and ideological

dimensions of the literary text; nor does it suggest b) a rejection of literary approaches by

strictly applying the methodologies of other disciplines like economics or sociology or

political science; nor seeks to c) overlook the politics and questions of representation in

the texts. Imre Szeman very aptly addresses this fear against materialist criticism and

points out that materialist cultural and literary criticism has often been fraught with

several “misunderstandings”—either it is conceived in utterly reductive forms or has

been “identified with the glum vocabulary of an older, parodic version of Marxist

criticism” (2). I concur with Szeman who points out that materialist criticism is primarily

“interested in the study of context or the historical situation or situatedness” (2), and

cannot be totally conflated with either Marxist criticism or New Historicist criticism,

though it does borrow from those fields. In its very simplistic conception, the new

postcolonialism is a syncretistic discipline, which in Milz’s words, “excludes neither the

study of the interiority of literary texts (traditional textual analysis) nor the study of

"literature's relation to the processes of globalization as they manifest themselves in a

variety of historical periods” (Jay 35).

But what are the broad tropes through which a more materialistic postcolonial

literary analysis can be reached in the context of globalization? What specific revisions or

disciplinary turns do the new literary postcolonialism can envision? Highlighting the
 52

focal points of my dissertation, I propose four main paradigms through which

postcolonialism can be thought out as an effective critical framework for literary analysis

in the era of globalization:

One of the ways through which the new postcolonial readings of contemporary

literature can address the material conditions of globalization is through an understanding

of the politics of production, dissemination and reception of the postcolonial texts as

cultural commodities in the global literary market. Taking cues from the enquiries of the

new historicists, it is important that postcolonialism also explores the historical context of

the production of the text and its role as an ideological artifact in the way it responds to

the tenets of neoliberal globalization. Thus, the new interventions in postcolonial literary

studies, Milz argues, should not merely focus on texts that thematize the socio-economic-

political realities of globalization but must go beyond the content of the text and rather

understand “the relationship between literature and globalization within the larger context

of contemporary power relations between nation-states, institutions, corporations, global

markets, international trade and policy instruments (e.g. the World Bank, WTO, IMF,

TRIPS, GATS), and so on. Thus, with the production and consumption of the

contemporary postcolonial novel inextricably tied with its commercial gains in the book

market, the involvement of the international publishing houses, the corporate methods of

publicity, and the marketability of the writer himself/herself, it has become increasing

imperative to analyze the postcolonial texts as cultural products circulating in the global

literary market. Graham Huggan’s The Postcolonial Exotic and Bishnupriya Ghosh’s

When Borne Across: Literary Cosmopolitics are both important interventions in situating
 53

postcolonial literature in the context of the politics of global culture flow. Consequently it

is also important to see how the postcolonial text embodies an ‘ideology’ in the Marxist

sense of the term and the particular ideas it disseminates as either tool of or a resistance

to the ‘hegemony’ of global capitalism. Since neoliberalism permeates into every sphere

of one’s lived experience, the ideological underpinnings and the cultural apparatus of

neoliberalism seek sufficient attention. Consequently, since postcolonialism has already

been one of the most productive fields to theorize on the ideological import of

imperialism of colonial and postcolonial literature in various works like Said’s

Orientalism and Gauri Viswanathan’s Masks of Conquest, new postcolonialism can also

be an effective critical framework to explore the complex relationship between the text

and the dominant hegemony of the new context—the globalized world. Thus when

encountering a text like Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger, a postcolonial critic needs to

look beyond the narrative of the novel, deeper into the specific ideological paean it

projects for neoliberalism and the politics of its marketing and reception in the global

literary market. Similarly, Chandra’s Sacred Games reveals layers of meaning in its plot,

narrative techniques and representational choices, only when seen through the ideological

discourse it seems to project. Thus, current literature needs to be interpreted as a cultural

commodity and ideological construct of globalization.

A second method of addressing the material contexts of neoliberal globalization is

through analyzing the way these issues are thematized in the new texts. Reading

postcolonial literature of a contemporary globalized world does not solely refer to an

extra-literary reading of the text as a cultural and ideological product representing the
 54

socio-economic history of the era; it also entails an understanding of the narrative and

themes of the text through the material contexts encompassed in the text. Postcolonial

literature post-globalization, as Paul Jay points out, is often “demonstratably different

from what we might call the classic postcolonial texts, for, while they all allude in some

way to the legacy of colonialism, they pay more attention to the contemporary effects of

globalization than they do to the imperatives of postcolonial state making and the

construction of specifically postcolonial identities and subjectivities” (95-96).

Consequently, the various dynamics of what Mohsin Hamid calls as “the post-

postcolonial fiction” ( qtd Jay 91), which he conceptualizes as embodying a marked

disjuncture between the period of colonialization and the period of contemporary

globalization, needs to be studied within the changing contexts of the erstwhile

postcolonial worlds and its people. Not only are the traditional postcolonial literary tropes

of colonialism, diaspora, and nationalism insufficient to understand many of the new

fictions like the post 9/11 world of Hamid’s Reluctant Fundamentalist or the world of the

unskilled illegal immigrants in Kiran Desai’s Inheritance of Loss, the crisis of the

postcolonial migrants in these novels hardly arise from their split postcolonial psyches or

from the conflicts of their cultural identity. The issues that they face, and the world that

they live in, have been vigorously restructured by new social and economic changes that

determine and shape their existence. Thus to read the literature of the contemporary

world, one must understand the material realities of the contemporary world itself. What

constitutes those material realities? Jameson’s list might be helpful:

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the international division of labor, a vertiginous new dynamic in international

banking and the stock exchanges (including the enormous Second and Third

World debt), new forms of media interrelationship…computers and automation,

the flight of production to advanced Third World Areas…and gentrification of a

now-global scale. (xix)

Subsequently, new postcolonial literary criticism needs to actively engage with

interdisciplinary endeavors, especially with the social sciences which have been proactive

in theorizing on the various impacts of neoliberal globalization. The need is not to

dismiss the literary for the material, but rather to enrich our understanding of the text

through the insights of the other disciplines—exploring how the social, economic and

political realities of contemporary postcolonial nations are conceived and projected in the

cultural spheres. The literary representations of a rapidly changing Delhi in Tejpal’s The

Story of My Assassins or the dynamics of Chandra’s modernized Mumbai cannot be fully

grasped without the various insights about neoliberal cities from the urban geographers.

Similarly, the resistive potential of a novel like Animal’s People can be fully understood

only with a perception of the economics of transnational corporatization and the social

activism of grass root protests. An interdisciplinary approach does not necessarily place

the literary text within the trajectory of extra-literary documents, but enriches our

understanding of the situatedness of the postcolonial text in the context it seeks to

represent.

Thirdly, we need to reassess postcolonial marginality in the context of neoliberal

globalization. Along with focusing on the materiality of the text and reassessing the
 56

notion of culture in the context of globalization, postcolonial criticism also requires to re-

conceptualize another of its seminal, and highly debated, concept—the notion of the

marginal. The figure of the postcolonial marginal often forms the central point where the

discourses of globalization and anti-globalization converge and contest, making the

marginal a significant figure in the literature of globalization. Thus while the rhetoric of

globalization particularly focus on the marginal groups and communities, extolling them

as the target for globalization’s boons, anti-globalization protests too revolve around the

repression and exploitation of the marginal in the global economy. The postcolonial

marginal, as critics like Spivak and Sheshadri Crooks point out, cannot be theorized by

disciplines like minority studies or race studies. The notion of marginality, especially in

the context of South Asia, in postcolonial criticism invokes a complex web of caste,

class, religious, racial, ethnic, gender and colonial paradigms of hierarchy which makes it

completely distinct from minoritization in other contexts like the Western/European

societies. As Spivak points out “the stories of the postcolonial world are not necessarily

the same as the stories coming from ‘internal colonization,’ the way the metropolitan

countries discriminate against disenfranchised groups in their midst” (“Who claims”

274). Simultaneously, it is also true that as the postcolonial nations take up economic

liberalization with increasing frequency, the postcolonial critics need to revise the earlier

notions of marginality in the context of the power structures of neoliberal globalization

and may benefit from the insights on the marginalization based on the tenets of neoliberal

ideology and policies that seem to be projecting another dimension to our current

understanding of the classic postcolonial marginal.

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New postcolonial criticism thus needs to consider the Third World marginal in the

new context of globalization. It is against this notion of the new globalized era that

Spivak theorizes on the new subaltern. Spivak asserts in “A New Subaltern” that “Today

the ‘subaltern’ must be rethought. S/he is no longer cut off from lines of access to the

center.20 The center as represented by the Bretton Woods agencies and the World Trade

center, is altogether interested in the rural and indigenous subaltern” (326). Thus, the

penetration of global capitalism –the New Empire— in the guise of the World Trade

Organization, NGOs, bio-research companies, UN Development projects and human

rights organizations – into the lowest levels of society is responsible for producing what

Spivak terms the ‘new subaltern’ (276). This new subaltern, caught between global

capitalism/development and tradition/culturalism, is now completely co-opted as her

body is rendered data and she is sought after as intellectual property. Not only is the

subaltern rendered as the site for global exploitation, the discourse of the concrete

experience of the subaltern is constructed as a rationalization for globalization. Since the

figure of the marginal embodies the crucial rhetoric, conflicts as well as resistive tropes

of globalization, the new direction of postcolonialism, thus can be reached, as Sheshadri

Crooks argues, through the “exploration of postcoloniality from the point of view of the

margin (as the excluded and the limit)”(66). Similarly, the figures of Balram, Ram

Mohammad, Salim, Kabir, Kaliya, Chini, Ganesh Gaitonde, Animal and Fokir depict a

20
Spivak mocks at herself for the irony of her position: “Today’s program of
global financialization carries on that relay. Bhubaneswari had fought for national
liberation. Her great-grandniece works for the New Empire. This too is a
historical silencing of the subaltern. (311)
 58

rich discourse of how post-liberalization India has changed economically, politically,

socially and geographically; and how the changing dynamics of a neoliberal India has

affected those on the margins.

Finally, new postcolonial literary analysis needs to concentrate on a continued

focus on the nation state in the context of globalization. Along with the figure of the

marginal, new postcolonial criticism also needs to re-assess another of the central

concepts of postcolonial theory—the role of the nation state. As materialist critiques of

postcolonialism point out, it is too premature to proclaim the decimation of the nation

state and myopic to celebrate the cultural carnival of a borderless world, when the nation

state continues to play a significant role in the global world. Like the figure of the

marginal, the concept of the nation state too becomes central to both pro-globalization

and anti-globalization discourses. Thus, while on the one hand scholars like David

Harvey and Pheng Chea assert that though globalization creates the facade of the

permeation of the borders of the nation state, it plays a central role in neoliberal

globalization and has not been rendered as an obsolete structure in global politics.

Simultaneously, Jameson asserts that the “nation state remains the only concrete terrain

and framework for political struggle” (65) and is echoed by Timothy Brennan who

emphasize the importance of the nation state as a sight of resistance “to secure respect for

weaker societies or people” (77) who might be completely annihilated if left at the mercy

of the neoliberal juggernaut.

Thus Ania Loomba points out that contemporary postcolonial criticism must

engage with a “more detailed, more patient, more accurate representation of the
 59

reciprocal flow of power (economic, social and cultural) between nation states and

globalized capitalism” (21). As my readings of the novels in this dissertation show, the

postcolonial nation state of India forms the epicenter of the new changes of liberalization.

Thus while on the one hand the rhetoric of globalization as an emancipatory force is built

on the failure of the nations state like in Adiga’s novel The White Tiger, on the other hand

the nation state itself plays a proactive role in exploiting and repressing its marginal

citizens as an ally to the forces of global capitalism in novels like The Story of My

Assassins and Animal’s People. The nation state very much exists and postcolonial

criticism needs to continue its vigilance of the nation state and its new role in the era of

globalization. Consequently, a vigilance of the nation state and an exploration of new

notions of marginalization require postcolonial criticism to divert its focus on the

literature of the ‘local’. The exploration of the phenomenon of globalization in new

postcolonial criticism needs to shift its attention from primarily focusing on the literatures

of the diaspora and the migrant elite, so rigorously projected through the migrant authors

and the migrant protagonists in exile of many of the well known novels of Rushdie,

Bharti Mukherjee, Michale Ondatje, Sashi Tharoor, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Amitav

Ghosh, that come to represent the canonical postcolonial literature of India. To

understand globalization through postcolonial literature, we must also focus on the

literatures by resident Indians and the regional literatures who capture the repercussions

of globalization on in the local context of India--for the effects of globalization are not

only experienced only by the diasporic migrants but also by the local, static subjects
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whose lives are altered by the forces of globalization though they might not step out of

their native places throughout their lives.

Literature Review and Methodology:

Having placed my project within the larger discourse of new postcolonialism let

me proceed to chart out the trajectory of previous works of literary analysis in the context

of globalization. Intending to read postcolonial literature against the material and

ideological concerns of neoliberal globalization, my project contributes to the burgeoning

field of interdisciplinary cultural and literary studies that focus on how globalization has

shaped literature in the contemporary age and the way globalization can become the

central discursive point as a paradigm for analyzing individual literary texts of the

contemporary age. Though economic globalization as a theoretical paradigm has been

well established in the field of comparative literature, its application in English literary

studies is quite recent. Some of the significant critical works that use the specific aspects

of neoliberal globalization to study contemporary literary texts have been in the context

of the American novel. James Annesley’s Blank Fictions: Consumerism, Culture and

Contemporary American Novel and Fictions of Globalization: Consumption, the Market

and the Contemporary American Novel both focus on the way recent American writing

has responded to and been shaped up by globalization and the economic forces of

contemporary capitalism. Similarly Christian Moraryu’s Cosmodernism: American

Narrative, Late Globalization, and the New Cultural Imaginary studies post-cold war

American literature and a changing cultural paradigm against the backdrop of the rising
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trends of late twentieth century globalization. In the field of postcolonial literature, Paul

Jay’s book Global Matters: The Transnational Turn in Literary Studies is one of the

seminal works that studies English postcolonial literary texts in the context of

globalization, mainly through the paradigm of transnationalism. The second section of

the book titled “Globalization and Literature” is particularly important in the way it

analyzes novels that have gained global recognition—namely The God of Small Things,

Red Earth and Pouring Rain, Desai’s Inheritance of Loss, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and

others through the framework of the global changes that has occurred in the late twentieth

century. While attempting to read postcolonial texts in the context of contemporary

globalization, Jay also offers an engaging discussion on the relationship between

postcolonialism and globalization studies as contending yet allied fields of study.

A similar work that analyses postcolonial literature, particularly from South Asia,

through the paradigm of cosmopolitanism and globalization is Bishnupriya Ghosh’s

When Borne Across: Literary Cosmopolitics in the Contemporary Indian Novel. Ghosh

explores the globally well known Indian writers of English like Salman Rushdie, Vikram

Chandra, Amitav Ghosh, Upamanyu Chatterjee, and Arundhati Roy and studies their

impact as representative Indian fiction in the literary global market. As she studies how

the various themes of globalization like migration and cosmopolitan identity get

represented in the texts, she also probes deep into analyzing these texts as literary

products for consumption in the geopolitical locales beyond the ones where the text is

originally produced and the localities that are represented. Consequently, she proposes a

new mode of literary studies and places the analysis of the texts in the present era of
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globalization. A recent contribution to this field has also been made by Liam Connell and

Nicky Marsh’s edited volume Literature and Globalization: A Reader which takes up

important issues of contemporary globalization in the readings of literary texts. The

essays in the book focus on five crucial areas of globalization—global politics,

environmentalism, technology and cyber-cultures, migration and labor, and cosmopolitan

citizenship—and contribute, as book itself proclaims, to “the framing, narrating and

recording some of the varied ways in which literary studies has approached the

heterogeneous discourses of globalization” (1). Similarly, several other works –like

Claudia Sadowski-Smith’s Border Fictions; Globalization, Empire and Writing on the

Border , Helen C. Scott’s Caribbean Women Writers And Globalization: Fictions of

Independence, Rebecca Walkowitz’s Immigrant Fictions: Contemporary Literature in

the Age of Globalization --make significant contribution to the burgeoning field of on

analyzing literature through the lens of contemporary globalization.

My work makes an important contribution in this field in two ways:

Firstly, this project is the first full length study of contemporary literature in the context

of post-liberalization India, a nation that has been in the crux of both the new global

world order as well as postcolonial studies. The liberalization of India triggered a wide

range of socio-economic-political changes that are representative of the colossal effects

of globalization in the global South and the way it reshapes the erstwhile postcolonial and

developing nations. Consequently, the new literary developments in Indian literature are

significantly representative of the new trends in postcolonial literature that respond to the

power dynamics of globalization and project important discourses on the ideological

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underpinnings and socio-economic consequences of neoliberal globalization. Thus,

studying Indian novels through the paradigms of globalization entails a significant

endeavor in understanding the new direction of postcolonial literature and the way the

global south (or to controversially call it the ‘third world’) responds to the forces of

global capitalism. Secondly, unlike many previous projects that take into account the

transnational experiences of globalization, my project is specifically focused on the

effects of globalization on the ‘local’—that is the space within the boundaries of the

geopolitical nation state of India. Thus, instead of looking at the issues of migration,

hybridity and diasporic communities—which are the most commonly discussed

paradigms of literary studies of globalization—I look at economic globalization in the

context of what it does to the nation state itself and the ways it reshapes and realigns the

local geographies, the local societies and the local populations. The novels I analyze in

this project are all narratives of the ‘local’ India affected by global forces, specifically

portraying the socio-economically marginalized people who have never migrated beyond

the ‘local’ boundaries of their nation state and yet whose lives are inextricably influenced

and controlled by the forces of globalization, which come to them.

In terms of methodology, I analyze the select novels through three main critical

frameworks--neoliberalism, urban studies and eco criticism—that cogently correspond to

the three central issues of contemporary globalization—namely the dynamics of

neoliberal ideology, the restructuring of the urban space and the environmental debates of

globalization. The use of neoliberalism as a critical framework for literary analysis has

been an increasingly significant trend in contemporary literary studies in the analysis of

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the recent fictions of the late twentieth century. Recent scholars have often tried to

understand the themes and contexts of contemporary literature in the ways it embodies or

responds to the ideology of neoliberalism. A seminal work in this field is Michael

Clune’s book American Literature and the Free Market 1945-2000 that reads American

Post-World War II fiction in the context of the free market and the economic changes that

reshaped the nation and the world. Clune identifies a new genre in postwar U.S. literature

that he terms as the “economic fiction,” a “genre of aesthetic works in which the market

organizes experience” (25). Subsequently he reads a wide range of texts from the novels

of Philip Roth to rap music to analyze how the influence of the market has shaped the

fictional worlds and themes of identity in these cultural texts.

Similarly, Walter Benn Michael reads the specific characteristics of the

“neoliberal novel”, that seems to portray a world where there are “only the individuals

and their families” and where “cultural difference” is substituted for “class difference,”

whereby economic inequalities are summarily veiled. Again, Robin Goodman and

Kenneth Saltman’s Strangelove or How We Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Market

attempts an insightful study of the multiple ways neoliberal values are disseminated

through education, popular media, public discourses and literature. Closely reading

literary works like Keri Hulme’s Bone People and Ana Castilo’s So Far From God,

Goodman and Saltman show how the novels problematically celebrate the corporatization

of the natural resources and erasure of the sense of community. Similarly, scholarly

works like “Market Corrections: Jonathan Franzen And The" Novel Of Globalization" by

James Annesley, “Neoliberal Noir: Contemporary Central American Crime Fiction as

 65

Social Criticism” by Milos Kokotovich, Gillian Harkins’ Everybody’s Family Romance:

Reading Incest in Neoliberal America, “The Return of the Referent in Recent North

American Fiction: Neoliberalism and Narratives of Extreme Oppression” by Jane Eliott ,

Money, Speculation And Finance In Contemporary British Fiction by Nicky Marsh , and

other works such as these, all read literary texts through the paradigm of neoliberalism. In

my project too, I analyze how contemporary Indian novels like Aravind Adiga’s The

White Tiger and Vikas Swarup’s Q&A reflect specific traits of neoliberal ideology and

weave it in the novels’ fictional worlds.

Along with invoking neoliberalism as a critical framework for my project, I also

explore the novelistic representation of the neoliberal city and the peripheralization of the

urban poor through an interdisciplinary framework of urban studies. I take my cue from

the field of interdisciplinary literary analyses that uses theories from the sociological and

particularly geographical insights about the city from the field of urban studies, and apply

them to the study of the urban space within the novels. Significant among such works are

Gerd Hurm’s Fragmented Urban Images: The American City in Modern Fiction , Sharon

Marcus’ Apartment Stories , London Narratives: Post-War Fiction And The City by

Lawrence Alfred, City Fictions by Amanda Holmes, Other Cities Other World: Urban

Imaginaries in a Globalizing Age by Andreas Huyssen, Philips C Abbott’s essay

“Cyberpunk Cities: Science Fiction Meets Urban Theory” and a recent upcoming

contribution in the field of postcolonial studies—Salman Rushdie's Cities:

Reconfigurational Politics and the Contemporary Urban Imagination by Vassilena

Parashkevova. Along the same line, I use various interdisciplinary insights on the
 66

construction of the neoliberal city from eminent urban studies scholars like Edward Soja,

Andrew Mitchell, Jason Hackworth, Neil Brennar, David Harvey, Jamie Peck, Roy

Coleman and others, as well as Indian urban sociologists like Nandini Gooptu, Gautan

Bhan and Aditya Nigam, to analyze the various representations of the post-liberalization

modernizing Indian cities. I look at two metropolitan cities as represented in the novels—

Delhi and Mumbai—and explore how neoliberal policies of urban modernization have

redrawn the boundaries of the city space to privilege the ‘productive’ elites and have

imposed disciplinary methods to control the urban poor.

Finally, I also concentrate on the critical framework of postcolonial ecocriticism

to analyze one of the most important debates of globalization: the issue of the

environment. Attempting a cusp between understanding literary representation of the

environment through the paradigms of postcoloniality, postcolonial ecocriticism, a term

coined by Graham Huggan, refers to a way of literary analysis, rather than a “a specific

corpus of literary and other cultural texts” (Postcolonial Ecocriticism 13). It is a literary

analysis that works towards “confirming an environmental ethic that sees ‘environmental

justice, social justice, and economic justice [not as dissonant competitors] but as parts of

the same whole (Curtin 7)’ ” (Huggan 13). As De Loughrey and George B. Handley point

out, though postcolonial ecocriticism is primarily conceived as a postcolonial response to

the problematic meta-narrative of earlier ecocriticism and global environmentalism—

which are “institutionally and epistemologically” centered in the United States and the

United Kingdom(136)—it does not merely widen the lens to include the previously

“overlooked geographical regions, historical experiences, cultural perspectives and

 67

concepts of race, class and gender”(136). Rather, Loughrey and Handley assert,

“postcolonial ecocritics question the very notion of what constitutes as ecological crises”

(136), and the politics and power structures behind them. Thus, arguing that an eco-

critical approach is indispensable to postcolonial/globalization studies, a seminar course

on postcolonial ecocriticism aptly sums up the connection:

That argument might run as follows: Ecocriticism provides a broader grasp than a

merely sociological, political, and economical analysis, as it focuses on the

environmental foundations of the global economy. Ecocriticism pushes the

inquiry into postcolonial issues such as race and sexuality to even more

fundamental questions about speciesism, reprocentrism, and the relation between

the human and the more-than-human world. In addition, ecocriticism argues that a

radical critique of the (post)colonial and of globalization can specifically be found

in artistic and literary revisions of the imagination of the environment. (“Eco-

Poco”)

Consequently, postcolonial ecocriticism has been an important method of analyzing the

literature of globalization, especially in terms of understanding how multinational

corporations influence the environment of the global south, how globalization has

affected the marginal communities with subsistence based livelihoods, and how

neoliberalism and projects of ecotourism reshape the natural world and people’s

relationship to it. Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin’s book Postcolonial Ecocriticism:

Literature, Animals, Environment constitutes a seminal work in the field, contributing to

both theoretical and literary discussions on the efficacy of postcolonial ecocriticism as a

 68

crucial critical framework for contemporary literature. Other significant scholarly works

that explore the themes of globalization in literary works through the framework of

postcolonial ecocriticism include Laura Wright’s book Wilderness into Civilized Shapes:

Reading the Postcolonial Environment where she reads changes brought by colonialism

and globalization through the lens of the environmental in postcolonial novels like Zakes

Mda’s The Heart of Redness and Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood. Similarly, other

works include Paradise Discourse, Imperialism, and Globalization: Exploiting Eden by

Sharae Deckard; essays like “Articulating a World of Difference: Ecocriticism,

Postcolonialism and Globalization” by Susie. O Brien; edited volumes like , Postcolonial

Studies and Ecocriticism by Anthony Vital and Hans-Georg Erney ; Postcolonial Green

Environmental Politics and World Narratives by Alex Hunt and Bonnie Ross; a

dissertation by Hans-Georg Erney, Titled Modernity And Globalization In Contemporary

Literature: A Postcolonial-Ecocritical Approach. In a similar way, I read the novels like

Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People and Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide through a

postcolonial eco-critical paradigm to explore the effects of globalization on environment

and people of cotemporary India.

This dissertation thus places itself in this burgeoning field of ‘new’ postcolonial

literary studies that seeks to address the concerns of neocolonialism and economic

globalization in the non-Western postcolonial nations of the peripheries of global South.

While this project invokes the core concepts of postcolonialism of power and

marginality, it situates the discussions in the context of a new system of transnational,

decentralized power as well as new conditions of marginality shaped by new

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manifestations of the nation state, new definitions of model citizenship, transforming

socio-political milieus, restructuring of the urban spheres, new modes of social control

and changing environmental conditions in a post-liberalization metamorphosing India.

Consequently, seeking to read contemporary postcolonial literatures that focus more on

the materialistic debates of globalization than just the classical postcolonial issues of

culture, identity, and hybridity, my dissertation engages with new critical frameworks of

interdisciplinary research, especially borrowing from the social sciences and

globalization studies for literary analysis.

 CHAPTER 2

The “Homo Œconomicus”: Rags to Riches Stories and the Self-Made Man

The novel of social mobility was once a trademark of American fiction. Perhaps

its transfer overseas is to be expected, but when India—the traditional home of a

hidebound caste system—steps forward as the setting of a grand contemporary

rags-to-riches story, the implications are clear. Even the world of fiction, it

seems, is flat.

Ted Gioia, “Review of The White Tiger”

Ted Gioia, in his review of The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, points out the new and

significant trend in Indian novels in English to showcase stories of a protagonist’s rise

from extreme poverty to immense financial success. In the recent novels of Aravind

Adiga, Vikas Swarup and Rakesh Wadhwa, Indian literature has found its own versions

of the rags to riches stories that resemble the novels of Horatio Alger and themes echoing

the “American Dream” of social mobility. Thus, novels like The White Tiger by Aravind

Adiga, Q&A by Vikas Swarup and Deal Maker by Rakesh Wadhwa all tell stories of

protagonists hailing from the lowest sections of society, struggling with their poverty and

for survival, and then miraculously climbing up the socio-economic ladder to wealth and

prestige. As all of them rise from poverty to prosperity using new prospects brought in by

the liberalization of India, the stories of their success resonate with the rhetoric of “India

70
 71

Shining”– the fantasy of a prosperous India that offers in a variant of the American

Dream, opportunities for one and all to make it big in the new globalized India.21 Yet, the

onus of this prosperity also depends on the ambitious protagonist himself, who must

strive to rise above his inherited class by perseverance and by “educating himself in the

laws of capitalism” (Kaye 5). Thus, as Alger’s rags to riches novels have often been read

as signifying the tenets of capitalistic notions of success and the self-made man

circulating in the American society in the 19th century, the new trend of rags to riches

story in the Indian fiction can also be interpreted through the ideologies of global

apitalism and the concept of the ideal neoliberal subject propagated in the current context

of globalization.22

In this chapter I read The White Tiger and Q&A through the paradigm of

neoliberal subjectivity. Using Foucault’s concept of the “homo œconomicus,” or the

21
“India Shining” was the slogan of Bharatiya Janata Party’s election campaign
for 2004 that projects India’s economic success under BJP’s vigorous promotion
of neoliberal policies. As Parwini Zora and Daniel Woreck point out “The flavour
of the promotion is indicated by one poster, which featured smiling women in
yellow saris playing cricket and the slogan “you’ve never had a better time to
shine brighter”. A number of commentators have pointed to the glaring and
obvious gulf between those well-off Indians and the vast majority of the
population who are mired in poverty and lack access to the most basic services”.
22
For a detailed analyses of Algers’ novels as projecting capitalistic ideologues of
self-made success, see “Horatio Alger, Jr.; or, Adrift in the Myth of Rags to
Riches” by Richard Bowerman (1979); “The Gentle Boy from the Dangerous
Classes": Pederasty, Domesticity, and Capitalism in Horatio Alger” by M.
Moon(1987); The American Myth of Success: From Horatio Alger to Norman
Vincent Peale by R Weiss (1988); Made In America: Self-Styled Success From
Horatio Alger To Oprah Winfrey by JL Decker (1997).
 72

economic man that he theorizes in The Birth of Biopolitics, I argue how these marginal

protagonists of the novels personify Foucault’s concept of the ideal economic man of the

neoliberal system, who is both an entrepreneur and a consumer. Subsequently, I also

study the essential traits of ideal neoliberal subjectivity—such as self-care, self-

responsibility, fierce individualism, a rejection of the community, potential to manipulate

their surroundings, exceptional entrepreneurial skills, risk management and often ruthless

methods of success—and argue how both the protagonists, Balram and Jamil, become

ideal poster-children for the rhetoric of the leveling powers of the free market.

Consequently, this chapter also focuses on the globalization of the British and American

reality TV and the way it disseminates ideas of neoliberal subjectivity through the pattern

of its shows and the participants. Borrowing chiefly from media study scholars like

Ouellette and Hay, and Brenda Weber, I analyze how Swarup’s Q&A not only invokes

the familiar rhetoric of reality TV in his novel, but also derives from reality TV a model

of neoliberal subject who redefines the modes of existence in a post-globalized neoliberal

world .

The White Tiger and the Self-Made man:

Published in 2009, The White Tiger by Adiga continues the legacy of India’s

success at the Man Booker Prize Awards. Born in Chennai and raised partly in Australia,

Adiga is the fifth Indian author to win the Man Booker Prize after V S Naipaul, Salman

Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai who won the prize in 1971, 1981, 1997 and

2006 respectively. Part of this success derives from a continuous fascination of the
 73

Booker Prize jury with India; The White Tiger being the ninth novel on India or Indian

identity to earn the Booker. Yet, what attracted the panel of judges to The White Tiger

was not the familiar idyllic and exotic image of India, so commonly found in other

Booker award books like Roy’s The God of Small Things, but rather the darkness of the

Indian underbelly.23 As Michael Portillo, the chairman of the judges, explained: “The

White Tiger prevailed because the judges felt that it shocked and entertained in equal

measure. ‘The White Tiger’ presented "a different aspect of India" and was a novel with

‘enormous literary merit’”. The Booker Prize homepage lauds the novel as a moving “tale

of two Indias: Balram’s journey from [the] darkness of village life to the light of

entrepreneurial success” (ibid). The White Tiger thus gathers international acclaim for its

‘realistic’ portrayal of the Indian underbelly—the extreme oppression that the socio-

economically marginalized face in the hands of the people who retain power through the

still existing caste system, the Indian bureaucracy and an ineffective government, so

much so that the poor take up crime for their survival. Yet, The White Tiger is not a

moving tragedy of the protagonist pushed to crime by an unjust society; rather, it is a

celebration of his post-crime success and the freedom gained through his self-

entrepreneurship based on the tenets of neoliberal growth. Adiga scathingly reveals the

multiple oppressive structures of Indian society and puts forward a neoliberal agenda.

The central theme of The White Tiger thus depicts the spectacular success story of a stock

23
Reportedly, Adiga had a tough competition from the top contender Sebastian
Barry, who was leading the odds in the bookmakers’ assessment.23 The other
contenders on the list were equally well known names: Amitav Ghosh (Sea of
Poppies), Linda Grant (The Clothes on Their Backs) and Philip Hensher (The
Northern Clemency).
 74

low class, low caste man who can find liberation in the new India transformed by

economic globalization, only by conforming to the notions of an ideal neoliberal citizen.

The White Tiger is a novel in the epistolary form and is set in the current backdrop

of post-liberalized India. The story begins with a letter from a self-made Indian

entrepreneur, Balram Halwai, who narrates the story of his own success to the Chinese

Premiere. With China and India emerging as the new economic superpowers, Balram

appeals to an alliance between the “the yellow man and brown man”(4), asserting that the

erstwhile master, the “white skinned man,” (4) has already wasted himself and no longer

holds power in the new world economy. Through the letters Balram narrates his life in

retrospect, narrating how he rose from humble origins to spectacular entrepreneurial

success. Born in a poor family in a backward village, he grows up in extreme poverty and

deprivation; he is not allowed to complete his education and is employed as a child labor

in a local tea stall. Running away from his village, Balram seeks a job in the city and

finds one at his erstwhile village landlord’s house, who has now moved to the city. A

major part of the novel depicts Balram’s life as a servant cum driver at the household of

his former landlord, and the kind of exploitation and class difference that exists between

the rich masters and their poor servants. Consequently, in an urge to escape his situation

and enjoy the luxuries of life available to the rich, Balram kills his employer, robs his

money and finally finds a new successful life of entrepreneurship in the hub of India’s

globalization—the city of Bangalore. Balram’s story is particularly a narrative of India’s

neoliberal success, specially the success of call centers and outsourcing of labor from

India in the IT sector, which have produced a boom for the middle class service sector
 75

and sprouted a number of self-made business entrepreneurs like him. However, though

the story starts in Bangalore, India’s leading IT hub or what Balram calls as the “world’s

center of Technology and Outsourcing,” the central narrative focuses on Balram’s

passage from a small North Indian village to the center of Bangalore as a journey from

the ravages of poverty and oppression to the freedom of wealth, thus projecting Balram

as a self-made man who took up responsibility for his own welfare. Intelligent,

determinate and ruthless, Balram Halwai is a testimony to the success of what Foucault

calls as the “homo œconomicus” or the economic man who is driven thoroughly by self-

interest and embodies almost a total rejection of the community. Thus to understand

Balram and his mantra for success, it is important to gloss over the concept of neoliberal

subjectivity, cogently theorized by Foucault through the figure of the “homo

œconomicus”.

One of the most interesting and over reaching effects of neoliberal globalization

has been seen in the realm of the individual subject. “Neoliberalism…has pervasive

effects on ways of thought to the point where it has become incorporated into the

common-sense way many of us interpret, live in and understand the world.” ( Brief

History 3)— comments David Harvey, asserting the way neoliberalism has moved on

from being just a group of economic policies to a way of life that restructures the earlier

social and individual identities of the citizens into a new mode of neoliberal subjectivity.

As Wendy Brown asserts, neoliberalism as an ideology seeks an “extension of economic

rationality to formerly non-economic domains and institutions” that extends to

“individual conduct, or more precisely, prescribes citizen-subject conduct in a neo-liberal

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order” (46). Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics is one of the early theorizations on the

ideal neoliberal subject who is conceived as, what Foucault calls a “homo œconomicus”,

an “entrepreneur of himself”: “being for himself his own capital, being for himself his

own producer, being for himself the source of his earnings” (226). Foucault’s concept of

the “homo œconomicus” has its genesis, as Foucault points out, in classical liberalism

where he is the “man of exchange”(147), embodying what can be called a subjectivity

based on interests of utility. In neoliberalism, the “homo œconomicus” is re-

conceptualized as essentially a consumer who is also an entrepreneur of himself. Foucault

explains dual role of the “homo œconomicus”, drawing a significant parallel between

consumption and production in neoliberalism: “we should think of consumption as an

enterprise activity by which the individual, precisely on the basis of the capital he has at

his disposal, will produce something that will be his own satisfaction” (226). In a later

lecture, Foucault dedicates a longer discussion on the figure of the “homo œconomicus,”

extending the significance of the “economic man,” beyond the realm of economics to the

domains that are not primarily or directly economic and theorizes on the more pervasive

domain of the subject’s “rational conduct”(269) .24 Foucault lists the essential

characteristics of the “homo œconomicus” in clear terms— the “homo œconomicus” is

someone who “pursues his own interest”; he is also someone who is an active participant

in the market, willingly acting in his own self interest and yet is governed by the

24
Though governable, the “homo œconomicus” is however not coerced into the
market. Rather the central premise of the economic man is based on the
assumption that a rational human would always make decisions in his own
interest, which will in turn convert into collective benefits for the market
(Foucault 269-272).
 77

“invisible hand” (278) of the market forces.25 As neoliberalism takes over, the “homo

œconomicus” becomes the model citizen of the new world order.

It should be noted that a significant difference between liberalism and neo-

liberalism is manifest in the way neoliberalism considers everyone as a potential subject

for the market. As Hai Ren aptly sums up this change: “This neo-liberal conception of

conduct has extended the constitution of the liberal subject (the bearer of liberty as rights

and responsibilities) from the traditional bourgeois individual (represented by an

educated, middle-class, male, European, and white) to the ordinary person (any education

level, any class, any gender, any sex, any ethnicity, and any race)”.26 Thus, as Ren goes

on to explain, while the liberal subject had not applied to the marginalized, the poor, the

excluded, and the non-Western other, in contemporary neo-liberal situations, the concept

of subjectivity extends beyond the traditional bourgeois white male to encompass those

subjects who were not previously treated as citizens. Thus the immense significance of

the notion of “homo œconomicus” thus lays in the way neoliberalism tries to co-opt all

citizens as the ideal subject for the market.

25
Foucault’s conceptualizes the forces of the market through Adam Smith’s
notion of the “invisible hand” (278) whereby the “homo œconomicus”, by
working towards his own self-interest ends up benefitting the entire economy
through a larger system of invisible and unfathomable market forces. Significant
in this model is not only the emphasis on the individual unit of the economic
system, that is the consumer-citizen-entrepreneur, but also the movement from the
sovereign modes of state power to the non-sovereign power of the market .
26
Ren adds in a footnote: “In Britain, for example, the bearers of the liberal mode
of conduct were limited to those who maintained liberty as “rights” and
“responsibilities.” The liberal subject was “middle-class male, individual, not
Irish, not black, not female” because the white male bourgeois individual was the
only subject who could be “rational, disciplined, and self-sufficient.” Also see
Richard E. Lee, Life and Times of Cultural Studies, p. 63.
 78

Adiga’s Balram Halwai is an ideal “homo œconomicus” in many ways, primarily

because he embodies one of the most important characteristics expected of the neoliberal

subject—the awareness of self-responsibility. Balram is essentially a self made man—“a

thinking man” and “an entrepreneur” (3)--who has taken the onus of his own life. He is

neither formally educated—thus his “half-baked” (9) schooling has nothing to contribute

to his success—nor has he inherited a fortune that secured his future. Instead, whatever

he has achieved in terms of financial success is his own doing and the result of his taking

responsibility for himself in turning himself to an entrepreneur on his own. Thus, as he

proudly proclaims, he is an example of self-taught entrepreneurship “born, nurtured and

developed” (4) from the scratch.

This concept of self-responsibility is essential to the notion of the ideal

“economic man”. Foucault argues that the neoliberal logic sees the body as a “human

capital” (221), the potentials of which the bearer (the human individual) is expected to

explore in order to participate in the growth of capital. The duty is thus on the individual

subject who must assume responsibility for himself and his own well-being and act as an

active consumer-entrepreneur in the economy. Similarly, Hursh points out that

“neoliberalism perceives of and promotes the individual as an autonomous entrepreneur

responsible for his or her self, progress and position” (115). Consequently, the neoliberal

subject should stop depending on other agents for his well being and act on his own. He

is one with a fierce sense of self-care, who remains independent and assumes

responsibility for himself as well as manages his own risk, one “who can survive in an

uncertain and individualized world by learning how to calculate…(it) requires the

 79

adoption of suspicious disposition and a calculative rationality” (Dahlberg and Peter

Moss 21). The rhetoric of the self-responsible individual is also based on a concurrent

rhetoric of what Nikolas Rose calls as the “power of freedom” for the individual who,

endowed with autonomy, exerts the capacity to make rational choices for himself-herself

(223). Consequently, this idea of freedom is associated with concepts of identity and

rationality whereby freedom is seen as autonomy of the individual to make his own

rational choices, without being thwarted by the state. Rose sees this autonomy as an

extension of the old free market skepticism over the powers of government which came

to be seen as limiting the freedom of the autonomous, rational individual. The rhetoric of

self responsibility is thus intricately connected with the notion of controlling states,

whereby the rational individual should be free to choose and hence be the master of his

own destiny, with minimal or no intervention of the state27.

Balram’s notion of self-sufficiency, however, needs to be seen in the context of

the Indian state and the unique dynamics the citizens and the government of India share.

Balram’s self sufficiency is a direct critique of the state and an alternative recourse taken

because the state has failed in its duties to protect its citizens. Unlike the Western

capitalistic societies, the neoliberal propaganda of self-responsibility in the Indian context

27
The problem with this choice is that it is ultimately limited, since the
autonomous individual is expected to make a choice or inevitably ends up in
making a choice in favor of the market. Subsequently, the trope of self-
responsibility, as Lemke points out, tries to achieve congruence between
“between a responsible and moral individual and an economic-rational
individual…It aspires to construct responsible subjects whose moral quality is
based on the fact that they rationally assess the costs and benefits of a certain act
as opposed to other alternative acts”.
 80

is not based on the rhetoric that the individual must be free from the constraints of the

interventionist state, but rather derives from the issue that the welfare state has failed to

intervene and ‘provide’ for its dependents. Thus, contrary to the Western concept of

individualism, the Indian socio-political model is primarily based on the expectation of

welfare and an increased affirmative intervention from the state to protect its citizens,

especially the marginalized sections. As Aradhana Sharma points out, the Indian state

“through its self appointed duty of developing the nation and its populist slogans like

garibi hatao (remove poverty) and roti, kapda ar makaan (food, clothing and housing)

promises to provide for the basic needs of the poor” (132). These promises are enmeshed

in the electoral politics of India and the state is expected to fulfill them. Sharma’s

assertion is supported by Vivek Rai, a New Delhi based civil servant whom she

interviews, and who, after having worked at the grass-root level of the Indian

administrative system, confirms this model of dependency of the poor on the state’s

support. Rai points out the various types of “dole system” that the government initiated

for the poor, which encouraged the “mai baap” (literally means mother and father)

syndrome of looking up to the state as a parent figure to be “set in motion from the

erstwhile Mughal and British regimes” (qtd in Sharma 131). Consequently, he asserts, the

poor people looked upon “the state as their “mai-baap” or father and mother and expected

the state to take care of them (ibid). This unique relationship between the Indian state and

its citizens points to India’s feudalistic past where the notions of the protectionism of the

kings and the loyal submission of the common people in return have carried on as a norm

in the post-independence nation state as well.

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This model of India, as primarily a welfare state, dates back to the post-

Independence governance policies formulated by Jawaharlal Nehru.28 In spite of its

conceptual ingenuity, Nehru’s model of state-led national development failed in its

execution especially in addressing the concerns of the socio-economically marginalized.

Criticism of the state ran high after the failure of the third planning commission, with

Indira Gandhi’s autocratic state control during the Emergency, which fanned more of the

anti-state discourse29. This anti-state rhetoric was particularly evident in popular culture

and literature, whereby the corrupt politician, the bribe taking policeman and the greedy

businessman became the stock characters of numerous Bollywood movies.

Simultaneously, the Indian novels like Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Rohinton

Mistry’s A Fine Balance, Sashi Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel, O.V.Vijayan’s The

Saga of Dharmapuri and others scathingly attacked the state, especially under the period

28
Addressing an India still staggering from the ravages of colonialism, lack of
resources, and a large population of disparate people who have never had any
experience in democratic voting, Nehru adopted a model of democratic socialism
in which the government proposed to take over the responsibilities of economic
development. This model aimed at using a socialist intervention of the state as a
means for ameliorating poverty and generating economic growth without
undermining the powers of democracy. As Om Prakash Misra points out, Nehru’s
vision was “very much enthusiastic for making necessary arrangements for
education, sanitation, health, skill formation, recreation etc for the huge
population of India” (105).

29
The anti-state sentiment was fanned by Indira Gandhi’s policies which, as Parth
J Shah asserts, “changed the focus of planning from state-led growth to state-
directed redistribution. The lack of certainty of electoral victory, unlike her father,
induced Indira Gandhi to use the machinery of the state for electoral politics.
Redistributive populist policies became the norm: nationalisation of banking and
insurance industries, subsidies to vote banks defined by caste, class, or religion,
licensing of firms and industries, heavy import tariffs and restrictions”
(“Evolution of Liberalism in India”)
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of Emergency, and its atrocities to the poor. Thus, while Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children

refers to the historical event of the cleansing of the Jama Masjid slums in the hands of

autocratic state-authorities, Mistry’s Fine Balance is a moving tale of protagonists from

the untouchable ‘chamaar’ castes whose lives and livelihoods are put at stake by the state

directives during the Emergency. The critique of the state has been one of the most

consistent themes in Indian literature.

In a similar way, Balram’s narrative also projects a sharp critique of the role of

the state but in a different context of the post-liberalization contemporary India. As John

Harriss points out, the neoliberal changes in India negotiate with very strong expectations

of the responsibility of the state from the “fractious and turbulent electoral democracy”

(128) who expect the state to deliver in its duties of supporting the citizens.

Consequently, the state becomes the target of criticism in a neoliberal context as well

when it fails to provide for its citizens. Balram’s critique of the state is also built on this

notion of the state’s role as a provider, whereby he lashes out at the government for

failing to implement neoliberal growth in all sections of society, which has lead to a

modern India but one that is divided into two halves of the rich and the poor. Balram

dismantles the myth of ‘India shining’ by exposing the bleak experiences of oppression

and depravation that the under-privileged are forced to live in the modern, neoliberal

India. The shopping malls, better amenities, luxury mansions, branded products and

consumer goods that represent India’s economic boom after globalization are available

only to the upper and the middle classes, while the lower classes lead a more contrasting

life of poverty and exploitation.

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Many scholars thus read the novel as a critique of post-globalization India and

particularly the income disparity that global capitalism has created in India. As Sobhan

Saxena asserts: “Just when we thought that the world has raving about the economic

miracle of India, a brutal confession by The White Tiger protagonist exposes the rot in

the three pillars of modern India—democracy, enterprise and justice—reducing them to

the tired clichés of a faltering nation”. On a similar note, AJ Sebastian reads the novel as

a narrative of social injustice and economic disparity in India since the neoliberal reforms

were introduced in the early 1990s (230). Consequently, asserting its role as social

criticism, Peter Logan and et all list the novel as a modern picaresque, whereby the

picaro criminal-protagonist Balram projects a caustic social criticism on the notions of

right and wrong in modern India, returning us “to a world in which society functions not

as an enabling structure for human life and livelihood, but as an oppressive structure or

an anarchic chaos that reduces people to the condition of vicious and homeless pícaros”

(620). Similarly, Cielo Festino asserts: “This is the way I read Aravind Adiga’s The

White Tiger (2008): his critique of the Indian nation, in the age of ruthless global

capitalism and technology through a satire of its main beliefs and institutions, that goes

from mockery to severe denunciation and reveals, at every step, an honest desire of

reform”. Significantly enough, and quite ironically too, Balram’s solution for India’s

economic disparity in the age of globalization is the free market itself. It is important to

note that Balram’s act of murder itself is an act that marks his transition from a feudalistic

system of the traditional Indian state to a capitalistic system of a globalized world. As

Lily Want points out:

 84

Gradually, the novel starts breaking the feudal norms when feudal social relations

based on mutual loyalty and trust are confronted with capitalist relations which

are based on individual ambition, disrespect for traditional notions of duty and

distrust. Being at the receiving end of this feudal world, it is Balram who breaks

the feudal rules of reciprocal trust and personal obligations but in doing so he

participates in the betrayal of the ideals of service, loyalty and obligation that

define one’s basic humanity or in his own words “that trustworthiness of servants

which is the basis of the entire Indian economy” (The White Tiger 175). (74)

The White Tiger is thus more a critique of the state than a critique of the forces of

neoliberal globalization. For Balram, the onus of the sad plight of the poor solely falls on

the government and the state, rather than the market. Balram thus completely absolves

the free market for generating any disparity—rather the novel projects the market as a

solution for emancipation.

Thus, though set against the context of neoliberal India, Balram’s target of

criticism is thus not global capitalism itself, but rather the Indian state and its age old

corrupt structures like feudalism, caste system, a dysfunctional bureaucracy, ineffective

justice systems and other oppressive structures that have not allowed the benefits of

globalization to “trickle down”30. The novel projects the state as the greatest evil, and not

30
One of the central precepts of neoliberal economics, the “trickle down theory”
asserts that though free market policies promote growth for the top, richer
sections of society and economy, the positive effects of their growth will trickle
down to the bottom sections as well, benefitting the entire society. Theodre
McDonald explains the concept as such:”In theory if one individual suddenly
become richer than the rest of the community…everyone will eventually benefit
 85

the forces of neoliberalism, for it is the state that is held responsible for creating

impediments in distributing the boons of the great equalizing power of neoliberal

globalization, which if allowed to flourish fully, can bring prosperity to even marginal

citizens like Balram. Balram’s saga of success and the novel’s stark critique of the socio-

political milieu of India closely echo the rhetoric of IMF used to justify globalization’s

failures and the responsibility of the developing countries:

Openness to globalization will, on its own, deliver economic growth: Integrating

with the global economy is, as economists like to say, a necessary, but not

sufficient, condition for economic growth. For globalization to be able to work, a

country cannot be saddled with problems endemic to many developing countries,

from a corrupt political class, to poor infrastructure, and macroeconomic

instability.

Thus, while Adiga’s criticism of the postcolonial Indian nation is justified on many

levels, it often eludes how the discourse of the failure of the nation has been subtly

usurped by the neoliberal rhetoric. The state thus comes to be critiqued as an ineffectual

distributor of resources and a failed provider for the poor, giving way to a justification for

the free market system. Consequently, the failure of the state, as an effective distributor

of resources and an able provider for the poor, often gives way to a justification for the

free market system. The rhetoric is that of a false dilemma: the alternative to a

malfunctioning welfare state is often global capitalism. As Aijaz Ahmad observes, in

as the rich spend their money” (11). This notion has been severely criticized,
precisely for the logic—as MacDonald points out—“For one thing, in real life
such winners often do not spend the money in the community in which they
gained it, but salt it away in investments abroad” (11).
 86

“any predominant agrarian Third World society, the essential choice is between effective

sovereignty of the people” and an “alignment with imperialism.” The failure of the

Nehruvian proto-socialist system, as Ahmad points out, has led to an enthusiasm for

integration into the global capitalist economy, which may eventually lead to a military

intervention as well (“Compromising Sovereignity”). Thus, the free market rhetoric in

India frequently corroborates the mounting frustration of the common people with ‘a

sclerotic and corrupt state bureaucracy’ (Lall and Vickers 17) with an alternative logic

that privatization is a better mode of allocating resources, especially for the poor. This

failure of socialism, as Pathik Pathak asserts, ‘to successfully disenfranchise the poor

Indian populace is expressly contrasted with the possibilities for national rejuvenation

made available by economic liberalization’ (75). The market thus promises to open up

opportunities that the state could not, and that the masses would find emancipation

through the private sector. The narrative of Adiga’s The White Tiger also closely echoes a

critique of the state, and projects a neoliberal rhetoric that the globalized market is a

better provider for the poor than the state itself.

As a part of the same critique, a large part of Balram’s autobiographical narrative

delineates the failures of the Indian welfare state. Projecting an extreme picture of India’s

backwardness, Balram describes his native place, Bihar as the realm of “Darkness”:

“India is two countries in one: an India of Light, and an India of Darkness. The Ocean

brings light to my country. Every place on the map of India near the ocean is well off.

But the river brings darkness to India—the black river” (12). He is clearly hinting at the

divide between the more prosperous South Indian states (near the Indian Ocean) and the
 87

poor, Indo-Gangetic ‘BIMARU’ states among which Bihar ranks the worst. Used as an

acronym for Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, the BIMARU states

are identified as having the poorest Human Development Index.31 Known for their

reportedly high poverty rates, corruption, rampant illiteracy, poor living conditions,

underdevelopment and the fiercest cases of caste conflicts; the “BIMARU” areas

exemplify the worst failure of the Indian nation state.32 Balram narrates the magnitude of

the “Darkness” in all its forms: Balram is born in a low-caste family, amidst poverty and

extreme backwardness. When his rickshaw-puller father dies of Tuberculosis, a disease

specifically caused by poor living conditions, he is pulled off from school and made to

work as a child laborer at a local tea stall. Balram caustically slams the all-round

underdevelopment of the region: dysfunctional schools where the teachers embezzle the

school fund money, malfunctioning hospitals without doctors, and amenities that do not

function (16): “Electricity poles—defunct. Water tap—broken. Children—too lean and

short for their age, and with oversized heads for which vivid eyes shine, like the guilty

conscience of the government of India” (16). However, what most plagues the region is

its caste oppression, where the landlords rule as the undisputed masters over the lives of

31
Unfortunately, the name also means ‘sick’ in Hindi, referring to the poor socio-
economic conditions and living standards of the people. A recent assessment of
MPI (Multidimensional Poverty Index) by the UNDP reports that Eight Indian
states, including the BIMARU states of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya
Pradesh , Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, together account for more poor people than
the 26 poorest African nations combined. (“8 Indian States poorer than Africa’s
26 poorest.” The Economic Times, 13 July, 2010.)
32
Though the BIMARU states have made a slow progress from what they were a
decade ago, a study by Radhakrishna et all. done in 2006 still show them at the
bottom of the Human Development Index (462). [Radhakrishn, Rokkam and et
all. India in a Globalising World. Academic Foundation, 2006
 88

the lower castes. Nicknamed as the “Buffalo”, “Stork”, “Wild Boar” and “Raven” for

their greed and lust, the landlords in Balram’s village exploit the poor farmers, extract

money and sexual favors from them and even torture them to death (21). The oppressed

in return meekly surrender to them in compliance, proclaiming their loyalty to their

masters. Significantly enough, the condition of Balram’s village is not exceptional;

rather as Blaram claims, his village can stand for any village in this region, where the

poor cannot dream of anything better (12-13).

This glaring power imbalance, however, is not only contained in the rural

hinterlands still operating under the tenets of feudalism. As the landlords move to the

city, they shift the power regimes there, whereby the servants now become the new

subordinates. Consequently, though Balram moves to the city, and becomes a driver to

his former landlord, the feudal power structures are still retained through his master’s

authority over him and his own submission to them. He is thus asked to run several

unpaid errands from cooking for his masters to massaging their feet (60), given a minimal

pay and a shabby room to stay (57), even framed for the accident his employer commits,

and yet is expected to proclaim his unflinching loyalty. As Balram asserts caustically:

“The jails of Delhi are full of drivers who are there behind bars because thay are taking

the blame for their good, solid, middle-class masters. We have left the villages, but the

masters still own us, body, soul and arse” (145). Through these examples, Adiga reveals

the subjugated life of the poor and the corruption of the state bureaucrats like the Buffalo,

who hold the reins of power in all spheres whether be it the village, the city or the entire

nation. Subsequently, the state has also failed to deliver its poor citizens.
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Balram thus provides a startling picture of the lower strata of the Indian society,

who having been denied the basic amenities, rights and education, can hardly hope for a

respectable living. With the state having failed to rescue them, what does a subjugated

one do in such a situation? Balram’s answer is straightforward—become a self-made,

self-responsible entrepreneur. Balram thus echoes the neoliberal rhetoric of self-

responsibility with enough conviction: “People in this country are still waiting for the war

of their freedom to come from somewhere else—from the jungles, from the mountains,

from China, from Pakistan. That will never happen. Every man must make his own

Benaras” (261). Subsequently, Balram also exemplifies what Petersen points out as one

of the central tenets of neo-liberalism that “calls upon the individual to enter into the

process of their own self-governance through the processes of endless self-examination,

self-care, and self-improvement” (48). In a process of self-examination about his socio-

economic marginality, Balram compares the Indian social system to a “rooster coop,”

asserting that the poor Indians are like roosters in captivity, kept ready for butchering—

“They see the organs of their brothers lying around them. They know they are next. Yet

they do not rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop” (147). Instead of being

captivated in the coop, Balram preaches and practices taking responsibility for one’s own

self and breaking free of the coop. He doesn’t depend on others to release him, nor does

he take responsibility to release the others. As a self-responsible man, he takes

responsibility only for his own future and pursues his own ambitions—even if that means

making moral compromises like murdering somebody. Describing himself as “the White

Tiger/ A Thinking Man and an entrepreneur” (1) Balram thus echoes the tenets of the
 90

ideal economic man—one who earns his own capital by his own methods and displays

fierce individualism and a self-centric desire for his own well-being.

Balram’s success however does not come solely from his sense of self-

responsibility; rather Balram exemplifies the ideal neoliberal subject in many other ways.

One of the most significant skills of the neoliberal entrepreneurial subject is his ingenuity

and his ability to exploit adverse situations. The unique manipulative and survival skills

of the entrepreneur—whom Carla Freeman calls “neoliberalism’s quintessential actor”

(252)—involve “ingenuity”, “self-invention” and most importantly, “adaptation” (261).

Balram shows the skills of manipulating his underprivileged situation from his very

childhood. Denied a school education—which he says only left some “half-baked ideas”

in his head--Balram uses his job at the tea stall to learn about people, educating himself

on his own in even an adverse situation. Thus, instead of spending all his time in the

menial jobs of the shop, Balram would use his ingenuity to eavesdrop on people’s

conversations, and expand his knowledge of the world. Thus, though denied of a proper

education and forced to work as a child labor, Balram still manages to make the best of

his situation and tries to manipulate it to his advantage. Significantly enough, it is this

experience of worldly knowledge, and not a “half-baked” formal education that helps him

climb the social ladder. However, the greatest act of manipulation that he pulls off is

deceiving his masters with his apparent submissiveness that is naturally expected of his

caste towards the landlords. Aware of the power hierarchy between the landlords and

himself, he exploits his subordination to put up an act of loyalty and subservience, which
 91

yields him a job and a place in the employer’s good books. Later Balram gloats with self-

achievement at his acting skills and asserts:

You should have seen me that day—what a performance of wails and kisses and

tears! You’d think I’d been born into a caste of performing actors! And all the

time, while clutching the Stork’s feet, I was staring at his huge, dirty, uncut

toenails, and thinking…Why isn’t he back home, screwing poor fishermen of

their money and humping their daughters? (51)

Balram puts up this act of servitude several other times to please his masters, knowing

precisely how to manipulate their ego for his personal gain. Thus, his staged humility gets

him a pay raise (55), his charade of being a willing clown makes him his mistress’s

favorite man and his flawless performance of humility earns him his master’s trust.

Simultaneously, the “homo œconomicus”, as Foucault asserts, is not only the man

of exchange or a simple consumer, he is also the man of enterprise and production (147).

Balram’s success in the market economy is prompted by a successful implementation of

his entrepreneurial skills and his ability to channel the capital he procures from the

murder. Thus, after murdering his employer, Balram masterfully uses the stolen money to

build up his own business instead of squandering it in unproductive pursuits. Balram also

stands out in making optimal choices as a successful entrepreneur, who can effectively

gauze what is best for himself and his profit. This point to a culture where the market

determines the norms of existence and success, and a subject’s decision is constructed in

and by the market. As Lipman and Hursh point out: “neoliberalism reconceptualizes the

individual by expanding on classical liberalism’s faith in the individual as a rational

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chooser within market. Under neoliberalism the individual is no longer merely a rational

optimizer but conceived as an autonomous entrepreneur” (115) as well. In a similar way,

Balram makes successful decisions as an “autonomous entrepreneur” and comes out as a

crafty businessman who knows how to tap the market effectively for profit. Thus, with

the outsourcing of Indian labor and the call centers on the rise, Balram is quick to identify

the potential market of night time cab service for call center employees and dives into the

market with expertise. For Balram, globalization holds the potential for a new future in

India. He describes the powers of ‘outsourcing’ of capital and labor as follows:

“Everything in the city, it seemed, came down to one thing. Outsourcing…Everything

flowed from it—real, estate, wealth, power, sex. So I would have to join this outsourcing

thing, one way or the other” (255). Thus, with outsourcing of labor and the call centers on

the rise, Balram exploits the new work culture to open a cab service company to serve

commuters working at odd hours of the night (which corresponds to daytime in US and

Europe).

Again, like an ideal neoliberal entrepreneur, who is necessarily “flexible, multi-

skilled, mobile, able to respond to new demands and situation” (Davies 9), Balram also

skillfully responds to the demands of his new business. As a master-entrepreneur, he

knows how exactly to exploit the system for his own profit. Thus, dealing with a corrupt

police system, Balram uses his money to buy off the keepers of law to serve his own

interest. True to his speculations, the police bust his rival company and give him a

breakthrough in the business (257-258). Besides these entrepreneurial skills, the

calculative, self-enterprising neoliberal economic man is also someone, as Aihwa Ong

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asserts, who “acquires skill, aptitude and competence to build up human capital” (173).

As much he is an entrepreneur of financial capital, Balram is also a crafty manager of

human capital. As an employer, his relationship with his employees is one of extreme

professionalism, without any sociability. As he describes his relationship with his

employees:

Once I was a driver to a master, but now I am a master of drivers. I don’t treat

them like servants—I don’t slap, bully, or mock anyone. I don’t insult any of

them by calling them my “family”, either. They are my employees, I’m their boss,

that’s all. I make them sign a contract and I sign it too, and both of us must honor

that contract…When the work is done I kick them out of the office: no chitchat,

no cups of coffee. (259)

Thus with Balram we find the ultimate “economic man”—immensely resourceful,

capable of self-care and making choices in his self-interest, a positive force in the market

and a successful and almost intuitive entrepreneur.

However, along with being an entrepreneur, the “homo œconomicus” is also

essentially an enthusiastic consumer. As Foucault points out, the “homo œconomicus” is

primarily a “man of consumption,” insofar as he becomes the producer of his own

satisfaction (226). Drawing from Gary Becker, Foucault asserts that consumption itself

becomes an “enterprise” by which the “individual, precisely on the basis of the capital he

has at his disposal, will produce something that will be his own satisfaction” (226). The

desire for self-satisfaction thus forms one of the major attributes of the new consumer-

citizen. This emphasis on consumerism also makes the “individual compliant to solely
 94

concentrate on earning money, since to lose one’s job, to be without income is to lose

one’s identity” (Davies 9). Balram too is strongly motivated towards an active agenda

towards self-satisfaction, to earn money for a better consumer life and to gain more

purchasing power. For him, the divide between the rich and the poor is primarily marked

by the poor man’s inability to participate in the consumption of commodities: the

inability to buy foreign liquor, inability to afford expensive white prostitutes, forced to

drive someone else’s car instead of one’s own, and be forbidden to enter the shopping

malls meant for only the rich. As a servant to his employers, he runs errands for them and

fetches their expensive drinks, but craves to enjoy the luxuries for himself: “English

liquor, naturally, is for the rich. Rum, whiskey, beer, gin—anything the English left

behind…my eyes dazzled by the sight of so much English liquor ” (62-64). Similarly, he

expresses his dissatisfaction with the cheap prostitute his money can afford and grudges

that he is not allowed to enter the shopping mall. As a part of his secret desire for a rich

life, he sneaks out to enjoy his employer’s expensive car without their knowledge and

longs to own one himself. He thus defines his deprivation solely in terms of his inability

to enjoy elite consume products. Consequently, he defines his later success by his

increased ability to consume—he could now buy the expensive chandeliers in his house,

the “silver Macintosh laptops”, afford girls in five star hotels and own twenty six Toyota

Qualises. The success of Balram as the “homo œconomicus” thus both determines and is

determined by his success as a consumer.

Along with being an entrepreneur and a consumer, Balram also embodies the

neoliberal “homo œconomicus” model in his repulsion for social connections. Though
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apparently acting in a way that benefits the entire economy, the figure of the “homo

œconomicus” is by definition distanced from the domain of the social. In order to be a

subject and object of the free market, as Foucault points out, the “homo œconomicus”

should pursue his or her own interest and ‘must be let alone” (270). Subsequently,

Foucault points out that the economic bonds serve as inimical to the bonds of civil

society—that is “the active bonds of compassion, benevolence, love for one's fellows,

and sense of community” (270). Thus neoliberalism “constantly tries to undo what the

spontaneous bond of civil society has joined together by picking out-the egoist interest of

individuals, emphasizing it, and making it more incisive”(302). The rejection of the

social relations for the sake of individual economic success constitutes an integral part of

the neoliberal system. Neoliberalism thus raises significant ethical questions, for it not

only expects individuals to act as a self centered, profit-oriented entrepreneur and

consumer, but also because it promotes what Giroux critiques as the new world order in

which “citizenship has little to do with social responsibility and everything to do with

creating consuming subjects”(15). Having internalized the ideology of the market to the

extreme, Balram embodies a menacing product of that creed— he shuns his family,

community and every social relationship to the point of expressing violence toward them

in order to be a successful neoliberal subject.

Neoliberalism, as an ideology, is essentially an individualistic one. Commenting

on the psychological effects of neo-liberalist market, H.E Nafstad asserts that it changes

“the social contract between society and the individual in many societies in directions

that may be detrimental for the organisation of communities, which historically has been
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based on the principles of traditional solidarity and universalism”(313) . Neoliberalism

assaults the fundamental ethics of a communal identity, since profit often comes at the

cost of rejecting social responsibilities. As Apple and other critics argue , since the

neoliberal subject’s survival is no longer dependent on society, he/she does not have the

same commitment to the social; therefore skills for “individual survival (ability to earn

money, flexibility, competitiveness) replace those essential values of maintaining the

social fabric (solidarity, fairness, compassion among others)” (40-41). Neoliberalism thus

works on the principle of alienation from the social groups, whereby the neoliberal

objective of financial deregulation and an uninterrupted market is achieved primarily

through an erasure of political collectives. As Pierre Bourdieu asserts:

The movement toward the neoliberal utopia of a pure and perfect market is made

possible by the politics of financial deregulation. And it is achieved through the

transformative and, it must be said, destructive action of all of the political

measures that aim to call into question any and all collective structures that could

serve as an obstacle to the logic of the pure market: the nation, whose space to

maneuver continually decreases; work groups, for example through the

individualisation of salaries and of careers as a function of individual

competences, with the consequent atomisation of workers; collectives for the

defence of the rights of workers, unions, associations, cooperatives; even the

family, which loses part of its control over consumption through the constitution

of markets by age groups. (“The Essence of Neoliberalism”)

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The ideal homo œconomicus is thus an isolated individual who is dismissive of his shared

existence and is hostile to the community around him.

In a similar manner, Balram also rejects camaraderie with any other social

contact. While his relationship with his employers is predictably one of exploitation and

counter-manipulation, he also dismisses class solidarity with the fellow servants. Balram

is in a constant tussle of power with the two other servants of the household—the older

driver Ram Pershad and the gatekeeper; and he strives to outwit them both for his own

success. Balram thus plays by the tenets of a ‘neoliberal game of power’—a concept that

Cliff DuRand compares with the famous board game of Monopoly: “You win by driving

them (the opponents) into destitution so they can no longer continue to play. It is a zero

sum game; what one wins is at the expense of another. This is a game in which each is to

be guided by self-interest alone. Compassion for another player who is not doing well,

can simply make you vulnerable to your competitors…But in the free competition of

Monopoly there are no permanent friends, only permanent interests”. In a similar manner,

Balram exploits his opponents’ weakness to dominate over them. In an incident at his

master’s house, Balram threatens to reveal his co-driver, Ram Pershad’s, well guarded

secret of being a Muslim and forces him to leave his job while Balram reaps the benefits;

the gatekeeper too is blackmailed to submission for hiding the truth from the masters.33

Thus, instead of forming an alliance with the other servants of the household, Balram

eliminates them all and secures his position as the most trusted servant. This apathy to

33
With the Hindu-Muslim divide still quite strong in India, many traditional
Hindu households would not allow Muslims within their premises, even as
employees.
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form alliances characterizes all of Balram’s social interactions, exemplifying what

Bourdieu calls as the “moral Darwinism” or the dangerous “cult of the winner” where

self-centeredness, cut throat competition and cynicism is the norm of all action and

behavior. Thus, while the other employed drivers, who had formed camaraderie among

themselves, try to be amicable and take Balram into the group, Balram is immediately

repulsed by the possible risks of such association:

Servants need to abuse other servants. It’s been bred into us, the way Alsatian

dogs are bred to attack strangers. We attack anyone who’s familiar. There and

then I resolved never again to tell anyone in Delhi anything I was thinking.

Especially not another servant. (109)

However, it is not only the society of his fellow servants that he shuns; Balram

shows extreme detachment from the primary social unit of his family too, almost to the

point of dehumanization. He is a man dissociated from any kind of familial relationship

or emotional bond. He feels disconnected from his family from his very childhood when

bereaved of his mother at a young age, he is detached from the rest of the relatives. Even

the tragic death of his father is narrated with utmost emotional detachment, sarcastically

highlighting the flaws of the government health care system more than recounting the

loss of a parent (40-42). More significantly, the narration of his father’s death is

immediately followed by a detailed narration of his brother’s marriage deal and a

contented description of all the material gains that followed. Balram writes:

Kishan’s marriage took place a month after the cremation. It was one of the good

marriages. We had the boy, and we screwed the girl’s family hard. I remember
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exactly what we got in dowry from the girl’s side, and thinking about it even now

makes my mouth fill up with water: five thousand rupees cash, all crisp new

unsoiled notes fresh from the bank, plus a Hero bicycle, plus a thick gold necklace

for Kishan. (42)

Balram promptly shifts from the topic of his father’s death to an almost exalted

description of Kishan’s dowry, testifying that nothing excites him more than the prospect

of profit and his interest in money. Consequently, in spite of being the only earning

member of his family, Balram hates to share any familial responsibility.

For Balram, the family is not only a meaningless burden; he even labels it as the

main impediment to individual success and emancipation. As he states: “ A handful of

men in this country have trained the remaining 99.9 percent—as strong, as talented, as

intelligent in every way—to exist in perpetual servitude; …(for) the Indian family is the

reason we are trapped and tied in the coop” (149). Since the oppressors would always

destroy the family of the rebel, Balram argues, the poor remains in servitude out of love

for the family. It is only someone like Balram, the man without any attachments, who can

escape his situation and taste success for himself. Occasionally guilty of the dire

consequences that might befall his family for the murder that he has committed, Balram

justifies their possible death as good riddance, arguing that the impoverished family

thriving on the lowest margins of the society would have been wiped out by the powerful

landlord anyway, else they would have had to resort to begging, homelessness and

extreme poverty, which is nothing better that being dead (270). The only familial contact

he brings along to his new life is his young nephew Dharam, with whom he seems to
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grow to bond beyond the motive of financial profit. Yet, in a chilling description, Balram

reveals his cold-blooded calculative mind again, asserting that he will not hesitate to kill

Dharam if he dares to rebel against him (272). The self-made entrepreneur is thus an

epitome of cold blooded emotional detachment; his sole concern being unhindered

capitalistic success only for himself.

The mantra to Balram’s success thus lies in his ability to be alone and to stay

apart from the crowd. Christened as the “The White Tiger” in his school, he proclaims his

rarity in the ‘jungle’ of men. Thousands of people go through the oppression that he did,

yet it is only him that has made it successful in the end. “A The White Tiger keeps no

friends,” (302) he thus asserts emphatically; for the neoliberal subjectivity he internalizes

is one of extreme self-centeredness and a complete disinterest in anything that calls for

being a part of any social group. This aversion for the community as well as the family

seems particularly unconventional when taken in the context of the Indian social system,

where the family still forms a very important role in an average person’s life. Like many

traditional families, Balram’s family too is a joint family consisting of all the blood

relatives, staying together under the same roof. Yet Balram is an exception—for neither

does he show any eagerness to be a part of his family, nor does he agree to financially

contribute to his impoverished family, even after his financial success. As Lily Want

observes: “His (Balram) philosophy of social mobility based on productive commercial

investments embraces, to begin with, a breach of family duty. In his avidity to rise,

family bonds, family allegiance and family obligation cease to have any meaning for

Balram now” (75). The implications of this ideology of self-interest look more ominous
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when taken in the context of a whole society, for as Apple and et all explain, they imply

“political quiescence, social demobilization” and a loss of the sense of community from

which the independent consumer is cut off (41). The rhetoric of individuation is thus a

dangerous ideological ploy to isolate the individual from any mode of collective

resistance—for the “neoliberal utopia,” as Bourdieu asserts, destroys all political

measures and demolishes all collective structures that could “serve as an obstacle to the

logic of the pure market”. Thus, collective structures like the nation, which could regulate

the market, and the work groups, which could protect worker rights against exploitation,

are all reduced to redundancy under neoliberalism. William Tabb sees this shrinking of

the “public realm” as the ultimate victory of the capital over labor:

the self confidence with which market ideologists attack any sense of public

space, of solidaristic provision of services and shelter from the relentless

individualistic values of the market, represents a measure of defeat of democracy.

Similarly, devolution of service provision… from the federal to the state to the

local levels, and then to the individual procurement based on ability to pay,

undermines the limited solidarities which hold society together. These processes

have little to do with globalization, and a great deal to do with the victories of

capital over labour, and the resulting damage to the rights of citizenship.

Thus, cut off from his social connections, the neoliberal man is not only rendered

powerless and more exploitable, since, as Foucault observes, he also becomes a myopic

subject of a larger system who ends up contributing more to the neoliberal market. As

Foucault argues, the “homo œconomicus” in pursuing his self-interest “function as an

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individual subject of interest within a totality that eludes him and which nevertheless

founds the rationality of is egoistic choice” (278). This ‘totality’ or invisibility of

economic forces—a concept that Foucault derived from Adam Smith’s concept of the

“invisible hand” (279)—assures that the more the individual pursues his personal gains,

the more he augments the market. Thus, mimicking the neoliberal agenda, Foucault

sarcastically exclaims: “Thank heaven people are only concerned about their interests,

thank heaven merchants are perfect egoists and rarely concern themselves about public

good, because that’s when things start to go wrong” (279). A total rejection of public

good, or for that matter any sort of social collectivity, signifies one of the most important

characteristic of the ‘economic man.’

The figure of the “homo œconomicus” raises more serious ethical questions in

terms of conceptualizing criminality within this new economic order. Balram is a

criminal in the basic sense of the term—he murders his employer in cold blood, through a

violent process and embezzles his money for his own success. Yet he embodies the

attributes of the ideal ‘economic man’ and proves himself useful to the market. Adiga’s

treatment of Balram is almost amoral in tone, and concluding assertion of Balram’s

ultimate freedom through his actions in a way on celebrates his success in spite of his

criminality. To understand the notion of amorality associated with the “homo

œconomicus”, it is imperative to discuss the notion of criminality in neoliberalism, as

Foucault discusses it in The Birth of Biopolitics. Foucault points out the interesting

conflation of the penal system and the calculations of the economy in the eighteenth

century, in which “the mechanism of the law, was adopted as the economic principle of
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penal power, in both the widest and most exact sense of the word economic” (249).

Foucault closely studies neoliberals like Gary Becker who analyze the problem of crime

situating it within the economic paradigm, and explains how in Becker’s interpretation,

crime comes to be defined as an economic pursuit: “crime is that which makes the

individual incur the risk of being sentenced to a penalty” (251). For Foucault, Becker’s

definition of crime under neoliberalism signifies a shift in point of view of seeing crime

from the position of the individual criminal subject, rather than the larger structures of

penalization. Foucault thus points out how the figure of the criminal is thus conflated

with the “homo œconomicus”, making the criminal a fundamentally ‘economic man’:

So we move over to the side of the individual subject by considering him as

“homo œconomicus”, with the consequence that if crime is defined in this way as

the action an individual commits by taking the risk of being ----punished by the

law, then you can see that there is no difference between an infraction of the

highway code and a premeditated murder. This also means that in this perspective

the criminal is not distinguished in any way by or interrogated on the basis of

moral or anthropological traits. The criminal is nothing other than absolutely

anyone whomsoever. The criminal, any person, is treated only as anyone

whomsoever who invests--in an action, expects a profit from it;-and who accepts

the risk of a loss. (253)

Consequently, a potential criminal act comes to be seen as essentially an economic

decision made by the individual criminal subject. The rationale behind this as a method

of crime prevention through the economic grid was that the scale of penalties would be
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sufficiently subtle to convince every individual that certain crimes are not worth the risk,

for the penalty is too grave than the profit of the crime. The neoliberal merger of the

criminal subject, or the homo criminalis, with the “homo œconomicus” signifies far

reaching connotations. The merger signifies a dissociation of the paradigm of morality in

conceptualizing the criminal subject under neoliberalism, whereby the criminal subject is

driven not by ethics or morality but rather by purely economic motives. The amorality of

criminality, in return ascribes the ‘successful’ criminal an ideological absolution from his

crimes, since he has been able to act in accordance to his best interests and has

successfully reaped a profit from it. It is this very amorality that resounds in Adiga’s

novel as well. Balram as a criminal gets somewhat redeemed precisely because he

succeeds as an ‘economic man’. Being conceptualized through the economic grid,

Balram’s crime ceases to be a deplorable act under neoliberal regime, precisely because

Balram does not suffer any economic loss in the process. The question of criminality in

neoliberalism thus poses a crucial problem of ethics, whereby the amoral projection of

the criminal subject as a successful ‘economic man’ like Balram becomes considerably

problematic.

While on the one hand The White Tiger raises serious moral and ethical issues, on

the other hand the novel becomes all the more questionable since Balram’s subjectivity is

projected through a constructed subaltern agency and as a simplistic emancipatory tool

for the immensely complex socio-cultural hegemonies of India. Balram’s story is the

success of the marginal subject in a new phase of India brought in by globalization. The

novel celebrates the immense possibilities that globalization and the deregulation of the
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market has apparently opened up for the poor. Posing himself as the model for a new

India, Balram inspires all poor men to find their liberation in the new India:

Haven’t I succeeded in the struggle that every poor man here should be making—

the struggle not to take the lashes your father took, not to end up in a mound of

indistinguishable bodies that will rot in the black mud of Mother Ganga?

(273)...I’ll say it was all worthwhile to know, just for a day, just for a minute,

what it means not to be a servant (276)

Balram justifies his actions as the only resort for resistance left in his state of oppression.

It was either to submit to servitude that society had destined for him, or to break out of

the coop and embrace the global network, even if that includes murder. The rhetoric he

uses is thus essentially one of binaries—old India vs. new India, the feudal oppression vs.

the neoliberal liberation, the failed state vs. the successful market. The critique of first

one essentially leads to the exaltation of the latter. Balram thus projects a model of an

unabashed neoliberal subjectivity and an uncritical exaltation of the free market that is

shown to offer immense possibilities for the marginal groups.

On the surface, Adiga’s tongue-in-cheek tone in portraying Balram and his flaws

might also facilitate a subversive reading of the text as a satirical narration of the

apparent success of neoliberal India. Balram is at once dangerous and ludicrous—his

megalomaniac gestures, his futile attempts at mastering English, his repulsive habits and

his unabashed description of his violence, makes him a character that is far removed from

crying for sentimental sympathy. However, critics like Amardeep Singh point out that

this reading of Balram as a caricature “constructed to make a socio-political point about

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India's ‘dark side’” is not very convincing, arguing that “this might be a reasonable way

to read Adiga's novel, except that as the novel progresses, Adiga grows more and more

committed to the character, and Balram becomes less of a darkly comic caricature and

more of a realistic anti-hero. The White Tiger seems rather non-ironic by the end, and the

various cynical one-liners about the hollowness of Indian democracy don't have the bite

they should.” Adiga’s non-ironical exaltation of Balram’s freedom at the end of the novel

can be read as an exaltation of the neoliberal discourse of capitalistic success. In his

interview with Hirsh Sawhney, Adiga initially assumes an apparently critical stand

regarding globalization, which he proclaims as “It’s kind of like a shot of sugar—it’s

great at first, but it actually has no nutrition”, but quickly asserts that his complaint of

globalization is not based on the its debatable methods, but that it doesn’t trickle down to

the lower strata: “Outsourcing counts for less than 1% of the economy. I wanted to show

that this is a very small part of the Indian economy and the bulk of life is way outside

this.” Instead, Adiga’s scorn is mainly directed at the failures of the Indian democracy

and not Balram’s means to resolve it:

The book deals with an India smack in the middle of “the boom,” and it

challenges a lot of comfortable assumptions about Indian democracy and

economics. I want to challenge this idea that India is the world’s greatest

democracy.34

34
When asked if crime is the only way to end the power hierarchy, Adiga even
goes on to exclaim: If you don’t have English, an education, or healthcare, then
how are you going to do something to transform your life? A poor man in India
making 4,000 rupees a month is never going to transform things. The only
 107

In another interview (BookBrowse) he overtly hails the hopes globalization has brought

in: “The past fifty years have seen tumultuous changes in India's society, and these

changes -- many of which are for the better -- have overturned the traditional

hierarchies…There are lots of self-made millionaires in India now, certainly, and lots of

successful entrepreneurs.” Again, in a different interview, Adiga markets his book as

essentially picturing the contrast between the old India of decay and the new hopeful

India—the old “stagnant, largely corrupt system” and the changes that the opening up of

the economy brought in 1991, setting in the New India. As the novel progresses, Balram

becomes more of a model citizen than a caricature, who is projected as an inspiring tale

of subaltern uprising in the new India.

Significantly enough, Adiga projects his manifesto of marginal success with a

claim to authenticity, especially of the marginal reality he portrays. Asserting that Balram

represents the underbelly of India that Adiga encountered in his own journey through

India, Adiga claims the authenticity of the “continuous murmur or growl beneath middle-

class life in India” (Book Browse) he records in his book. Consequently, the novel gets

marketed and is received by the international readers as authentic picture of India and the

new possibilities. A cursory look at the reviews on the book reveals the seriousness with

which Western readers take this portrayal as an ethnographic account of the Indian

underbelly and consequently read Balram’s success as inspiring. These reviews applaud

transformation possible is crime for someone like Balram, otherwise he’s going to
be surrounded by fantasies, dreams, and not make it out…Often life is so tough
you just have to be brutal…What is stopping a poor man from taking to the crime
that occurs in Venezuela or South Africa?
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the book for success story of the marginal, equating it with an inspiring tale of liberation

from injustice. Akash Kapur’s review of the novel on New York Times praises Adiga for

his “bare, unsentimental prose” with which “he strips away the sheen of a self-

congratulatory nation and reveals instead a country where the social compact is being

stretched to the breaking point.” Simultaneously, for Kapur the book’s appeal lies in its

manifesto for success: “There is much talk in this novel of revolution and insurrection:

Balram even justifies his employer’s murder as an act of class warfare”. Similarly the

reviewer for The Economist opines “Balram’s education expands, he grows more corrupt.

Yet the reader’s sympathy for the former teaboy never flags.” Thus the reviewer acclaims

Adiga for producing a memorable, inspiring character “In creating a character who is

both witty and psychopathic, Mr Adiga has produced a hero almost as memorable as Pip,

proving himself the Charles Dickens of the call-centre generation.” On a similar note,

Lee Thomas of San Francisco Chronicle reviews the novel as a tale of hope for the lower

classes: “Names hold particular significance in a country where everything seems to be in

the middle of a transformation. The poor finally get a whiff of opportunity, enough to

incubate hope”. For reviewer David Mattin from The Independent, the novel is “a

thrilling ride through a rising global power.” Many reviewers thus find the novel as a

fascinating tale of the ‘realities’ of India and more significantly, a tale of astounding

social mobility.

As some of these reviews show, the appeal of the novel lies not only in its

depiction of the dark side of India but also in the way it depicts an unprecedented rags to

riches story and presents a powerful testimony of Balram’s success in a modern

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transforming India. Significantly enough, the importance of Balram’s success in

globalized India is also enhanced through Balram’s identity as a marginalized citizen.

Balram belongs not only to the low rungs of class hierarchy but also apparently comes

from a lower, untouchable caste. He is thus doubly marginalized in terms of his socio-

economic standing, and his identity invokes not only the category of class but a much

more complex dynamics of caste oppression specific to the context of India. Distinct to

the Indian socio-economic structure, the hierarchy of caste denotes a complex hegemony

that works independent of class distinctions. Significantly enough, Adiga’s novel echoes

the problematic rhetoric of neoliberalism in addressing even complex caste issues in

terms of simplified economic problems. Balram’s story thus projects the success of the

free market, not only as an emancipatory force for social mobility in terms of class, but

also as an ameliorating force for caste oppression as well, which invokes a completely

different dynamics. Balram’s caste disparity seems to have vanished as soon as he gains

financial success. Yet, contrary to the fictional depiction, the appropriation of the

category of caste by the neoliberal rhetoric is a sheer misreading of the basics of caste

system, which is a socio-cultural hierarchy derived not from class or relative ownership

of wealth, but rather like race, a genealogical categorization of one’s family, organic

body and the historical significance of one’s bloodline. The discrimination based on caste

therefore places the oppressed individuals on an unequal scale right from the beginning,

which cannot possibly be addressed by economic emancipation of the free market alone.

As Anand Teltumbde points out the fallacy of emancipation propagated by the neoliberal

rhetoric:
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Free market basically assumes that seller and buyer in the market are all equal,

endowed with equal amount of information and therefore the exchange between

them takes place purely on the basis of perceived value of the thing exchanged.

Now in a real world, arguably created by the elements of free market itself (that

allowed accumulation by some beyond their needs and thereby exercise power

over others, both, money as well as informational) this assumption becomes quite

problematic. With given inequality of people in marketplace the free market

becomes a mechanism of exploitation.

Teltumbde goes on to point out that the retraction of the state has in fact affected the

lower castes adversely in terms of the “withdrawal of the state from its obligation towards

people and privatization of what was public”, leading consequently to a threat to the

human rights guaranteed by the state for the lower castes. With the government playing a

less active role in the retribution and reservation programs for the lower castes under

neoliberalism, Teltumbde argues, “globalization has damaged comprehensively what

could be called as the emancipation project of Dalits”. The projection of neoliberal

globalization as a magic elixir that can cure even caste problems is thus not only

simplistic but also misleading.

This fallacy, or what Teltumbde calls the “deliberate mischief,” of the neoliberal

rhetoric is problematically overlooked in Balram’s story of success. By his background,

Balram is a member of a low caste, whose family has long been oppressed by the upper

caste landlords. The persecution that Balram’s family and other villagers from the lower

strata of society face in the hands of the landlords is a discrimination, as we can assume,
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not based solely on class or feudal authority but also caste. Yet, significantly enough, the

issue of caste is never explicitly addressed in the narrative. The only information about

his caste that we get is he is a Halwai (or the food cooking caste), hence “one of the

bottom castes” as Mukesh points out. Though his caste identity gets him a job at the

Malhotra’s mansion, the maltreatment he gets from his employer suggests a continued

oppression by the upper caste landlords. Balram however never really engages with his

caste identity; instead, in an interesting passage, Balram dismisses the paradigm of caste

completely as an obsolete structure and instead substitutes it with a class hierarchy: “To

sum up—in the old days there were one thousand castes and destinies in India. These

days, there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies, and Men with Small Bellies. And

only two destinies: eat—or get eaten up” (54). Balram’s rejection of the hierarchy of

caste for a more one-dimensional hierarchy based solely on class is problematic not only

because it essentializes the ‘problem of India’ into a fallacious, over-simplified economic

paradigm, but also because it creates an ahistorical, non-specific, constructed marginal

subject who can serve as a model poster-child for the neoliberal rhetoric solely through

his economic success. With the complexities of caste overlooked, Balram becomes a

simplified and the quintessential marginal figure that can be saved by neoliberal

globalization’s economic boons. Thus the merger of the categories of class and caste into

one oversimplified category of generic marginalization projects globalization as the

miraculous antidote to all forms of social hegemony. The essentialization of the figure of

the marginal is something that stands out in Vikas Swarup’s Q& A as well, which
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projects a similar plot of the rags-to-riches story, embodying an emphatic assertion of

neoliberal hope through the cultural phenomenon of the reality TV.

Q&A and the New Subject of Reality TV:

Vikas Swarup’s Q&A is better known as the novel which inspired Danny Boyle’s

academy award winning film Slumdog Millionaire. While the film has gained both

critical and popular recognition on a global scale, the novel too, has achieved a huge

commercial success—winning several global awards and been translated into 37

languages. The novel focuses on the life of the underdog in a post-globalization new

India: it is the story of a poor slum boy participating in a reality TV quiz game and

winning it by incredible luck and with his experiences of an extraordinarily adventurous

life. As the book catches the fancy of international readers as a spectacular tale of an

underdog’s success, it is interesting to note how the novel reflects the emerging trends of

global entertainment in a changing consumerist society. Based on the premise of a reality

TV show, the novel seeks to celebrate the spectacular turn of a generic common man’s

life to fame and wealth through the global media and India’s economic liberalization; as

well as projects another example of the model of the “homo œconomicus” consumer-

citizen who constitutes an ideal subject of the free market ideology.

Q&A shares a lot of commonalities with Adiga’s The White Tiger. Like Adiga’s

novel, the basic plot of Q&A remains the same—a slum boy’s accent to immense

financial success.Ram Mohammad Thomas, the protagonist of the novel, has been

arrested on charges of foul play for correctly answering all the questions in a reality game
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show, roughly modeled on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The whole story is narrated is

a flashback mode in which Ram recounts segments of his life to his lawyer Smita, hence

explaining how he could successfully answer each question in the game show based on

his life’s experiences. The narrative follows an episodic pattern as each chapter narrates a

unique experience from Ram’s life that specifically corresponds to the question asked at

each stage of the quiz show, and ends with a successful completion of each level of the

quiz, giving the novel a thriller like suspense. Swarup asserts that he meant to write a

thriller with an exciting story and he cared less about the reality factor of it. Significantly

enough, unlike Adiga, Swarup negates the claims of realism and rather redirects the

readers to the thrill and inspiring message of the story---the miraculous journey of a

common man from poverty to wealth through the medium of a reality show. When asked

in an interview with Mark McDonald, from the New York Times, if he actually lived in or

experienced the slums that life in the slums that he portrays in his book, Sawrup replied

in negative:

No. None. Because I wasn’t trying for that level of realism. That’s the great thing

about fiction. In my invented universe, I make the rules. Google took me

wherever I needed to go. Without Google I couldn’t have written the book in two

months.

Thus, the slums just provide, as Swarup asserts, nothing more than “the backdrop to the

story of the courage and determination of this boy who beats the odds” (ibid). The real

appeal of the novel, like Adiga’s The White Tiger, rests on its rags-to-riches story of a

poor man climbing up the social ladder in a fascinating change of luck. Moreover, like
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Balram who benefits the from the new opportunities for entrepreneurship that have

opened up in post-liberalization India, Ram Mohammad too gets to transcend his

inherited socio-economic marginality through another process of the spread of global

capitalism, the globalization of the entertainment media.

Swarup’s novel is based on the theme of the reality TV shows, that reflects, as

several scholars have often argued, not only the contemporary trends of global media but

also essentially embodies the tenets of neoliberal ideology. Laurie Ouellette points out in

a seminal essay that reality television has a distinct relationship with neoliberalism,

evident from the fact that reality TV “gained cultural presence . . . alongside the

neoliberal policies and discourses of the 1990s” (125). Not only that, the characteristic

features of reality TV—especially the trend of replacing the labor of paid professional

actors by casting unpaid commoners, the focus on surveillance of the common citizen,

emphasis on self-interest and winning—has been identified as corroborating the modes of

post-welfare state-governance.35Indian reality- TV shows are directly connected to the

economic liberalization of India in 1991, which opened up satellite channels replacing the

monopoly of the state owned Doordarshan. It is interesting to note how the narrative of

he novel, in terms of its theme, invokes the global phenomenon of the televised media,

especially the reality TV shows and many of its aspects that corroborate a neoliberal

35
Also see Nick Couldry Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics After
Neoliberalism, Marwan Crady and Katherine Sender The Politics of Reality
Television : Global Perspectives, Gareth Palmer Exposing Lifestyle Television:
The Big Reveal.
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notion of citizenship.36 Through three distinct aspects of the novel that echo the reality

show model—(i) the projection of the protagonist as a ‘common’ man, (ii) the notion of

TV as offering hope for the poor and (iii) the focus on neoliberal entrepreneurial skills in

the characters—I argue how Swarup not only invokes the familiar rhetoric of reality TV

in his novel, but also echoes the ideology of reality TV on a much deeper level of

attempting to redefine the modes of existence in a post-globalization neoliberal world.

Q& A invokes one of the most important aspects of the neoliberal ideology—

that is the promise of social mobility for the poor. As Manfred Steger points out the

central ideological tenet of neoliberalism— “presented to the public as a central,

leaderless juggernaut that will ultimately produce benefits for everyone” its “promises of

material well-being and social mobility” are well-publicized (79). Q&A projects a

neoliberal premise of social mobility by banking on one of the most revolutionary aspects

of reality TV, that is, its focus on the ‘ordinary’ man. Marking a major shift from the

scripted sitcom narratives and professional actors, reality TV had turned the spotlight to

the common man. Be it the talents searched in the Idol series, the celebrated participants

of the game shows like Survivor or Big Brother, or the ordinary people in their ‘real’

36
Though the term “reality TV show” refers to an enormous array of reality
shows televised across several decades, in diverse forms varying across different
nations, in this paper I have primarily referred to the popular shows broadcast on
the British and American televisions and their adaptations in India. The Star TV
aired Kaun Banega Crorepati (Indian version of Who Wants to be A Millionaire)
hosted by the megastar Amitabh Bachhan in 2000 was a phenomenal success and
opened up a surge of reality shows which now constitute a major genre of
programs. However, most reality shows in India have been
adaptations/derivations of UK and US shows, out of which the Indian Idol (taken
from American idol), Big Boss (Big Brother), Biggest Loser, Zhalak Dikhla Zaa
(Dancing With the Stars), have been most popular.
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lives videoed on the 70s show American Family—reality TV was all about the common

man’s entry to the entertainment media. Simultaneously, the reality shows also claim

unpredictability through these unprofessional ‘real’ characters who are supposed to

operate without a script. With the rise of more interactive audience participation through

public voting, the staged ordinariness is meant to appeal to the mass viewers who can

instantly identify with their onscreen representatives. Though Su Holmes and Deborah

Germyn assert that it is not new for ordinary people to appear on television, and that

genres like news, quiz shows, and documentaries have “long since relied upon the role

and presence of real people as opposed to media professionals and performers” (113),

they also go on to assert that the limited presence of the ordinary people as essentially

belonging to the category of ‘ordinary’ in the earlier shows has been radically altered by

reality TV which seeks to convert the participants to celebrities (113). The apparent

democratizing trends of the reality TV is also observed by Anita Biressi and Heather

Nunn who point out the nature of this change in the portrayal of media generated social

mobility. As they point out:

Ordinary people, formerly the sympathetic subjects of social-conscience

documentaries have now been transformed into the ‘especially remarkable

celebrity’ through their new found media visibility…We consider the increasing

premium placed on social mobility achieved not through merit, trained talent or

the traditional accumulation of cultural and economic capital but through media

visibility alone. (8)

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Though Biressi and Nunn rule out the economic aspect of this media visibility, the reality

shows affect the contestants economically as well. Thus, while reality TV generates

sensationalism through the turning of “ordinary people into marketable celebrity-

commodities” (Turner 33), it also projects an alternative form of socio-economic success

for the contestants. The post-participation fame that came to the Louds (American

Family), Carrie Underwood (American Idol Season 4), or Melissa Rycroft (The Bachelor)

exemplifies how reality TV can change the life of the once unheard of common man not

only to one of celebrity-hood but also to economic affluence.

This theme of social mobility of the commoner hero marks the central plot of

Q&A. The novel also plays on this concept of the commoner-turned-celebrity through a

reality game show, whose life changes after he participates in a reality TV show. Like

Adiga’s ‘marginal’ protagonist, Swarup’s lead character is a generic common man

without a historical specificity of caste, religion or ethnic identity. The protagonist is an

orphan, thus bereft of any specific family background, and is surprisingly named Ram

Mohammad Thomas—a name that carries the most common denominators of a secular

identity, since it includes the names of a Hindu god, a Muslim prophet and a Christian

missionary. Unlike in Boyle’s film, where the protagonist Jamil is specifically identified

as a Muslim and hence represents a particular minority status in terms of both economic

and religious marginalization in India, Swarup does not embark on the nuances of

identity politics in India at all, especially in terms of religion. Instead Ram is the

quintessential common man who stands for all the major religious groups of India and

can be identified with any one of them. Simultaneously, Ram is also the generic ‘poor’
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man who lives the lives of a variety of poor people found across India— he is at once the

child in an orphanage, the street beggar, the vagabond, the waiter, the servant at rich

households, the tour guide at tourist spots, the slum dweller. He thus represents the

ordinary working class man, who constitutes the majority of the Indian population, and is

indistinguishable as a separate entity in the crowd.

In Swarup’s novel, the common man’s ascent to limelight, both as a protagonist

of a novel and as the most sought after man in the events of the story, is spurred by his

participation in the reality quiz show. Thus on one level, he is sought after by the show

organizers and the police who suspect him of fraud; on another level, his extraordinary

feat at the show of getting all the questions right spurs a lawyer to take up his case and

listen to his story. His narrative opens up his life for the readers as well, offering them a

glimpse into the otherwise unheard off, marginal experience. The novel thus projects the

apparently democratizing aspects of the reality TV which churns out a new concept of

social mobility under the global capitalist media. For Ram Mohammad too, participating

in a quiz show marks a bold transgression of his marginal status. Therefore, asserting that

his arrest was prompted by his daring act to participate in the quiz show as a slum boy,

Ram comments sarcastically at the strict socio-economic hierarchies in India and the

status quo the poor is not supposed to transgress:

There are those who would say I brought this upon myself. By dabbing in that

quiz show. They will wag a finger at me and remind me of what the elders in

Dharavi say about never crossing the dividing line that separates the rich from the
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poor. After all, what business did a penniless waiter have participating in a brain

quiz? (2)

The sarcasm of the comment, in an extended logic, warrants the leveling powers of the

reality show. Ram has indeed bridged that gap through his participation in the show, and

hence he faces the impediments. Ram basks in his new found glory that has brought him

a new social standing: “After my performance they would have looked at me with new

respect” (2). Ram’s life thus takes a drastic turn post the quiz show: in a dreamlike sweep

of fortune, the slum boy devours the limelight and suddenly his anonymous existence

becomes a matter of public interest with a controversy of cheating in a game show that

makes him a known face among the police, human rights activists and the common

crowd.37

The social mobility of the common man through the reality shows is, however not

limited solely to his public appearance; rather the lump sum prize money to be won at the

end of the show stages the righting the wrongs of society for the masses and projects a

distinct neoliberal idea. Mark Andrejevic convincingly argues that the rise of the

commoner through TV shows serves as a distraction and compensation for the growing

economic disparity in the neoliberal economy (63). Thus, the prize money acquires a

talismanic implication of a treasure lying open to be won by anyone, offering a private

37
The novel thus celebrates what Andy Warhol conceptualizes as the inversion of
the celebrity equation whereby by exposing his/her private life to the mass media,
the common man ascends to the status of a celebrity—much like the popular
recognition that the Louds gained after their lives were out for public display on
the American Family
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recourse to success especially for those people who have been deprived by the welfare

state and the civil society. Consequently, the shows project an apparently egalitarian

concept of distributing resources among ordinary people, often as an alternative and

private method to remedy the economic deprivation of certain sections of society. Susan

Murray and Laurie Ouellette assert that reality TV has taken up “the duties of the

philanthropist, the social worker, the benefactor, and the ‘guardian angel’ ” (2). The

apparently philanthropic role of reality TV is most potently seen in poverty themed

British reality shows like The Secret Millionaire or How the Other Half Lives where the

participating millionaires would pick up poor people to donate a hefty sum of money as

charity. These philanthropic missions to help out of the ‘chosen’ poor, as part of a media

spectacle, not only assert the commoditization of poverty but they conform to the

neoliberal discourse of the private intervention in social distribution of wealth. With the

free market seeking to shift the responsibility for economic well-being to the realm of the

private, the reality shows promise financial success on an individual level.

This narrative of hope in reality TV echoes the rhetoric of neoliberal optimism,

which has become one of the major rallying points for the free market. A variant of the

American Dream—that anyone can be successful if he takes responsibility for himself

and works hard—the neoliberal dream, as Giroux argues, is a new ‘hope’ for individual

success that is packaged as a promise of neoliberal capitalism. Built on the premise of the

free market, this notion of hope substitutes welfare programs and community activism

with a strong sense of self-responsibility. Thus, as Giroux points out, it substitutes

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the celebration of wealth, privilege, and greed for notions of hope grounded in an

opposition to economic injustice, racism, domination, and diverse forms of

oppression. Within this discourse, public responsibility is transformed into private

gain, and public issues reduced to private worries. Hope loses its political

bearings in this narrative and rewrites social obligation as the counting up of

private gains and benefits. Similarly, hope is abstracted from any notion of social

vision and the necessity of keeping social change alive. Mortgaged to the dictates

of the global market, the media conglomerates now package hope as either a

commodity or as part of a crude survivalist ethic (“Something’s Missing” 230).

For Giroux, the main propagandists of this new hope are the reality shows like Who

Wants to Be a Millionaire that represent “the prime time media’s offer of hope in the

instant fix” by not only relieving the audience of assuming “any responsibility of the

weak—that is the powerless and the impoverished” (112) but also by projecting a

narrative of economic possibility even for the commonest people.

Projecting a similar rhetoric, the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire,

renamed as Kaun Banega Crorepati, caught the nation’s fantasy, became an instant hit

and sparked participation from millions of people precisely because it held out the

promise of a better future through a TV show. Running successfully for five seasons, the

show continued to garner high TRPs continuously—the central appeal of the show being

the rhetoric of hope that this show gave out to everyone. As the KBC producer Siddharth

Basu shared the strategic decisions of the show “It was very much a programming

decision to reach out to contestants from further afield, from the interiors, to have video
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windows on each one of them, their lives and milieus, their hopes and disappointments...

Because we wanted the viewer to relate more deeply with the person on the hot seat in

this life-changing game.” Consequently, contestants were introduced to the audience in

their humble backgrounds, tattering houses and lives enmeshed in poverty captured in the

videos flashed before the game started, to enhance the redemptive power of the game

show for the deprived citizens. More often than not, past winners were brought back to

the show in special episodes where they testified how radically their lives have changed

after the show.

Q & A too corroborates the discourse of neoliberal hope through reality TV.

Swarup himself calls this a novel about hope at the time of economic crisis and

uncertainty—in this case offered solely by the new age media through the large sum of

money. Thus he exclaims in his interview with IBN Live: “The book's message is that

hope makes life bright struck a chord. At a time when people were reeling under the

global financial crisis, this book spoke about the audacity of hope.” The importance of

the prize money is spelt out in the very beginning of the book when the producer of the

show, Johnson, assures the commissioner of the real attraction of the game show: “Would

it have half as interesting if the top prize had been ten thousand instead of ten

million?…the biggest tease in the world is not sex. It’s money. And greater the sum of

money the bigger tease” (6). The ‘tease’ of the large sum attracted Ram as well, who

entered the quiz show in an acute financial crisis. He desperately needed a lot of money

to bail out his beloved from the brothel, and it looked impossible in his current socio-

economic status that he would ever succeed. Yet, the quiz show changes his life
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completely, serving what Giroux calls as the “instant fix” (112) for his socio-economic

problems. The novel ends with a spectacular resolution of all the problems that plagued

not only Ram but also his allies whose lives change for the better due to the prize money.

The novel’s fairy tale finish certainly echoes the happy ending at the end of a reality

game show— the common man walks away with a huge money, and along with it,

endless possibilities of altering only his own life, while the larger picture of economic

disparity remains the same.

Though his win is prompted by a stroke of luck, the commoner hero Ram

Mohammad embodies important tenets of the ideal neoliberal citizen signifying that he is

a worthy winner of the money. It is thus not chance alone that can turn one’s life around

but rather, to be successful in the neoliberal context one needs to inherently posses, and

to a certain degree inculcate in oneself, the essential precepts of the ideal ‘economic man’

or the model of the entrepreneur-consumer “homo œconomicus”. Ram fulfills his role as

a consumer very successfully. Like Balram, Ram Mohammad is an avid consumer. Thus

after winning the money, he buys himself a luxurious lifestyle complete with a posh

mansion by the high-end Juhu beach and chauffeur driven Mercedes Benz and Ferraris.

However, apart from being a successful consumer, Ram’s success is warranted by his

self-entrepreneurship as well, and most importantly by his ability to manage risks that

constitutes another important aspect of neoliberal subjectivity.

Ram’s ability to survive and manage his risks is seen in the action of the novel

that is built through the new challenges that Ram faces and overcomes, portraying the

various perils of a life in the Indian underbelly. Each chapter is a description of a unique
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adventure where Ram is pitted against a hostile environment which often turns perilous

for him. Consequently, Ram’s success comes from a skilful maneuvering through the

difficult situations, much like the perilous challenges thrown at the contestants in a reality

show. Consequently, like the tough struggle for survival in the reality shows, the novel

too narrates a powerful tale of survival. The notion of survival, or more precisely the

survival of the fittest, overcoming a perilous and competitive society forms a central

concept in neoliberal ideology. Drawing from the notions of ‘Social Darwinism’—that

conflates the idea of Darwin’s evolution theory with social competition to propagate the

notion of the survival of the strong or the fittest in the race for social existence (William

Richard Hofstadter; Mike Hawkins), neoliberalism lays immense emphasis on the skills

of survival, ingenuity and often fierce competitiveness. As Bourdieu points out: “the

power of neoliberal hegemony is based on a new form of social Darwinism: In the words

of Harvard ‘the best and the most remarkable win the race’” (51); the ideal subject of

neoliberalism is therefore someone with commendable survival skills. Subsequently,

echoing the neoliberal ethics of individual survival, the main emphasis, and often the

winning factor, in many reality TV shows is the ability to survive in even extreme

adverse situations (Ouellette and Hay; Rosendale and Rosendale). While shows like the

Survivor and Big Brother strongly harp on the themes of competitive survival but putting

contestants against each other and through a process of mutual elimination, other survival

shows like Man vs Nature, Man vs Wild, Survivorman hinge on the concept of

resourcefulness and ingenuity of the contestants to emerge as successful survivors in the

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most extreme situations; or as Giroux puts it, reality TV projects “individuals who define

agency in terms of their survival skills”(134).

Similarly, based on the theme of reality TV, Q&A also replicates the notion of

individual survival of the subject when pitted against some of the most challenging and

threatening situations. The sheer variety and range of the dangerous situations Ram faces

is itself overwhelming, and yet he survives through all: Firstly, Ram’s stay in the

orphanage becomes eventful with his encounter with a young priest, Brother Tom, who is

at once a pedophilic, a gay man who takes drugs, has a leather fetish and lives an alter-

life of a outlawed biker. The chapter (“The Burden of a Priest”) features many other

adventurous encounters of young Ram with pornography, child molestation,

suicide/murder and an illegitimate affair of a priest. Yet, in spite of such perilous

encounters, Ram successfully escapes unscathed (35-53). Secondly, the chapter “How to

Speak Australian” describes Ram’s experiences at the residence of Colonel Taylor, an

Australian diplomat who has set up secret cameras all over his own house, works in a den

like office that is equipped like a spectacular espionage unit and is himself a spy on a

secret mission. Ram’ stint as a servant actually ends up with his stint as a spy who

uncovers the illegal activities of Col. Taylor through the espionage technique of voice

counterfeit and emerges out safely from the situation (“How To Speak Australian”, 103-

129 ). In another instance, Ram befriends a mentally challenged young boy in Agra and

discovers later that he is actually a royal prince thrown out to the slum by his queen

mother for discovering her illicit affairs. Ram confronts the powerful queen and is

threatened, and yet manages to survive the situation (“X Gkrz Opknu”, 238-300). Again,
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in the chapter “Tragedy Queen”, Ram works as a servant at the house of a film star

Nilima Devi and gets badly trapped with her deadbody after she commits suicide. Though

running the possibility of being charged with murder, Ram’s presence of mind saves him

from a possible arrest (211-237). As slum kids who encounter the underworld quite

closely, Ram and Salim have their brush with dangerous gangsters and train robbers.

However, not only do they escape unharmed, in some cases they also outwit the gangsters

and get them killed. (“License to Kill”, 192-210 and “Murder on the Western Express”,

148-165).These varied adventurous situations constitute the unique setting for a distinct

adventure in each chapter. The narrative thus overwhelms the reader with the sheer

variety of situations that Ram faces as challenges. Yet Ram proves to be the ultimate

survivor, cruising through every challenge with his own survival skills. As Ram escapes

each situation with his own planning, careful actions and successful navigation of risks

without any other external help or support, he thus exemplifies the concept of self care in

a post welfare society where the individual ideally assumes responsibility for himself and

his family and friends, without depending on anyone else to rescue him. Swarup too

emphasizes on the theme of handling crises as the most important characteristic of his

protagonist, asserting that as an integral part of the Indian survival. When asked in his

interview with Mark McDonald whether the “intrinsic theme of the book seems to be

captured by the Hindi word “jugaad”— ingenuity, perseverance, fix it”, Swarup agreed:

Exactly, jugaad means to get the job done, somehow or other. It’s really the spirit

of India. My phone recently had water damage and I gave it to the Nokia dealer.

He said, “No one can do. Can’t be fixed. Just buy a new phone.” If that had
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happened in India, some local guy in a little shop would have cloned an old

Samsung or Motorola or whatever, and five minutes later, “Here you are Mr.

Swarup, it works!” They would never say it cannot be done. Jugaad is the spirit of

whatever-it-takes. That’s India. And that’s the spirit of those kids.

Thus, Swarup equates Ram’ ability to get out of crisis to the spirit of innovation which

form the cornerstone of his success.

Closely related to the notion of individual survival is the risk management skill of

the neoliberal subject. The new age, Ulrich Beck asserts, has ushered in the paradigm of

“risk societies” (46) whereby risks are no longer circumscribed spatially or temporarily,

but rather all people around the globe are exposed to common risks. Consequently, the

neoliberal form of governance shifts the responsibility of risk management from the

welfare state on to the private realm of the individual. The ideal neoliberal subject is thus

expected to act as a calculative rational choice actor to avert his own risk through

judicious decision making and be responsible for managing his own threats. As Pat

O’Malley cogently sums it up:

Better understood as prudentialism, it is a technology of governance that removes

the key conception of regulating individuals by collectivist risk management, and

throws back upon the individual the responsibility of managing risks. This is

advocated by its supporters as “efficient”, for individuals will be driven to greater

exertion and enterprise by the need to insure against adverse circumstances—and

the more enterprising they are, the better safety net they can construct. (197)
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The neoliberal subject is thus, what Michael Peters terms as “a calculative rational choice

actor” (91) who becomes responsible for a series of investment decisions concerning the

various risks associated with one’s health, education, security, employment and in a

nutshell, one’s own survival. Thus, while innovation and enterprise still remain the key to

success, the neoliberal economy lays increasing emphasis on responsible risk taking

which entails, as O’Malley puts it, both “risk minimization or avoidance of harmful

risks” (76). Thus, a neoliberal subject not only takes up chances to maximize profit, he or

she should now be equally careful of the dangers that pose a threat to him/her and take up

responsibility for them on their own. The question of prudence becomes crucial in risk

management, for the successful neoliberal survivor has both intuition to perceive risk and

ingenuity to avert it.

Much of the emphasis in the reality shows, especially the ones based on the

format of a game like Deal or no Deal and Money Drop lies on the crucial choices and

right decisions that the contestants need to make in order to win the game. The format of

Who Wants to be a Millionaire too follows the same mode of making the right choices at

every step of the game to minimize the risk of loss and maximize gains. While these are

more direct forms of risk management, the outcome of other game shows like Survivor

and Big Brother involving multiple players also depends a lot on the way the contestants

speculate their respective threats, identify the enemies or strong contenders, form the

right alliances and avert their risk of getting ousted from the game. Most of these choices

thus involve managing risk—either in terms of speculating the game or handling

obstacles or strategizing against competitors—that finally affect their financial profits

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from the game, and hence the shows often simulate the speculative practices of a

financial market in terms of calculated risks. The act of decision taking in the reality

game shows thus invokes the contestants in the neoliberal modes of risk management,

whereby the contestants need to take calculated risks in their own interest to survive in

the game. Swarup’s Q&A too narrates several instances where Ram takes the crucial

decisions to manage his risk that ultimately determines the chances of his survival and in

the long run, his winning of the prize money. Just like a reality TV contestant who

minimizes his/her risk to increase his/her odds at winning the prize money, Ram also

manages to be the winner only because he successfully negotiates the aspect of risk in

accordance to the neoliberal model of subjectivity.

Ram is impeccable in assessing the gravity of each difficult situation and acting

accordingly, often fashioning in own escape routes. For example, in the Taylor house,

Ram is the first one to realize that Colonel Taylor is watching every move of all the

inmates and thus avoids any action that might get him in trouble, while the rest of the

servants keep doing their own things only to be dismissed:

In the fifteen months I have been with the family, five more servants have been

dismissed. All because of Colonel Taylor. He is the Man who Knows…I am the

only one who has survived. I admit, occasionally I am also tempted to pocket the

loose change lying around on Mrs. Taylor’s dressing table or grab one of the

Swiss chocolates from the fridge, but I keep such urges in check. Because I know

that Colonel Taylor is the Man Who Knows. (106)

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There are several other occasions like this where Ram’s sense of caution helps him come

out of dangerous situations completely unscathed. As a child too, he is the first one to

sense the pedophilic leanings of Father John in the orphanage and thus warns the rest of

the boys about him. Again, though Ram comes dangerously close to getting arrested

several times—for accidentally murdering a train robber, being witness to Nilima Devi’s

suicide and for stealing money from Rani Sahiba’s palace—he manages to cover himself

up cleverly and evades trouble. Ram’ decisions always prove right in the long run,

making him a subject capable of his personal risk management.

This exemplary capability for trouble management is initially portrayed as Ram’ s

infallible luck. There are at least three major decisions that Ram makes by flipping his

lucky coin which always seems to steer him clear through the threat he faces. Thus, when

Smita walks in the police lock up as Ram’ lawyer, Ram tosses his coin to decide if he

should trust her. Ram goes with the coin’s decision to trust her and it turns out to be the

most positive choices Ram makes towards attaining his freedom from police custody and

winning his prize money. Similarly, Ram tosses his coin to decide if he and Salim should

leave Maman’s den of crippled children, which again turns out to be a smart choice that

saves them from mutilation. Again, the coin correctly predicts the dangers of robbing

Rani Sahiba’s locker for Lajwanti and indeed she does get arrested for the risky venture.

Finally, Ram tosses the coin to decide the correct answer for the last question on the quiz

show that places Ram under the risk of losing “a hundred million in less than a

minute”(312) if his answer is wrong. Once again, the coin leads him to the correct answer

and a billion rupees of prize money. While the coin is apparently presented as a piece of
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talisman that seems to protect Ram from every obstacle, the end of the novel reveals the

coin as a useless one for dictating a choice since it has the same image imprinted on both

sides. We come to realize that the decisions were throughout taken by Ram himself—his

successful navigation through the obstacle of his life was not prompted by luck but rather

his own ability to perceive risks and act accordingly. Having established himself as a

successful neoliberal survivor who has also acquired capital, Ram tosses away the coin at

the end of his story, proclaiming: “I won’t need it anymore. Because luck comes from

within” (318). Ram thus proves to be a successful manager of risks with an excellent

ability to make right decisions .In his ability to minimize risks, Ram Mohammad

personifies what Louise Amoore and Amieke de Goede define as neoliberal

“prudentialism,” in which “subjects are required to prudently calculate, and thereby

minimize, the risk that could befall them” (27). Capable of foreseeing the future hazards

and of minimizing his losses, Ram becomes an ideal responsible neoliberal subject.

In contrast to Ram is Salim, another boy from the slum who initially shares the

same socio-economic status as Ram but lags behind in terms of risk perception and

ingenuity to tackle crises. Salim is portrayed as too naïve, almost to the point of being

careless, that makes him inadequate as a neoliberal subject. Interestingly, the novel not

only portrays Salim lacking all the skills that Ram has, Salim is also admonished and

counseled by Ram to be a more judicious individual. Significantly, the novel charts his

makeover from his naiveté to an enterprising individual, projecting a correctional

progression towards a more desirable neoliberal subjectivity.

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The process of Salim’s transition from a weakling, incapable of surviving without

Ram’ help, to an ingenious plotter, who cleverly eliminates his enemies, again closely

follows the correction method of makeover shows on reality TV that intercept the

‘imperfect’ individual and aim to transform “ordinary people into improved versions of

themselves”(Ouellette and Hay 102).38 Terming these programs as “life interventions

programs” (85), Ouellette and Hay assert how these shows mobilize all kinds of

professional motivators and ‘lifestyle experts’ to help people overcome all kinds of

obstacles— in their personal, professional, and domestic lives –– by instilling self-

management techniques. Consequently, Ouellette and Hay argue that these shows

essentially project the idea of neoliberal self-government by producing citizens that are

capable of managing themselves in accordance to a neoliberal subjectivity of risk

management39. In Salim’s case, Ram takes over the role of his counselor and guide,

teaching him the ways of survival. Salim’s transformation from naiveté, after multiple

instances of Ram’s chastisement, follows the essential stages of an individual’s makeover

that Brenda Weber locates in makeover reality shows, namely:

a) An initial portrayal of the subjects of makeover as weak, vulnerable and worthy of

sympathy (7)—followed by shaming and rebuking of the subjects to make them subscribe

38
Life interventions programs on reality TV include, amongst others, very
popular formats such as Supernanny, How Clean is your House, and Honey, we’re
Killing the Kids, series all of which originated from the BBC; and very successful
American series as Dr Phil , Intervention, Judge Judy, Biggest Loser, How Do I
Look and Clean House.
39
Also see A McCarthy “Reality Television: A Neoliberal Theatre of Suffering”
and John McMurria “ Desperate Citizens and Good Samaritans: Neoliberalism
and Makeover Reality TV”
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to the urgency of their makeover (31); the actual process of guidance and supervision

with caring attention from the experts through the logic of “love power” or what Weber

calls “affective domination” (96); and the final “big reveal” where the After-body or the

more desirable avatar of the subject is revealed to the amazed audience (2).

Salim’s transformation as a protégée of Ram, in terms of skills of survival and

risk management, follow a similar trajectory of subsequent stages in a personality

makeover show. In sync with the first stage of change, Salim too is initially portrayed as

too naïve and defenseless against the abusers and living a victimized life. Salim is thus

the ill-fated orphan boy, hailing from marginal community of Muslims in India and

whose family had been tragically killed in the violence of a riot. Left alone to fend for

himself, Salim is all the more pitiable since he lacks the essential resourcefulness to

survive alone and is rendered vulnerable at multiple instances of his life. Thus, Salim is

immature enough to blindly worship the larger than life film heroes, spend his money

vainly on a roadside soothsayer, and nurture improbable fantasies about becoming a film

star. Consequently, his lack of a sense of alert constantly lands him in danger—

unsuspecting as he is, he becomes the easy target of sexual abuse for both Armaan Ali

and the orphanage deputy, Gupta. Consequently, his immature disposition is constantly

reprimanded by Ram, who urges him to change himself for a better fit in an enterprising

society. Corresponding to the second stage of expert guidance in makeover shows, Ram

too steers Salim through situations of danger, offering his guidance and advice. Thus,

Ram is the one who senses trouble both the times when Salim is about to be abused.

While Salim remains clueless even when Gupta undresses him and was about to rape
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him, it is Ram who realizes the gravity of the situation and raises a cry of alarm to call

people and saves Salim in the nick of time. Similarly, when caught in Maman’s

orphanage— that deliberately maimed children to turn them into pitiable beggars—Ram

senses the dangers and steers himself and a completely unsuspecting Salim out of the

place, asserting his self-assigned responsibility to play Salim’s mentor: “I am your

guardian angel, and you are part of my package deal” (98). Alongside driving Salim

clear through many dangers, Ram also chastises him for his foolishness and imparts

advice for a smarter living. Thus, when Salim wants counseling from a roadside palmist,

Ram rebukes him for wasteful spending and warns him of the fraud involved in such

services. On a similar note, Ram sermonizes Salim on the basic rules for risk free living:

“I told you not to poke your nose into other people’s affairs or make other people’s

troubles your own. Remember this as a lesson for the future” (55). Ram is thus both

Salim’s mentor and the disciplining guardian without whom Salim becomes a vulnerable

victim in a dark world of poverty and crime.

Ram’s guidance for Salim is primarily directed towards making Salim more

perceptive to his imminent risks and accordingly to escape situations that might harm him

both physically and financially. Though both of the same age, Ram is more enterprising

and a far better risk manager than Salim, who need to learn the skills of resourcefulness

from Ram to be a successful neoliberal subject. Corresponding to the third stage of “big

reveal” in the makeover shows, Salim is ultimately revealed as a transformed individual

who can not only gauze his risks but also knows how to manipulate the odds to turn the

situation in his best possible interest. The chapter “License to Kill”, which focuses solely
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on Salim’s experience, narrates his encounter with a contract killer and the way Salim

played with a smart strategy to attain multiple goals, all in his personal interest.

Appointed as a household help for Ahmed Khan, a now smarter Salim quickly realizes

that Ahmed is a contract killer, who gets his assigned target’s photo mailed to him in an

envelope. On discovering that Ahmed has been contracted to kill a film producer who

had promised Salim a role, Salim manipulates the situation with an amazing

entrepreneurial ingenuity. Salim not only informs the producer of his imminent danger—

who expresses his gratitude by securing Salim’s acting career considerably—but also gets

rid of his threatening personal enemy, Maman, by swapping his photo with that of the

producer’s as Ahmed’s targeted victim. Salim cleverly escapes from Ahmed before he is

caught, and his feat of manipulation secures him a dream career, a riddance of his enemy

and a successful evasion from any connection to the contract killer. Salim is thus, a

transformed subject not only capable of sensing his threats and steering clear through

them, but also becomes one like Ram Mohammad who can reap profits even out of the

worst situations. Consequently, his transformation is applauded by Smita—and in a way

the readers too—with the same amazement that the transformed subject is applauded after

makeover in the reality shows. With Salim transformed from an infantile subject citizen

to a desirable neoliberal subject with entrepreneurial skills, the experiences of the

narrative reach their purpose.

Having discussed the concept of self-care in both White Tiger and Q&A let me

end the discussion with a brief analysis of the problematic premise of this concept. The

notion of self-care, though apparently enabling, is a rhetoric based on the survival of the
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fittest. The concept is an important articulation of the transformation of the welfare state

to a neoliberal state that significantly diminishes, as Martinez and Garcia point out,

public expenditure for welfare programs, leaving the poor without a support system.

As David Harvey points out that “as the state withdraws from welfare provision and

diminishes its role in arenas such as health care, public education, and social services,…it

leaves larger and larger segments of the population exposed to impoverishment”(76). The

concept of self-care is directly correlated with this withdrawal of the social safety net,

projecting a system that promotes individual responsibility. Consequently, this notion

also generates an anti-poor discourse, whereby those incapable of self-care are

condemned and criminalized. As Martinez and Garcia point out, one of the characteristic

features of neoliberalism is to impose the culture of self-responsibility among the poorest

margins of society—“pressuring the poorest people in a society to find solutions to their

lack of health care, education and social security all by themselves -- then blaming them,

if they fail, as "lazy."” Harvey also asserts, in a similar way, how “the social safety net is

reduced to a bare minimum in favour of a system that emphasizes personal responsibility.

Personal failure is generally attributed to personal failings, and the victim is all too often

blamed” (76). Self-care thus becomes a discourse of propagating a neoliberal subjectivity

that is conducive to the growth of the market; subsequently it also justifies the discourse

of the exclusion and punishing of the poor as failed subjects. I discuss in the next chapter

how the failure of the poor, marginal subject to fit into the neoliberal model leads to a

discourse of his criminalization and consequent disciplining.

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Adiga’s The White Tiger and Swarup’s Q& A thus revolve around the underdog’s

journey through the various obstacles and narrate the tale of their ultimate success in the

context of neoliberal globalization. In a failing welfare state and a hegemonic society

fraught with age old hierarchies of caste, class and religion, neoliberalism projects itself

as the new emancipatory force for the marginal. Consequently, by constructing the

essentialized subjectivities of marginality in the characters of Balram and Ram

Mohammad, both the novels thus display how the paradigm of marginality is

appropriated to serve as emphatic testimonies of the neoliberal regime. The marginal hero

thus becomes the ideal subject and endorser of the neoliberal rhetoric and offers a strong

testimony of its spectacular success.

 CHAPTER 3

The Neoliberal City: Urban Space, Noir Fiction and the Criminal Subject

“Why is the Third-World metropolis suddenly taking over western culture?

…Why would it be so? For a start, the rumours crackling in from the Third World

have ceased to be quaint. Indian and Chinese business people rattle assumptions

by buying up major corporate assets in America and Europe; there are stories of

Asian billionaires buying houses at record-breaking prices in Belgravia. There is a

dim awareness of something monumental happening far away, of extraordinary

wealth creation that goes beyond mere imitation. More perceptive observers see

something awe-inspiring in outsourcing: for a western, metropolitan outlook

could not have imagined a world so devoid of centre, so unsentimentally flattened

out… exist in those places for such plans to be dreamed up. All that was

“backward” swings round to the front, full of vast and uncanny promise”.

Rana Dasgupta, “The Sudden Stardom of Third World City”

Rana Dasgupta points out in his article “The Sudden Stardom” that the third world city,

or more particularly the Indian city, has become a popular theme for recent novelistic

explorations. Along with the rags to riches stories, recent Indo-Anglican literature has

138
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also seen a burgeoning of the genre of urban crime fictions set against the backdrop of

India’s modernizing metropolises. While explorations of the contemporary Indian city

mostly consists of non-fictional, journalistic writings , like Katherine Boo’s Pulitzer

winning book Behind the Beautiful Forevers, William Dalrymple’s City of Djinns and

Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City, the genre also includes fictions like Altaf Tyrewala’s

critically acclaimed debut novel No God in Sight , Vikram Chandra’s bestseller Sacred

Games , Tarun Tejpal’s The Story of My Assassins, Hrish Sawhney’s volume of short

stories Delhi Noir, Atish Tasser’s The Templegoers and others, which deal with the dark

underside of the cities. The modern Indian novel is often the novel of urban India,

particularly cosmopolitan cities like Delhi and Mumbai, and the story of the third-world

underbelly grappling with the changing dynamics of the urban space. Thus, gone are the

verdant and idyllic landscapes of Roy’s God of Small Things or the stagnant and decaying

cities of the Emergency period in Rushdie and Mistry; what takes the center stage today

are stories of throbbing urban hubs of a new India that swings with and embraces a

changing global economy. The image of the so called disorder and chaos of the third

world city—which Rana Dasgupta lovingly reminiscences as the European tourist’s

chagrin at the cows and the camels on the streets or the disarray of the slums sprawling in

the heart of the city (the corrugated sheets and the tarpaulins)—have been gradually

replaced by a city that has transformed itself with the onset of globalization.40 The
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modern Indian cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore transform from just cities to what

Saskia Sassen terms as “global cities”—the crucial localized nodes in the network of

global capitalism.41These Indian cities thus mirror the various processes of neoliberal

urban re-structuring and the transformation of the city in accordance to the tenets of

global capitalism that often shape the other global cities in the world. Consequently,

attempting to effectively map the changing milieu of the Indian cities through the lives of

the urban poor, the urban fictions not only depict metamorphosing city landscapes but

also focus on the stunning ‘realities’ of the urban underworld, the criminal subjects of the

slums and the margins and the inner life of the urban anti-hero. These new string of

novels that claim to expose the murky ‘reality’ of the glossy Indian cities, weave

narratives of poverty, exploitation, violence of the underprivileged in the city, and

inevitably invoke the figure of the underclass criminal as the central focus of the

narratives. While Rana Dasgupta in “A New Bend in the River” celebrates this trend of

highlighting the criminal protagonists as signifying the dispossession of the elite or

middle class, English speaking bourgeoisie versions of reality of the earlier Indian

English novels by subaltern “realities” , a more nuanced reading of these novels reveal

them as not only reflecting the changing socio-economic conditions of the nation but also

40
The chaos, filth and dismay of the Indian cities in the eyes of the Eurocentric
traveler have been famously captured in Dominique Lapierre’s City of Joy and
V.S. Naipaul’s India: A Million Mutinies
41
Sassen defines “Global cities” as “the centers for servicing and financing of
international trade, investment, and headquarters operations – wherever these
might be located. That is to say, the multiplicity of specialized activities in global
cities are crucial in the valorization, indeed overvalorization of leading sectors of
capital today. And in this sense they are strategic production sites for today’s
leading economic sectors” (“Whose city is this”?)
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depicting a discourse of social control with new modes of surveillance for the lower class

margins in the new urban cities.

This chapter looks at the fictional representation of the marginal groups in the

context of the neoliberal city. Central to the notion of marginality is the exclusion of the

poor from the growth process under globalization. One of the most potent critiques of the

neoliberal globalization has been its differential influence on the different strata of the

society, whereby several scholars have argued that globalization and the regime of the

free market have failed to include the poor and the underclass in its stride of progress

(Harvey ; Gough, Eisenschitz, and McCulloch; Ryan). Though the IMF and World

Bank’s globalization rhetoric is essentially directed towards alleviating poverty—giving

rise to the concept of what the UNDP report of 1999 calls as “globalization with a human

face” (1)—the globalization of free market, as the IMF itself confesses, has failed to

address the problem of global poverty and has often led to a greater degree of

disenfranchisement of the already marginalized sections.42 This has consequently led to

an alternative rhetoric of castigating the poor. As Gough, Eisenschitz, and McCulloch

point out:

42
The Director of IMF’S Office in Europe, Flemming Larsen asserts this in his
2001 address:
“There is a striking contrast in the global economy. Living standards and the
quality of life are steadily on the rise in the industrial countries as well as in a
number of emerging economies. But both are stagnating in a number of the
poorest countries, in particular in Africa. Some African countries are even
regresssing. The income gap between the rich and the poor has never been so
great. Reversing this trend is imperative”.[ “Globalization and the Poor Countries:
Viewpoint of the IMF”]
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This political embarrassment is then covered by labeling the unemployed as

work-shy and feckless…the poor are no longer portrayed as economically rational

but as culturally different from the rest of the population, that is an

‘underclass’…Moreover the neoliberal reliance on the market fails to socially and

ideologically integrate the poor, manifested in crime, drug abuse and riots…A

discourse which blames wide socio-economic failure on laziness and social

indiscipline in society as a whole provides an excuse for failure. (170)

With the poor sections being excluded from the neoliberal growth, globalization, as

Ronaldo Munck points out, thus creates a new form of “social exclusion” even in the

global south (21). In a similar way, Manuel Castells points out a telling image of the

“Fourth World”, comprising of “exclusion of people and territories, which from the

perspective of dominant interests in global, informational capitalism, shift to a position of

structural irrelevance” (167). This chapter explores such narratives of exclusion of the

marginal subject in a post-globalized world in the context of the neoliberal urban space.

Through a study of the fictional urban geography in Tarun Tejpal’s novel The Story of

My Assassins I argue how Tejpal’s Delhi embodies the spatial alienation of the elites and

the marginalized, constructs the poor as criminal subjects and projects a structuring of its

urban space in the model of neoliberal urbanism. Concurrently, I also analyze Vikram

Chandra’s novel Sacred Games through the concepts of panopticism and surveillance in

terms of its narrative technique, to explore how the discourse of criminality construct,

interpret, and regulate criminal subjectivities within the city space.

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The divided city in Tarun Tejpal’s The Story of My Assassins:

The second novel by the journalist turned novelist Tarun Tejpal, The Story of My

Assassins projects a contemporary Delhi that has been sufficiently modernized as a global

city. The narrator, like Tejpal, is an anonymous journalist who, one fine day, suddenly

finds himself to be the target of an elaborate assassination plan. Abruptly hurled into a

world of police protection, media attention, courtroom and professional criminals, the

narrator experiences a dark world of crime and corruption. Well known for his sting

operation journalism on corrupt political figures, the novelist Tejpal captures in his novel

the same murky corruption, inner secrets and depravity of the politicians in power

through the eyes of his narrator, who himself lives a corrupt double life with illegal

dealings and a steamy extra-marital affair. However, central to the novel is the story of

the five ‘assassins’—Chaaku,Kabir, Kaliya, Chini and Hathoda—who are charged with

attempting to murder the narrator. The novel explores the dark underbellies of urban

Delhi as well as the violent rural hinterlands on its fringes, and focus on how the poor and

the marginal groups live a precarious life of dispossession, criminality and violence,

which is in complete contrast to the luxurious and sheltered lives of the urban middle and

upper classes. The main appeal of the novel thus lies in the way it delineates the bleak

underside of ‘shining’ India which is under the constant threat of the potentially

disruptive, ‘criminal’ marginalities that form the underclass. Referring to the violence of

the novel, Suresh Menon describes how the narrative exposes “stories of his five

assassins who have emerged from a system where rape is a weapon of mass destruction,

where the sensitive learn to stick knives into or hammer the brains out of those who cross
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their paths, and where forgiveness comes with the successful murder or with settling of

scores.” Similarly, S. Prasannarajan praises the novel not only for its blatant portrayal of

violence that shocks, but also for the revelatory “cracks of the horrors from where it

originates.” He goes on to explain: “It is a world where life is nasty, brutal, dispensable.

Where power is measured by violence and fear. Where India is a story devoid of the

moral certainties that propel those who live by, well, Wystan Hugh”. Again, lauding the

novel as “one of the most engaging political novels of recent times” Binoo K John reads

the novel as an expression of Tejpal’s contempt for the “sanitized novels” of India,

whereby Tejpal throws “these disturbing stories at them and us, guilt-tripping our

conscience and also taking us along on such frightful and impassioned journeys.”

Similarly, for reviewer Sudipta Datta, the novel is an impassioned exploration of the

neglected underbelly: “The novel holds up a story that is unequal, corrupt, unjust, blind.

Tejpal sifts through the noise and chaos that is India to bring us stories about the

dispossessed and the marginalized, the ones we gloss over while carrying on our

quotidian tasks.” Tejpal’s novel thus, essentially projects a dystopia of the marginalized

entities in the urban sphere. As the city restructures itself for the entrepreneurial elites,

the underbelly is pushed to father margins into darker realms of violence and criminality.

The restructuring of the city is one of the central effects of neoliberal

globalization, precisely because the city assumes a focal point in global capitalism.

Saskia Sassen asserts the significance of the local place, especially the urban centers in

globalization, that form the central nodes of the global networks of both capital and

people (Global City). On a similar note, David Harvey in his book Social Justice and the
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City aptly sums up the metaphoric significance of the modern cities—“The city is a

vantage point from which to capture some salient features operating in society as a

whole—it becomes as it were a mirror in which other aspects of society can be reflected”

(16). The truth of Harvey’s statement can be felt in the way the current prominence of the

market led economic and social ideologies reflect in the material and spatial re-mapping

of the modern city. The changes in the urban sphere towards a more defined agenda for

investment and economic production started as early as in the 1970s, as noted by early

scholars like Boddy , Cochrane, Rees and Lambert , Blunkett and Jackson. Later, several

contemporary urban geographers such as David Harvey, Jamie Peck, Adam Tickell, Neil

Smith argue that neoliberal urbanism—characterized as entrepreneurial, city

management, privatization, deregulation and extension of market logics to the provision

of urban services—has reshaped the urban space to a considerable degree. While Harvey

asserts that urban governance has increasingly moved in line with the rules of capital

accumulation in the current phase of neoliberalism (“Neoliberalism and the City” 43),

Neil Brenner and Nik Theodre call this urban restructuring “the actually existing

neoliberalism” (4)—signifying the “contextually specific interactions between inherited

regulatory landscapes and emergent neoliberal, market-oriented restructuring projects at a

broad range of geographical scale” (4). Similarly, arguing that the workings of capital

determines and is largely determined by geographical spaces, Brenner and Theodre assert

how the cities have become “crucial geographical arenas in which a variety of neoliberal

initiatives—along with closely intertwined initiatives of crisis displacement and crisis

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management—have been articulated”(4). The city in the context of economic

globalization thus becomes the microcosm of the globalizing world itself.

In this context, Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell point out that recent urban

development both promotes and normalizes the “growth first” motto of neoliberalism,

“reconstituting the social-welfarist arrangement as anti-competitive costs and rendering

issues of redistribution and social investment as antagonistic to the overriding objectives

of economic development”(47). As a consequence, cities compete to attract opportunities

for promotion and investment through its structural growth geared towards tapping

entrepreneurial resources and simultaneously “forecloses alternative paths of urban

development based, for example on social retribution, economic rights and public

retribution”(47). The comprehensive goal of such changes in policy is to relocate the city

space as a site that prioritizes both market-oriented economic growth and the

consumption practices of the elite class. The basis of this prioritization is the relative

productivity of the economic classes, whereby the modern city privileges its most

creative citizens. As Jamie Peck aptly explains:

Policies are designed to stimulate the “creative growth” of city economies—

usually by way of market-friendly interventions in the cultural sphere, to attract or

retain elite workers—Catering to the creative class has become, almost

simultaneously a favored strategy, an urgent imperative and a hackneyed cliché

of contemporary urban policy making…an influential thesis has been that

productive potential is carried by a creative class of individuals who will be

attracted only to cities with “buzz,” cities with a welcoming and sustaining people
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climate…Extant urban development models have been retrofitted around this

vision of creative growth. (41)

The city is thus remapped according to the demands and needs of the groups who can be

most productive for global capitalism.

Tejpal’s Delhi embodies a fitting example of a city catering to the elites and the

productive class. The anonymous journalist narrator, unapologetic about his class

privilege, inhabits a city complete with gated residential communities for the middle class

to the lavish bungalows of the rich politicians. The narrator aptly sums up the highlights

of the neoliberal city that supports a very specific life style reflected through the

narrator’s own perception of the urban space—“office, home, sports club, lawyers,

restaurants, movie hall. That was the universe” (34). It is a city which safely shelters the

residential buildings of middle class professionals and of US returned fashionable

intellectuals like Sarah, the business offices of entrepreneurship and capital growth, and

the expensive sports complexes that primarily thrive on the consumerism of popular

Indian game, cricket. Right beside the sports club is the equestrian enclosure where the

rich kids are “brought there by their fair, painted-up mothers or by dark, tired domestics

to play out their horse fantasies”(292). Tejpal’s narrator sums up the glimpses of urban

reality of modern India: “The young boys watched NBA games on cable television and

were shod in Nike shoes…These were kids for whom India was just a vast amusement

park, set up by some earnest geezers after kicking out some white men”(293). While the

cultural globalization, or more precisely Americanization, is complete with the narrator’s

description of the NBA and the Nike used by the Indian kids, the visual landmarks of
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globalization are symbolized in the McDonald’s outlets and in the huge billboards that

flash the local retails of the international brands of merchandise. Simultaneously, the

urban space also testifies the processes of the ‘neoliberal aestheticization’ of the city—

what Choon-Piew Pow aptly describes as the “minute detail and sensory pleasure” that

“has been meticulously planned and ordered to create a picturesque and pristine living

environment”(372)— through the shopping complexes and the opulent emporia that trade

the exotic local art at exorbitant prices. Tejpal’s tongue-in-cheek description of such an

emporium brings out the sensory appeal of such high end commercial centers that adorn a

world class city like Delhi:

These outlets were gleaming affairs—glass fronted, wood paneled, air-

conditioned, worked by elegant women in silk sarees. Not Indian shops but

international showrooms, with big glossy books on art and culture, that piped

Indian classical music and herbal tea…we looked around at the carpets, the

ornate, richly polished furniture with inlays of stone.”(274)

The prominence of such spaces in the landscape of the city points to an important process

of ‘gentrification’ that implements the agenda of prioritizing the entrepreneur class in

specific policies of urban restructuring.

Describing how the neoliberal city is remodeled through a comprehensive

process, Ruth Glass uses the term “gentrification” (ii) , defining it as process by which

more and more landscapes in the city are fenced off and converted to spaces exclusively

catering to the residential needs, business needs and sites of leisure and consumption of

this group. In a founding statement in as early as 1964, Glass observes this process in
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which one by one the working class quarters of London were replaced by middle class

housing, which are further taken over by more opulent residences. Discussing the origins

of this gradual change, she writes,: “Once this process of “gentrification” starts in a

district it goes on rapidly until all or most of the original working-class occupiers are

displaced and the whole social character of the district is changed” (xviii). Neil Smith

however contends that remaking the city for the middle class is not limited to gentrified

housing. Rather contemporary gentrification converts vast expanses of the city space into

“comprehensive class-inflected urban remake” (“New Globalism” 443). He thus asserts:

“These new landscape complexes now integrate housing with shopping, restaurants,

cultural facilities (cf Vine 2001), open space, employment opportunities—whole new

complexes of recreation, consumption, production, and pleasure, as well as residence”

(443). Touted as urban development, these modes of spatial restructuring ensure the

exclusion of the poor, ‘non-productive’ groups from the smooth functioning of the global

capital flow in a city, now converted primarily to a trope of entrepreneurship and

consumption, where not only is capital generated but products are also consumed,

favoring the growth of the free market.

Coming back to the depiction of Delhi in The Story, apart from the elite

residential and commercial spaces that cover the expanse of the main city, a particularly

telling example of the gentrification of Delhi in the novel is found in the lavish private

farmhouse of the Frock Raja, described as “five acres of lala land” complete with

sculptured fountains, huge swimming pools, carefully maintained lawns and a fancy

stable (55). Farmhouses, or what Soni calls as the “prized fiefdoms of the urban gentry”
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(77), are large rural or semi rural lands privately owned by the affluent city dweller as a

weekend getaway facilitating a short, stylized village experience. Mushrooming

predominantly around the fringes and the surrounding rural lands around Delhi, not only

does the trend of farmhouse tourism mark a significant process of commercialization of

the ‘undeveloped’ villages into more productive hubs of capital generation, the demand

for farmhouses among the urban gentry dominate the real estate market as a part of the

larger gentrification of the city.43The conversion of rural lands into private property for

elite consumption necessarily accompanies a severe encroachment on agricultural lands

(Thakur 573) and a gradual displacement of the farmer by the urban elite. Sam Miller

points out that as the city kept expanding, farmhouses lost their agricultural purpose and

were taken over as part of the city. They are essentially private sites of elite consumption,

with high walls guarding them from prying eyes and private security guards guarding its

boundaries. Moreover, these are spaces where “there is not a farmer to be seen” (Miller

277). For Miller, the farmhouse culture is an extension of the overall changes happening

in Delhi in the 1990s, coalescing with the development of Delhi’s satellite city Gurgaon

as “India’s most modern city” that attracted significant foreign investment, new

industries, multinationals and a residential crowd aspiring for the elite westernized urban

experience in India (277-78).

Representing to these spatial developments in Delhi, Tejpal’s narrative also offers

a glimpse of the farmhouse that harbors the luxuries of the politically powerful and the

43
see M.R.Biju: Sustainable Dimensions of Tourism Management
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immensely wealthy. The sheer expanse and extravagance of the private property is both

preposterous and overwhelming:

There were water spurting Scandinavian marble mermaids with large Indian

breasts, a topiary of dinosaurs, a swimming pool shaped like a flounced

skirt…undulating manicured lawns with colourful steel birds poised for takeoff,

lines of mast trees trimmed to precisely the same height flanking every

pathway…a Yeats pond with the fifty-nine swans of Coole, a dining room in a

mock stable with two handsome horses tethered in a corner. (55)

The importance of this place is enhanced by the fact that this is the site where million

dollar deals are made and the entrepreneurial class plans on new business ventures that

both justifies and explains the opulence of the place. Tejpal thus describes Delhi as a city

of opulence and luxury, of consumption and capital flow that matches any other global

city in terms of its glitz and amenities for the economically privileged.

Significantly enough, if the Delhi projected in Tejpal’s novel is an urban space

essentially for elite consumption and global capital flow, it is also a model of

urbanization that testifies the power of the state. As the narrator evocatively describes the

core of the city:

Outside the gates of the courts ran the wide stately roads of Lutyens’ Delhi,

curving with an imperial assurance around imposing edifices of the National

Stadium, the National Gallery of Modern Art and the India Gate, the taking the

high road to Raisina Hill where the monoliths of North and South Block

continued to be metaphors for the imperiousness and inscrutability of the state

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before finishing up inside the excessive sprawl of the presidential palace, an

appropriate metaphor of shallow decorativeness. Patrolled by police jeeps, these

were ceremonial roads, cocooning a space where the state could continually

convince itself of its power and purpose. (74)

The detailed description of the edifices of state power in an urban space built on the

tenets of neoliberalism emphasizes the significant conflation of the state and the market

in the age of global capitalism. As David Harvey points out, “neoliberalism does not

make the state or particular institutions of the state (such as courts and police functions)

irrelevant” (Brief History 78), but on the other hand the state is supposed to be actively

creating conducive conditions for the market. A key difference between the earlier

liberalism or laissez faire and neoliberalism is this very alliance between the state and the

market (Foucault; David Toke; Harvey; Lee and McBride). Neoliberal urbanization,

therefore, is implemented and maintained by the state intervention (Brenner and Theodre

76), creating a nexus of power between the apparently contradictory entities of the

government and the market.

Tejpal’s description of the political center of Delhi conjures up the other half of

the power paradigm in this modern global city. Like the gentrified city that is

aestheticized and marked exclusively for the elite class, the vast expanse of the

ceremonial government buildings and the wide, ornamented roads of Central Delhi

project a similar process of beautifying and ordering of the urban space for the political

elite. Like the gentrified half of the city, the political and administrative blocks of Delhi

are essentially kept free of illegal settlements, jhuggis and slums and of stray poor or
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encroachment by the socio-economically marginalized. The interesting parallel between

“the excessive sprawl of the presidential palace” and the expansive land of Frock Raja’s

farmhouse is latently drawn in the description of the wasteful size of both—for both

exemplify the acquiring of vast expanses of the city space for private or state ownership

that is exclusive to people with power and money. Moreover, the historical trajectory of

power in the urbanization of Delhi is also invoked in the British colonial buildings of

India Gate, the National Stadium, and the Rashtrapati Bhawan (“presidential palace)—all

built during the colonial restructuring of New Delhi under the British architect Edwin

Lutyen. Built as a part of the British attempt to emphasize its colonial power on the

geographical space of Delhi through veritable and colossal monumental landmarks, these

imperial monuments have now come to signify the emblematic edifices of the current

government of India, testifying the continuity of power from imperialism to the modern

Indian state. Tejpal thus portrays a contemporary picture of a global city that

emphatically testifies the all pervasive appropriation of the urban space exclusively for

the wealthy and the powerful. Quite aptly then, the city is primarily etched through the

upper class journalist narrator’s eyes, who not only has access to all the spaces in the city

but is also a part of the gentrified class whose consumerist lifestyle is carefully nurtured

by the city.

Though the beautification and modernization of the urban space emphatically

bears out the undeniable marks of a neoliberal urban restructuring that prioritizes the

‘productive’ class, what is particularly striking in this process of urbanization is the way

this desired model of the city is reached and preserved. The preservation of the spaces of
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productivity and capital formation are essentially guaranteed by an exclusion of the

‘nonproductive’ class of the socio-economically marginalized, who are pushed to the

margins of the city. Securing the city for the free market calls for state administered

disciplinary techniques of social control that safeguard the neoliberal reconfiguration of

the spaces, limit their access and implement exclusion, and most importantly

conceptualize forms of regulation to police the underclass population. As Gordon

MacLeod points out:

While the political invocation of an entrepreneurial urban agenda offers many

inner-city spaces a spectacular makeover, it also risks deepening socioeconomic

polarities along social cleavages like class, ethnicity, gender, age, and occupation.

And by journeying beyond the overheating downtown we observe some

additional inscriptions of this new urban geography, variously captured in debates

around a “dual”, “quartered,” “walled” or fortress city…These perspectives offer

compelling dramatizations about how the contemporary urban form appears to be

manifesting as an intensely uneven patchwork of microspaces that are physically

proximate but institutionally estranged. (258)

MacLeod builds on Edward Soja’s concept of the “carceral cities” (a concept Soja further

borrows from Foucault and was also used by Mike Davis), which Soja describes as “an

archipelago of ‘normalized enclosures’ and fortified spaces that both voluntarily and

involuntarily barricade individuals and communities in visible and not so visible urban

islands” (299). Thus, one of the most important transformations witnessed by the modern

Indian city is this polarization of spaces---the marking out of separate spaces for the rich
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and the poor. Matt Hern thus names the modern neoliberal city as the “dual city” where

there are “separate worlds living right beside each other, occupying the same space but

living different realities” (15). Therefore, as the city witnesses a shrinking of the public

spaces into spaces of private consumption and entrepreneurial ventures, it also sees a

dispossession of the socio-economically marginal groups from the inner city to the urban

margins or to specific, separate geographical confinements within the urban landscape.

Echoing their Western counterparts, several Indian urban geographers and

sociologists have also noted an increasing trend of neoliberal urbanism in Indian cities.

Gautam Bhan’s detailed study of millennia Delhi reveals a startling picture of massive

evictions of the slums and the poor populations from the city space between the years

1990-2000, signifying the changing attitude of the urban policy makers towards the

socio-economically marginalized groups in the city. As Bhan argues, the evictions testify

“increasingly altered understandings of poverty and inequality based on a

“misrecognition” (9) of the poor that become the ethical basis of the disavowal of their

rights” and more importantly “a changing discourse on the ideas of government rooted in

the slow demise of the nationalist development state and the rise of neoliberal ideologies

of self-government and market participation” (131). Similarly, Aditya Nigam’s

impassioned study of Delhi, which he calls a “postcolonial city with a first world desire”

too reveals a restructuring of the city in accordance to neoliberal urbanism, whereby city

planners desire to make Delhi into another ‘global metropolis’, in concurrence with the

rapidly emerging 'new global order' (40). Nandini Gooptu offers a seminal study of the

post-liberalization Indian city in which both the public and the private sector coalesce
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together in a ‘revanchist’ plan against the urban poor, signifying the “emergence of the

‘entrepreneurial city’” in India and “the process of urban gentrification as a form of elite

revolt” (35). Gooptu particularly refers to the launch of the Jawaharlal Nehru National

Urban Renewal Mission that covered 60 cities, in 2005 in which the Indian Prime

Minister Manmohan Singh declared a blatant mission to remodel Indian cities as a

“bridge between domestic economy and global economy” (qtd in Gooptu 37).

Consequently, Gooptu notes that there has been an aggressive effort to re-engineer the

erstwhile images of the Indian cities like Kolkata, Mumbai, Ahmadabad from being cities

of poverty, squalor and political unrest to world class cities of entrepreneurial

opportunities. Thus in the drive to modernize the Indian cities as glitzy centers of

commerce and leisure, the urban spaces have been revamped and given a new

appearance, but at the cost of the poorer residents.

In Tejpal’s novel, the wealth and power of the elite city is glaringly contrasted

with these margins and separate spaces of the underbelly that are marked by poverty,

squalor and crime. Tejpal portrays an alternative Delhi that resides in the suburbs and

fringes of the metropolis—in the shanty one-room apartments and the slums and the

filthy railway station that shelters the beggars and the street children. In a striking

difference with the spaces that stand for “privatopias and cathedrals of consumption”

(MacLeod 261),Tejpal describes the sordid “two bedroom second-floor flat in Punjabi

Bagh”(164) which harbors criminals like Mr.Healthy and the dagger-wielding Chaaku:

Built on a two-hundred-square-yard plot, the flat was dark and delerict, all sun

and light cut off by the houses crowding it in. It had one bathing bathroom with a
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leaking brass top, and one Indian-style crap cubicle with an old style iron cistern

strapped high on the wall…Even with all lights on it felt like a dungeon. All the

window sills and grilles were daubed with bird droppings, mostly pigeon—and

the bathroom slats had nesting sprouting from them like tufts of hair from an old

man’s ears. (164)

The below mediocre quality of this flat stands in acute contradiction with the spaces of

affluence and aesthetic appeal that the narrator describes in the other half of the city.

Significantly enough, these localities marked by underclass residents also form the

germinating spaces of crime and disorder.

Tejpal paints a darker picture of a more precarious space in the portrayal of the

Paharjung railway station—a place that signifies the chaotic transitory space of the city,

since the railway station serves as the gateway to the entry and exit from the city. The

platform is a fecund space of chaos, consisting of several groups of the urban underbelly

who find no place within the inner city space—the petty street vendor who sell “magic

potions, ” the homeless children, the beggars, the prostitutes, the criminals and drug

dealers. Unkempt and disheveled, the platforms are no better than garbage dumps with

the “debris of cracked tea kullads, stitched-leaf plates and rough napkins” (300) strewn

all over the place. It is also perilous space that lurks with dangers and uncertainties,

where the residents have to struggle for their daily lives and are frequently abused, raped

and killed. It is a place where the homeless children train themselves in petty criminal

acts as well as get involved in organized crime like drug peddling. In such a place the

police too break laws and torment the station dwellers, imposing a reign of terror through
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exhortations and sexual abuse. Teenagers like Gudiya are gang raped in the station and

Dhaka, the young leader of the homeless children’s group is found dismembered on the

railway tracks due to a gang war. Tejpal’s depiction of this space of darkness is both

frightening and repulsive, and the detail with which he etches out the bleakness of this

place evokes immediate comparison with the glitzy, secured, vast and beautiful spaces of

the neoliberal city. In an evocative passage, Tejpal describes the temporary night shelter

of the station children—the drainage gutter—with great visual minutiae that speaks of the

immense deprivation of the station children:

The band moved home again…and was now snugly ensconced in the gutter

between platforms four and five…There was a trickle of sludge in the groove at

the centre, but the boys had thrown old railway sleepers across it to bury its slime

in deep. The iron cover of the manhole had been stolen and sold long ago, and

now the entrance to their home was guarded by a cratewood trapdoor, the dozens

of nail-heads in its flesh glinting in the midday sun. (338)

Surviving in such inhuman living conditions, the station children can only be stunned

when confronted with the city of opulence—resplendent with “dazzling glass-fronted

shops and big glowing signs,” magnanimous cinema halls and “roads where big cars

shone like diamond” and inhabited by upper class elites “so beautiful, so sweet smelling”

(356) that seem almost unreal.

Significantly enough, the core urban space of Delhi stands in contrast not only to

its urban underbelly but also to the threatening geographical spaces of dark crime and

underworld dealings that lie outside the borders of the urban landscape, on its fringes
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shared with UP and Haryana—like Bareily, Noida, the badlands of Meerut and

Muzaffarnagar and the villages that are untouched by the urban restructuring. The

suburbs and villages surrounding the core city Delhi are both impoverished and

dangerous and like the railway station, signify the utter pandemonium that lies outside the

safety haven provided by neoliberal urbanism. Cities in India, especially those like Delhi

where a large part of the population consists of people who have migrated from the rural

areas, have always had a connection with the villages. As Aditya Nigam points out, the

postcolonial city has “been marked by a deep and organic connection with the

village/countryside, which functions as its 'constitutive outside': what the city is, can only

be understood with reference to the non-city, especially rural areas. For those who make

their journey to the city, it represents the land of opportunity and promise, however much

the realities of decaying urban existence may eventually work towards smashing that

dream”(40).

In Tejpal’s novel, the dichotomy between the city and the village is revealed in

terms of their comparative orderliness. The city not only stands in contrast to the village

in its amenities, Tejpal projects a picture of a rural life fraught with feudalism and

violence—a dangerous place lurking right outside the borders of the modernized, orderly

city. Tejpal projects the vagaries of a village life still running by the codes of an

exploitative feudal order—where land disputes lead to fatal consequences, honor killings

are frequent, and where the feudal lords exert their ‘rightful’ power over the peasant’s

families through extreme violence and oppression. However, what makes the rural

landscape in the novel potentially more violent is the retaliation of the lower sections of
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the society. The power structures that divide groups along class and caste lines are highly

volatile and the order of society is often disrupted. The crimes of both Chaaku and

Hathoda Tyagi are extreme and yet are common occurrences in the turbulent atmosphere

of rural violence. While Chaaku pays back his upper class-upper caste tormentors by

slicing their entrails (131), his family is raped and butchered in retaliation from the

landlords (147). Similarly, Tyagi’s sisters are raped publicly by this rich, landowning

relatives—an act Tyagi avenges by smashing the perpetrator’s skull with his massive

hammer (414). In a gruesome passage, Tejpal describes another instance of the extreme

violence that commonly characterizes the class and caste strives in the villages:

The Gujjar teenager had blown one nulli (barrel) each through both their

(landlord’s son) heart. Two days later, the thakur’s brothers had picked up the

boy’s sisters and raped them repeatedly before decapitating them and hanging

their heads on the palash tree. Only great terror can restore order. A week later,

one brother had a hole blasted through his spine. (404)

In comparison to such sheer raw violence of the rural space, the neoliberal city is

evidently portrayed as a tamer place, devoid of class wars. Cordoned off in two separate

spaces, and the potentially criminal subjectivities of the socio-economically marginalized

groups being pushed to the margins, the neoliberal city of Tejpal’s novel projects a

controlled order in contrast to the lawlessness and mayhem of the village. Unlike the

villages, the power structures of the urban space in the novel are never challenged, nor

disrupted. The subaltern classes in the city are regulated through strict social control, and

the city never becomes a dangerous place for the upper rungs of the urban society. For
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the middle class narrator and his English literate readers as well, the village thus becomes

this dangerous space of anarchy and violence, of uncontrolled criminal subjectivities and

utter lawlessness that lurk outside the safe haven for elites that the neoliberal city

provides.

Harboring two different worlds for the rich and for the poor is however, not the

most conspicuous characteristic of the neoliberal city. The urban poor have always

experienced a different and bleaker city life than the rich. Simultaneously, for decades

together the urban elites have complained and asked for a cleaner city space, cleansed off

the poor, unkempt and the dirty. As Nandini Gooptu points out, more than the rural poor

it is the urban poor who are seen as a potential threat to public health, political order and

stability since the colonial period (The Politics of the Urban Poor 7-8). However, what is

more characteristic of a neoliberal city is the magnitude with which the local authorities

and the state participate and implement such a vision of the new economic geography of

prioritizing the urban elite. The way Tejpal’s Delhi is neatly divided into two quarantined

geographical halves of the rich and the impoverished suggests an effective ‘spatial

governmentality’ in action. Drawing from Foucault’s concept of “governmentality” as a

mechanism of social ordering, Sally Engel Merry defines spatial governmentality as

follows:

“They differ substantially from disciplinary forms of regulation in logic and

techniques of punishment. Disciplinary regulation focuses on the regulation of

persons through incarceration or treatment, while spatial mechanisms concentrate

on the regulation of space through excluding offensive behavior. Spatial forms of

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regulation focus on concealing or displacing offensive activities rather than

eliminating them. Their target is a population rather than individuals. They

produce social order by creating zones whose denizens are shielded from

witnessing socially undesirable behavior. The individual offender is not treated or

reformed, but a particular public is protected. The logic is that of zoning rather

than correcting (17).

The same techniques of cordoning off the spaces of the city from the impoverished and

the marginal groups seem to be in effect in Tejpal’s description of Delhi. Spatially, the

two clearly demarcated halves of Tejpal’s Delhi—the elite and the marginal—can be

mapped out in terms of geographical co-ordinates. The elite half of Delhi is

geographically concentrated in certain parts of South Delhi like Saket, Vasant Kunj and

Greater Kailash, and the gated residential complexes in Dwarka of West Delhi. These are

spaces which are essentially marked off by iron gates and private security, where access

is limited and exclusive for the elites, and these spaces are distilled off the presence and

sight of the unkempt and the poor. Thus the concept of the “carceral cities” is very close

to, as MacLeod points out, Steven Flusty’s notion of the “interdictory spaces”, which

Flusty describes as spaces designed to “systematically exclude those adjudged to be

unsuitable or even threatening [or] people whose class and cultural diverge from those of

the builders and their target market (659; qtd in MacLeod 259). On the other hand, the

lower classes and the marginal groups are confined to the geographical areas of northern

Old Delhi and Kashmere Gate, the Pahargunj railway station and the congested colonies

of Rohini and Punjabi Bagh—the wasteland suburbs in North-West Delhi. In sharp

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contrast to the “carceral city” spaces of inner Delhi, these spaces of poverty contain the

impoverished and the marginal groups who do not fit as citizens of the neoliberal city.

Significantly enough, it is not only the zoning off of polarized spaces that point at

the new urban changes; what really characterize the radical transformation of the urban

space under neoliberalism are the processes through which such an ordering of

population is implemented and maintained. Much like in the real Delhi, the two

differential spaces and their respective populations do not intermix in the novel’s

narrative geography. The urban underclass subjects hardly breach the boundaries of their

assigned spaces and do not ‘contaminate’ the elite spaces of the carceral city. The

dividing lines are clearly seen when the homeless children of the Paharjung station

confess that their adventures to the main city are strictly limited and they have never gone

beyond the congested slums, “the jhuggi-jhopdi colony” and the cheap flea markets of

Sadar Bazaar—all of which characterize the low class ghettos within the inner city.

Similarly, the rural miscreants like Chaaku and Hathoda, who escape to the big city from

their villages, again do not make it to the urban spaces of the politically powerful and the

economically affluent. The dangerous and potentially disruptive populace remains

confined within the spatial underbelly of the city; they can hardly transgress into the

spaces secured for the elites. Thus, not only are the geographical spaces of the city zoned

off into separate spaces for the elites and the poor and criminals, the city also implements

tangible policies of urban governance that regulate the ‘misfits’ and prevents such

excluded citizens from permeating into the city space secured for the entrepreneurial

class.
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Before we move on to discuss the other modes of spatial governmentality

projected in the novel, let us consider what constitutes as “exclusionary citizenship”

(MacLeod 604) in the narrative. The misfit citizens of the urban space or the potentially

dangerous, criminal “assassins” of the novel are essentially members of the marginal

groups—like the orphaned street children, the vagabonds or the beggars—or they belong

to a religious minority group like the Muslims, or hail from oppressed castes like the

gujjars or belong to the lowest rung of the feudal system as landless laborers. All the

criminals share the common experiences of marginalization, the common methods of

initiation into crime and similar behavioral patterns that identify them as potentially

disruptive. The first assassin profiled in the novel is Chaaku—son of a drunkard, wife-

beating army subedar, whose family is socio-economically marginalized as the meager

tenants under a powerful landlord, in the remote hinterlands of Haryana. The family is

both powerless and poor, is frequently oppressed by the landlords and lives a life of fear

and penury. The boy Chaaku, with no entrepreneurial and productive skills, can only

survive by violence. Chaaku and his family thus embody immense low value as human

capital, and thus exemplify the utter misfits in the neoliberal city.

The same parameters of socio-economic worth and status characterize the other

criminals as well. Kabir M exemplifies a life wasted in spite of being provided the right

opportunities for social mobility. In spite of his parents’ humble background, Kabir is

sent to an English medium school and is expected to have a respectable upper class life.

Instead, he proves himself unworthy of making that socio-economic progress, drops out

of school, gets involved in petty criminal acts and ends up in jail. Similarly, the
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miscreants Kaaliya and Chini both belong to the homeless group of orphaned children

residing in the Paharjung station. Dehumanized as “rats,” and living a dangerous life in

extreme penury, abuse and violated human rights, these stray children represent the worst

possible conditions of human lives on the lowest rung of society. Consequently, with no

skills to participate as productive members of the neoliberal market, they are utter misfits

in the city that lay beyond the station: “They had no tools to take it on—no language, no

knowledge, no contacts, no money” (356). Significantly enough, the novel also

sarcastically portrays a different group of high end criminals like Kapoor Saab and Frock

Raja who are involved in illegal rackets on national and international level, and yet hold

respectable positions in the city due to their power and wealth. Tejpal’s point is thus

clear—the question is not about singling out crime itself but rather about identifying and

regulating a certain group of underclass ‘criminal’ population who do not fit into the

scheme of the neoliberal city. Such neat socio-economic profiles of the identified

criminals, corresponding to their marginalized status in society, echo the stereotype of the

elite notion of criminal subjectivity, whereby criminality gets inherently associated with

one’s socio-economic marginality. The same generalization is applied when poor and

marginalized groups are targeted in the neoliberal urban space, where entire groups of

marginalized population are identified as potentially dangerous and disruptive.

Consequently, they are rendered essential targets of correctional biopolitics and hence

subjects of regulatory control.44

44
Deriving the word from the twin words “bios” and “politicos”, Foucault’s
conceptualization of “biopolitics” refers to the political processes of controlling
entire human populations—“the emergence of something that is no longer an
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This process of securing the urban space from the ‘potentially dangerous’

marginalities can be best understood through the notion of neoliberalism’s ‘underclass

thesis’. Popularized in the neoliberal context by Charles Murray in his book Losing

Ground, which had considerable effect on the Reagan administration, the term

‘underclass’ in neoliberal context refers to the poor sections who inhabit an irredeemably

‘different world,’ whose problems could not be solved through reform or a growing

economy (xv). The underclass is essentially defined by their bad behavior and moral

deficiency (1), which as Sonia Martin points out, is equated with a conscious choice or

agency of subject. Murray thus points out the immense moral depravity and potential

dangers of such underclass population in his study of Britain’s poor: “Britain has a

growing population of working-aged, healthy people, who live in a different world from

the other Britons, who are raising their children to live in it and whose values are now

contaminating the life of entire neighborhoods” (4). Similarly, Takis Fotopoulos also

aptly sums up the notion of the neoliberal underclass, referring to the victims of

neoliberal globalization, consisting of “the unemployed and the marginalized”, those

living “close to subsistence level” and particularly the wayward youngsters who have no

future: “in a word, the present-day sans culottes, who do not belong to any of the

anatomo-politics of the human body, but what I would call a “biopolitics” of the
human species”(History of Sexuality 137). Biopolitics thus aims to treat the
population, as Foucault explains, as “a set of coexisting living beings with
particular biological and pathological features, and which as such falls under
specific forms of knowledge and technique”(474), whereby the authorities of
power reach out to dictate norms of living conditions on the citizen-subjects.
Biopolitics thus seeks to discipline entire populations into specific modes of
life—or as O’Kane and Tripner aptly puts it “biopolitics arises when life itself
becomes the objects of structures of power” (xxxi).
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established social classes as they have not (yet) been integrated into the social system of

the internationalised market economy and its political complement, representative

‘democracy’” (1). Though the underclass thesis is principally a rhetoric of anti-welfare—

whereby as Martin asserts “within this framework, income support recipients are viewed

as either passive recipients who have been disempowered by the welfare state,… or

active recipients who deliberately abuse the welfare system”(5)—it also constructs a

terrifying and alienating notion of the poor who are not only morally corrupt, and hence

choose a decadent life by their own agency, but also dangerous and disruptive for the

rest of the entrepreneur-consumer citizens. The aggressive quarantine and elimination

policies for the poor constitute a key process of policing the undesirable underclass in the

city space.

Thus, the spatial governmentality of the neoliberal city operates by not only

cordoning off spaces but also by monitoring the populations from specific social strata to

prevent potential disorder. The regulation of the space thus spells out a new mode of

urban governance that seeks to maintain order and render the city safe and attractive to

the entrepreneurial, productive class by guarding the core urban spaces from

contamination from the beggars, homeless and criminals. As Roy Coleman points out:

Social control strategies enacted in entrepreneurialised landscapes are increasing

the divergence of control tasks that traverse public and private sectors and open

up spaces for the expansion of ‘crime prevention’ projects which are not

necessarily directed at legally defined ‘crime’, but instead bring under punitive
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control target groups and individuals deemed incompatible with the neoliberal

urban vision.(298)

Tejpal’s novel projects various processes of such urban control against the poor and the

marginal, a process that characterizes what Neil Smith famously refers to as a

“revanchist city”( The New Urban Frontier 43). Referring to the French word revanche

meaning “revenge,” Smith defines the neoliberal urban space as a “revanchist” city,

referring to the particularly violent measures employed in the city against the poor,

unemployed and the homeless (43). Offering a close study of the ‘zero tolerance policies’

of New York Police Department under Giuliani’s leadership as the trademark policies of

a revanchist city, Smith points out how the city officials came down upon the marginal

groups, who were identified as criminals and culprits, with almost a ruthless vengeance to

‘cleanse’ the city off these unruly sections (43). Mitchell takes the notion of revanchism

further to conceptualize on the “post-justice” city (81)—a city which is “no longer

defined by the struggle for social justice …instead, [it is] a question of the best way to

exterminate homeless people” (311). Tejpal’s novel cogently delineates three processes

through which spatial governmentality is effectively employed to secure the city space

for the ‘desirable’ elite class—through the methods of eviction, paternalistic intervention

and surveillance.

Most neoliberal cities have a history of eviction of the marginalized groups from

the zones marked for the elites. Calling it a process of “accumulation by dispossession”

(34), David Harvey explains the process as a method of capturing land for private use and

“the removal of much of the working class and other unruly elements from the city
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centre, where they constituted a threat to public order and political power” (“The Right to

the City” 33). Aditya Nigam points out the long trajectory of slum demolition in Delhi

the 1970s and 1980s that culminated into a massive mass eviction during the

developmental drive in the early 2000s, that saw the displacement of around 50,000 low

income workers (45). Similarly, Gautam Bhan points out that between “1990 and 2003,

51,461 houses were demolished in Delhi under “slum clearance” schemes. Between 2004

and 2007 alone, however, at least 45,000 homes were demolished, and since the

beginning of 2007, eviction notices have been served on at least three other large

settlements” (128). The displacement and relocation of the urban poor in specific spatial

grids in the neoliberal city, project the radical measures of population control

implemented not only by the city planning agencies or the municipal bodies, but as Bhan

points out, even by the judiciary (133).

Tejpal’s novel narrates a telling instance of similar eviction of the snake charmers

from the metropolitan centers of Delhi and Bombay who not only face the gradual

extinction of their age old profession in a modern city, but are also criminalized and their

profession is declared as illegal. Rendered outcasts by the urban authorities, these groups

of snake charmers wander as vagabonds on the fringes of the modern city and never

succeed to claim a space inside it:

Times have changed and [the snake charmers]…had fallen foul of democracy and

modernity…This large, wide world had no place for them, and wherever they

went--they were unwelcome. Everywhere there was a…policeman to shoo them

away, everywhere he saw his father and uncles beg and plead for a stretch of field
 170

where they could set up a camp…they were abject men, in soiled sweaty clothing,

itinerant beggars, squatting on their haunches, their hands folded in supplication,

asking for a temporary patch of the earth that no one was any more willing to give

(308-309).

The snake charmers’ plight exemplifies the way these low-income groups are constantly

denied a place to settle in the city, often driven off beyond the boundaries of the city.

Ironically, too young to understand the violence meted out by the city to his community,

Kaaliya, the young boy of a snake charmers’ group, keeps dreaming of the city as the

utopian space of escape. Kaaliya’s dream to settle in a posh area within the city is ironic

in the way the modern city remains only a coveted but impossible dream space for the

poor, ‘unwanted’ population like Kaaliya who are outcasts in the city.

Apart from eviction, the novel also projects an alternative method of equally

problematic method of governmentality through the interventionist efforts that seek to

relocate these underclass groups in the city to a ‘better’ life. G DeVerteuil and et all

observe in the context of the urban restructuring in New York, that in contrast to the

revanchist methods in Los Angeles, the response to homelessness in New York was a

more interventionist process, whereby the homeless people were forcibly removed to the

city’s winter shelters with the justification that it’s “somehow in their own best interest”

(649). Such ‘altruistic’ intervention of helping out the poor conforms to what Lawrence

Mead calls as “new paternalism” that refers to “social policies aimed at poor that attempt

to reduce poverty… by directive and supervisory means” (2). The concept is built on the

presumption that the poor are incapable of looking after their own well-being, hence they
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mandatorily “need direction if they are to live constructively” (Mead 2), whereby the

government must step in as an interventionist, disciplinary authority and in “effect

treat[s] adults like children” (Mead 26). On a similar strain, Soss, Fording and Schram

situate “paternalism” in the context of the neoliberal market as a mode of disciplining that

aims at poverty governance (24).45However, the process of poverty governance does not

necessarily signify upward social mobility and an emancipatory intervention for the poor.

Rather, as several scholars have pointed out, paternalistic interventions to help the poor

get employed amount to the “regimentation” of underclass citizens into the low wage

labor market (Sassen ; Beck; Schram ; Bevir and Bevir; Soss, Fording, Schram). Schram

points out the contradictory implications of this notion of including the poor in the labor

market:

Labor activation policies are often justified in a terms of helping the unemployed

overcome their “social exclusion.” Yet, the emphasis of workfare programs is to

45
Soss, Fording and Schram explain further: “In referring to paternalist
governance, our use of the term departs from the liberal definition in three
important ways. First, we begin with political relations rather than unencumbered
individuals, emphasizing that paternalism is an authority relationship based on
unequal status and power (Smiley 1989). It is not a form of “interference” with
individuals whose desires exist, somehow, prior to social relations. Rather, as the
father-child metaphor suggests, it is a relationship that makes the individual’s
development through social relations into a self-conscious project pursued by a
directive and supervisory authority. Second, although paternalism may involve a
“person being coerced,” power may operate and be exercised in a variety of ways
that do not require coercion of a resistant individual (Hayward 2000; Barnett and
Duvall 2005). ..Third, because governing arrangements are always supported by
multiple rationales, paternalist governance cannot be limited to activities
“justified by reasons referring exclusively” to the well being of the governed
person or group. In practice, paternalist poverty governance is motivated by a mix
of broad public purposes, particularistic interests, and beliefs about what is good
for the poor”. (24)
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get the unemployed to make “rapid attachment” to the paid labor force, even if it

means taking low-wage jobs. As a result, labor activation policies risk helping the

poor overcome their social exclusion in ways that re-inscribe their subordination

(“Uncaring Neoliberal Paternalism” 5)

Asserting that poverty governance does not attempt to abolish poverty, Soss and

et all argue that its main purpose is to ensure significant contribution from the socio-

economically weak and make them participants in the market: “they [ government]

restrict aid to encourage the poor to take up work…They create incentives and services to

smooth the path to preferred behavior…through these and other methods the

governments work continually to manage low income populations and transform them to

cooperative subjects of the market and polity”(1-2). Simultaneously, Soss and et all point

out, paternalistic interventions into poverty governance thus do not assert the rolling back

of the state to make way for the market, rather it testifies the expansion of the state’s

activism as an affirmative agent of the market (46). Interestingly enough, Soss and et all

also note that contemporary poverty governance is conducted through a “network of

actors who are positioned in quasi-market relations” (3), instead of a single body of the

government. Consequently, as the novel projects, government officials, community

workers, NGOs—who Dhaka condescendingly call “the fucking pimps of goodness”

(345)— all offer to uplift the underclass by offering them a place in the economy, but

essentially as low wage workers that signifies no substantial social mobility. Neoliberal

poverty governance inculcates work incentive among the poor, only to often push them to

the low paying and menial jobs. By including the underclass in the folds of the market,
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the state ensures that the potentially dangerous class is not only left alone but that they

also become participants in the market. While nothing really changes for the poor

regarding their socio-economic status, the process ensures a steady supply of low wage

labor to the market and seeks to control the potentially disruptive sections of the

population, so as to secure the city space for the wealthier clientele.

The Story narrates many instances of such interventionist efforts that attempt to

transform the ‘non-productive’ poor groups to ‘productive’ members of the economy,

however with a specific motive. Thus, while the NRI ‘fannekhans’ or animal rights

activists claim to usher the snake charmers to a new way of life by calling for an abolition

of their itinerant trade, Kaliya’s mother mocks at the façade of such ‘philanthropic’

projects: “Jobs! Yes of course, my illiterate lord is now going to be put into a pant and a

suit, and will sit in an office and sign papers” (314). The very promise of a white-collar

job for an illiterate snake charmer sounds outlandish to Kaliya’s mother, who instantly

rejects the veneer of such a hopeful future. Similarly, the real nature of such apparently

altruistic drives is promptly exposed in the context of the homeless station children:

“There were spies of social agencies whose weapons were soft words and rosy dreams ,

who talked with sincere eyes about goodness and education, who wanted to pull the boys

into their hospices and domesticate them into cooks and guards and gardeners”(345).

Therefore, Dhaka proclaims in frustration, the station children are co-opted into jobs that

can only make them slaves in some rich man’s house—all serving tea and wiping tables

and washing dishes (345). The Story thus brings out the defeating purpose of such

philanthropic drives to employ the poor, for the opportunities of social mobility are not
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only restricted, they also assert another form of hierarchy between the upper classes and

the low wage working classes, with the economic disparity remaining constant.

Along with these, a more radical form of spatial governmentality is reached

through surveillance of the criminals and by penalizing the disorderly crowd.

Neoliberalism creates a unique surveillance society where populations are regulated

through close monitoring. As Torin Monahan aptly sums it up---“from biometric

technologies at airports and borders, to video surveillance in schools, to radio frequency

identification tags in hospitals, to magnetic strips in welfare food cards, surveillance

technologies integrate into all aspects of modern life, but with varied effects for different

populations” (x). Surveillance has become, as Roy Coleman points out, a frequent

method especially for crime ‘control’. Coleman reminds us that the focus of such

regulatory surveillance is essentially on the ‘street’ and the ‘street people’, which

reinforces the definitions of ‘crime’, ‘risk’ and ‘harm’ as “emanating solely from

powerless and disaffected people” (227). Surveillance techniques, especially through

close circuit cameras that routinely monitor the streets and the urban population have

been a defining feature of the social control in the generic neoliberal city46 (Soja;

Coleman ). The objective is to monitor and minimize the risk of crime, and prevent its

occurrence, rather than to punish crime after the act. A particularly proactive role in

invigilating and monitoring the marginal is played by the state machineries of penal

46
Though research on surveillance studies are highly concentrated in the case
study of US and UK cities like Liverpool, the increasing adaptation of the
Western mode of urbanization into Indian cities call for similar theoretical
paradigms.
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disciplining, especially the police, whose relationship with the poor communities, as

Samara points out, have become increasingly violent in neoliberal contexts all over the

world . While surveillance techniques ensure that the potentially disruptive subjects are

closely monitored and the ‘suspicious’ ones are often detained for questioning, police

disciplining of the underclass citizens in the neoliberal era can range to more penal forms

of regulation, from the US model of mass incarceration—which leans more on the idea

of segregation and punishment—to the European model of disciplining the poor through

police and courts, which obeys the logic of ‘panoptic’ rather than vengeance (Wacquant

17).47 The situation is more complicated when seen in the context of India, where current

the police force is constructed on the protocols of the colonial police force of the British

Raj and has long been associated with corruption, their subservience to the politically and

economically powerful, oppression, and physical abuse of the ‘criminals’ to the point of

violating human rights. The already strained relationship of the commoners with the

police is thus heightened in a neoliberal city, which sanctions revanchist measures.

47
Wacquant points out the “difference between the United States and France (and
the countries of continental Europe more generally): the penalization of poverty à
la française is mainly effected by means of the police and the courts, rather than
through the prison. It obeys a logic that is more panoptic than retributive or
segregative, Correspondingly, the social service bureaucracies are called on to
take an active part in it since they possess the informational and human means to
exercise a close surveillance of “problem populations” - this is what I call social
panopticism” (17) However, he also asserts that the difference between the two
methods are valid only if the latter methods of surveillance are meant to improve
the “life chances” and employment options of the residents, else the patrolling
police will just increase arrests and penal sentences and thus, in the end, lead to
the incarcerated population.
.
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In Tejpal’s city, the police appear in multifaceted roles—as panoptical surveyors

of the urban space, as faithful private guards to the important elite citizens, and as violent

perpetrators of incarceration—but all of which comply with the larger neoliberal goal of

penalizing poverty and distilling the city space for the productive, wealthier citizens. The

Story projects an evocative picture of the all pervasive but invisible network of

surveillance that monitors the city and its inhabitants. Much of the surveillance work of

the police in the novel is done as a protectionist measure to guard the safety of the

socially respectable, middle class narrator, whose safety becomes a national concern after

a failed attempt on his life. Members of the police force are employed as his private

guards, the state almost serving as a personal protector for its more affluent citizens. As

Huthyam Singh, the policeman in charge of the narrator’s security comments: “People

like you are very important for the country. It is our job to make sure that not a hair on

your body s harmed. You are very safe”(39). The superfluous paraphernalia of security

and the sheer number of policemen employed to protect just a single person appear both

preposterous and wasteful; it also echoes the practice of policing the wealthy

neighborhoods by recruiting armed private personnel in many US cities48. The vigilant

policemen in the novel are referred to as the “shadows”, referring to their near-invisibility

and haunting omnipresence while they maintain a constant gaze on the narrator and his

surroundings. While they are meant to guard the narrator, who was the potential target of

a group of assassins, their vigil extends much beyond the immediate context of the

48
see Jody Ray Bennett “Privatizing the Police: A Developing Model in the
U.S.A”
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narrator. Instead, as the narrator gradually realizes, the expanse of their surveillance

encompasses the whole city and monitors its farthest streets. Significantly enough, there

are also direct references to the extensive surveillance techniques used to control crime in

the megacity. The plan to assassinate the narrator is foiled by Delhi Police’s diligent

methods of tapping cell phones as well as by the undercover secret agents who were

patrolling the city borders for potential disorder (495). Tejpal etches a Delhi that teems

with such panoptican gazes of the police, constantly monitoring even the private lives of

its citizens in order to maintain the order of the urban space.

The vigilant police and their monitoring gaze, however, conform to milder forms

of social control by the police force. The underbelly of the Indian city also confronts a

more violent, vengeful police force that incarcerate and brutally suppress the low class,

potentially ‘criminal’ populations in a manner that fits the objectives of the “post-justice”

city—a city where the marginal groups are excluded to the point of being deprived of any

rights at all. Thus in Tejpal’s novel, the policemen invoke immense terror among the

homeless snake charmers and the orphan street urchins alike, acting as the immediate

purveyors of the city’s repressive policies. In a disturbing passage, Tejpal also describes

how the police inflict brutalities on young, low class boys like Kabir, solely as a

retribution to the ‘miscreants’ personal feuds with the powerful. Arrested for no apparent

reason, the police torture Kabir to the point of castrating him, and then falsely charge him

for serious offenses under the Arms Act (251-254). He is put away to jail promptly with

concocted evidence produced by the police. Justice really seems to elude the underclass

‘criminals’ of the city who are again picked up randomly from their haunts and
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incarcerated in a speedy way, often in spite of lack of evidence. Waquant argues in

Prisons of Poverty that in all the countries where the neoliberal ideology of submission to

the “free market” has spread, one observes that the state takes up a role of a collective

organization of violence, whereby the police and the penal institutions seek to control the

dominated and the disruptive through incarceration (87-88). In Tejpal’s novel too, the

potentially disruptive population are sent away to jail on the sole discretion of the police,

irrespective of whether they are guilty or not. Law becomes just another way of

repressing a targeted population, specifically those who do not fit into the vision of the

modern global city. Tejpal’s novel thus presents an evocative picture of Delhi as a

neoliberal city, which not only embodies an urban space that prioritizes entrepreneurial

productivity through the spatial governmentality of the landscape of the city but also a

cityscape that secures itself through social control that attempt to construct, interpret, and

regulate criminal subjectivities to maintain the reign of neoliberalism.

Apart from these, the novel also embodies another crucial form of social control

by surveillance through the discourses of profiling the criminals in the narrative itself.

True to its title, the novel is indeed the story of the assassins, but not necessarily a view

from below. Rather, the five stories of the five assassins, that intersperse the dominant

narrative of the middle-class urban experience of the narrator, appear more as criminal

biographies than subaltern testimonies. There are detailed, third person, unimpassioned

narrations that examine and carefully describe their lives, behavioral patterns, the social

forces and the environmental factors that shaped their criminality. As Foucault argues in

Discipline and Punish, the conversion of the criminal into a discursive subject for both
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scientific and social study constituted a significant of method of monitoring crime as

early as in the 19th century. The objective was to render the criminal a subject of

hegemonic knowledge and one who can be grasped, contained and ameliorated, and

hence can be controlled (19). The criminal biographies of Tejpal’s novel that seek to

impart ‘real knowledge’ about the assassins echo the discursive genres of crime literature

and journalistic stories on criminals that Foucault talks about--- whereby not only were

crime stories turned into commodities of consumption but they also affected an

appropriation of criminality in acceptable forms and thus more feasible for correction.

Interestingly enough, it is not only the narrative pattern of the novel that imparts this

sense of the criminals converted to discursive subjects, but as the novel informs, the five

character sketches are indeed descriptive profiles that circulate as a discourse among the

police, the lawyer, the activist, the journalist, and the other authorities of social control.

The novel itself thus becomes a mode of surveillance, gazing into the inner lives and

activities of the criminals. As the criminals are scrutinized closely—both within the

narrative and in the process of reading, the discursive trope of criminality signifies more

subtle and deeper forms of the ‘panopticism’ of the neoliberal city. Drawing mainly on

Foucault’s Discipline and Punish and the other panoptic theories of understanding

literature, I discuss in the next section how the narrative and form of crime fiction itself

reflects a process of literary voyeurism in sync with the culture of neoliberal surveillance,

depicted in novels like Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games.

Crime fiction and the Panopticon in Sacred Games

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Sacred Games is the third novel of the California based Vikram Chandra who

already has two more successful novels--Red Earth And Pouring Rain: A Novel, Love

And Longing In Bombay: Stories —to his credit. Bid at an exorbitant price among New

York publishers, this enormous 900 page long novel narrates the dark side of Mumbai

and the motley world of criminals, the film industry, drug and sex rackets, police

networks and the immense fecundity of the Mumbai underworld. The book was an instant

favorite among critics, bagging several literary awards like the Crossword Award for

English Fiction for 2006 and the Salon Book Awards for 2007, and featured as the "10

Best Asian Books of 2006," Time (Asia Edition), "Best Fiction of 2006," Guardian

(USA), and "Books of the Year," The Independent (UK). The novel has been praised for

being a stunning revelation of the underbelly of Mumbai and for its detailed depiction of

the criminal underworld. While New York Times’ reviewer Patricia Brown calls it “The

Author’s Vision Of The Mean Streets Of Mumbai,” the review on NPR asserts that “to

enter the world of author Vikram Chandra's new book, Sacred Games, is to be immersed

in the crime and corruption of India's financial and movie capital” (“An Epic of

Mumbai’s Underworld”). Yet, to read Sacred Games as an author’s faithful

documentation of the city’s dark underside is to read the novel too simplistically. The

significance of Sacred Games as a modern novel of new India lies in the way the

aesthetic techniques in the narrative form embody tenets of neoliberal surveillance and

create a narrative panopticon, which can best be understood through a Foucauldian

paradigm.
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The novel is a cops-and-criminal story, centering on the detective figure of police

inspector Sartaj Singh and Ganesh Gaitonde, the sought after gangster kingpin of the

dreaded criminal syndicate G-Company. Sartaj, one of the very few Sikhs on the Mumbai

police force, is a forty year old, divorced man who stands out with his emphatic markers

of identity through his turban and beard. Though honest and committed to his job, he

often brushes along the dark alleys of the underbelly, has personal contacts among the

outlaws and knows the underworld like the back of his hand. Having failed in the past to

track Gaitonde, Sartaj sets out to find the legendary boss of the G-Company after he gets

an anonymous phone call revealing his secret hide-out. However, when Sartaj reaches

there, he finds that Gaitonde has locked himself up in a bunker, demanding to speak only

to Sartaj. The rest of the story follows as a combination of Gaitonde’s own confessions

about his life, Gaitonde’s suicide, Sartaj’s investigation into Gaitonde’s contacts and past,

a revelation of Gaitonde’s secrets, and a recapitulation of a dramatic murder. The novel

teems with several other characters revealing the multifaceted aspects of the Mumbai

urban life—the dance bars, the lower middle class life of the constables, the chawls or

slums, the network of religious gurus, and the corrupt politicians. However the main

focus of the novel is on Gaitonde’s recounting of his early days, the genesis and

summation of his criminal career and his ultimate death. Sartaj thus plays the typical

detective hero who uncovers the truths and stands in sharp contrast to Gaitonde, the

seasoned professional criminal.

In both its form and content, Chandra’s novel proclaims a self-confessed

emulation of the nineteenth century social realist novels and detective fictions. As the
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description on the blurb of the book reads: “Drawing inspiration from the classics of

nineteenth-century fiction, mystery novels, Bollywood movies and Chandra's own life

and research on the streets of Mumbai, Sacred Games evokes with devastating realism

the way we live now but resonates with the intelligence and emotional depth of the best

of literature”. The similarities are evident in elements of ‘realism’ and the faithfulness

with which the novel delineates the intricate ‘realities’ of the society. Most reviewers

praising the novel focus on this element of ‘realism’ and Chandra’s expert craft in laying

bare the hidden underbelly of India. Thus, the judges for the Crossword award for

English fiction, Anita Roy, Mukul Kesavan and Shoma Chaudhury, asserted their choice

of the book in recognition of Chandra’s quality as “a master of the close-up – zooming to

capture every nuance and detail of his characters lives” (“Citation by Judges”). Similarly,

the reviewer for The Independent (UK), Soumya Bhattacharya points out the exemplary

realism of the novel, calling it an “excursion into the pleasures of realism: the kind of

psychological realism that descends from 19th-century European and English fiction”.

Frequent comparisons are drawn between Chandra’s narrative and dark world of social

realism of Dickens’ crime novels. Thus, while Jane Shilling’s review for The Daily

Telegraph (UK) compares Sacred Games with Bleak House, asserting that Chandra’s

Dickensian trait is evident in “the ability to enlist an entire city -- in this case, Bombay

(or Mumbai, the novel uses the terms interchangeably) -- as a character in his drama”,

Boyd Tonkin for Independent (UK) opines that the book “unspools with Dickensian brio

and at Dickensian length, but seldom loses its touch for street-smart observation and

suspense.” Similarly, for reviewer Karl Pohrt of Shaman Drums, the novel evokes
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Mumbai “with the same vivid intensity that Dickens brings to his descriptions of

London.” Such repeated invocations of literary realism, as a stylistic technique of Sacred

Games, raise a very significant point regarding the relationship of the novel with

panopticism. Though literary realism is too ambiguous and multifaceted a term to be

defined in totality, I intend to single out its distinctive stylistic features of ‘realistic’

representation and its implication as a mode of surveillance.49

Emerging in the nineteenth and early twentieth century works of Dickens,

Balzac, Zola and other European writers of the urban novels who reflected life as it is,

literary realism had a distinct relationship with the changing socio-economic conditions

of the contemporary period. As Nancy Armstrong points out, such novels respond to the

emergence of “new wealth”—asserting that “what consequently emerge as real from

these fictionalized accounts of individual lives shaped by capitalism is what might be

called the social geography of the city itself” (329). Thus the society in flux, the new

realities were thus captured as faithfully as one could, often going beyond what was

considered to be “aesthetically permissible” (Kearns 3). Some scholars like Pam Morris

suggests that the trope of realism or “fidelity of representation” echoes the effects of

another emerging art form into literature—the art of photography (5). As she points out:

“Realist novels developed as a popular form during the nineteenth century alongside the

other quickly representation of photography. This coincidence may have encouraged a

49
One remembers the epistolary exchange between Anna Sergher and Georg
Lukacs, where Sergher assiduously asks Lukacs “please explain once again what
you mean exactly by realism” and yet was pretty discontent with his reply.
[Collected in Lukacs’ Probleme der Realisms, quoted in Theories of Literary
Realism (3)]
 184

pictorial or photographic model of truth as correspondence” (5). The writer thus assumes

the role of an omniscient seer—often neutral like the camera—who with an incisive

vision and a “forensic attention to the tangible components of his environment” (Kearns

11) scans the world around himself and records it with all its flaws. Apparently objective,

the narrator’s piercing gaze brings out the contrasting facets of the urban space, like the

mutually exclusive worlds of Dedlock’s estates in Chesney Wold and the murky streets

where Jo lives in Dicken’s Bleak House. The realist novels would often focus on the dark

underside of the society—as Nancy Armstrong puts it: “Realism portrays the city as an

illegible terrain resembling Henry Morton Stanley’s “darkest Africa” in its capacity to

trap individuals in dangerous positions and choreograph a predatory relationship among

them” (329). While literary realism often projected representations of the poor sections of

the society and their marginal existence in general, the violence and darkness of the

murky underbelly, the disarray of the streets and a more closer focus on the criminal

subject form an integral part particularly in the crime fictions of the realist school.

Significantly, the figure of the criminal or the delinquent subject in realist crime fictions

was most commonly placed in contrast to the figure of the law enforcing detective, who

not only echoed Victorian middle class values and morality about criminality, but also

embodied the conflicting realms of the contrasting economic classes in a transforming

economic system (D.A Miller; Megan Abbot; John Scaggs; Phillis Betz).

Though it will be misleading to label crime literature, and its subgenre detective

fiction, as distinctly a nineteenth century phenomenon, the proliferation of crime novels

or the stories of the criminal characters as popular forms of literature in nineteenth

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century is strongly tied to the changing notions of penalty and social control during that

time. Since it coincides with a socio-historical period of the emergence of a bourgeoisie-

capitalist society and an age marked for its repressive social control, the genre of crime

fiction has too often been read as a mode of social control —by major detective fiction

scholars of the early 1980s like D.A.Miller, Dennis Porter, and Mark Seltzer— through

the lens of Foucault’s theorization of the panopticon and the discourse of criminality in

19th century in Discipline and Punish. However, the panoptican theorists or “panopticon

Foucauldians” as Richard Hull calls them , have been criticized in recent scholarship (see

Hull; Reitz) for reading the social conditions and literature of 19th century Britain with

Foucault’s observations primarily based on French history and through a convoluted

application of Foucaldian paradigms of sociological theories into literary studies. Thus,

while Reitz strongly asserts that “in his discussion of panopticism as a disciplinary

mechanism, Foucault is certainly not concerned with detective fiction”(xx), Miller

himself explains in the foreword to The Novel and the Police, the most obvious problem

of claiming fictional works as part of the operative panopticon :“the most notable

reticence in Foucault’s work concerns precisely the reading of literary texts and literary

institutions, which, though often and suggestively cited in passing, are never given a role

to play within the disciplinary processes under consideration” (viii). With so many issues

with the basic theoretical paradigm, one may ask what then is the efficacy of my

methodology in attempting to read Indian crime fiction of the neoliberal age through the

lens of a dated literary scholarship of the 1980s that itself seems to misplace social

theories of French conditions into literary readings on texts of Britain?

 186

My argument for this reading is threefold—Firstly, I argue that though temporally

different, neoliberalism is grounded in many of the tenets of nineteenth century

liberalism; and with its emphasis on surveillance and biopolitics, the neoliberal condition

also echoes the notions of social control of 19th century Europe (See Coleman, O’Malley;

John Pratt). Significantly enough, the nineteenth century anxiety about crime and the

notions of criminality projecting the socio-economic tensions of the period find their echo

in the current socio-economic tensions of the neoliberal age, and the subsequent

projection of the anxiety on the figure of the criminal. As Jodi Dean points out the

symbolic import of the figure of the criminal in neoliberalism, which like the nineteenth

century fixation about criminals, embody the changing dynamics of wealth and

deprivation. Thus he asserts:

The criminal is imagined as the monstrous instrument of deprivation…Scholars

attend to the proliferation of crime dramas on television, the spectacle of

criminality that drives local news,...What my analysis of fantasy in neoliberal

ideology adds is insight into the way the criminal is a strange attractor for

displaced anxieties around the brutality of the neoliberal economy. Criminals

seem particularly horrifying figures precisely because they are figures for the Real

of [sic] loss. (72)

Consequently, contemporary Indian urban crime fiction can perhaps be safely read

through the paradigms of 19th century English crime fiction and its social conditions, at

least in terms of the concept of criminality being conflated with the underclass, the

anxiety around the criminal and the cultural import of such literature.
 187

Secondly, these Indian novels essentially use the narrative technique of literary

realism that is steeped in what Jeffrey Mehlman calls as the “fantasy of surveillance”

(124), whereby the narrative authority of the omniscient narrator is itself reminiscent of

the power of the panopticon. It is therefore imperative that we read the burgeoning trend

of the contemporary realist novels in the light of the panoptical significance of the genre

itself. Thirdly, contrary to Miller’s claim that Foucault himself does not say anything

about crime fiction, Foucault does assert the significance of the literature of crime or the

“aesthetic rewriting of crime” (68) that emerged in concurrence with a time when the

corporeal punishment for the condemned was taken over by more covert ways of social

control through a discourse of criminality. The literature of crime in novelistic accounts

thus becomes a significant trope of constructing and disseminating concepts of

criminality and the criminal subject, and falls in sync with the methods of panopticism

that sought to refine the penitentiary techniques.

The concept of panopticism in Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, though has its

roots in the architectural particularities of Bentham’s panopticon, signifies protocols of

structural disciplining that is implemented through different levels of society. Thus, the

panopticon is a method of arranging and observing the miscreants or the potentially

disruptive sections of the society for a better understanding of these categories. Marking a

shift from the sovereign modes of power to the non-sovereign modes—one that he

describes in his 2003 lectures as “presupposed a closely meshed grid of material

coercions rather than the physical existence of a sovereign” (Foucault 36) .50 Foucault
 188

emphatically points out in Discipline and Punish the decentralized network of

panopticism:

While on the one hand, the disciplinary establishments increase, their mechanisms

have a certain tendency to become ‘de-institutionalized’, to emerge from the

closed fortresses in which they once functioned and to circulate in a ‘free’ state;

the massive, compact disciplines are broken down into flexible methods of

control, which may be transferred and adapted. Sometimes the closed apparatuses

add to their internal and specific function a role of external surveillance,

developing around them a whole margin of lateral controls. (211)

Though immensely nebulous, the panoptic system is essentially based on the central

notion of surveillance and the ‘visibility’ of the target subjects. In contrast to the

miscreants who must remain visible, the figures of disciplining authority observing the

miscreants themselves remain in invisibility—rendering the target subject as the sole

“object of information, never a subject in communication “(Foucault 200). While

50
Foucault distinguishes the non-sovereign from the sovereign: “An important
phenomenon occurred in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the appearance
– one should say the invention – of a new mechanism of power which had very
specific procedures, completely new instruments, and very different equipment. It
was, I believe, absolutely incompatible with relations of sovereignty. This new
mechanism of power applies primarily to bodies and what they do rather than to
the land and what it produces. It was a mechanism of power that made it possible
to extract time and labour, rather than commodities and wealth, from bodies. It
was a type of power that was exercised through constant surveillance and not in
discontinuous fashion through chronologically defined systems of taxation and
obligation. It was a type of power that presupposed a closely meshed grid of
material coercions rather than the physical existence of a sovereign, and it
therefore defined a new economy of power based upon the principle that there had
to be an increase both in the subjugated forces and in the forces and efficacy of
that which subjugated them” (35). [The Global Panopticon]
 189

Bentham’s model of the panopticon and Foucault’s theorization of discipline are

essentially placed against the context of nineteenth century Europe, several contemporary

theorists of neoliberalism have often found astounding similarities between the

disciplining methods of the current free market and governments and the increasing

popularity of surveillance as a method to control criminalities in the neoliberal context.

Stephen Gill, one of the major scholars of the panoptic theory in the context of neoliberal

globalization, argues that “disciplinary neoliberalism” is intensified through an

application of the practices of surveillance or panopticism (2), whereby not only do

databases, satellites, bar code scanners, closed circuit TVs, telecommunications intercepts

are used as effective tools of gathering data about the population by the market and the

government, but they are also used for more coercive purposes like controlling “the

actions and rhythms of workers and to keep them monitored genetically and biologically”

(19)51.In a similar strain, Massimo de Angelis finds overwhelming similarities in

Bentham’s model of the panopticon and Frederick Hayek’s conceptualization of the free

market, asserting that in both Bentham’s and Hayek’s order, power’s knowledge of

individual actions and plan is not perfect, and both the rationale behind both the systems

51
Gill cites an example: “A contemporary example of this is the way production
tasks are redesigned so that they can be performed by robots, so that the role of
humans in the factory is reduced to filling in for the robots when the robot
malfunctions - a development akin to the nightmare of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.
New auto assembly lines run by General Motors embody this idea, and they are
accompanied by mandatory drug testing and urine analysis which in effect, are
designed to mandate the elimination of workers who, it is claimed, are unfit to
work to the technologically and managerially defined rhythms” (19).
 190

is to tap into this knowledge. In both cases, this “co-optation of knowledge and choices is

at the basis of the system's maximisation of efficiency” (Angelis 4).

Similarly, for urban geographers like Soja and Wacquant , the neoliberal urban

space embodies a panopticon in its contemporary form. Thus, while Soja asserts that

“amidst its multiplicities of expressions, every city is a panoptican, a collection of

surveillance modes designed to impose and maintain a particular model of conduct and

disciplined adherence on its inhabitants” (235), Wacquant studies “punitive panopticism”

in the way sex offenders are targeted and disciplined in the contemporary neoliberal city

(209). Apart from these theorists, the notion of the panoptical surveillance in

contemporary society has been theorized in various other ways. Oscar Gandy’s work on

the “panoptic sort” studies how today's panoptic operations of the state, which gathers

and classifies information about its citizens, “make use of an almost unlimited amount of

personal information to manage the social and economic systems within their spheres”

(abstract). Moreover, scholars like Mark Andrejevich, Garreth Power, Murray and

Ouellette, take up the notion of panoptical surveillance as embedded in the cultural

products like the reality TV shows such as Big Boss that discipline and regulate people

according to the tenets of neoliberal subjectivity52. Thus, reading the contemporary

neoliberal condition against the Foucauldian paradigm is an effective way to understand

how modes of citizenship and the operative methods of social control get shaped by the

current changes brought in by the globalization of capital. The narrative of Vikram

52
I will engage into a detailed discussion about the complex and significant
paradigm of ‘neoliberal subjectivity in my next chapter.
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Chandra’s expository novel Sacred Games itself embodies a form of panoptical

surveillance—thereby I call it a panoptical novel—which finally leads to the construction

of the notion of criminal subjectivity in a neoliberal urban space.

In terms of its narrative technique, the form of the realist crime fiction itself has

often been read as what Jeffrey Mehlman calls the “fantasy of surveillance”. As he

explains:

we may well agree with Lukacs that the future of the novel is with the excellence

of vision which is the distinguishing mark of realism. But simultaneously we…are

suggesting here the existence of what might be called in Michel Foucault’s term

an “epistemologico-juridical formation”…if he is correct in positing a politics

implicit in the very discursiveness of every form of knowledge; and if we may

accept his suggestion that the very epistemophilic passion to see or examine

human reality, which orients our human sciences, is shot through with a fantasy of

surveillance, then we have located a politico-literary point of intersection between

the “future of novel” and the “future of France” (123-125)

Thus for Mehlman, the very form of the realist novel invokes a sort of panopticism that is

as politicized as the epistemological endeavors of the human sciences, thus contributing

to the Foucauldian connection between knowledge and power. Mehlman’s notion of the

“fantasy of surveillance” in the realist fiction is thus not a simple desire to see social

reality as it is, but rather the perusal of a particular ‘reality’—the unknown hidden

‘realities’ of the criminal subjectivities—the knowledge of which of is pursued as an act

of discourse. One of the most formative works on the politics of literary surveillance,
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especially in the writings on the underworld, comes from Mark Seltzer who theorizes on

what he calls as the cult of the “spy mania” (506).53 Seltzer’s focus is particularly on the

ways the urban underworld becomes the object of literary scrutiny that corroborate the

methods of police surveillance with more subtle methods of power and coercion through

literary texts. Thus, referring to the nineteenth century monographs on the London

underworld—like George Sims’ The Mysteries of Modern London and How the Poor

Live and Horrible London, Jack London’s study of the London slums in The People of

the Abyss, as well as fictional works like Henry James’ Princess Casamassima—Seltzer

points out an effective trend of surveiling the urban underbelly through the observation,

dissemination and consumption of the literature on the underworld. Subsequently, the

mystery and fear of the underworld, or what Seltzer calls as the “fantastic paranoia” (26),

was responded with “an attempt to book London’s unrecorded mysteries and to

supplement the official police record through unrestricted lay policing” (26). A

particularly strong resemblance between the police surveillance and the literary and

journalistic scrutiny emerge in the methods of gathering information, which often employ

many police tactics like private espionage, tapping of sources, undercover operations and

interviewing the subjects.

In talking about his underworld explorations for Sacred Games, Chandra too

reveals how he tapped multiple sources that include his adventurous visits to the dens of

real life underworld dons like Arun Gawli and other people associated with organized

53
The term is originally taken from George Sim’s The Mysteries of Modern
London and How the Poor Live and Horrible London where he proclaims “We do
not suffer from the spy mania here” (81).
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crime. Though he vows to keep their identities private in his novel, he gives a sensational

description of the entire exciting trip to the underworld in a post publication article:

I met one afternoon with Arun Gawli, one of the great Bombay mafia Dons. I

went to meet him at Dagdichawl, his fortress-home in the heart of the old mill

area of Parel. I waited, sitting on a plastic chair alongside other supplicants, under

a grey hulk of a building. Above us, from a balcony, Gawli’s boys, his young

soldiers, watched. Finally, I was led up a narrow staircase, and a left turn took us

into a large gold-Formica-paneled room, where I waited again, sitting on a shiny

maroon sofa under a very large silvery chandelier. The walls were covered with

large gold-framed pictures of gods and goddesses. Gawli was a fervent Shiva-

bhakt…It felt like a durbar hall, but Gawli himself was a very small man dressed

in a white shirt, white pajamas, and a Nehru cap. He was very polite, and it was

only when he spoke of his mortal enemy, the mafia boss Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar,

that his eyes grew still and hard, and I felt a chill. (“The Cult of Authenticity”)

Chandra’s description of his meeting with another ferocious mafia, Hussain Ustra, is even

more dramatic and sensational. As Chandra and his crime journalist friend waited in a

dangerous mafia-ridden locality, his cell phone phone rang and he was directed through a

web of narrow lanes and shady corners to a dungeon like building to Ustra. He describes

seeing a host of close circuit tvs spanning multiple cameras that signified the mafia’s own

network of surveillance. After a long process of security check, Chandra finally meets

with Ustra and describes him as a “slightly paunchy man, dressed in a tailored white shirt

and pants. He would have been completely at home at a Nariman Point lunch for
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stockbrokers. He had an elegant haircut and sophisticated Urdu and a very direct

stare…In passing, he mentioned that his company followed strict Islamic rules, that none

of his boys smoked or drank” (ibid).

The accounts, replete with detailed descriptions about the much feared yet

immensely intriguing underworld that forms a part of the public fascination, supply what

Seltzer terms as the “morbid curiosity mongering”(30). Since the novel is based on these

real life encounters, the appeal of the novel thus lies in the ‘authentic’ investigation of the

writer who, through firsthand experience, lays the unknown and dangerous quarters of the

underworld exposed for public consumption. Chandra’s novel can thus be read in the

light of Foucault’s theorization on the rise of popular crime fiction in the nineteenth

century, whereby he argues that the literary trend of exposing the criminal’s life

coincided with the gradual abolition of corporal punishment from the penal system. As

public execution and the spectacle of torture of the criminals became less common, the

“penal leniency” became a “technique of power” and the criminal became an “object of

knowledge” (24), who needs to be discussed, understood and regulated as a social

category, instead of being condemned. As Foucault points out: “The carceral texture of

society assures both the real capture of the body and its perpetual observation; it is…the

apparatus of punishment that conforms most completely to the new economy of power

and the instrument for the formation of knowledge that this very economy needs” (304).

Consequently, Foucault locates that the birth of crime literature converges with this

moment of social change, whereby the literature itself becomes a crucial part of the

discourse of criminality (22). Though Foucault makes a crucial distinction between

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journalistic literature of crime in the broadsheets, pamphlets and almanacs and the

literary representation of glorified crime in the fictions of de Quincey and Baudelaire, the

emergence of all forms of crime literature testify the growing anxiety about crime and its

unpredictable, threatening forms (68).

Seltzer’s comment on Sim’s works fits for Chandra’s novel as well, that it

“sensationalize(s) the mysteries beneath the humdrum surface and posit lurid secrets to be

detected; they incite and cultivate a fascination with the underworld that converts it into a

bizarre species of entertainment” (30). In a similar way, Sacred Games reports the world

of organized crime almost with an anthropologist’s precision, revealing startling facts

about the various methods and rituals of underworld dealings in a way that is both

informative and interesting. The novel diligently narrates how goods are smuggled across

the borders in spite of patrol forces through elaborate methods: first being brought to the

coastal villages in a “hundred foot dhow,” then put in “neat little fishing boats” for how

transport to the beach, where trucks wait “with plastic sheets on the flatbread” for the

cargo (253). The novel continues to give details about how the smuggled goods are

encashed and circulated as legitimate goods within the market, how crime syndicates

enroll and maintain their gang of boys and how gang wars involve strategic planning, a

network of informers and the involvement of certain allied police officers. Thus, in

another revealing passage, the novel narrates how the significant members of a gang are

traded off by police officers in exchange of lump sum money from the enemy gangs.

Gaitonde commissions Inspector Samant for twenty five lakh rupees to capture his enemy

gang leader Vilas Ranade. In return, Samant quite efficiently traps him in a false
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encounter and even the newspapers fail to sense the foul play behind this incident,

whereby they report Ranade’s death as a simple case of police encounter—“Shooter Vilas

Ranade killed in Encounter, some of the afternoon papers reported the next day”(124). In

a way, thus, Chandra’s novel brings to the readers what even the journalists fail to do,

that is uncovering the real secrets beneath the apparent veneer of things. There are

numerous such narrative moments in the story which reveal the dark, deep secrets of the

underworld dealings that are otherwise left hidden from the public eye.

In its expository role, Chandra’s novel also exposes a Mumbai that is both

mysterious and dangerous, spurring the anxiety that crime lurks beneath the veneer of an

orderly city. In a revealing passage, Chandra narrates the dark underside of the urban

space, describing how the criminal underworld also inhabits in an alternative urban space

of crime within the geography of the city. As Ganesh Gaitonde proclaims:

I took the land between N.C.Road and the hill which overlooks it…The

government owned it, and so nobody owned it. I took it. You know how it’s

done…You pay off three chutiyas in the municipality, oil them up properly and

then you kill the local dada who thinks he deserves a percentage on your action,

like it’s his bhenchod birthright. That’s it. Then the land is yours. I took it so it

was mine. (102)

This chilling account of land acquisition and the subsequent description of Gaitonde

building up his sprawl of illegal settlements remind us of the anxiety surrounding the

‘illegal’ squatters in megacities like Delhi and Mumbai, which have long been the target

of government evictions and civic reforms. Homes to mostly the urban poor and low-
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income workers, the illegal settlements have often been identified as encroachments and

hence eligible for eviction. The anti-encroachment rhetoric is not only loaded with an

argument for the misuse of the land,—as Ramanathan has argued that the term

“encroacher” signifies one who “usurps the right to possession and use of land that

belongs elsewhere”(45)—the rhetoric also invokes an inherent fear of the elite,

productive citizens of the city for criminals residing in those encroached quarters, within

the borders of the urban space. Chandra’s novel not only plays with these common

anxieties that wreak the modern day urban existence, it also reaffirms with great details,

the popularly believed, and often stereotyped, nexus between the underworld and the

political parties, police, film industry, and religious groups. Chandra’s novel thus appeals

to the fears and anxieties of the urban middle class, and consequently generates interest

about the criminal underworld which, as a threatening unknown domain, must be

revealed before the readers.

Significantly enough, the accounts of the deadly crimes, and the dark world of the

gangsters in the novel, seem all the more threatening because of their otherwise ‘normal’

life. They celebrate Diwali with pomp and enthusiasm, start families through arranged

marriages with ‘common’ women and even become disciples of religious gurus and

follow spiritual discipline. The seeming normalcy of the gang members and their

virtually indistinguishable appearance from the rest of the commoners render them as

more dangerous figures in the popular imagination, for they embody the perils that exist

among the crowds of common people in the city. Moreover, the uncertainty of their threat

is heightened by the very amorphousness of their spatial presence. Thus, unlike Tejpal’s
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city, the fictional space of Chandra’s Mumbai does not project specific zones for

containing specific population, whereby the criminals and the commoners, the police and

the politicians, the call girl and the cinema stars inhabit a fictional geography of Mumbai

that is both fluid and precarious. A case is therefore made for surveillance, whereby the

crowd needs to be observed closely and the novel itself pans its gaze on the criminals,

exposing the secrets of their inner lives as if they are being spied on through surveillance

cameras. The intent is to map the unknown and mysterious underworld to render it a

more transparent and a known world. The panopticon theorists read the rise of the

nineteenth crime novel as a part of this discourse of surveillance—as a mode of

disciplinary power, operating through its role as a panopticon of surveiling and

disseminating knowledge about the criminal.54 Scholars Shang-jen Li argue how the

novels like The Count of Monte Cristo and Les Miserables as distinct manifestations of

the nineteenth century anxiety about crime—heightened by the “legal elevation of the

bourgeoisie concept of private property…working class uprisings, social disturbances and

the Paris Commune” (195)—that cumulated into fears of the “criminal race” living

among the crowd of common people (195). With the anxiety about crime on the rise, the

criminal becomes an object of both fear and curiosity, and consequently a subject of

literary narratives.

54
Christopher Pittard also points out the distinct connection of the growth of
crime literature with the socio-economic anxieties of the age, arguing that the
changing nature of society—particularly through Industrial revolution and rapid
urbanization—created new chaos and consequent fears of disorderly behavior.
Added to this, as Pittard points out, was the emerging value on “portable property
than land” and the threat of the theft of property.
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The policing power of a novel form, as D.A Miller argues, plays out in the very

practice of novelistic representation, to the extent that the genre of the realist novel itself

embodies a panopticon, or what Miller equates to Foucault’s notion of the “micro-politics

of the novelistic convention” (21). For Miller, the panoptical power is embedded in the

omniscient narration, the “infallible supervision” (23) that penetrates through the surface

of things and acquires complete knowledge of the world it places under supervision. As

Miller asserts: “We are always situated inside the narrator’s viewpoint…what matters is

that the faceless gaze becomes an ideal of the power of regulation (24). Characters and

events in the novel thus exist and interact with each other under a surveiling gaze that

records and reports the scenes faithfully. Chandra’s novel too is dominated by an

omniscient third person narrative voice which pans on Sartaj as he polices and disciplines

the city:

Sartaj shrugged. The Gaitonde they had read about in police reports and in the

newspapers dallied with bejeweled starlets, bankrolled politicians and bought

them and sold them…The early morning man with the tip-off had hung up

abruptly and Sartaj had jumped out of bed and called the station while putting on

his pants, and the police party had coming roaring to Kailashpada in a hasty

caravan bristling with rifles. (29)

Significantly enough, as Miller observes, the realist narration is separate from the

“casualties operating in the narrative” (25). It is a gaze that only surveils and knows all,

but does not intervene in the events. However, Miller contends that the apparent

invisibility of the narrative voice, or the Flaubertian notion of the artist as the invisible
 200

“Dieu dans l’univers” (or like a God in the universe), does often control the discursive

framework of the novel through what Bakhtin terms as “monologism”, which Miller

sums up as “the working of an implied master-voice whose accents have already unified

the world in a single interpretative center” (25). 55 For Miller, the monologistic voice

never “simply soliloquizes” (25). Rather it asserts its power through the famous

nineteenth century technique of style indirect libre whereby the omniscient narrative

voice appropriates, comments on and re-articulates a character’s inner thoughts while

securing its authority. Chandra’s novel shows an extensive use of the style indirect libre

to explore the complex world of crime through Sartaj’s ruminations in passages like

these:

The dead boy had wanted more than marriage for his sisters, he had wanted a

television set and a gas range…no doubt he had dreamed of a brand new

car…What he had dreamed was not impossible, there were men like Gaitonde

…And there were boys and girls who had come from dusty villages and looked

down at you from the hoardings, beautiful and unreal. It could happen. It did

happen, and that’s why people keep trying. It did happen…Katekar nodded and

Sartaj knew that Katekar understood…(215)

Why had he (Sartaj) been angry at her? It wasn’t just the money. He was quite

used to taking money, to being bought…There was still a lingering aftertaste of

indignation in Sartaj’s mouth, a sour rancor that had nothing to do with what a

55
Flaubert wrote to Colet that “the artist in his work should be like God in the
universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere”.
 201

spoilt, irritating little child it was. Was it only that she had been unfaithful, that

she had done something a woman was not supposed to do? (399)

Sartaj breaks into such self-reflective ruminations often in the course of the narrative, not

only projecting an incessant commentary on the multiple facets of the world of crime in

Mumbai, but also a glimpse into the privacy of his inner life as mediated by the

omniscient gaze. However, a more interesting politics of narratorial authority can be seen

in the first person narrative voice of Ganesh Gaitonde which reveals the inner life of the

mafia lord and the inner workings of the underworld to the full.

In contrast to the third person omniscient narrator that narrates the inner lives of

all the other important characters in the novel—Sartaj, Sartaj’s mother Pravjot, Anjali

Mathur and Katekar—Ganesh Gaitonde tells his own story in the first person narrative

voice. Though apparently projecting a “dialogism” through an alternative narrative

viewpoint, Gaitonde’s autobiography hardly adds “polyphony” to the narrative and is

severely robbed of its subversive potential.56 Rather, Gaitonde’s first person narrative

seems like a surrogate, rather than a rival, of the omniscient third person narrator

constructing an authoritative version of the ‘truth.’ There are several ways how Chandra

manages to retain the panopticon power of the narrative while creating an illusion of

56
I use the terms polyphony and dialogism in the sense of Bakhtin’s theorization.
In Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Bakhtin developed the concepts which were
to inform much of his work. The concept of ‘polyphony’ (borrowed from music)
is central to this analysis. Polyphony literally means multiple voices. Bakhtin
reads Dostoevsky’s work as containing many different voices, unmerged into a
single perspective, and not subordinated to the voice of the author. Each of these
voices has its own perspective, its own validity, and its own narrative weight
within the novel.
 202

polyphony. Firstly, Gaitonde’s narrative is split into two points of the novel’s historical

time. The first time we encounter Gaitonde speaking out is at an early juncture of the

novel’s linear narrative, when Sartaj confronts him in his nuclear shelter. Gaitonde

interjects into the omniscient narrative of the novel not only through a first person

narrative in direct voice by carrying on a dialogic exchange with Sartaj, but also subverts

the panoptic gaze of the narrator through his invisibility. Locking himself up in his

impenetrable bunker, he avoids being the object of gaze and rather implements a counter-

gaze by looking at others through his surveillance camera. He communicates with Sartaj

as an invisible, all seeing voice but offers no glimpse of himself, not even to the

omniscient narrator. Consequently, for this short period of time Gaitonde controls the

course of events in the novel, and in extension becomes an authoritative narrative voice.

The first person narrative in this section is still revelatory of Gaitonde’s early life, but

equally teasing and challenging. He refuses to divulge information to Sartaj’s questions

like “This building is very impressive. Who designed it for you?’” and instead asks

counter questions like —“‘Never mind who designed it Sardarji. The question is how are

you going to get in?’” (30). He also teases Sartaj: “Gaitonde laughed bitterly. ‘Are your

feelings hurt, saab? Should I be more respectful?’”(31). He also challenges and dismisses

the omniscience of the narrator. Thus when a power cut shuts off Gaitonde’s voice in the

microphone, the third person narration (through Sartaj’s inner thoughts) regains control

and in a lengthy passage describes how “it was a matter of waiting, and an hour or two

under the hot June sun would turn the unventilated, unpowered building into a furnace

that even Gaitonde…would find hard to bear” (30).This information is promptly

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dismissed by Gaitonde’s alternative source of power and his counter-narrative: “ ‘What,

you thought it would be so easy?...Just a power cut? What, you think I’m a fool?’ ”

(30).The narrative voice of Gaitonde at this juncture disrupts and subverts the monologic

narrative. This moment of subversion however quickly ends with Gaitonde’s suicide and

the consequent silencing of his voice. What follows in the rest of the novel is a

continuation of Gaitonde’s voice in the first person narrative, but lacking the subversive

potential of the first one. The rest of the novel projects a somewhat posthumous

autobiography of Gaitonde which is not situated in the present timeframe of the main

linear narrative, unlike the first one. The third person linear narrative continues

uninterrupted through Sartaj’s point of view and brings a culmination to the main plot of

the story through a single interpretative voice.

Gaitonde’s first person narrative that follows after his death in the novel, in the

meanwhile, is interspersed as an distractive appendix to the main plot, which has no

presence in the main plot, nor is placed in a meaningful temporal relationship with the

monologic narrative. Gaitonde’s voice still speaks to Sartaj but only as a rhetorical

gesture and not as a dialogue in the real space and time. And unlike the previous voice,

this does not challenge nor subvert the authoritative tone of the omniscient narrator, nor

does it hold back information according to its own discretion. Rather it complies with the

panoptical role of the omniscient narration by providing a complimentary and an equally

expository gaze on the inner workings of the underworld. Not only is the audience for

Gaitonde’s narrative been misplaced, whereby the imploration “So Sardarji, are you

listening still?...Are you somewhere in the world with me?”(49) becomes a mere
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rhetorical question with no real dialogic import, the narratorial space of Gaitonde’s first

person persona is also usurped by a posthumous pseudo-autobiographical voice that

constructs Gaitonde’s subjectivity in his absence, in the same way the first person

criminal narratives of the nineteenth century constructed criminal subjectivities in the

Newgate Report through biographies of the criminals. Declared dead as a character,

distanced from the main narrative and rendered powerless to hold back his secrets,

Gaitonde’s narrative becomes a mere foil to the surveiling gaze that uncovers the dark

secrets of the Mumbai underworld. Thus, Gaitonde ceases to a performing presence and

becomes the Foucauldian object of knowledge.

Apart from the narrative voice, the policing power of the panoptical novel lies

most strongly in its ability to convert criminality into a discourse, whereby the figure of

the criminal is dissected and studied, and often turned into a site of disciplining. One of

the most effective mechanisms of discourse, as Foucault has cogently argued in the

History of Sexuality, is the mode of confession. From the absolution practices of the

Middle Ages, the confession has been a compelling mode through which speakers would

acknowledge their deepest secrets and share intimate details about their life. Started as a

religious practice, the confession has become an important mode of gathering knowledge

and has played a fundamental role in ‘governmentality’ not only the realm of sex and

morality but also in “justice, medicine, education, family relationships, and love

relations.” (Foucault, 59) and concerning other contexts of life. In the realm of criminal

offense, the confession embodies itself as what Foucault (1975) calls as the “gallows

speech” where the condemned man would confess his guilt in his final moments—“it
 205

seems that he was given another opportunity to speak, not to proclaim his innocence, but

to acknowledge his crime and the justice of his conviction” (65). Gaitonde’s posthumous

narrative, in which he reveals his own life and candidly talks about his various crimes,

serves the same purpose of a confession. As Gaitonde shoots himself, trapped in his

nuclear shelter all alone and surrounded by police, his death comes as a sort of symbolic

penalty, though self-inflicted, for his deeds. Gaitonde symbolically executes himself and

goes on to confess his multiple crimes that not only testify his guilt but also lays bare his

life and the underworld with its sordid details and darkest secrets. Consequently, the

confession necessarily signifies a power equation between the confessor and the hearer as

Foucault points out: “The agency of domination does not reside in the one who speaks

(for it is he who is constrained), but in the one who listens and says nothing; not in the

one who knows and answers, but in the one who questions and is not supposed to know”

(Foucault, 62). With these “confessed truths”, social controls are effectively implemented

as “confidential statements” slowly surface. Reading from a Foucauldian paradigm of

“penitentiary panopticon” that he discusses in Discipline and Punish, Gaitonde’s self-

inspired confessional narrative thus implies the ultimate conversion of the criminal

subject to an epistemological category.

Foucault’s notion of the “penitentiary panopticon” differs from Bentham’s

panopticon in a way that the penitentiary panopticon is also a system of disciplining

through accumulating knowledge: “it has to extract unceasingly from the inmate a body

of knowledge that will make it possible to transform the penal measure into a penitentiary

operation, which will make of the penalty required by the offence a modification of the
 206

inmate that will be of use to society” (251). Like his earlier works, Foucault’s emphasis

here is on the profound relationship between power and knowledge and thereby the

inmate becomes useful to the controlling authorities and to the society at large by

becoming an object of knowledge. Thus Foucault asserts, “the offender becomes an

individual to know” (251). Consequently, as the criminal is co-opted as a discursive

subject, he is converted to what Foucault terms as the “delinquent” (251). For Foucault,

the ‘delinquent’ can be distinguished from the criminal “by the fact that it is not so much

his act but his life that is relevant in characterizing him. The penitentiary operation, if it is

to be a genuine re-education, must become the sum total existence of the delinquent, thus

making the prison a sort of artificial and coercive theatre in which his life will be

examined from top to bottom” (252). In a similar manner, the novel successfully converts

Gaitonde from a deadly, unknown criminal to a knowable ‘delinquent,’ whereby he

becomes the object of gaze and his life exposed to his the readers to the full.

A significant aspect of converting the criminal to a delinquent involves

“biographical information” (252). As Foucault points out, the biographical information of

the delinquent should go back not only to the “circumstances but also to the causes of his

crime, they must be sought in the story of his life” (252). The introduction of the

‘biographical’ is thus important as part of the penitentiary process because “it establishes

the criminal existing before the crime and even outside it” (252). The biographical

discourse of the delinquent thus identifies not only the “dangerous individual” but also

contributes significant knowledge to the potential of criminality in certain groups of the

society. Consequently, modes of social control can be applied to monitor and control the
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‘potential criminal’ from the target group even before the crime is committed.

Significantly enough, like the criminals in Tejpal’s story, Gaitonde’s biographical

information also conflates criminality with marginal existence, socially disagreeable

family history and a history of juvenile violence very early in the criminals’ lives.

Gaitonde too was born in poverty; his father committed murder and his mother took up

prostitution, and Gaitonde too shows streaks of violence very early in his life when he

hurls large rocks at his bullies or carries a knife under his shirt. Subsequently, running

away to Mumbai and unable to find a job there, Gaitonde predictably gets pulled into the

criminal world/ Gaitonde’s criminality thus conforms to the same socio-economic groups

that are ‘ideally’ excluded from the boundaries of the neoliberal urban space. Gaitonde’s

life story adds to the already prevalent discourse about the potential undesirability of the

poor, the prostitutes, the anti-socials, the refugees, the immigrants and the jobless in the

modern neoliberal city—all of whom are identified as possibly disruptive and potentially

criminal. The novel therefore, through its multiple narrative techniques equaling the

panopticon, projects a close surveillance of the criminal subject and the unknown

vagaries of the potentially dangerous underbelly of the city.

The rhetoric of surveillance in the crime novel is also embodied in its importance

to small details. As D.A. Miller points out that in a crime fiction “the trifling detail is

suddenly invested with immense significance…For in the same process where the detail

is charged with meaning, it is invested with a power already capitalizing on that

meaning” (28). For Miller, a crime fiction puts an immense emphasis on the revelation of

the minute details by the detective or the guardian of law, thus depicting the power of
 208

appropriating trivial details. Consequently, it projects a method of a more meticulous

surveillance where, as Miller asserts “what had seemed natural and commonplace comes

all at once under a malicious inspection, and what could be taken for granted now

requires an explanation” (29). In terms of his narrative style, Chandra is assiduous in

etching out the minutiae of the scenes to vivid details, whereby both his main

characters—Sartaj and Gaitonde—have great eye for details. Gaitonde’s description of

Paritosh Shah’s hub is replete with visual shots of photographic precision:

Paritosh Shah was a family man. I waited for him on a second-floor hallway, near

a staircase that exhaled occasional blasts of sharp urine-stink. The building was

six stories tall and ancient, with a bamboo framework roped and nailed to its

tottering façade, and worrisome gaps in the ornate scrollwork on the balconies.

The second floor was full of male Shahs, who passed by where Kanta Bai’s boy

had left me on the landing, and they called each other Chachu and Mamu and

Bhai, and ignored me entirely. They walked by my dirty shirt and ragged trousers

with the barest of glances. They were a flashy, gold-ringed lot who wore mostly

white safari suits. I could see their white shoes and white chappals lined up in

untidy rows near the uniformed guard at the door. Sometimes inside was the

sanctum of Paritosh Shah, guarded by a hoary old muchchad perched on a stool

with an absurdly long-barelled shotgun. He wore a blue uniform with yellow

braid, and his moustache was enormous and curved at the ends. (57)

The description not only echoes the description of Chandra’s real life expeditions to the

haunts of the gang lords, the elaborate depiction of the scene is undeniably voyeuristic,
 209

bringing home to the readers the graphic details of the world of the gangsters. While the

physical description of the space sounds almost like a careful mapping of the place for

the purpose of recording precise information, the description also gives an inside view

into the unperturbed world of the busy gangsters who are unaware that they are being

watched, and hence are caught completely off guard, signifying the power of the gazing

eye.

The view through Sartaj’s gaze is equally voyeuristic, recording the fine details

with equal precision as he describes his world of the police and their dealings with the

criminals. Apart from these, the significance of details also forms an important thematic

feature in the novel, especially in terms of detecting the secrets of the miscreant. Sartaj

confesses the importance of paying attention to details as a part of his profession—“a

policeman must gaze steadfastly at everything, anything, what the world is truly made of,

you must know it all unflinchingly” (87). It is with this concentrated gaze that Sartaj

unmasks many of his criminals and uncovers the ‘truth’ behind the misleading

appearance of things. Thus, Sartaj is the first one to find Jojo’s secret chamber behind her

neatly arranged shoe rack; he detects the real culprit behind the Kamala Pandey

blackmailing case by merely observing a child’s apparently meaningless playful gestures

and is the first one to identify the mastermind religious mafia—Guruji—by carefully

observing the details of his wheelchair. Like the late Victorian detective fiction of

Sherlock Holmes, Sacred Games thus celebrates the power of the gaze and in multiple

other occasions, the scrutinizing observation of minute details that leads to bigger

revelations. As D.A. Miller argues, the novelistic panopticon is thus emphasized through
 210

the notion that “what had seemed natural and commonplace comes all at once under a

malicious inspection” (29).

However, Chandra’s novel creates the effect of gaze not only in its visual details

but also in its auditory ones, especially by carefully recording the linguistic eccentricities

of the underworld. Chandra’s novel is an extensive study in the “tapori” language—a

type of Mumbai street language, popularly associated with the underbelly that uses a

syncretistic mix of various other linguistic registers like Marathi, Konkani, Gujrati and

Tamil, drawing from the wide variety of immigrant populations in Mumbai. Chandra

weaves the novel with an extensive use of the Rushdiesque ‘chutnified’ English almost

to the point of exhaustion—the novel is replete with words of typical ‘Mumbaispeak’ like

“bhai”, “chaavi”, “bole toh”, “lodu”, “thoko” etc— which incites a comment from Pankaj

Mishra about “a research-heavy attempt at authenticity” of the novel. Such linguistic

features are not new in Chandra’s case, since he has always been a stickler for

incorporating the vernacular elements in his novels, while caustically lashing out at

literary critics like Meenakshi Mukherjee who read chutnified English as the anxiety of

Indianness (“The Cult of Authenticity”).57 However, not going into the debate of the use

57
Chandra narrates Meenakshi Mukherjee’s critique of his works and lashes back
in defense in “The Cult of Authenticity”: “To put a cow, any cow, even one cow,
into an Indian story is, I suppose, to "signal one’s Indianness in the context of the
Western market. Without doubt, one koel in an Indian narrative causes all sorts of
connotations. This despite the fact that every day in Maharashtra substantial koels
sit on substantial tamarind trees in their thousands, as they have been doing for
thousands of years. And certainly, to title a story with a resonating abstraction like
"Dharma" or "Shakti" is to use language that a ‘regional writer’ would be
‘embarrassed’...I imagined the scrupulous and ascetic Munshi Prem Chand
blushing with shame under Dr. Mukherjee’s strict gaze, and I shuddered.”
 211

of localisms in Indian English novels and its politics in the literary market, let me focus

on how the linguistic eccentricities of the novel work as part of the panopticon. The

chutnified English is more than often expository moments in the narrative, revealing the

covert linguistic code that circulate among members of the underworld. Gaitonde’s

narrative voice is thus spectacularly revelatory:

They learned the language, and then the walk, and they pretended to be

something, and then they became it. And so for American dollars, we said

choklete, not Dalda like the rest of our world; for British pounds, lalten, not

peetal; for heroin and brown sugar, gulal, not atta; for police, Iftekar, not nau-

number; a job gone wrong was ghanta, not fachchad; and a girl so impossibly ripe

and round and tight that it hurt to look at her was not a chabbis, but a churi. (118)

As the gang members incessantly talk in their cryptic language—precisely to subvert the

signification of these words and construct an alternative semiotic code of the underworld,

Gaitonde’s narrative decodes the codified language for the readers and renders it legible.

The desire for this legibility is most prominently seen in the separate glossary that

Chandra provides at the end of the book and on his website, explaining in painstaking

details the idiosyncrasies of the language and slangs of the criminal subculture. The

functionality of this can be explained through Simon Joyce’s interpretation of the use of

the criminal slang in Dicken’s novels, which Joyce reads as a “larger project of making

criminal subcultures” available to the reading public. Talking especially of the linguistic

glossaries, like Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, Joyce asserts that “working

through the processes of infiltration, illumination and categorization, such a strategy

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could present itself as providing valuable service for the urban bourgeoisie, who might

consider themselves forewarned by the knowledge they gain about the London criminal

life” (78) . In the same way, Chandra’s attempt at uncovering the underworld slang can

be seen as an attempt to render the criminal underbelly more transparent. Like the visual

and narrative panopticon in the novel, the language of the novel constitutes a linguistic

panopticon that carefully records and elucidates the codified interaction between the

criminal subjects, as if keeping them all under the watchful eye.

Though the authenticity of any gangster language remains a subject of debate—as

Allon White points out in a study on the underworld slang that “the language or anti-

language of a criminal subcultures could never be clearly identified or defined from

outside…part of its function was precisely its resistance to any comprehension by the

high language” (52)—the frequent use of “tapori” speech in popular media, like

television and mainstream Bollywood films, denotes the appropriation of the gangster

culture not only as an object of discourse but also as a product for popular consumption

for entertainment, which can be termed in Seltzer’s words “the purchasable spectacle of

criminality” (33). The intent is to create an effect of taking the reader ‘behind the scene’

and present the criminal world in terms of easy consumable paradigms. As the

underworld becomes commoditized for entertainment and an object for close scrutiny in

the various cultural products meant to be consumed by the mainstream Indian society, the

trend does conform to Seltzer’s notion of the “spy mania” that emphasizes the relation

between seeing and power in the literature of the urban underworld. Sacred Games thus
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depicts how the criminal outcasts of the neoliberal city are thus not only surveilled upon;

they also become objects of entertainment for consumption by the mainstream society.

The Story of My Assassins and Sacred Games project revealing portraits of the

neoliberal urban space. As the Indian megacities like Delhi and Mumbai are revamped

and restructured to match the other modernized global cities of the world, the urban space

encounters the same tensions of the neoliberalization of the Western cities at the end of

the twentieth century. The novels’ urban geography not only project how the urban poor

are increasingly dispossessed and quarantined from the core spaces of the city, the

fictional world of these two novels also illuminate on the crucial ways how the marginal

groups as potential criminals are made objects of discourse, governmentality, social

control and subtle bio-politics.

 CHAPTER 4

“The people of the Apokalis”: Globalization, Environment and the Marginal

“For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is

first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all,

dignity.”

― Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 9

As Fanon points out in The Wretched of the Earth, the question of land and environment

has always been a central issue in a colonial and postcolonial context. Thus, along with

the themes of social mobility of the marginal and the criminal urban underbellies, a

theme that has gained prominence in contemporary Indian novels in the context of

globalization is that of the environment. Though the paradigm of the environment was

also invoked in the earlier postcolonial novels of Raja Rao (Kanthapura), RK Narayan

(Malgudi Days) and Kamala Markandhya (Nectar in the Sieve), those novels invoked the

natural world mostly as a mere backdrop to the stories and as a slate where the human

drama unfolded and which reflected the inner conflicts of the characters. The recent

Indian novels like Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, Ruchir Joshi’s Jet Engine

Laugh, Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People, Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide however

engage with the natural world in terms of deeper ecological issues and concerns about

the way the recent forces of globalization affect and metamorphose nature and the people

214
 215

associated with it. The paradigm of environment in contemporary Indian fiction thus goes

beyond the representation of a symbolic landscape in the story, and rather constitutes the

material reality of a changing India. Significantly enough, this material reality of the

environment is often one of desolation and one that points to a trajectory of exploitative

forces related to colonial capitalism to neocolonial global capitalism. As Upamanyu

Pablo Mukherjee points out, “the peripheral zones of global-capitalist developments” or

the “global South” like South Asia, South America and Africa (21) embody a condition

of postcoloniality that is “felt and lived as a toxic environmental condition”, whereby a

substantial intensification of the experience of the contemporary marginality is embodied

“primarily as a traumatic material and bodily encounter with a hostile environment” (24).

For Mukherjee, the uneven encounter with the environment is what marks the difference

between “the lives of global majority” and that of “the global minority” (24).

Consequently, while the crisis of a marginal existence in the contemporary age of

globalization can be defined most succinctly through the crisis of the environment, the

most enthusiastic resistances against the victimization of the marginal in a post-

globalized age also center on the ecological concerns, through grass root movements that

primarily focus on the environmental cause. The trope of the environment thus becomes a

significant discursive space where globalization is both experience and resisted.

This chapter explores this widely debated issue regarding globalization—its

effects on the environment. Through Indra Sinha’s novel Animal’s People I analyze how

the marginal communities become the worst victims of globalization in the often

disastrous onslaught of multinational corporations on the environment and its subsequent

 216

degradation as a toxic menace. Yet, on the other hand, through a reading of Amitav

Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide, I also argue that the marginals are equally, and ironically,

victimized in movements of global protectionism and environmentalism as well. Thus,

like the processes of environmental decimation, the processes of global environmentalism

also hinges on an exclusion of the local inhabitants, whose demands and voices are often

silenced in the drive to save the earth. Consequently, this chapter also explores how the

erasure of the marginal sections in environmental decision-making in the context of

globalization opens up narratives of resistance and spaces of transnational activism for

“globalization from below.”58

Corporations and the Environment in Animal’s People

Published in 2009 that commemorated 25 years of the Bhopal Gas tragedy, Indra Sinha’s

Animal’s People recalls the world’s worst industrial disaster that took place in the Indian

city of Bhopal. On a December night in 1984, the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL)

pesticide plant in Bhopal leaked around 27 tons of poisonous Methyl isocyanate gas,

58
Borrowed from Richard Falk’s term “globalization from above”, the term
“globalization from below” refers to the grass root movements connecting people
transnationally on a global scale, but resisting the other, commonly known
connotation of globalization—that is economic globalization. As Brecher, Childs,
and Cutler define the concept: “Globalization-from-below, in contrast to
globalization-from-above, aims to restore to communities the power to nurture
their environments; to enhance the access of ordinary people to the resources they
need; to democratize local, national, and transnational political institutions; and to
impose pacification on conflicting power centers. During the 1980s, according to
Falk, transnational activism by the environmental, human rights, and women’s
movement became prominent for the first time in history” (xv).
 217

instantly killing and injuring thousands of people with fatal health consequences. Since

then, the disaster has claimed about 15000 lives, injured around 6 lakhs, and continues to

wreak havoc in the subsequent generations of victims. Simultaneously, since UCIL was

part of the US based multinational company Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), the

tragedy also exemplifies the worst case of corporate irresponsibility, state ineptitude and

minimal retribution for the affected, making it one of the longest running protest

movements in India against the government and the corporation. As the common people,

as well as various international activists, continue to fight for their rights for a safer

environment, a better compensation and the penalization of those responsible, the Bhopal

Gas tragedy raises important questions about the responsibility of the multinational

corporations operating in the Global South and their impact on the local environment.

Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People narrates the story of the ordinary people forever scarred

by a fictional industrial disaster, which closely replicates the Bhopal Gas Tragedy.

Abandoned by the multinational company from where the disastrous gas had leaked and

neglected by the government, the affected people living on the fringes battle against

poverty, sickness, death and a bleak denial of basic human rights.

Set in the fictional town of Khaufpur, Animal’s People showcases the aftermath

of a fictional industrial disaster that closely resembles the Bhopal Gas Tragedy in the

magnitude of its damage, and the way the victims continue to struggle for survival.

Lashing out at both the “faceless” multinational corporation that refuses to appear for

trial, and the corrupt government that is least concerned about its citizens, Animal’s

People is a caustic critique of the insidious nexus between the state and the transnational
 218

corporation under economic globalization. As Kamila Shamsie asserts in her review of

Animal’s People in The Guardian, “Sinha has a sharp political purpose in telling the story

of Bhopal's victims and drawing attention to the fact that it is a story which should, in a

world of any conscience, remain within the realm of fiction” (“Behind the Clouds”).

Simultaneously, the novel also celebrates the anti-globalization grass root movements by

the people that promise to bring in a better future of social justice. Animal’s People is

thus not only a moving tale of exploitation by the global corporation but also an inspiring

account of people’s protest and the grass root movements of collective resistance.

The context of the novel closely mirrors modern day Bhopal after more than two

decades of the gas tragedy. Deemed as the worst industrial disaster of human history,

Bhopal gas tragedy still haunts the local inhabitants of Bhopal through its long term

effects. At the midnight on December 3, 1984, water leaked into one of the storage tanks

of the UCIL plant, releasing large amounts of the poisonous methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas

and other toxins from the gas plant.59As the deadly gas drifted over crowded localities,

this leakage affected around half million people. According to the official data, the

immediate death toll was 2,259.60 However, the government of Madhya Pradesh

confirmed a total of 3,787 deaths due to gas leakage (“Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and

Rehabilitation”);61 however other government and non-government agencies estimated

more than 15,000 deaths (Eckerman; Broughton). Thousands of children died after the

59
See Eckerman, Ingrid. The Bhopal Saga—Causes and Consequences of the
World's Largest Industrial Disaster
60
See Varma, Roli and Daya R. Varma. "The Bhopal Disaster of 1984". Bulletin
of Science, Technology and Society.
61
See http://www.mp.gov.in/bgtrrdmp/facts.htm
 219

accident or were permanently disabled. Around 70 per cent of the children born before

the disaster continue to suffer from respiratory diseases and 55 per cent from affected

eyesight (Eckerman; Sharma and Sharma). After the accident, many pregnant women

suffered miscarriages, while others delivered malformed babies. More than half the

children exposed to the gas in their mothers’ wombs died (Misra; Doyle). Many others

were born with deformities and permanent disabilities. Even after 25 years after the gas

leak, 390 tons of toxic chemicals abandoned at the UCIL plant continue to leak and

pollute the groundwater in the region and affect thousands of people (Kulling; Saini).

Indra Sinha has taken up the cause of Bhopal for more than a decade now, since

1993. The former advertising copywriter-turned-writer got drawn into the Bhopal

matters, as Stephen Moss reports, when he received a request for an advertisement to help

raise money for starting a free clinic in Bhopal (“Triumph from disaster”). The ad

campaign resulted in generous contributions from newspaper readers for the clinic and

inspired Sinha to a long term commitment with the issues of Bhopal. He has been

consistent in his active campaigning and writing (mostly in The Guardian) for the cause

of Bhopal, which culminated in his second novel Animal’s People that was shortlisted for

the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2007 and won the Commonwealth Writers Prize

(Eurasia Region, Best Book) in 2008. The narrative is set against the backdrop of a

fictional city called Khaufpur closely re-creates the post-disaster Bhopal still fighting for

justice. Like Bhopal, Khaufpur too had witnessed a fatal gas leak from a pesticide plant,

which the people of Khaufpur call the “Kampani” (Company), which had killed

thousands and the gases still continue to affect the survivors. The story is told through the
 220

eyes of the central character Animal, a nineteen year old orphan boy who has been

crippled by the poisonous gas and walks on all his four limbs. Like the survivors of

Bhopal, the victims of Khaufpur too had been fighting the abusive power networks—

from the global corporation, the state, the judiciary, the media—that led to and still

continues to spell doom for the victimized common man. Thus, in order to understand the

tragedy of Khaufpur, one needs to understand the issues of Bhopal, for the connections

between the two are too deeply entangled.

However, in his email interview with Sandhya of Sepia Mutiny, Sinha proclaims

that the one thing the novel was not supposed to be was being a ‘polemic’. Consequently,

instead of being just a manifesto for the cause of Bhopal, the novel effectively weaves in

crucial issues in its narrative of a humane story of fictional victims surviving in a post-

disaster scenario. The characters are uniquely appealing, and like the central character

Animal—who is foul mouthed, cynical, crafty and yet lovable—often elude being

stereotypical objects of sympathy. As reviewer Ligaya Mishan of New York Times points

out, “Sinha is an effervescent writer, but he endows his characters with quirks rather than

fully realized interior lives”. Simultaneously, though victims of a gas disaster that closely

resembles the Bhopal tragedy, the characters are not necessarily tied to the geographical

space of Bhopal only. Rather, bereft of any real spatio-temporal specificity, they

represent the generic survivors fighting their lives out against the larger powers of global

capitalism anywhere in the globe. The fluidity of their identity, coupled with the

ambiguity of the geographical locale, makes the novel a universal tale of corporate
 221

exploitation all over the world. As Sinha asserts the wider scope of his novel in his

interview with Sandhya from Sepia Mutiny:

The disaster that overtook the city of Khaufpur is always kept sketchy, the

Kampani is never explicitly named, it is just the Kampani, and as such is not

simply Union Carbide or Dow Chemical, but stands for all those ruthless, greedy

corporations which are wreaking havoc all over the world. In Jaipur at the literary

festival Vickie and I met Alexis Wright, who has written of the aboriginal

peoples’ struggle against Rio Tinto Zinc, in Bombay we spent time with Sudeep

Chakravarti who has written a powerful book called Red Sun, about the Naxali

and Maoist movement in India - again tribal peoples forced off their land by

mining corporations and steel companies, including Tata, which is trying to get

Dow off the Bhopal hook.

Sinha’s novel indeed becomes a voice of resistance, as Sheila Jasanoff points out, “In

recent years, a work of fiction, Indra Sinha's novel Animal's People, may have done more

to revive international interest in Bhopal, and thus to touch the conscience of the world,

than decades of medical or legal action” (114). Apart from being a tale of injustice, the

novel is also a tale of local resistance. Balanced against the gross exploitation of the poor

by global corporations is common people’s unrelenting resistance in the form of grass

root activism. Thus, while the fatal toxicity and the dying people in Khaufpur portray the

gloom, the resilience of the common people and the potency of their protests bring in new

hopes for a successful resistance.

 222

One of the most impassioned critiques against economic globalization has been in

terms of the damage the multinational corporations wreck on the natural environment and

ecological balance of the global South. From the depletion of the Amazon rainforests to

the exploitative oil mining in Nigeria, global corporations have been held responsible for

multiple instances of ecological damage driven by corporate greed.62Michael Anderson

makes a comprehensive list of some of the most infamous cases of environmental

devastation caused by the corporatization of the developing countries under economic

globalization. His list goes as follows: The Bhopal gas tragedy that was caused in 1984

by a leak of methyl isocyanate gas from a pesticide plant owned by Union Carbide in

Bhopal, India; the injury and sterility caused in Costa Rican banana plantations from

exposure Dow-manufactured chemicals; the radioactive pollution in the village of Bukit

Merah in Malaysia caused by Mitsubishi; the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest in

Ecuador caused by Texaco; the damages following the collapse of a dam from copper

mining in Papua New Guinea; the environmental pollution caused by Shell’s oil

exploration in Nigeria; asbestosis and mesiothelioma in South Africa caused by asbestos

exposure from Cape Industries and so on (405-406). In most cases, the issue is not only

about the corporate exploitation of the resources of the developing countries, but also

about the refusal of the multinational corporations to take social and environmental

62
See Michel Chussudovsky, The Globalization Of Poverty: Impacts Of IMF And
World Bank Reforms (1997); Mark Hertsgaard, Earth Odyssey (1999); Joshua
Karliner, The Corporate Planet: Ecology And Politics In The Age Of
Globalization (1997); David C. Korten, When Corporations Rule The World
(1995).
 223

responsibility. Thus, though factories are set up and run with the motive of profit

maximization, the corporations, as several scholars point out, refuse to take

responsibilities for their overseas workers or the foreign environmental damage (Jacobs;

Korten; Eckersley; Sethi). Nagaraj and Raman caustically point out the duplicity of the

corporations’ Western, wealthier home countries like the US, which applies a differential

rule of corporate liability at a national level and a different one for abroad. As they assert:

“It is significant that while no attempt was made by the US government to get their

multinationals to improve safety standards abroad, many steps were taken within the US

to enhance safety and protect potential victims of industrial hazards” (537). Industrial

disasters and ecological damage by the corporations in the global South thus often result

in an evasion of corporate responsibility, and a lengthy battle for human rights and

compensation like in the case of Bhopal gas tragedy. Predictably, the worst victims of the

environmental hazards caused by global corporatization are the marginal communities—

the local indigenous populations who thrive on the local natural resources, the local

laborers who encounter poor environmental conditions in their work place and the poor

who cannot afford to escape from the disasters. These marginal communities are often

forgotten when policies are drawn and decisions are made by the state in favor of the

MNCs. Critiquing such policy decisions, Vandana Shiva calls globalization a process of

stark “environmental apartheid” (“A Common Future” 3), which operates through

“restructuring the control over resources in such a way that the natural resources of the

poor are systematically taken over by the rich and the pollution of the rich is
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systematically dumped over the poor” (136). Sinha’s novel depicts such victimization of

the poor residents of Bhopal who suffer due to corporate onslaught on the environment.

As a geographical locale, Khaufpur (which literally means the city of terror) is a

place of death and sickness. Animal, along with thousand others in Khaufpur have lost

their families, and their health been irreparably damaged for life from a night of toxic gas

leak that equals the magnitude of the Bhopal tragedy. Animal has been orphaned and his

spine incurably twisted that makes him walk on all fours. Almost all the residents of

Khaufpur have been affected by the gas disaster in some way or the other. Thousands

died and left innumerable families affected. Victims like Pyare Bai lost her husband,

Pandit Somraj lost his family and his voice, Huriya Bi lost her daughter and is left with a

maimed granddaughter. The disaster has not even spared the unborn, like the aborted

fetus that Animal names as Khã-in-the-jar, which bears testimony to the intensity of the

damage done by the gas. Living in a city teeming with tales of tragedy, Animal narrates

several other stories of victimhood with precision, yet with a cynical indifference that

comes with witnessing a long trajectory of suffering on a mass scale. Khaufpur remains

poisoned for decades after the accident and the plight of its people continues as the

abandoned factory and its residual toxins continue to contaminate the ecology of the

town. Thus, discovering that her breast milk shows signs of poisoning even after decades

of the disaster, a woman from Khaufpur laments: “Our wells are full of poison. It’s in the

soil, water, in our blood, it’s in our milk. Everything here is poisoned” (108). Sinha’s

Khaufpur replicates the bleak picture of modern Bhopal, where toxic chemicals still lay

exposed, contaminating groundwater sources and continuing its impact on the survivors
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(Chander; Stringer; Labunska) while the next generations are still being born with birth

defects arising from gas poisoning (Eckerman). Khaufpur is thus the metaphorical

dystopic space of environmental devastation, ushered in by the globalized corporations as

a living nightmare for the common people.

As the novel reveals issues of continuing environmental damage, it embodies a

distinct rhetoric of environmentalism. Evoking a prominent metaphor in environmentalist

discourse, the landscape of Khaufpur is portrayed as an ‘ecological dystopia’, a term that

Lyman Sargent defines as depicting the horrors of a man made environmental collapse

(31). Taking up the rhetoric of environmentalism, the novel recurrently invokes the image

of ‘Apocalypse’—which Lawrence Buell has asserted as “the single most powerful

master metaphor that the contemporary environmental imagination has at its disposal”

(285). Animal refers to the night of the gas leak as the “night of the Apokalis” and refers

to himself and the people of Khaufpur as the “people of the Apokalis” (136,148), the

ones who have witnessed the worst of an environmental destruction. As Animal’s foster

mother Ma Fanci says: “Don’t you know that the Apokalis has begun? It started here and

it’s coming back again” (143). Again, using another popular rhetoric of

environmentalism, the novel describes the mass deaths of the people closely incarnating

the visions of an annihilating man-made environmental disaster that many

environmentalists like Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlich and Murray Bookchin had predicted.

Animal recalls scenes of the innumerable deaths on the fateful night that testify the

magnitude of the disaster: “On that night it was a river of people, some in their

underwears, others in nothing at all, they were staggering like it was the end of some big
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race, falling down not getting up again…the road was covered with dead bodies (32). The

post-apocalyptic landscape, as Animal describes through his description of the factory

site, is a topography of toxicity and lifelessness, and resembles the visions of the dystopic

environment that Carson describes in Silent Spring: “There was a strange stillness…It

was a spring without voices…only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh (2).

Similarly, the factory site at Khaufpur too is devoid of all life forms: “Listen how quiet

it’s. No bird song. No hoppers in the grass. No bee hum. Insects can’t survive here” (29).

Sinha’s Khaufpur aligns with Carson’s dystopia also in terms of the causal factor in the

catastrophe, for Carson too describes a world ruined primarily by the poisonous chemical

pesticides. Simultaneously, the description of factory site also echoes another frequent

image that Buell observes in late twentieth century environmental writings—“the vision

of a tampered-with nature recoiling against humankind in a kind of return of the

repressed” (308). As wilderness grows back in the poisoned land, the factory site thus

embodies the conflict of man versus nature, with nature trying to reclaim its possession:

Mother Nature’s trying to take back the land. Wild sandalwood trees have arrived,

who knows how…That herb scent, it’s ajwain, you catch it drifting in gusts, at

such moments the forest is beautiful, you forget it’s poisoned and

haunted…Creepers, brown and thick as my wrist, have climbed all the way to the

top…like they want to rip down everything the Kampani made” (31).

Animal’s impassioned description of the abandoned factory site clearly demarcates the

central dialectical tropes in the novel, of the corporation versus nature. On the one hand is

the greedy, exploitative corporation, embodied by the “Kampani”, which wreaks

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catastrophe on the environment with acts of recklessness; and on the other hand is nature,

rendered devastated and which in return, turns lethal for mankind. Animal, in his

description of a devastated Khaufpur, stands aligned to nature in their common

victimhood, and consequently, demonstrates a greater ecological awareness of the

disaster.

Not only does Animal visualize the apocalypse and can perceive the wilderness of

the place with a greater empathy with nature, Animal’s description also repeatedly

evokes the sense of the ‘uncanny’ that Timothy Morton identifies as an integral part of

ecological awareness. As Morton asserts: “The more ecological awareness we have, the

more we experience the uncanny…If there is an inevitable experiential dimension of

ecology, there is an inevitable psychological dimension. This psychological dimension

includes weird phenomena that warp our psychic space” (54). This concept of the

uncanny, which Morton originally derives from Freud’s conception of the uncanny and

describes as the weird perception of both familiarity and strangeness in desolate nature

(53), is also seen in Animal’s perception of the post-disaster environment. Abandoned by

all, the factory is Animal’s exclusive shelter, for none except Animal comes near the

dreaded haven of poison. Animal is thus familiar with every corner of the desolate locale

and uses it as his private sleeping nest. Yet, in spite of its familiarity, the place also

embodies a sense of uncanny for Animal, which he sometimes feels in the overpowering

strangeness of the place. As he comments:

Eyes, there’s such a thing as bhayaanak rasa, the kind of terror that makes your

little hairs stand up and tremble…I feel it when I come to this high place…You
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should hear the ghosts, the factory is full of them, when a big wind blows, their

souls fly shrieking up and down the empty pipes. Some nights, there’d be nothing

here, just the ghosts and me… (32)

As the place invades the psychological space of Animal, he also shares a sense of unity

with the post-catastrophe landscape, both rendered disfigured by the external agents of

environmental exploitation. Sinha’s narrative thus marks the distinction between the

victimizer and the victimized, asserting that the global corporation is a larger debilitating

force that destroys both men and nature alike.

In contrast to the environment and its people stands the corporation, the

‘Kampani’, which Sinha indicts as the sole perpetrator of the disaster. The tragedy calls

into question the issue of ethical responsibility of the multinational corporations

operating in the third world nations. The UCC, on which Sinha’s ‘Kampani’ is primarily

modeled, has been identified as a major cause behind the Bhopal disaster. Several studies

have revealed that the UCC did not maintain that crucial safety measures in the plant that

potentially lead to the disaster. The negligence on the part of the UCC ranged from the

absence of safety parts in the plant like the MIC tank alarms, sufficient manual backup

systems, slip-blind plates to the malfunctioning of several other safety features like the

vent gas scrubber and the refrigeration system much before the actual tragedy struck.

( Eckerman; Chouhan). Apart from that, the poor work conditions including bad

employee management, halted promotions, forced compromise on safety controls and the

communication gap between the mother company and the Indian branch (Kurtzman;

Cassels) had also been blamed for the long term causes of the disaster. These failures on
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the part of the UCC blatantly pointed out the down side of multinational expansion in the

name of foreign investment, and the slovenly attitude of the corporation when it comes to

the context of a developing nation. On a similar strain, The Trade Environmental

Database (TED) Case Studies of the Mandala Project from American University, have

pointed to “serious communication problems and management gaps between Union

Carbide and its Indian operation”, characterized by “the parent companies [sic] hands-off

approach to its overseas operation” and “cross-cultural barriers” (233). However, the

company’s failings not only display corporate indifference and sloppiness but rather

testify, as David Weir argues in the various chapters in his book The Bhopal Syndrome,

larger issues of corporate exploitation that makes use of third world conditions like

malnutrition, illiteracy, poverty, and a short life expectancy to conductively increase the

international mobility of hazardous products, industry, and wastes to these lucrative

markets of cheap labor, low maintenance costs, and relative indifference to occupational

health . The UCC, however, shifted all blames on its Indian counterpart UCIL, claiming

that most of the shares of the company were owned by the “Indian financial institutions

and thousands of private investors in India” (“UCC-Bhopal”). Evading all responsibilities

for the catastrophe, the UCC also claimed that “neither Union Carbide nor its officials are

subject to the jurisdiction of the Indian court since they did not have any involvement in

the operation of the plant”(ibid). The CEO Warren Anderson fled Bhopal on the night of

the tragedy, never to return again to face any of the charges filed against him.

Sinha’s novel cogently brings out such evasive nature of the multinational

corporation that is far beyond the reach of the common people, both geographically and
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metaphorically. Set in more than a decade after the tragedy, the novel shows the people

of Khaufpur still fighting for their rights against the company. The people of Khaufpur

demand that the ‘Kampani’ take responsibility for the disaster, pay proper compensation

to those affected and clean up the rest of the poisoned site that continues to pollute the

surrounding environment. Yet, as Animal points out, the “trouble was that the Kampani

bosses were far away in Amrika (America), and they refused to come to Khaufpur’s court

and no one could make them” (33-34). As the protestors in Khaufpur keep on

proclaiming their demands with no success, Animal informs how the almost impossible

probability of the company being brought to justice has entered the idiom of Khaufpur’s

speech as a metaphor for eternity (34). Sinha’s novel shows the glaring power

discrepancy that lies between the transnational global corporation and the locally bound

hapless victims who have virtually no power over the international expanse of the

corporation. The aftermath of the gas tragedy bears witness to the dangers of

transnational fluidity brought in by globalization; for while the free market has opened up

the third world nations for corporations and a free flow of goods and capital, it is this

very fluidity that allows the corporations to abandon their accountability of the local

population.

However, it is not only the negligence and the lack of accountability of the

corporation that is laid bare in the tragedy; Sinha’s novel exposes other crucial issues that

refer to how companies, like the UCC, actively perpetrate violent measures against the

local population in order to protect its interests. More than anything else, the immediate

concern of the “Kampani” after the disaster struck was to cover it up. Animal
 231

sarcastically comments on the Kampani’s refusal to divulge the composition of the

poisonous gas as a part of its “trade secret” (230), which actually refers to the UCC’s

refusal to release any information about the MIC, both before and after the disaster.

Eckerman shockingly asserts that, “in reply to the telegrams sent to UCC’s US

headquarters, doctors in Bhopal were told that the gas was harmless” (90); several other

researchers like P.S. Chauhan and et all, Jamie Cassels, and Tara Jones question the

UCC’s callous actions of hiding crucial information about the poisonous gas , or what

Suroopa Mukherjee terms as the “conspiracy of silence” (35).

The novel also refers to multiple other instances related to the Bhopal tragedy that

testify the corporation’s deliberate attempt to mislead people and cover up the disaster.

One such event that Sinha re-creates in the novel is that of the use of sodium thiosulfate,

which was a major point of contention in the Bhopal issue. The UCC initially

recommended the use of sodium thiosulfate, which seemingly relieved the victims’

symptoms, but later withdrew the statement in an attempt to what has been interpreted as

a cover up of evidence of HCN in the gas leak that the UCC had vigorously denied

(Dhara; Broughton). Consequently, in alliance with the corporation, the state resorted to

official violence, ordering the police to break into the volunteer medical camps,

confiscate the thiosulfate and arrest the doctors administering the drug (Jasanoff 188).

Animal narrates a similar incident in the context of Khaufpur that replicates the

thiosulfate episode in Bhopal:

This thighs-of-fate was a medicine which was helping people to get relief. News

quickly spread, from all over the city people came to wait in line for injections,
 232

but suddenly the treatment was stopped. Some bigwig let slip that the Kampani

bosses from America had rung up their best friend the Chief Minister and told him

to stop the thighs-of-fate…The police came, wrecked the shack, beat up the

doctors. Zafar said that by giving thighs-of-fate somehow also proved that the

illness could pass to future generations. The Kampani was afraid of this

knowledge getting out, so they had the thighs-of-fate stopped and many were lost

who could have been saved. (112)

Animal’s narration, though apparently misinformed about the actual name of the

medicine, nevertheless testifies the active violence that the global corporation metes out

on the population of the poor. Moving beyond the issues of negligence, incidents like

these reveal the global corporation as a ruthless profit machine that would go to any

length to safeguard its monetary interests. Consequently, this incident also raises crucial

questions about the insidious alliance between the transnational corporation and the

national government, an issue that I will take up later in the chapter.

Instances of the company’s attempts to cover up the gravity of the catastrophe

have been cited numerous other times in the course of the novel’s narrative. When the

American doctor, Elli Barber, arrives in Khaufpur to open a clinic, the leader of the

protestors, Zafar, vehemently opposes her moves. Zafar doubts her to be to be another of

the “Kampani” sponsored medical personnel, many of whom have visited Khaufpur to

gather case histories, surveys and data, only to refute the claims of the protestors and

claim that the chemicals have ceased to have poisonous effects on people (69).

Consequently, the corporation can shove off its responsibility for any further action on
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their part. Zafar’s fears are not unfounded for they refer to the real life rhetoric of a

current toxin-free Bhopal, propounded by the UCC and backed by the state. For example,

denying the negative effects of the gas The New Scientist Nov 28, 1985 issue quotes a

letter that the UCC CEO Warren Anderson wrote “We sponsored leading medical

authorities, here in the United States to visit Bhopal…We are pleased that their

experience in Bhopal and the news reports from there corroborate the beliefs of our own

medical people, that those injured by methyl isocyanate are rapidly recovering and

display little lasting effects (41). Interestingly enough, none of the research projects on

Bhopal—whether be it by international scholars or Indians— seem to assert that the

toxins in Bhopal have ceased to affect people, arguing on the contrary for the long lasting

damaging health effects that have been carried even to the subsequent generations. In a

similar strain, Zafar voices the concern of the real victims who continue to suffer the

after-effects of a devastating disaster, while company backed data attempt to establish the

apparent ‘safety’ of the poisoned city.

The callous role of the “Kampani” in Khaufpur not only stands for the UCC’s

violence on Bhopal, but rather symbolizes several other instances of corporate terrorism

brought in by neoliberal globalization in multiple sites of especially economically

marginalized nations. As Zafar asserts the universality of their plight:

Is Khaufpur the only poisoned city? It is not. There are others and each one of has

its own Zafar. There’ll be a Zafar in Mexico City and others in Hanoi and Manila

and Halabja and there are Zafars of Minamata and Seveso, of Sao Paulo and

Toulouse…(296)
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Zafar’s examples recall the several other incidents of environmental debilitation by

corporatization all over the world—the fatal air pollution by the industrial plants in

Mexico City that affected more than one million people in 1999; the severe mercury

pollution by the Chisso Corporation in Minamata (which gave rise to the infamous

Minamata disease), the industrial disaster at Seveso caused by a chemical plant in 1976,

the AZF explosion at a Toulouse chemical factory in 2001 that killed half a million

people and several others that carry the same story of the common man’s suffering due to

corporate irresponsibility. The novel is an overt critique not only of the UCC or its role in

the Bhopal gas tragedy alone, for critique against this particular company extends beyond

its specific context to expose the intricate network of power of a generic “Kampani” or

global corporation. Thus, Khaufpur, and in a way Bhopal, is not an isolated case of

corporate oppression but belongs to the same trajectory of the exploitation of global

corporations that spelled multiple instances of disaster and suffering.

The novel projects the hegemony of the global corporations also through

metaphorical motifs. In a poignant passage in the book, Zafar describes his vision about a

powerful corporation that reigns supreme in economic power all over the world. Though

narrated as a surreal sequence, the description brings out a potent critique of the

operations of a global corporate house that seeks to control, exploit as well as manipulate

people for the sake of its profits. Zafar’s vision sees the company as no less than an

aggressive military body of neocolonialism, armed with its own battalions of soldiers and

weapons of mass destruction like tanks, jets and atomic bombs (228-229). Again, Sinha

takes a dig at the corporate sponsored scientific research projects that ultimately work to
 235

accelerate the profits of the company—“doctors doing research to prove that the

Kampani’s many accidents have caused no harm to anyone”, chemists experimenting

with poisons and the biologists testing them on the living animals to gauge their

effectiveness (229). Sinha’s caustic satire also lays bare the pretense of corporate social

responsibility (CSR) which many contemporary corporate houses use to accentuate their

social appeal. With more companies claiming an allegiance to environmentalist and

social concerns as part of their business ethics, or what McAlister calls as “strategic

philanthropy”(689), Sinha’s narrative scathingly rejects those corporate claims for social

good as gimmicks in public relations.63 Thus Jafar’s vision clarifies: “It is the job of the

PR people to tell the world how good and caring and responsible the Kampani is” (229).

And finally, Zafar’s illuminating epiphany reveals the networks of power that are

enmeshed with the global corporation. The “Kampani” is aligned with political power

and the media, the underworld and the lawkeepers, on both national and international

level. By listing “generals and judges, senators, presidents and prime ministers, oil

sheikhs, newspaper owners, movie stars, police chiefs, mafia dons”(229) all on the roll of

the corporations’ friends, Sinha hints at the immense span of the power networks spun by

the unbridled spread of global capitalism. The corporation in Zafar’s dream thus

simulates the structure of a classic global corporation based in a first world nation and

controlling its operations globally. As Bartlett and Ghosal describe the classic

63
McAlister defines “strategic philanthropy “as such: “Many firms have
discovered the performance benefits of philanthropy, including increased
customer loyalty, enhanced company reputation…In order to reap these
benefits… philanthropy is increasingly integrated within corporate strategic plan”
(690).
 236

Multinational Corporation through the metaphor of an octopus— with a single brain

located in the company headquarters operating the strategic resources while its tentacles

are spread across the globe (65), Zafar’s dream too seems to reveal the octopus-like

structure of corporate power networks that are disseminated across nations.

Crucial in this power network is the alliance between the corporation and the

nation state that embodies the characteristic realignment of power in a neo-liberal

economy. As Foucault argues, unlike liberalism which sought to restrict the intervention

of state for more freedom of market, neoliberalism restructures the state according to the

interests of the market— i.e “a state under the supervision of the market rather than a

market under the supervision of the state” (116). It is this same proposal for the “effective

state” that the World Bank President Wolfensohn endorsed when he summoned the

nation states to play “a catalytic, facilitating role, encouraging and complementing the

activities of private business and individuals" (“The State in a Changing World”).

Consequently, the repressive power of the states, like the police and laws, have been

applied to protect the interests of the neoliberal market, with the government increasingly

intervening in aspects of citizen’s social lives that are “off limits” for the neoliberal

ideology (Sklar 1995; Hutton 1997). In India, as activist Smitu Kothari points out, the

state has deployed security forces “to facilitate domestic capital or foreign exchange-

bearing entrepreneurs” (114). Subsequently, Kothari points out in another instance how

the business interests of foreign investors have often been projected as national interests

by the state. As a result, Kothari argues, the democratic space of those victimized by the

new economic policy of liberalization shrinks significantly (114). The Bhopal Gas
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Tragedy witnessed such an alliance between the state and the corporation, which the

novel poignantly brings out in its sharp critique of the state government.

The role of the Indian government, especially of the state government of Madhya

Pradesh, has been a subject of rigorous critique in the context of the Bhopal disaster due

to several reasons. Firstly, it is questioned why the state government gave permission for

the factory to be set up in a densely populated locality unsuitable for a pesticide plant.

Several independent investigations—from news agencies like the NDTV to scholars like

Brojendra Nath Banerjee have pointed out the utter inanity of the local Municipal Board

and the state authorities for having overlooked the safety standards and risks associated

with the UCIL factory, suggesting an insidious nexus between the state and the

corporation. Secondly, the state and the central government have been directly indicted

for aiding the CEO of UCC, Anderson, to flee from India immediately after the disaster.

While the question as to how Anderson could escape safely immediately after the disaster

logically points to some governmental intervention, in a recent testimony the former

Union minister Sathe has asserted the direct involvement of the then Chief Minister

Arjun Singh in providing a government plane to safely escort Anderson out of the

country. Finally, the Bhopal activists have located the state-corporation nexus mostly in

the compensation deal that the Indian state settled with the UCC, on behalf of the victims,

which proved to be totally inadequate for the victims’ losses. The $470 million UCC paid

to the Indian government, was partly based on the disputed claim that only 3000 people

died and 102,000 suffered permanent disabilities (Kumar 366). By the end of October

2003, according to the Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation Department,
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compensation had been awarded to 554,895 people for injuries received and 15,310

survivors of those killed, with each receiving a meager amount of money.

Sinha’s Animal’s People takes up these very issues through the lived experiences

of the characters for whom the state—in both its figures of authority and repressive

actions—is analogous to the callous company. As one resident of Khaufpur sums it up:

Haven’t the politicians been in the Kampani’s pocket from the beginning? Have

you forgotten the old days, how those pompous big shots would ride in the

Kampani limos, never looking to right or left…Says Nisha, “The CM does what

the Kampani wants.” (112)

While the CM is revealed as a close ally of the corporation, working in its best interest

rather than the people, the novel also brings out the repressive state machinery through

police brutality on protesting crowds. Twice in the course of the narrative, the crowd

gathered to protest is dispersed by the police through violent means. The scenes of the

police brutality in the novel are vivid, bringing out the double helplessness of the

victimized people, who are ignored by the corporation and repressed by the elected state

machinery. Yet, as the people continue with their protests, the powers of the state enter in

a shameless private deal with the company representatives to settle the demands of

compensation. The novel describes the meeting between the two sides of power as a

secret, clandestine affair conducted away from the public eye, and again safely guarded

by the repressive machinery of the police and the military. Though the meeting in the

novel ends up in a humorous disaster—with someone jeopardizing it with a stink bomb—

the instance in the narrative points to the real life deals like these that are constantly
 239

settled between the state authorities and the powers of global capitalism, outside the

public eye. With such daunting power networks to challenge, how much do the local

protests matter? Animal’s People shows that they matter significantly, for the novel

narrates a hopeful future where the juggernaut of global capitalism can be stalled by the

grass root movements of the poorest marginals.

The issue of socio-economic marginalization of the victims is crucial in

understanding the complete power dynamics of the post-disaster politics. Khaufpur’s

disaster, like any other environmental disaster, is a tragedy whose worst affected victims

are the poor people from the margins. Victimhood in environmental disasters is often

disproportionate in terms of the socio-economic standing of the victims and related to

poverty (Wisner 654), for the poor are not only inadequately equipped to face a disaster,

they are also the most potential victims of an environmental calamity owing to their

proximity to the hazardous sites. As Alexander and Fairbridge assert, the poor are

constrained to occupy sites that are most vulnerable to hazards—“the flashfloodable

canyons of the Andean cities such as Cusco, the steep, unstable tropical hillsides of

Caracas, Rio De Janeiro and Ponce, the crumbling and floodable river banks of Ganges

and Brahmaputra in Bangladesh…and the sites next to dangerous chemical plants in

Mexico City and Bhopal” (663). Consequently, hazards strike these poor populations the

most, who, having nowhere else to go, battle for their existence against disasters that the

privileged can afford to escape. The Bhopal Gas tragedy was also essentially a tragedy of

the poor, for the places most heavily affected in the gas leak were the congested slum

colonies such as J. P. Nagar, Kazi Camp, Chola Kenchi, and Railroad Colony that
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surrounded the factory site. Residing in dangerous proximity with the toxic pesticide

plant, these poor slum people were virtually damned for disastrous consequences even

before the night of the gas leak. Yet, the residences were hardly a matter of choice—

though the government often dubbed them as forced illegal occupancy—and rather

testified the sites of marginal existence that accompanied the processes of modernization

brought in by corporations. As De Grazia cogently puts it, the Bhopal slums were direct

products of the factory itself:

Every Indian city that can boast of progress must confess to the slums that come

with progress. To create a new factory of the highest levels of design and

technology employing one thousand workers in a fully modern setting is to create

a shanty-town of 30,000 people. It is practically a sociological law, one which,

however, has been given only cursory attention by those who try to built

modernity by emplacing isolated scraps of it upon a traditional culture.(16)

Ironically, when modernization turned into disaster, it is again the people at the margins

who suffered the most.

The worst victims of the gas leak in Animal’s People too are the poorest of the

poor. Though the night of the disaster brought death and illness for all the people of

Khaufpur, Sinha’s narrative shows how the poor are affected beyond just the

physiological or personal damage, for the tragedy left them economically impaired as

well. The novel also brings out a disproportion of victimhood between the affluent and

the poor—though both the well-off Pandit Somraj and the poverty ridden slum dwellers

lost their families on the fateful night, it is the poor people of the slums who experience
 241

the aftermath of the disaster in their daily struggles for existence. Thus, while Somraj as a

victim experiences the disaster as more of a personal loss where he lost his family, and

even artistic loss—since the gas rendered the vocalist in him mute—his plight is

completely different from that of the slum dwellers like Animal or poor women like

Pyare Bai, for whom the tragedy compounds when it couples with struggle for the basic

means of sustenance. For Pyare Bai, the illness and death of her husband through gas

poisoning was not only a personal loss, but also the loss of the sole bread winner of the

family and thereafter a deeper plunge for her into poverty and debt. Pyare Bai’s post-

disaster trouble is a particularly telling example of how environmental catastrophe strikes

its most severe blows on the underprivileged people— in this case a poverty ridden

widow with no support. Alarmingly, Animal asserts that her suffering is not one of its

kind, for “the story of this one woman contains the tale of thousands” (83). Similarly, for

Animal, the disaster renders him not only physically disable but also incapable of fending

for himself except as a street scavenger. Thus, for all the victims at the Nutcracker,

Khaufpur’s most affected slum, the calamity brought in by the Kampani is essentially a

multifaceted force of physical and economic destruction.

Significantly enough, poverty also stalls the prospects of recuperation after the

disaster. The suffering of the victims of Khaufpur, like the victims of Bhopal, is all the

more aggravated by their lack of resources, inability to afford good health care, poor

living conditions and most importantly, their negligence by both the state and the

corporation. Zafar narrates how proper healthcare is also at stake for the poor people—

since the doctors also spurn the poor, refusing to touch them for the fear of pollution (24).
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Similarly, Animal exposes the futility of the so called “free” hospitals that are of no avail,

as the poor of Khaufpur still pay exorbitant prices for a bottle of blood (24) or struggle to

afford the much needed oxygen for the gas affected victims. Added to that is the

subhuman living conditions of the slums that most of these victims are confined to,

making it almost impossible for these poor people to recover from the damage done to

them. Doomed to a life of waste, the poverty of the victims fetches them more neglect

from the authorities, who hardly care about these people living on the margins of the

society. With neither the state nor the company ready to take any responsibility for these

impoverished victims, ironically the poor man himself gets blamed for the mess that he is

in. Thus, when Elli gasps with disgust at the way most slum dwelling victims in

Khaufpur live—“filth, litter and plastic all over, open drains stinking right outside the

houses. Flies. Every bit of waste ground used as a latrine”—the government doctor lays

the blame on the people themselves—“it’s these people, they don’t know any better”

(105). Sinha critiques this very discourse of blaming the poor for their sufferings, which

is a part of the larger neoliberal discourse of individual self-care. Decrying that each

individual is responsible for his own welfare and self-care, neoliberalism asserts that the

poor are “responsible for their own fates” (Corbridge and Harris 121 ) and hence the state

has no responsibility for them. In the same way, as Sinha shows in the novel, the actual

government indifference for the continuing suffering of the poor victims of Bhopal

echoes the idea that nobody else is responsible for the plight of the poor but their own

condition. Quoting a real life instance of this rhetoric, Muneeza Naqvi reports that

Babulal Gaur, the state minister for gas relief and rehabilitation in Madhya Pradesh,
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denied charges that Bhopal is still being polluted by the toxic factory residues; insisting

that there is no current toxic contamination to cause the current birth defects ‘allegedly’

related to the disaster. Rather Gaur promptly lays the blame on poverty—asserting that

“the diseases plaguing children are only a consequence of living in poor slums”.

Simultaneously, the debilitating effects of poverty are often manipulated into a

rhetoric of fatalism of the poor man, who is destined to suffer by some way or the other if

not by the company. In the novel, Elli narrates the moving account of her encounter with

another doctor regarding the state of affairs in Khaufpur. While Elli expresses shock and

indignation at the plight of the poor, raising questions about their justice: “But what about

those people? The ones still waiting for justice? The ones who are suffering without help?

Do you move on and leave them behind?”; the other doctor on the other hand justifies

the fate of the poor as inevitable—“Those poor people never had a chance. If it had not

been the factory it would have been cholera, TB exhaustion, hunger. They would have

died anyway” (153). Thus, the relative low life expectancy of the third world poor

becomes a distorted excuse for discounting the damage done by corporation, and in

extension becomes an excuse for the corporation and the state to absolve their liabilities

for these marginal victims. The logic is that since the victims are already vulnerable to

disease and death from their own living conditions, and the corporation cannot be held

responsible for causing too much damage. Sinha’s narration of the rhetoric of fatalism in

the doctor’s assertion seems to explain why the authorities have least bothered to take up

the cause of the Bhopal victims even after 25 years after the event.
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Not only that, the profiling of the victims according to the relative cost of their

lives also explains the pattern of disproportionate compensation for the Bhopal victims

which is the lowest when compared with other scales of disaster compensation. The

average amount to families of the dead was only $2,200 (Kumar 24) which is nothing

compared to the immense damage the victims faced. If compensations are based on the

cost of the damage caused, then the poor people’s lives were assigned a minimal value.

As Castelman points out, had compensation in Bhopal been paid at the same rate at which

the asbestosis victims were being awarded in US courts by defendants including UCC,

the liability would have been greater than $10 billion dollars (218). Hanna, Morehouse,

and Sarangi also provide another instance of discrimination for the Bhopal victims—six

months after the Bhopal tragedy on June 23rd, when an Air-India Jumbo crashed off the

coast of Ireland, the relatives of all the 300 victims were speedily settled for a

compensation of nearly 1 million rupees each (12). The grossly disproportionate

compensation is a marker, among many others, how the victims of Bhopal tragedy were

discriminated against on account of their marginalized socio-economic status.

Devastated by the disaster and ignored for being on the margins, the underclass

victims of the gas leak stand at a huge power differential with the authorities of power.

Yet, Animal’s People narrates an impassioned account of common people’s fight against

the mighty forces of global capitalism and tells a story of grass root struggles. On an

apparent comparison of agency, the victims are of no match to the immensely powerful

global corporation and the state. Zafar describes this unequal war for justice where all the

power is tipped on the side of the Kampani:

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My people are the poorest on the planet, those we fight against are the richest. We

have nothing, they have it all. On our side there is hunger, on theirs greed with no

purpose but to become greedier. Our people are so poor that thirty-three thousand

of them together could not afford one Amrikan lawyer, the Kampani can afford

thirty three thousand lawyers” (228).

The poor people of Khaufpur take on the powerful “Kampani” with no other means and

weapons other than the power of collective resistance, whereby all the victims join

together in protest without any individual difference. The novel thus projects a powerful

manifesto for social activism that could challenge the oppression of the power structures

and through the success of the fictional people of Khaufpur, paints a hopeful future for

Bhopal when justice will finally be achieved. Yet, the collective resistance of common

people is not only limited to Khaufpur’s localized protests, involving only the affected

victims, but rather the novel portrays a resistance movement on a much larger scale—that

draws in people from diverse social classes and even foreign nationalities—to unite

together for the cause of the victims. As the upper class Zafar, Nisha and Somraj, as well

as the American doctor Elli join in with the underprivileged victims of Khaufpur to fight

against the damage meted out by the global corporation, their collective protest

exemplifies how anti-corporate activism, even in the context a localized issue, transcends

its immediate local and national boundaries to invoke resistance on a transnational scale.

The resistive undertone of the novel is most emphatically captured in the

characters of Animal and Zafar. In an in depth analysis of Sinha’s novel, Rob Nixon

argues that the figure of Animal projects a resistive paradigm in the model of the
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picaresque. Terming Animal as the “environmental picaresque” Nixon argues how

Animal exhibits both the discomfiting abject of the elite class and the trans-identity who

embodies the leakiness between human and non-human, the national and the foreign. No

longer contained within specific categories, Animal is thus a subversive figure who

disrupts the apparent normalcy of things and instead spuriously resurfaces everything that

the socially remote, privileged classes, with their “ornate rhetoric and social etiquette,

seek to contain, repress, and eject” (451). Thus, as Nixon explicates:

Since the Spanish Golden Age, the picaresque has posed questions about the class

and gender politics of crime, contrasting the narrator's pecadillos with the

weightier crimes that society's overlords commit and from which they are

structurally exonerated. This passion for interrogating the hypocrisies of

criminality—above all, the inequitable definitions of crime—makes the

picaresque a promising fit with the priorities of the environmental justice

movement. Sinha, in repurposing the picaresque, brings into brilliant focus the

environmental, epidemiological, and economic fallout of the terrors that

transnational, neoliberal lawlessness dispenses in cahoots with corrupt, legally

immune local politicians. (252)

Thus the eccentric, cunning, often amoral Animal often stands out in resistance against

the shams of the pseudo-philanthropic institutions—the news and media, the state and

global aid—by exposing them and attacking them and refusing to co-operate with them in

their utilitarian motives.

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Another important figure of resistance is the local activist Zafar who spearheads

the people’s movement in Khaufpur. He embodies the Gramscian idea of the “organic”

intellectual—a leader of the masses whose role is no longer limited to eloquence, “which

is an exterior and momentary mover of feelings and passions but in active participating in

the practical life as a “constructor, organizer ‘permanent persuader’ and not just a simple

orator” (10). Like the Gramscian “organic” intellectual—who is not to be seen as

someone confined to an elite group but as someone grounded in everyday life to

articulate the prevailing dominant world view of the community he seeks to represent—

Zafar also shares his lived experience with the marginal victims he seeks to speak for.

Thus, as Animal asserts, he has become an integral part of Khaufpur’s people, having

“lived among them, dressed like them, shared their poverty and drank water from the

same stinking well” (22). Though initially an outsider who took up the cause of

Khaufpur, Zafar thus becomes an essential part of Khaufpur’s community through a long

trajectory of shared social experiences in oppression and injustice, in the daily perils of

living in a toxic environment and most importantly, in the collective experience of

constantly battling the Kampani and fighting for fundamental rights. Significantly

enough, like the Gramscian organic intellectual who is also distinguished less by his

affiliation to a professional organization and more by his socio-cultural function to

articulate the concerns of his group, Zafar is also an activist who left the institution of

education and mobilizes his people outside the paradigm of an institutional organization.

As essential harbinger of social action, Zafar mobilizes the masses of Khaufpur to

organized modes of social activism. Zafar’s leadership successfully culminates group

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solidarity among the victims who stand united in their resistance, no matter what the

odds. The mass boycotting of Elli’s clinic—when Zafar initially suspected Elli for

working in the interest of the Kampani—exemplifies how the common people can unite

in collective action in spite of their individual interests. Though Elli’s clinic had

presented an overwhelmingly lucrative offer by promising free medicine and quality

treatment to the long neglected gas victims, the people—in spite of their failing health

and intense physical suffering—remained united in boycotting it for the larger political

goal of achieving social justice through solidarity.

The novel narrates several instances of intense individual suffering that the

victims determinately bear to keep the boycott going, accentuating the unwavering

resolve of the people to forego individual needs for a social consciousness expressed in

communal resistance. With the neoliberal ideology increasingly propagating concepts of

‘individuality’ and ‘self-care’ dominating the discourse of a post-globalized world, the

common people of Khaufpur in Sinha’s novel project a powerful counter-discourse of

collective identity that embodies resistive potential against the powers of global

capitalism. The conflict of these two contrasting paradigms of self-care versus communal

responsibility is emphasized in Animal’s dilemma to whether exploit Elli’s resources for

his personal good or to be loyal to his community. Cynical of the potential results of

Zafar’s activist movement, though not his intention, Animal initially takes up a more

pragmatic approach to redress his own damage. Consequently, he manipulates his duties

as a member of the activist group for his individual interest—preparing the course for his

own cure through Elli, when thousands of other victims unite in resolve to boycott her
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clinic. Yet, in spite of his intense desire for self-betterment, Animal’s final decision

exemplifies the triumph of his collective identity over the individual one. Thus, though he

is offered treatment in a US hospital to cure his disability, Animal finally chooses to use

the money he had saved for his operation to release another fellow victim, Anjali, from

prostitution. When contemplating over his choices, Animal—who had long been

concerned with personal well being and ingenious modes of individual survival — is

overwhelmed by a feeling of empathy with the other victims who died fighting the

aftermath of the disaster. A sense of the collective seeps into Animal and makes him

more conscious of his communal ties over his individual needs, thus depicting a strong

subversion of the neoliberal ideology.

However, collective identity for these marginal victims is not only a matter of

choice but also a necessity. This is the only way the hapless victims, belonging to the

margins of society, can make their voices heard and articulate their concerns. As Zafar

leads his people through multiple facets of social protests, the marginal victim who is

often an invisible entity for the mighty bodies of power, is transformed into a part of a

potent community with a powerful force of collective resistance. Thus, it is only when the

people of Khaufpur is gathered together as unified community in protest—whether be it

in the collective demonstration outside the Chief Minister’s House or in a group hunger

strike demanding justice for the victims—that the state authorities takes notice of the

people’s demands. Narrating how the Chief Minister and the oppressive machineries of

the state were ruffled every time the people poured in collective actions of protest, the

novel both celebrates social activism as “weapons of the weak” (James Scott) and hopes
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for a better future of social justice brought in by victims on the margins. The people’s

resistance in Khaufpur is also a direct reference to the long trajectory of innumerable

pockets of protest and powerful activist movements in Bhopal that have been fighting for

justice over more than two decades. Sinha expresses his admiration for the relentless

struggle of the victims, quoting a report from Outlook India:

The victims haven’t given up. Their struggle for justice and dignity is one of the

most valiant anywhere. They have unbelievable energy and hope…the fight has

not ended. It won’t, so long as our collective conscience stirs. (“Interview with

Mark Thwaite”)

Significantly enough, activism in Bhopal illustrates a successful mobilization of marginal

identities for numerous illiterate, poor, marginalized women like Rabiya Bee, Mohini

Devi and the more famous Rashida Bee and Champa Devi Shukla—who have now

received the Goldman Environmental Prize for their leadership roles towards

environmental justice—and moved out of their primary domestic spheres to assemble in

political action against the state and the corporation. Thus, almost all the thriving local

organizations actively working with the victims of Bhopal — like Bhopal Gas Peedit

Mahila Stationery Karmachari Sangh, Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangathan, Gas

Peedit Nirasrit Pension Bhogi Sangharsh Morcha— are essentially conglomerations of

protestors who come from the socio-economically marginalized sections of society. In a

similar strain, Eurig Scandrette’s study on Bhopal activism reveal the astonishing

phenomenon of how the illiterate, underclass victims of Bhopal—who were completely

ignorant about the corporation or even the roles of their elected state representatives—
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grew aware of the issues, learned about their rights and could finally mobilize themselves

and others in the skills and tactics of political protests. The Bhopal disaster thus

witnessed the powerful uprising of common people to social activism, which though non-

violent, had immense import in keeping the issues of Bhopal alive.

Sinha’s narrative also brings into context the transnational compass of resistance

against the powers of globalization. Anti-corporate protests in the contemporary age,

especially in matters of environmental issues and rights, have often witnessed an

involvement of activists from all over the world.64 As economic globalization

disseminates through national boundaries to reach multifarious localities, the resistance

movement to the exploitative forces of globalization have also dispersed beyond local

and national boundaries to networks of protest on a transnational scale, a phenomenon

that is commonly known as “globalization from below”. Brecher, Costello and Smith

define the term as a resistive counter-movement:

through which people at the grassroots around the world link up to impose their

own needs and interests on the process of globalization…people can indeed

exercise power over globalization, but only by means of a solidarity that crosses

the boundaries of nations, identities and narrow interests. A corporate driven top-

down globalization can only be effectively countered by globalization from

below” (ix-x).

64
See Keck, Margaret E. and Kathryn Sikkink (1998). Activists Beyond Borders:
Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca, Cornell University Press -
chapter 1; Porta, Donatelle Della and Sidney Tarrow. Transnational Protests and
Global Activism.
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Consequently, as several grass root activist movements of the Global South— like

Abahlali base Mjondolo(South Africa), Narmada Bachao Andolan (India), —engage with

localized issues of oppression of the poor, indigenous rights and minority dispossession,

they are often joined by activist support from the international protestors, often from the

Global North. Similarly, the fight for environmental rights in a post-disaster Bhopal also

witnessed a considerable participation from the transnational protest groups hailing from

the first world countries. US based major activist networks like Amnesty International

and GreenPeace as well as the international campaigns formed solely for Bhopal—like

the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, International Medical Commission on

Bhopal—have been fighting for the cause of Bhopal on a transnational scale and

garnering support for it internationally. Significant among these transnational efforts is

the Sambhavna Trust, funded by the Pesticides Action Network UK (PAN-UK), which is

run as a coalition between local, national and international volunteers consisting of

eminent doctors, scientists, writers and social workers. Actively fighting for justice in

Bhopal, as well as providing direct medical help to numerous affected victims of gas

poisoning in Bhopal , the Sambhavna trust sets a commendable example of how

transnational engagement with local issues can counter the onslaught of global capitalism

and the damage it does to the people on the margins.

Taking its cue from the real life situations, the narrative of Animal’s People too

focuses on the context of international activists in local resistance movements. The

American doctor, Elli, leaves her own country and settles in Khaufpur, only to provide

free medical help—much like the voluntary doctors of Sambhavna clinic in Bhopal—to
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the long neglected, poor and suffering victims of Khaufpur. Again, Elli’s decision to help

the people of Khaufpur represents a potent resistance on a personal level— for Elli not

only works on her own, without tying up with any organization, but also takes up a fight

against her own husband, who works for the ‘Kampani’. Elli singlehandedly gives out

medical relief to the poor, relentlessly works to improve the living condition of the

victims, enthusiastically arranges for Animal’s treatment in a US hospital and in all

probabilities, is the woman behind sabotaging the insidious deal between the Kampani

lawyers and the state authorities. Sinha thus shows how the earnest efforts of even a

single person can make a huge difference in the counter movement against globalization.

Though Elli’s intervention in the matters of Khaufpur was initially received with

suspicion that she might be working for the Kampani itself, the misunderstandings about

Elli quickly give away to her acceptance in Zafar’s group, and the resistance movement

in Khaufpur gains in dimensions. The novel thus celebrates resistance as a collaboration

between the local and the transnational forces, for the fluidity of global capitalism can

possibly be countered only by an equally diffusive model of rhizomatic resistance in the

way Hardt and Negri asserts, “the forces that contest Empire and effectively prefigure an

alternative global society are themselves not limited to any geographical regions. The

geography of these alternative powers, the new cartography…is being written today

through the resistances, struggles and desires of the multitudes” (xvi).

Animal’s People thus narrates an blatant tale of corporate exploitation as well as

the grass root resistance of the people. While Khaufpur’s plight brings up questions of the

unbridled onslaught of global capitalism, the resilience of the people spell a hopeful
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future for collective resistance that subverts the rhetoric and policies of neoliberalism.

The novel ends with a sense of continuity, for the struggle against the powers of

exploitation will go on. Thus Animal proclaims: “All things pass, but the poor remain.

We are the people of the Apokalis. Tomorrow there will be more of us”(366). However,

while Animal’s People ends with the depiction of a hopeful future brought in by people’s

struggle, Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide projects a more haunting story of marginal

victimization, with no possible avenue for their redemption. Ironically, it is not the

corporate exploitation of the environment but rather the global initiatives to preserve the

natural world of the global south that leads to a harrowing victimization of the marginal,

subsistence-based communities. The novel’s environmental crisis can be resolved only

when global conservationists like Piya realize the limitations and concerns of the local

people, and work for a more context-specific conservation process.

Global Conservation and the Dispossession of the Marginal in Amitav Ghosh’s The

Hungry Tide.

Set against the unique backdrop of the Sunderbans, Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry

Tide narrates a compelling account of underclass settlers striving against the tumultuous

ecosystem of the deltaic archipelago. Considered to be one of the most significant

postcolonial writers of modern day India, Ghosh has repeatedly invoked issues of power

dynamics, oppression and marginal identities in the colonial and postcolonial context.

Thus, his Glass Palace narrates the Indian immigrant labor experience in Burma,The

Circle of Reason pans on the poor weaver Aloo criminalized under colonial laws, and In
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An Antique Land focuses on reconstructing the marginal history of the 12th century

Indian slave Bomma. Moreover, the marginal characters of Deeti and Kalua (Sea of

Poppies), Luchman and Mangala (Calcutta Chromosomes) that appear in Ghosh’s other

novels also exemplify his engagement with the marginal identities who are often rendered

silent in mainstream narratives of history. The Hungry Tide too takes up the issue of

marginality but in a unique context of globalization, ecogovernmentality, conservation,

and environmental research in the exceptional geology of the Sunderbans. While the

landscape of the Sunderbans spells unpredictability—embodying a complex conjunction

of the land, water and sea— complemented by a unique ecology that pits the poor settlers

in a constant tug of war with the dangerous and feral animals, global environmentalism

and ecotourism become a larger menacing force that evicts and displaces the third world

poor, dispossessing them consequently from the very natural resources on which they

depend for daily subsistence.

Set in a modern India where global conservation organizations, the nation state

and cosmopolitan researchers engage in supervising the local environment, The Hungry

Tide narrates a consequent dispossession and silencing of the marginal entities inhabiting

the landscape by the nation state and global forces of conservation. A countermovement

to environmental destruction, global environmentalism ironically invokes an equally

oppressive process of victimization of the marginal in the context of a developing nation

like India, which can hardly afford to join the bandwagon of global conservation due to

its immensely high population density and poverty. I read The Hungry Tide to explore the

politics of such marginalization affected by the dominant global environmental

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discourses on Sunderbans, as they unfold as a continuous trajectory of power through the

distinct spatio-temporal tropes of the postcolonial nation state to the contemporary era of

neoliberal globalization. Simultaneously, I also explore the intricate relationship between

environmental conservation and the neoliberal commoditization of the natural world and

the way the local inhabitants are adversely affected by these larger developments. Thus,

like the processes of environmental decimation, the processes of global environmentalism

also hinges on an exclusion of the local inhabitants, whose demands and voices are often

silenced in the global drive to save and market the earth.

The Hungry Tide tells a gripping story of diverse characters who hail from

distinct socio-cultural tropes and intersect each other against the most powerful presence

in the novel—the landscape of the Sunderbans. A deltaic archipelago consisting of

hundreds of islands located at the confluence of the rivers Ganga, Meghna, Brahmaputra

and the Bay of Bengal, the Sunderbans is characterized by powerful and unpredictable

workings of natural forces. Coupled with an ever changing topography, the Sunderbans—

as it possibly derives its name from the sundari or mangrove trees—also features the

largest wilderness of natural saltine mangrove forests that make parts of the region almost

impenetrably dense with foliage. Such a unique natural environment also facilitates a rich

variety of rare and often ferocious wildlife, including poisonous snakes, dangerous

crocodiles and most significantly, the man eating Royal Bengal Tiger. At once

mysterious and deadly, exotic and vengeful, the Sunderbans personifies a complex

ecotope with diverse connotations. Navigating this fascinating ‘tide country’ is the central

protagonist Piyali Roy, a young American cetologist of Bengali origin, who travels to the
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Sunderbans to study the rare, endangered river dolphin, Orcaella brevirostris. On her

onward train journey she meets the Delhi-based professional translator Kanai Dutt, who

is on his way to meet his aunt, Nilima, who has long settled in the island of Lusibari. Piya

and Kanai separate from each other after their initial journey and the story continues as a

staccato narration between two main plots—alternately panning on Piya’s research

expedition with Fokir, the young and illiterate fisherman with an immense knowledge

about the river, and Kanai’s literary expedition of Sunderban’s history through the diary

left behind by his deceased uncle Nirmal. While the central narrative of the novel depicts

the environmental issues and the marginalization of poor, local fishermen like Fokir in

the landscape in the context of contemporary India, a parallel narrative on the massacre at

Morichjhapi—retrieved through Nirmal’s diary accounts—portrays a violent history of

conflicts between the local inhabitants of the Sunderbans and the Indian nation state in

alliance with global drive for conservation..

The incident of Morichjhapi is crucial to Ghosh’s novel that projects the violence

of the post-independence nation state as it tries to blindly emulate the concept of nature

from the global north. Divya Anand reads this incident as the central theme of the novel

that shows how one dimensional environmental conservation policies, “disregarding the

material reality of a landscape, are detrimental to the socially and economically backward

classes like the indigenous peoples, forest dwellers, tribals and nomads” (157). Ghosh’s

novel traces the historical details of the 1973 massacre to considerable accuracy. The

landless partition-refugees, consisting of people mostly from Dalits and other subaltern

castes, had settled down in Morichjhapi which was one of the islands under the purview
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of a wildlife conservation project--Project Tiger. When they refused to give up their land

against the government’s call for illegal settlement, the settlers met with a violent process

of eviction by the armed state forces that killed, raped and drove out hundreds of people

under the pretext of clearing the land for environmental conservation. The Morichjhapi

incident points to the issue of eviction of the local communities for securing land for

environmental conservation that has been particularly telling in the context of tiger

conservation in India. The killing at Morichjhapi not only shows the pitfalls of blindly

applying Western conservation models in developing countries, but also reveals the

excruciating violence with which such a model is imposed.

Ironically, unlike Animal’s People, the incident of Morichjhapi in The Hungry

Tide portrays environmental conservation, rather than environmental exploitation as the

main victimizing force for the marginal groups. Thus, like corporate exploitation of the

environment, the counter-discourse of global environmental conservation is equally

exclusionary of the marginal groups. Though predominantly a 1960s movement, concepts

of environmental conservation had already taken shape in the later colonial period to

‘preserve’ the needs of the empire. Thus while forests were reserved to appropriate the

natural resources exclusively for the colonial regime, the preservation of the wild

animals— as John MacKenzie observes— ensured that “access to animals was to be

progressively restricted to the elite” as games for their hunting or used as “tourist

resources” in national parks (215). 65 A major motivation behind colonial conservation

65
Thus the colonial eagerness for conservation of Indian forests, as Guha and
Gadgil asserts, and the first attempt to safeguard forests and impose state control
 259

was however connected with the conceptualization of the colonized tropical islands as the

mythical space of Eden. The colonialist encounter with the vast ‘wild landscapes’ in

India, Americas and Africa, along with their luxuriant stove of wild flora and fauna came

to symbolize the long cherished European dream of a paradisiacal wilderness untouched

by humans (Grove; Prest). Thus, the colonial mission of conserving the wilderness in its

pristine form, which was a projection of a romantic and essentially Eurocentric view of

the natural world as an antidote to modernization, had started to take concrete shape in

the colonial period through botanical gardens, protected forests and wildlife and national

parks—which include the still thriving tourist hotspots of Yellowstone, Yosemite and

Serengeti. Significantly, the later environmental movements that emerged in the

industrialized Western nations in the 1950 and 60s—spear headed by mostly US and

European organizations like the Sierra Club and the World Wildlife Fund and individual

environmentalists like Rachel Carson, Paul Ulrich, Aldo Leopold—raised alarm against

environmental crisis and emphasized on protecting the purity of nature on the same

precepts of colonial wilderness conservation. The driving idea behind saving the world

was largely built on this grand plan of preserving biodiversity through the conservation of

the wilderness, not only in the Western nations where environmentalism took its roots but

also through a conservation of forests all over the globe.

The transnationalization of environmental conservation thus defines an important

aspect of the process of globalization. Working under the assumption that the poor, ‘third

on them—through the Indian Forest Act of 1865—was essentially taken “to

facilitate the acquisition of those forest areas that were earmarked for railway
supplies” (123).
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world’ nations are not only capable of protecting their own natural resources but are also

responsible for destroying the environment and its biodiversity, the North based global

environmental organizations and conservationist NGOs—which Ramachandra Guha

deridingly terms as the “green missionaries”—donned paternalistic roles in protecting the

‘third world’ environment and thereby dictated strategies for wilderness preservation to

countries that are economically and politically weak ("Radical American

Environmentalism). The North’s hegemony in both personnel and policies was blatantly

evident in most global initiatives regarding biodiversity preservation, as Vandana Shiva

aptly puts it:

While the crisis in biodiversity is focused as an exclusively tropical and third

world phenomenon, the thinking and the planning of biodiversity conservation is

projected as a monopoly of institutes and agencies based in and controlled by the

industrial North. (Biodiversity 7)

Consequently, the nations of the global South were often pressurized to comply

with the global environmentalist rhetoric for wilderness preservation through various

ways—which ranged from political pressure through United Nations initiatives and

various global conventions like the Stockholm Conference (1972) and the Rio

Convention on Biological Diversity (1992); to hefty grants from global organizations like

the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), NAFTA or the World Bank financed Global

Environmental Fund (GEF). The Eurocentric concept of conservation, often emulated in

postcolonial nations like India, essentially precludes an elitist control over nature and a
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marginalization of the indigenous marginals from their rights over the land. As

Ramachandra Guha critiques the myopic strategies of northern conservation:

This belief (or prejudice) has informed the many projects, spread across the globe,

to constitute nature parks by evicting the original human inhabitants of these

areas, with scant regard for their past or future. All this is done in the name of the

global heritage of biological diversity. Throughout Asia and Africa, the

management of parks has sharply posited the interests of poor villagers who have

traditionally lived in them against those of wilderness lovers and urban pleasure

seekers who wish to keep parks “free of human interference”— free, that is, of

humans other than themselves…At present, the majority of wildlife

conservationists, domestic or foreign, seem to believe that species and habitat

protection can succeed only through a punitive guns-and-guards approach. (“The

Paradox” 17)

Consequently, the creation of the reserve forests and wildlife sanctuaries were essentially

accompanied by the eviction of multitudes of poor forest-dwellers and marginal

villagers—who Mark Dowie aptly terms as the “conservation refugees” and estimates

their numbers to anything between one hundred thousand and six hundred thousand (120)

The Hungry Tide focuses on such western domination through the tenets of

environmental conservation through India’s official initiative for tiger protection through

Project Tiger—one of such large scale conservation schemes based on the model of

Western conservation ideals. Project Tiger was conceived in collaboration with the WWF

International and other foreign conservation NGOs, which as Dowie asserts, “has
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persistently embraced a model of western practice that focuses on individual endangered

species—‘mega-charismatic metavertibrates’—like elephants, rhinos or tigers, rather than

on whole habitats or eco-systems”. Consequently, the initiation of Project Tiger not only

implied a symbolic drive for national pride through the figure of the tiger, it also garnered

political advantage for the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, who—as Mahesh

Rangarajan asserts—encashed the wildlife conservation issues to “cultivate a small but

influential lobby in the Western world” (198). Yet, this much vaunted project embodies

an elitist reconfiguration of the native landscape according to the tenets of the Northern

wilderness ideal, whereby the marginal presence and interpretation of landscape is often

obliterated through a violent process. Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide projects such a process

of environmental hegemony through two crucial issues that often form of the crux of

many environmental debates. Firstly, the Morichjhapi incident narrated at length in the

novel brings up the crucial question of marginal displacement that inevitably

accompanies the northern conceptualization of preserving nature. And secondly, Ghosh’s

narrative also shows how the prevalent concepts of northern environmentalism affect a

dialectics of anthropocentrism versus biocentrism whereby animals and humans are

essentially pitted in conflicting categories.

In one of his interviews, Ghosh condemns the very rigidity of the state in

implementing the conservation model at the cost of the poor, which seems to work under

the assumption, as Volkmann, Grimm, and Detmers point out, that they are “wicked

people with some perverse criminal instinct” while in reality they are “some of the

poorest people of the world”, braving the forests for nothing more than some honey (82).
 263

Consequently, in his novel, Ghosh describes the oppressive measures of the state police

in evicting the settlers of the island Morichjhapi, whereby police boats cordoned off the

islands for days together, used tear gas and rubber bullets on unarmed people, forcibly

prevented food or water to reach the islands and destroyed their possessions. The

inhumane treatment reached immense magnitude, as the novel describes in graphic

details how the siege went on for many days to the effect that despite judicious rationing,

“food had run out and the settles had been reduced to eating grass. The police had

destroyed the tube wells and there was no portable water left; the settlers were drinking

from puddles and ponds and an epidemic of cholera had broken out” (215). While the

eviction of the settlers in Morichjhapi can be seen as a part of the long trajectory of

denying land rights to the partition refugees—who were seen as illegal immigrants and

unwanted burden on the Indian nation state—the brutality meted out to clear the land in

Morichjhapi was certainly driven by the justification of implementing the international

protocol of wildlife conservation. Significantly, Kusum voices the utter disregard of these

protocols for human lives in the poorer countries and the violence of the globalization of

environmentalism:

This island has to be saved for its trees, it has to be saved for its animals, it is a

part of a reserve forest, it belongs to a project to save tigers, which is paid for by

people from all around the world. Every day, sitting here with hunger gnawing

our bellies we would listen to these words over and over again. Who are these

people, I wondered, who love animals so much that they are willing to kill us for

them? Do they know what is being done in their name? Where do they live, these
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people? Do they have children, do they have mothers, fathers? As I thought these

things, it seemed to me that the whole world had become a place for animals, and

our fault, our crime, was that we were just human beings…(217).

Kusum’s ardent cry sums up the crux of the debates surrounding the international drive

for ecological conservation as it attempts to take into its purview the more populated and

poorer global south. Along with this, Kusum’s indictment also raises crucial questions

about the conceptualization of nature in terms of the binaries of humans versus animals.

The dichotomy between an anthropocentric and a biocentric world that forms the

basis of Northern environmental thoughts, especially that of ‘deep ecology’, is a much

debated concept when taken in the context of poorer Southern nations. The basic premise

of this binary essentially conceives environment as a dialectic space where humans and

animals are pitted in mutually exclusive categories. Simultaneously, such a world view—

taking its cue from Western philosophy--- presupposes that a human is by nature

egotistical and he interacts with nature with pride and arrogance. Consequently, radical

environmental ethics like “deep ecology” argue for a more humble place for man in the

natural world by focusing on the preservation of the non-human, biocentric world and

claiming rights for other life forms that seem to be marginalized by the prominence of the

human. Such a worldview, though apparently noble, has often been termed as fallacious.

As one of the most vocal critiques of this binary, Ramachandra Guha cogently dismisses

this paradigm for addressing environmental issues in a misleading way, arguing that the

two most pressing factors for global ecological destruction are overconsumption by the

wealthy nations and militarization—none of which has any tangible connection with the
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biocentric-anthropocentric divide. Contending that the “root of global ecological

problems lie in the disproportionate share of resources consumed by the industrialized

countries as a whole and the urban elite within the third world,” (80) Guha further asserts

that the anthropo/biocentric dichotomy, when imposed on the global south, triggers an

adverse effect of marginalization:

If the above dichotomy is irrelevant, the emphasis on wilderness is positively

harmful when applied to the Third World. If in the U.S. the preservationist /

utilitarian division is seen as mirroring the conflict between “people” and

“interests,” in countries such as India the situation is very nearly the reverse.

Because India is a long settled and densely populated country in which agrarian

populations have a finely balanced relationship with nature, the setting aside of

wilderness areas has resulted in a direct transfer of resources from the poor to the

rich. ( “Radical American Environmentalism” 80)

Thus, for Guha and other third world environmentalists like Vandana Shiva , the

argument for setting aside a part of the land exclusively for the animal world is not only

the “luxury of the rich” (Earth Democracy 49) but also acts as a red herring to distract us

from the real environmental issues and moreover allows for a complete disregard towards

the plight of the subalterns who are already marginalized not only their economic status

but also by a hostile predatory landscape inhabited by the fiercest of the animals—the

Royal Bengal Tiger.

Considered to be one of the fiercest group of man-eating predators, the tigers of

the Sunderbans have often baffled biologists for their unparalleled aggressiveness
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towards humans, killing off hundreds of people each year. The human death toll is also

compounded by the fact that the residents of the Sunderbans consist of some of the

poorest population of the state—people who risk their lives to venture out into the jungles

to gather meager amounts of honey and firewood for survival and often fall prey to the

man eating tigers. Not only those, the tigers are often reported to have crossed into

human settlements and buffer zones to attack humans and their live stocks. In spite of

several measures being taken by the state to stop the aggression of the tigers, several

unarmed villagers are killed constantly. The menace of the tigers has always loomed over

the islanders of Sunderbans for decades together. In a context like this, it is fallacious to

conceptualize the humans merely as the arrogant ecological dictators and the tigers as

helpless victims left at the mercy of the settlers. Though I find Annu Jalais’ interpretation

of tigers as insidious, “egotistical” beings conscious of their protective rights a little too

far-fetched, the fact remains that applying the deep ecological model of biocentrism

would amount to a gross misreading and injustice to the poor islanders of the Sunderbans.

Kanai voices these very concerns of global conservational drives that are often oblivious

of the local realities:

It was people like you,” said Kanai, “who made a push to protect the wildlife

here, without regard for the human costs. And I’m complicit because people like

me---Indians of my class, that is—have chosen to hide these costs, basically in

order to curry favor with their Western patrons. It’s not hard to ignore the people

who’re dying—after all, they are the poorest of the poor. But just ask yourself

whether this would be allowed to happen anywhere else. There are more tigers
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living in America, in captivity, than there are in all of India—what do you think

would happen if they started killing human beings? (248-49)

Kanai thus emphatically exposes the shams of wildlife protection that comes at the cost

of ignoring human lives, precisely so because the victims in question are socio-

economically marginalized and hence are valued less by society. Kanai’s comment brings

to the fore the very elitist nature of such an environmental ethics that is propounded by

both the first world nations and the richer classes of the global South.

Ghosh in his novel asserts the same dynamics of elitism that Ramachandra Guha

identifies in the context of wildlife reserves in India in which he argues that the

movement for conservation in the developing countries is primarily fuelled by the five

elite groups: 1) the urban dwellers and foreign tourists who want the wilderness as a

getaway for recreation 2) the ruling elites who see conservation of certain species, like

the tiger as a mark of national prestige 3) the international organizations like WWF who

work with a mission of paternalist protectionism for the third world, 4) the functionaries

of the state forest services mandated by law to control the parks and 5) biologists who

rally for conservation for the sake of science (How Much Should 14).66As these elite

groups dominate the landscape of the Sunderbans through their version of

environmentalism, the marginal settlers are further pushed to the margins of survival.

66
The recent Forest Rights Act passed on 18 December, 2006 attempts to redress
the “historical injustice” meted out to the forest dwelling communities and grants
them rights to land and other resources that were denied to them over decades as a
result of the continuance of colonial forest laws India. Though the law comes as a
landmark verdict that seems to revise the colonial and Eurocentric notions of
conservation, several tribal activist groups are protesting against the loopholes of
the law and its bureaucratic difficulties.
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While faithfully recreating Sunderban’s violent history of past eviction, Ghosh’s

The Hungry Tide also masterfully depicts the various dynamics surrounding the

landscape in the contemporary context and the continuing marginalization of the

islanders by the elites within the nation, transnational tourists and the neoliberal

ecotourism market. As a biosphere reserve of considerable national and international

importance, the contemporary Sunderbans is portrayed in The Hungry Tide as a

landscape dominated primarily by three distinct yet privileged groups—i) the state

officials controlling the land as a reserve forest ii) the international scientists surveying

the Sunderbans for its unique flora and fauna iii) the urban tourists who visit the land for

recreation. The novel shows how the landscape of the modern day Sunderbans is not only

frequented but is also somehow controlled by the dynamics of all these groups, working

individually or often in collaboration with each other. On the other hand, the local settlers

of the Sunderbans lack agency and are coerced into a lifestyle that is molded by these

elite groups. While all these groups frequent the Sunderbans for radically diverse

interests, what connects them is that they carry the same trajectory of subaltern

marginalization that has continued from the colonial times to the post-Independence

period to a modern era of neoliberal globalization. The Hungry Tide brings out a complex

web of power over the landscape where the poor fishermen like Fokir are pushed to the

margins and rendered silent in the narrative space.

Officially assigned by the state, the forest guards exert ultimate control over the

landscape of the Sunderbans and their surveillance duties are primarily directed towards

patrolling common people’s access to the forests. Like their colonial predecessors, the
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landmark forest legislations in Independent India---the Indian Forest Policy Resolution of

1952 and the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972--have mainly remained mechanisms for

restricting popular admittance to the forests. As Richard Haeubar argues, post-

independence Indian forest policies saw to it that “traditional tribal rights to forest use

and products had been limited even further than under colonial rule, changing from

privileges to concessions” (61). These laws were essentially based on the notion of the

“ecologically profligate tribals” (Rangarajan 211), in contrast to a protectionist colonial

state, that has been the central rhetoric of forest conservation in India.67 Thus, the

colonial conservation model had long laid the blame of environmental degradation on the

indigenous communities that have traditionally depended on the wilderness for their

survival. Eurocentric conservationists have routinely projected these communities and

their livelihoods as the main causes behind soil erosion, overgrazing, depleting forests

and as a threat to the natural wildlife (Guha; Shiva; Tucker).

The overwhelming presumption in this discourse is that the indigenous

populations squander the natural resources and hence an authoritative state control should

protect and own the forests. As a consequence, once the state enclosed lands ‘reserved’

67
Guha(1996) narrates how such accusations were often accompanied by a
pejorative tone, as was seen in a description by a a prominent member of the
Sierra Club who attacked the Masai for grazing cattle in the sanctuaries: ‘ “The
Masai and their herds of economically worthless cattle”, he said, “have already
overgrazed and laid waste to much of the 23,000 square miles of Tanganyika they
control, and as they move into the Serengeti they bring the desert with them, and
the wilderness and wildlife must bow their heads before their herds”(126).
Valuable evidence supportive of jhum, established by eminent ecologists, Madhav
Gadgil and P S Ramakrishnan, and historian Ram Guha -- or even works of
pioneers like Verrier Elwin -- have been blackballed.
 270

for conservation, it also restricted the ‘unwanted’ indigenous practices of the local forest

dwellers and barred their access to the same forests that have traditionally been their only

means of subsistence for ages. P.K Tripathy sums up the trajectory of oppressive forest

laws in India, asserting that at first they regulated and then denied tribal rights on the

forest and the produce of the forest: “The tribal were alienated from the forests which had

provided over ages fodder, fuel, building materials, agricultural implements, medicines

and even the most important requirement for existence—food to them.”(84). Thus, the

state yields sole discretion over permits, over decisions of land use, and forest clearance,

over the selection of trees that are commercially more viable and control over the

substantial population of forest dwelling people. Not only did the forest authorities, right

from the colonial times, criminalized the local foresters who trespass the restrictions even

for subsistence, there have been multiple studies that document how the people are

unjustly harassed and exploited by the more powerful and often corrupt forest guards. As

K.G.Karmakar points out:

The Forest Act has created an entire bureaucracy with very wide-ranging powers

and the power to make laws! A forest officer without warning may arrest any

person against whom a reasonable suspicion exists, and order a month’s

imprisonment. They can seize forest produce, cattle, tools, cart etc if a forest

offence has been committed. No civil suit can be lodged against them…Such

draconian powers have placed the tribal people under the oppressive power of the

forest bureaucracy. And there are always unscrupulous officers who could exploit

the hapless tribals. (114)

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The Hungry Tide brings out this grim picture of exploitative forest officials who

reign over the forest and often terrorize the local inhabitants. As Kanai humorously

asserts, there is a common idiom among the islanders that “if you’re caught between a

pirate and a forester, you should always give yourself up to the pirate. You will be safer”

(245). The novel narrates various instances of atrocities meted out by the forest guards to

the poor local people, most prominently seen in the incident with Fokir’s boat. Having

spotted Fokir’s humble row boat in an area which was supposed to be off limits for

fishing, the forest guards pursue the poor, unarmed fisherman with rifles and instantly

labels him as a “poacher” (25). Not only that, they rob him of the little money he was

carrying in his boat and physically abuses his child who tries to hide the money from the

guard’s prying eyes. The forest guards reappear in the narrative scene several times later

in the novel, but only as ruthless law-enforcing authorities who claim ultimate control

over the landscape, terrorizing the poor villagers in the name of maintaining law.

If the Forest Department embodies the menace of global environmentalism in

terms of local oppression, the American scientist Piya embodies the limitations of the

archetypal postcolonial migrant and questions the very epistemological privilege of a

transnational position. A student of California Ocean Institute, Piya is interested in the

Sunderbans for its unique ecosystem that provides a natural habitat for the subject of her

research----the species of Orcaella brevirostris dolphins that inhabit the rivers there.

Piya’s stint as an American cetologist involves travelling all over the world—especially

in faraway, unexplored terrains of the non-Western lands— to track these dolphins and

study their habitat closely. Consequently, she interpretes the Sunderbans solely in terms
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of its potential for successful fieldwork and for gathering scientific data, her character

thus echoing the quintessential colonial scientific explorer of in many ways.

Scientific explorations, mostly accompanied by the productions of descriptive and

detailed natural history in the new continents, have been in vogue in the European nations

since the eighteenth century. While the eighteenth century voyages of James Cook and

Jean Francois de La Perouse′ were one of the earliest ones to be termed as ‘scientific

travel’, they merely set the model for modern, well-equipped scientific expeditions of

several other traveler-scientists like Joseph Banks, Humboltd and , who were spurred by

imperial Europe’s increasing interest in the unique landscape and species, flora and fauna

of the new continents. Roy McLeod traces it to the information explosion of the sea

faring Europe that brought “glimpses of a world beyond the seas, whose artifacts

produced, using the term of Ram Kuhn, giant anomalies, puzzles for philosophers of

Europe (119)…Traversing by extension the Linnaean system and the Newtonian world

view, the program was to settle for all time the shape and texture of the earth and to

catalogue its flora, fauna and inhabitants” (128). Consequently, new species were

collected and exhibited, empirical studies on the new lands were methodically

documented—like in the Philosophical Transactions published by the Royal Society—

and scientific societies were found to pursue the study of what Said calls as the academic

discipline of the “science of the Orient” (155). Significantly enough, as Mary Lousie

Pratt argues deriving from Foucault’s The Order of Things, these scientific explorations

were essentially attempts to interpret and thereby control the newly discovered world
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through the paradigms of European epistemology. Asserting that natural history was an

intervention to compose order, Pratt argues that:

The eighteenth century classificatory systems created the tasks of locating every

species on the planet, extracting it from its particular, arbitrary surroundings (the

chaos) and placing it in its appropriate spot in the system (the order-book,

collection or garden) with its new, written secular European name…The (lettered,

male, European) eye that held the system could familiarize (“naturalize”) new

sites/sights immediately upon contact, by incorporating them into the language of

the system. (31)

Since scientific study rendered the unknown new world as classifiable and therefore

controllable, McLeod and many other scholars identify these scientific ventures as a

characteristic feature of the colonial period, furnishing “both a means of conquest and a

method of settlement (128). Notably, as Gary Dunbar points out, the prominence of the

disciplines like “the geography of the third world” or “geography of developing

countries” (167) in Western Universities from the end of 1960s show a continued interest

in the geography and biodiversity of the former colonies as a major research interest in

the Western academia. Simultaneously, several organizations based in the industrialized,

global North—like United States Agency for International Development (USAID),

National Science Foundation (NSF), Biodiversity Support Program—sponsor numerous

research projects to study and conserve the ecosystems in third world countries by using

the protocols of Western science (Hannigan 152).

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An American researcher sent on a funded project to study the animal life of a

remote terrain in India, Piya embodies the archetypal Western scientist researching on

third world flora and fauna. Piya not only represents the long tradition of imperial

scientists who studied and documented the bio-systems of India, she also declares herself

as a metaphorical descendant of that trajectory. Calling Calcutta as her “cetacean

pilgrimage” (188), Piya idolizes the imperial naturalists like William Roxburgh and

Edward Blyth who had dedicated their lives in the study of nature in the colonies. Pablo

Upamanyu Mukherjee aptly points out that in idealizing “these eighteenth and

nineteenth-century British naturalists, geographers and scientists” who are very much

part of the grand narrative of enlightenment—selflessly working in hostile environments

for the enlargement of the frontiers of knowledge—Piya overlooks the deeper nuances of

colonial and imperial knowledge-gathering:

how is the classifying of species also a part of the epistemology of imperialism?

What lines of power connect naturalists such as Edward Blyth, the dolphins he

studies, and the crowd of his Indian helpers? How do the museums and botanical

gardens (we recall Kim's jadoogarh here) created by these botanists replicate an

imperial environment? Piya herself, kitted out with the latest GPS monitor, range-

finder, depth sounder and binoculars, literally embodies the panoptical

knowledge-machine of colonialism. (152)

Piya views the whole landscape of the Sunderbans exactly through the same lenses as the

colonial naturalists, and consequently implements the same imperial methods of

recording her experiences in the new land. She scours the alien rivers in search of the
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gangetic dolphins, interprets a random group of dolphins by a predetermined model of

classification and records her experiences through an established scientific language.

Filtering all her experiences through the lens of an scientific explorer, Piya’s gaze

necessarily constitutes what Foucault calls the discourse of “seeing things systematically”

(134) or the systematic classification and tabulation of a new environment, rendering “the

whole area of the visible to a system of variables all of whose values can be designated, if

not by a quantity, at least by a perfectly clear and always finite description” (137).

Piya not only records her gaze as part of her allegiance to the Western discourse

of science, she also attempts to gain access in the foreignness of the land through an

authority she claims from the certainty of her knowledge. As Foucault aptly observes in

the context of colonial Natural history, the authority derived from the positivism of

scientific classification is not merely limited to “the discovery of a new object of

curiosity; it covers a series of complex operations that introduce the possibility of a

constant order into a totality of representations. It constitutes a whole domain of

empiricity as at the same time describable and orderable” (162). Piya’s gaze is both

directed and limited by the paradigm of this scientific order— while on the one hand her

tendency of classifying her world around the dolphins accounts for her cosmopolitanism

and the ease with which she moves between the national borders, on the other it severely

narrows her gaze. As Piya scans the Sunderbans with the same tools and observations

that she applied in all her field trips from Mekong to Mahakam to Irrawaddy, she

perceives these different geographical locales as homogenous, be it in terms of locating

the dolphins, interacting with the forest guards, the generalized idea of the local people
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and her own role and status as an American researcher. Consequently, as Piya organizes

the bigger picture around her methodological perception of things, she ends up with an

impaired vision that misses out the complex specificities of a locale. Piya is thus baffled

by the oppression of the forest guards over the poor fishermen of Sunderbans, finds it

difficult to understand why the local villagers would want to kill a tiger and is confused

by Fokir’s ambiguous relationship with nature. Piya’s initial interaction with the

landscape is essentially that of an outsider foreign to the nuances of the land and its

people.

Piya’s scientific gaze is not only restricted but also one of assumed authority.

Armed with her modern equipments of gathering data and her training in scientific

classification of species, Piya exudes a confidence and sense of superiority in claiming

superior knowledge about the dolphins, even more precisely than the local villagers

themselves. Piya’s assumed authority is evident in her usual frustration with the apparent

lack of information among the local villagers, who fail to contribute to Piya’s ventures

with the wild animals. While the villagers’ inability to provide useful information about a

local animal might have been thwarted by the methods Piya would use to gather such

information—namely by her use of the typical American pedagogical tool of display

cards that often made no sense to the villagers—Piya promptly assigns the failure of the

villagers to their presumed lack of total knowledge about the animals: “as a rule only the

most observant and experienced fishermen were able to make the connection between the

pictures and the animals they represented. Relatively few had ever seen the whole, living

creature, and their view of it was generally restricted to a momentary glimpse of a

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blowhole or a dorsal fin” (29). Consequently, Piya’s alliance with Fokir in her research

project is based on Piya’s assumption of her own superior scientific knowledge over

Fokir’s. Confident that she knows better than the local villagers, Piya thus relegates Fokir

only as her boatman and a navigator, much in the same manner as colonial scientists

would employ indigenous people as guides and informants, but “rarely did their

conceptions of the natural environment become an object of study in themselves” (Miller

and Reill 12). Fokir’s relationship with Piya is thus one of hierarchy—Piya pays him and

employs him only to navigate the river in her own way, often to the extent of holding him

back for days together to complete her own work. But never does Piya initiate any

interaction with Fokir in terms of procuring indigenous knowledge. Fokir’s own

paradigm of indigenous knowledge thus remains contained in the realm of the myth and

folklore and unintelligible to Piya. Piya’s inability to understand Fokir’s language, and in

extension his worldview about the mythical import of the local animals, symbolizes the

deep chasm that lies between the two paradigms of knowledge, whereby the domain of

the local indigenous remain marginalized and indecipherable to the Western

epistemology, unless the indigenous is translated into the hegemonic language of

English.68

68
See Raje Kaur for a discussion of the significance of language and translation in
Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide. Kaur argues that the polyphonous import of the novel
in terms of the various languages used by its characters essentially suggest the
theme of miscommunication in the narrative. Consequently, the translator Kanai
plays the role of go-between not for Piya and Fokir but also acts as an agent of
alliance for the global and the local
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The deep disjuncture between Piya’s notion of the environment and the local

people’s interaction with nature once again invokes the blind spots of a global meta-

narrative of environmentalism that fails to address the local specificities. Piya’s shock at

witnessing the public lynching of a stray tiger by the local villagers, including Fokir, and

her consequent virulent condemnation of it invokes the same dichotomy between

biocentrism and anthropocentrism that forms the crux of the debate regarding

Morichjhapi. Ghosh invokes this very debate about the dichotomy, not only in Kusum’s

indictment of the Project Tiger and the way the Morichjhapi incident testified the pitfalls

of a biocentric ethics over an anthropocentric one, but also in multiple times throughout

the narrative through Piya’s notion of environmentalism that encompasses the central

tenets of American “deep ecology”. Piya’s argument for biocentrism over

anthropocentrism is built on the critique of human chauvinism in exploiting the natural

world, which essentially precludes that the ‘human’ in question here is a privileged one

who has complete control over the resources, who has been rendered arrogant by his

power and therefore needs to make more morally compassionate choices. Thus, in her

debate with Kanai regarding the Sunderban residents’ hostility towards the tigers, Piya

harps on the same rhetoric of human hubris—“Just suppose we crossed that imaginary

line that prevents us from deciding that no other species matters except ourselves?

What’ll be left then? Aren’t we alone enough in the universe?” (249). Yet, what Piya

initially fails to understand is that the conflict between the humans and the tigers in the

Sunderbans is hardly a matter of human arrogance and rather a question of survival.

Instead for Piya, it is the poor local villagers who pose the greatest threat to nature,
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meting out tortures of “horror” to the “defenseless” wild animals (248). Thus, while

Kanai argues for a more compassionate approach to environmentalism—asking pertinent

questions like “isn’t that a horror too that we can feel the suffering of an animal, but not

of human beings?”(248)—Piya’s position is strictly biocentric and it is not until the very

end of the novel that she rises above this dichotomy to embrace a more comprehensive

model of environmentalism. Not only does Piya advocate for wildlife, she also

emphasizes that global conservation is in the best interests for the marginal people

themselves, thus projecting herself as the spokesperson for the people Kanai seemingly

defends. As Guha asserts:

This is an ecologically updated version of the White Man’s Burden, where the

biologist (rather than the civil servant or military official) knows that it is in the

natives’ true interest to abandon their homes and hearths and leave the fields and

forest clear for the new rulers of their domain…the biologists, park managers and

wildlifers—to determine collectively how the territory is to be managed. (How

Much Should 16)

The assumed authority of Piya’s initial position thus points to the way environmental

decisions are dictated by the biologists who in their power become equally oppressive as

a forest ranger for the subsistence based forest dwellers.

Apart from the forest officials and the NRI scientist, the landscape of Sunderbans

is also accessible and dominated by ecotourists who operate as consumers in a market.

Significantly enough, in her ways of traversing the landscape for its distinct fauna and

engaging with the local population in terms of commercial exchange, Piya is also no
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different from the commercial ecotourists that visit Sunderbans for its unique

environment. Though physically absent in the novel, the tourist is an essential component

of the life in the Sunderbans. The novel suggests a total commercialization of the forests

of the Sunderbans, which has spawned an expansive tourism industry. The forests attract

hundreds of tourists each day and the economy of the Sunderbans is majorly influenced

by ecotourism. Thus, while even the local politician Mejda draws his daily subsistence

from the tourist launch, which Piya describes as “a decrepit diesel steamer that had been

adapted for the tourist trade, with rows of plastic chairs lined up behind the wheelhouse,

under soot-blackened awning” (28), the tourism industry also prompts fishermen like

Horen to move away from their traditional profession to become part of the neoliberal

market. Thus, as fishing declines as a sustainable profession, Horen relies on not his

catch but rather on Megha, his tourist boat that carries picnickers who visit the islands as

a holiday getaway. For Fokir too, tangible income—in terms of the international currency

of three hundred dollars (175)--comes in the form of Piya’s offer to navigate the

landscape much like a tourist. It is thus the carefully maintained wilderness of the

landscape that ensures the capital flow in the Sunderbans. Ghosh portrays a contemporary

Sunderbans whose wilderness is not only distinctive but also essentially saleable, be it to

the leisurely tourist or the impassioned scientist, both of whom are drawn to the unique

selling point of the biosphere. The fanfare of provisions for the tourists and the touring

scientist stands almost in ridiculous contrast to the inhuman eviction of the landless

refugees from the same topological space of the Sunderbans. As a writer and social critic,

Ghosh has been immensely critical about the selling out of the Sunderbans for
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commercial tourism. In a telling essay that exposes the politics of privatization in the

Sunderbans, Ghosh critiques the Sahara group of companies and the West Bengal

government for launching a multimillion rupees project of a tourist complex in the

Sunderbans. Lashing out at the preposterous idea of building a tourism project in a

landscape infested with wild animals, dangerous rivers and frequent cyclones, Ghosh also

objects to the project on the grounds of how it marks the larger politics of neoliberal

privatization:

It is scarcely conceivable that a government run by the same Left Front is now

thinking of handing over a substantial part of the Sunderbans to an industrial

house like the Sahara Parivar. It runs contrary to every tenet of the Front's

professed ideology. The Sahara Parivar's project would turn large stretches of this

very forest, soaked in the blood of evicted refugees, into a playground for the

affluent. Although forgotten elsewhere, in the Sunderbans the memory of

Morichjhapi is still vividly alive: would it be surprising if the people there took

this project to be an affront to their memories and a deliberate provocation? (“A

Crocodile in the Swamplands”)

Ghosh’s novel draws on this sharp contrast between the desirability of the tourists versus

the abjection of the refugees—respectively defined as groups who act as consumers and

bring in capital, versus groups who are non-productive occupants of the landscape—

suggesting a commoditization of the landscape in the trend of neoliberal ecotourism.

As the reserved forests and the wildlife account for the marketability of the

Sunderbans, and the consequent conversion of the landscape into a consumable

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commodity in the neoliberal market, the enthusiasm for global conservation suggests a

deeper connection with the market forces in the form of ecotourism. Even in the colonial

times, conservation of nature was often done with a motive of rendering natural resources

as a marketable commodity. As John MacKenzie observes, conservation ensured that

“access to animals was to be progressively restricted to the elite” as games for their

hunting or used as “tourist resources” in national parks (215). Though the marketing of

preserved wildlife and forests as a tourism industry has been justified as a significant

source of self-funding required to meet the costs of a noble, yet expensive, project of

biodiversity conservation (Wiersma 3), it is too simplistic to view the nexus between

conservation and the market as solely a non-profitable venture. Rather, MacKenzie points

out that from their very early days, some lands reserved for environmental conservation,

especially the national parks, were meant specifically for tourism and generating profit.

Thus he asserts—“there was a considerable market for viewing animals” (266).

The trajectory of marketing the natural resources has magnified in the current era

of neoliberalism, whereby neoliberal ecotourism has become a well-developed industry.

Neoliberal ecotourism thus aims at conservation of nature precisely for the market value

it carries to ecotourists who are willing to pay to see and experience the uniqueness of

natural landscapes. Ecotourism is part of what Kathleen McAfee terms as “natural

capital” (133), referring to the trend of commercializing nature as a part of the project she

calls as “green developmentalism” (134), whereby nature is sustained and protected

solely for the purpose of rendering it globally marketable, and thus essentially to generate

global capital. While ecotourism often involves collaborative alliance of the global
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financial giants as the World Bank, private companies and the national governments for

environmental sustenance, it is also a process of converting the landscape to a

consumable commodity essentially for the elite. As McAfee points out---“by valuing

local nature in relation to international markets—denominating diversity in dollars, euros,

or yen—green developmentalism abstracts nature from its spatial and social contexts and

reinforces the claims of global elites to the greatest share of the earth's biomass and all it

contains”(132). Echoing McAfee’s statement, Rosaleen Duffy observes the

marginalization of the socio-economically weak in her study of ecotourism in

Madagascar that belies the whole rhetoric of community good that is often presented as

an argument for ecotourism:

while community-based ecotourism implies a high degree of public participation,

critics have pointed out that communities are very rarely given the chance to

respond meaningfully to schemes that are supported by governments and/or the

private sector. In this way, the community-based ecotourism often only benefits a

narrow elite because the political nature of decision making processes often

excludes communities and their interests. As a result, many community schemes

have developed a tokenistic form of participation (Hall, 1994:167-71; Hutton et

al, 2005). Such minimal participation then allows tour companies, NGOs and

donors to claim that the ecotourism schemes they support actively involve local

communities, in line with international definitions of what constitutes ecotourism.

(103)
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Ghosh’s novel portrays a similar marginalization of the local subalterns like Fokir in a

landscape that is driven by the market forces and consumer tourists.

Unable to fit into the market, unlike the other local inhabitants like Horen and

Mejda, Fokir essentially remains as an aberration in the productive economy. Apart from

the rare incident of being involved in Piya’s project, Fokir hardly participates in the

market and essentially remains outside it. Fokir’s plight as an aberration to the productive

society projects one of the most serious consequences of the global commercialization of

the natural world. As Marcia Langton points out, conservation groups driven by the

market interest often target small scale indigenous groups and demand for “suppression

of traditional forms of wildlife exploitation”. The consequent deterioration of small scale

hunting and gathering natural resources amounts to “environmental racism” and a

territorial marginalization of these groups dependent solely on these traditional economic

means. Ina landscape dominated by conservationists, forest officials and tourists, Fokir’s

traditional vocation as a non-commercial fisherman not only becomes increasingly

difficult but it is also perceived as an act of criminality. Simultaneously, unable to fit in

the market, Fokir is also constantly perceived as unemployed and as one wheeling away

his time, and who fails to play the expected role of the male provider of the household.

As Nilima describes him condescendingly: “a fine young fellow except that he could

neither read nor write and made his living by catching crabs” (107). Fokir’s ‘non-

productivity’ is repeatedly compared to his wife’s successful venture of generating

‘productive’ labor through an active participation in the networks of the market—where

the government, NGOs and consumers collaborate together to the productivity of the
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economy. Fokir, on the other hand, relies on indigenous means of subsistence and is

relegated to the margins of the economy. Thus, in addition to poverty and ignominy,

Fokir is also a silent figure in the entire narrative, symbolizing the magnanimity of his

almost erased existence in a landscape dominated by the forces of modernization and

globalization. What Pablo Mukherjee observes in the context of Velutha in Arundhati

Roy’s God of Small Things can be applicable to Fokir as well, for Fokir, like Velutha,

stands “between the categories of ecosystem people and ecorefugees”(26), whereby

modern development has turned the subsistence groups into “ecorefugees” (27) who have

no means to support themselves anymore.

Even the apparently emancipatory final resolution of the novel fails to shift the

power dynamics completely. Ghosh concludes the novel with Piya returning to Lusibari

with more funding for Sunderban’s development and a deeper insight into how

globalization affects the local realities. Consequently, she moves away from the meta-

narratives of environmentalism to focus more on the contextual issues of the local people,

proposing a developmental model which will aim at providing employment and support

for the poor, local groups and will involve the participation of the local people like

Moyna in crucial roles of its operation. Thus she informs Nilima about the funding offers

for such a development model from global conservation and environmental groups and

declares emphatically: “If I was to take on a project here, I’d want it to be under the

sponsorship of the Badabon Trust, so the local fishermen would be involved. And the

Trust would benefit too” (327). The solution though promising is not full proof, since it

ultimately ensures elites like Piya and Nilima, and not the local fishermen themselves,
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heading the project and in the supreme control of the funds, whereby the project becomes

another developmental project imposed from above and does not signify a change from

below. Yet, Piya’s realization at the end of the novel is indicative of the larger shift in

environmental discourse from its global view to a re-contextualization of concepts

according to the specificities of the local conditions. Moreover the alliance between

global funds and local development points towards a more collaborative future and a less

exploitative globalization. As Raje Kaur asserts:

In the end, when Piya and Kanai commit themselves to helping the tide country

people, and to strengthening Nilima's NGO efforts to provide basic health care in

the region, social justice and ethical ecological commitment coincide in a new

ecocritical paradigm where global entrepreneurs and cetologists can become

conscientious collaborators with local underclasses towards mutually beneficial

goals. (137)

As the novel ends with the happy union of Piya and Nilima, it projects a future of a better

environmentalism—whereby the NRI and the NGO channelize global capital into the

landscape, not as a part of the market, but rather for a more inclusive structural

emancipation for the marginal, no matter how utopic.

The two novels, Animal’s People and The Hungry Tide, thus address two crucial

debates about environment in the age of contemporary globalization. While the criticism

against the ecological exploitation of the global corporations in the “third world” have

been much more loudly voiced, Ghosh’s novel significantly points out the tacit repression

of the forces of global environmentalism as well. In both cases it is the marginal groups
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who have been overlooked by the global forces—rendered into an insignificant absence

when larger powers of globalization decide their fate. Consequently, these novels also

project discourses of resistance and subversion, both pointing towards a more

emancipatory, hopeful future for the marginals under globalization.

 CONCLUSION:

Summarizing Marginality under Globalization

This dissertation thus explores the 'new' literatures of “post-postcolonialism” that depict

the changes and issues of economic globalization in the context of the India. Placing

itself in the context of a global turn in postcolonial literature, as well as a paradigmatic

shift in postcolonial studies, this dissertation seeks to address the materialist concerns of

neoliberal globalization--such as the inequality of economic growth, the implementation

of neoliberal modes of citizenship, the ideological import of global media, the

gentrification of the postcolonial cities, the penalization and surveillance of the marginals

as criminals, environmental devastation by global corporations as well the dispossession

of the marginals for global environmentalism—as they are represented in the literary

texts of post-liberalization India. At the center of the narratives of these post-millennium

novels is the figure of the marginal subject who is invoked in a variety of ways,

projecting the various victimizing effects of neoliberal globalization on the lives of the

common, underprivileged people. Let us sum up the various representations of

marginality that we have discussed in the dissertation, whereby the marginal subject

becomes an emphatic signifier of the discriminating power dynamics of globalization.

Consequently, let us also discuss how the fictional representation of the marginals in the

novels point to some of the important concerns and threats of economic globalization that

288
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are out in the real world.

Novels like Adiga’s The White Tiger and Swarup’s Q&A are stark exposés of the

two halves of people who inhabit the post-liberalization India: the privileged, affluent

half who enjoys a better quality of life with the availability of modern amenities and

consumer products that have gained unrestricted access in the Indian market with

liberalization; and the impoverished, underprivileged marginal entities who are not only

deprived of the prosperity apparently brought in by globalization but are further pushed

to the margins of more deprivation. Though both the novels project problematic and often

improbable solutions to the severe disparity of contemporary India, both of them are

successful in depicting the bleak realities of the Indian underbelly—who in their poverty,

inhuman living conditions and dispossession, challenge the myth of the equalizing

powers of economic globalization. Globalization has often been critiqued on the basis of

how it creates further polarization of the rich and the poor. Globalization’s notion of the

“trickle-down theory”—in which it was claimed that the benefits of free trade will trickle

down to the poorest of the poor—has been summarily rejected by many critics. The IMF

itself acknowledges that globalization has failed in many countries—“Living standards

and the quality of life …are stagnating in a number of the poorest countries, in particular

in Africa. Some African countries are even regressing. The income gap between the rich

and the poor has never been so great” (Larsen). Similarly, economists like Joseph Stiglitz

criticize “the devastating effect that globalization can have on developing countries and

especially the poor within those countries" (35). Similarly, some of the other impassioned

critiques of neoliberal globalization—like Noam Chomsky, Robert Hunter Wade, Susan

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George, Kevin Watkins etc have criticized the process, specifically for its detrimental

effect on the poorer and marginal sections of the society. However, it is not only in terms

of economic prosperity that the poor are excluded; neoliberal globalization has immense

influence in the restructuring the socio-political milieu of the participating nations,

leading to an overall “social exclusion” for the marginal citizens.69 Globalization has

thus, as Munck argues, created immense inequality, whose full impact can be understood

only in terms of how certain sections of society are not only excluded from the economic

benefits of globalization but also experiences a “multidimensionality of deprivation”

(21). Consequently, the margins have been strategically excluded from the ‘progress’ that

neoliberalism so proudly proclaims. The erasure of the marginal groups as entities for

consideration in the political and economic decision making constitutes an extreme form

of marginalization and an utter disregard for the peripheral lives as existences worthy of

even acknowledgement. As the neoliberal system primarily privileges the upper and the

middle classes, the concept of development under neoliberalism also prioritizes these

more productive, profit generating classes. Consequently, developmental activities

69
Here I use the term as EU officially defines it: “Social exclusion is a process
whereby certain individuals are pushed to the edge of society and prevented from
participating fully by virtue of their poverty, or lack of basic competencies and
lifelong learning opportunities, or as a result of discrimination. This distances
them from job, income and education and training opportunities, as well as social
and community networks and activities. They have little access to power and
decision-making bodies and thus often feel powerless and unable to take control
over the decisions that affect their day to day lives” (“Social Exclusion and
Cabinet Office” 2). Ronaldo Munck points out that though the term originates in
the Western and especially the European Union context, the concepts can be aptly
applied to the various modes of marginalization and exclusion in the global south
as a result of neoliberal globalization.
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undertaken to profit the market typically overlooks the issues of the peripheral groups,

rendering them almost absent as important factors for consideration.

Asserting the symbiotic relationship of capital and the civil society, Mohan Dutta

argues that “capital must continuously create conditions of subalternity” for its own

sustenance. Marginal groups have thus been relegated to spaces of obscurity and silence

in the global economy: “Subalterns, therefore, exist in the interstices of modern civil

societies, rendered invisible through the lack of access to the discursive spaces of the

mainstream public sphere where issues are debated and policies are formulated” (184).

The hegemonic forces of economic globalization have often pushed the marginal groups

and indigenous populations to the periphery in the “nation-state’s strategic efforts to

advance the interests of the middle class” (McMillin 91), creating a form of exclusion

that almost amounts to their invisibility. The gradual erasure of the marginal, as Rajni

Kothari verily theorizes on what she calls as the “growing amnesia” towards the poor and

marginalized sections in India, is summarily evident in the drive for ‘modernization’ in

globalized neoliberal India. On a similar note, Leela Fernandes asserts the “politics of

forgetting” that relegates the disenfranchised to greater obscurity:

The visibility of the urban middle classes sets into motion a politics of forgetting

with regard to social groups that are marginalised by India's increased integration

into the global economy. The politics of forgetting in this case does not refer to

processes in which particular places or nations are left out of economic

globalisation. Rather, it refers to a political discursive process in which specific

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marginalised social groups are rendered invisible and forgotten within the

dominant national political culture. (2416)

The politics of forgetting, as Fernandes emphasizes, is not only a process in which certain

sections are excluded of economic globalisation. Rather “it is a political project that seeks

to produce a sanitised vision of the economic benefits of globalisation” (2416). The

marginal groups are thus rendered ‘absent’ when they become misfits and liabilities in

the middle class dream of a ‘modern’, ‘progressive’ India.

The exclusion of the marginal groups in the developmental projects is seen in its

worst form in novels like Tejpal’s The Story of My Assassins that provides an

impassioned portrayal of the lives of the marginal groups in an Indian city that is in the

process of renovating itself according to the tenets of neoliberal urbanization. As the city

modernizes itself in the model of global cities in their glitz and the glamour, in the

growing spaces for commercial activities and leisure, and in the privatization of public

spaces reserved for affluent, elite consumers, the poor, homeless and low income groups

in the urban spaces are evicted, quarantined and even incarcerated. Tejpal’s novel

projects the repressive urban policies that are imposed on the city spaces in India in the

era of globalization, whereby Indian cities desperately attempt to reinvent their labels of a

third world city and strive to become world class cities complete with all amenities and

extravagances. Consequently, the urban poor find no legitimate space within the city

space and are constantly targeted by local authorities and the police to the point of

vengeance. Tejpal’s novel is a moving testimony of how the urban development projects

under neoliberalism are particularly oblivious of the plight of the poor and the marginal
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communities which are the worst affected in the drive for ‘modernization’ of the cities.

As Erik Swyngedouw and et all point out in their study of the thirteen large scale urban

development projects (UDPs) in twelve European Union, the cities were developed and

beautified for its elites and the investors coming from outside, while the unaesthetic poor

and marginal presences were wiped off to invisibility from the city space:

Accommodation of the EU’s encroaching office expansion in Brussels, the

Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, the new financial district in the Dublin’s

docklands, the science-university complex Adlershof in Berlin, Copenhagen’s

Orestaden project, and the 1998 World Expo in Lisbon, among many other

examples that are dotted over the map of urban Europe, testify to the unshakeable

belief of the city elites in the healing effects that the production of new urban

complexes promises for the city’s vitality. (546)

In a similar fashion, Aditya Nigam points out that Delhi in the year 2000 presents a

picture of rapid 'developmental' activity, with multiple flyovers of different shapes and

sizes being constructed along the inner Ring Road and outer Ring Road, as well as in

several other parts inside the city (41). This picture of development, as Nigam points out,

is completed by “hotels, posh commercial complexes and shopping malls, displaying

familiar signs of giant global chains that mark any first-world city, within and in suburbs

like Gurgaon and parts of Noida”(41). Quite predictably, this development had nothing to

do with the welfare of the poor and rather lead to an eviction of a large crowd of poor and

low-income laborers from the landscape. Similarly, Gautam Bhan narrates how a Delhi

government project of 2003 to convert the public strip of land by the Yamuna into a
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riverside promenade, meant to be a major new tourist attraction, lead to an eviction of

35,000 families – more than 150,000 people consisting mainly of the homeless people

and the daily wage workers “construction workers, rickshaw pullers, domestic workers

and ragpickers or recyclers” (127-8). As Bhan’s satellite image of the place after the

eviction shows (128), the settlements were cleanly erased, leaving no trace of their

existence--as if these people had never existed in the first place. The neoliberal city has

thus been variously called “revanchist” (Smith 42)—that is revengeful in its dealings with

the poor, homeless and other marginal populations of the city space—and a “postjustice

city” (Mitchell 58), referring to the same tyrannical policies of neoliberal states that not

only punishes and oppresses the marginal sections but also eliminates the notion of social

justice and pushes the margins to almost the point of extinction. The aggressive policies

of the state and local governance seek to control and contain the marginal populations

within designated spaces—imposing a penitentiary regime on them through penalties,

evictions and dispossession.

In another form of repression and exclusion in economic globalization, the

marginal communities are left to their fate when their land is traded away and their

environments affected by multinational global corporations, in collaboration with the

state. Indra Sinha’s novel Animal’s People depicts the horrors of Bhopal Gas Tragedy—

one of the biggest industrial disasters of the recent years, when a poisonous gas leaked

out of a factory of the Union Carbide (a branch of the multinational firm DOW) killing

thousands of people overnight and leaving thousands others adversely affected for years.

The novel portrays the terrifying tales of damage that the gas has wreaked mostly among
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the poor and factory workers, who were the worst affected in the disaster, and the

constant struggle of the victims for compensation and justice for more than 2 decades. As

the poor people suffer and claim their rights, both the corporation and the state remain

nonchalant, shrugging their responsibilities off the people and the polluted environment.

Multinational corporate developments, especially in the developing nations, often act

amnesiac to the existence of the marginal groups in the regions. A global summary of

corporate developments all over the world testify the various instances in which the

marginal and indigenous groups were totally disregarded in the decision making

process—from the mining corporations of Australia to the oil corporations in Nigeria,

from the Camisea project in Peru to the corporate extraction of natural gas in Bolivia,

marginal populations have not only been sidelined but rather strategically forgotten and

rendered insignificant in the colossal corporate process.

There have been several instances in the context of India as well, where the poor,

the marginal groups, lower castes and Adivasis have been summarily ignored by the state

in its rhetoric of neoliberal development. The Narmada Bachao Andolan, going on for

almost more than two decades now, protests against the World Bank funded project of

building of Sardar Sarovar Dam which has and still has the potential to destroy thousands

of tribal homes and lives. Started with the rhetoric that the dam would benefit agricultural

populations in India, the project ignored to involve the villagers, tribals and local

inhabitants in the decision making process, leading to a unilateral decision by the state in

favor of the project. Similarly, the recent controversy surrounding the Korean Steel Plant

POSCO also stems from the alliance between the corporations and the state to set up
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aluminium factories in a heavily populated tribal forest area, Niyamgiri, without taking

into account the consent or objection of the local people themselves. Though the forested

mountain Niyamgiri happens to be the main source of livelihood, as well as the sacred

landscape, for numerous indigenous people, and though the building of the factories

would mean wide scale displacement, privatization of the landscape and contamination of

the water resources from the factory wastes, the state has turned a blind eye to the

demands of these people and have granted permission for the building of the project.

There are several other instances where the interests and even the existence of the

indigenous and marginal populations have been strategically ignored in the state’s drive

to promote neoliberal development. Goldy George gives a glimpse of the immense

inequality embedded in the concept of development in India:

Mining projects, power plants, dams, defense projects, wildlife management,

botanical gardens, bio-experiments, eco-tourism, etc has displaced large

population across the country. For example in Chhattisgarh alone almost 17 lakh

acres demarcated for wildlife conservation consisting of 250 villages with an

approximate population of 50,000 had already been cleared off. Ten major dams

acquired 2,57,032.585 acres of land affecting 238 villages and their rehabilitation

has not yet been done. Thirty medium projects impacted 123 villages with an

acquisition of 32,745.13 acres. These statistics are of 2000, which has gone

several multiple by now.

An impassioned critique of this inequality also comes from the eminent ecologist

Vandana Shiva, who asserts that “economic globalization has become a war against
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nature and the poor”. Associating the exploitation of the poor with the exploitation of the

environment, Shiva argues in one of her essays how the corporate land grab policies in

India shows an extreme disregard for both the poor as well as the ecology (“The Great

Land Grab”). Consequently, Shiva interprets the contemporary land acquisition laws as

emanating from the colonial era, which in itself was an exploitative regime, and argues

that the state “forcibly acquires the land from the peasants and tribal peoples and hand it

over to private speculators, real estate corporations, mining companies and industry.” The

narrative of ‘modernization’ and economic growth in India is thus a tale of erasing the

marginalized and the indigenous, whose existence ceases to matter in the drive for

corporate globalization and expanding the free markets in India.

Ironically enough, it is not only corporate exploitation that refuses to

acknowledge the existence and rights of the marginal sections. The global conservation

movements—that aim to protect the environment and the natural biospheres, even in

opposition to the corporate onslaught for profit—often assume repressive forms for the

marginal groups of the global south. Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide projects the

brutality meted out by the Indian state on the subsistence based marginal communities, all

in the name of following the protocols of global directives about environmental

conservation. Ghosh depicts the historical incident of the Morichjhapi killings, where

refugees from Bangladesh—who had ‘illegally’ settled down on lands reserved for wild

life—were mercilessly butchered by the state police to secure the land back for the

conservation, mostly because of the pressures from global environmental groups. The

brutality of the eviction in the novel points out to the a startling story of what happens
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when forces of globalization—even in the form of conservation drives—dictate their

terms to the nations of the global south. National conservation drives like India’s Project

Tiger are mostly dictated by global conservation policies which, as scholars like

Rangarajan and Mark Dowie point out, are often imposed on the developing nations of

the global south by the northern environmental groups like the WWF International and

Greenpeace. Consequently, these conservation endeavors do not acknowledge the forest

dwelling tribals and indigenous groups who need to be ruthlessly evicted and deprived of

their primary means of livelihood—the forest itself—in order to create safe biospheres

for the wild life. As Mark Dowie points out, global conservative initiatives favoring the

preservation of wildlife have led to various instances of mass eviction for the indigenous

and forest dwelling groups. Providing the examples of Nagarhole National Park,

Semarsot, Kanha, Sariska and other National Parks in India, Dowie asserts that millions

of people—mostly the tribals—living inside India’s formally protected areas were evicted

as the forests were cordoned off. Calling them as “conservation refugees” Dowie

provides a disturbing statistics of a staggering number of people dislocated due to global

conservation efforts—around “300,000 families around India had experienced similar

forced relocation to protect the habitat of tigers, rhinos and Asiatic lions residing in the

580 national parks and sanctuaries that have been created in India since the colonial

period”. The eviction of the marginal groups and the conservation of nature become all

the more significant since conservation in the contemporary era is often associated with

eco-tourism—which is a specific mode of marketing the forests and natural resources as

Edenic tourist attractions. In Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide too, the landscape of Sunderbans
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becomes an important profitable destination for ecotourism that gives justification to the

conservation of the forests, even at the cost of repressing the local marginals. As

Rosaleen Duffy points out, ecotourism is part of the neoliberal globalization that

commoditizes nature as part of the global capital flow and is often funded by the

financial giants like the World Bank to generate profit-- ecotourism relies on the

neoliberalisation of nature through the transformation of natural resources into privately

owned and globally ‘marketable goods” (327). Consequently, as Duffy points out,

neoliberal ecotourism in Madagascar, Botswana and Thailand have marginalized the

local communities and has lead to an appropriation of their interests by the NGOs, the

state and the private sector who claim t represent the interests of the marginal groups by

foregrounding their own interests. Jim Igoe and Dan Brockington’s ‘Introduction’ to the

special issue on neoliberal conservation in Conservation and Society, enlist multiple the

several essays in the volume that cite instances from all over the world on how

conservation and the commoditization of reserve forests and wildlife sanctuaries have not

only pushed the peripheral groups like the local farmers and the indigenous population to

the edges, but have also usurped their means of livelihood:

Berlanga and Faust present a case in which local people in Yucatan, Mexico

worked to start a protected area only to see it taken away by the federal

government and its benefits appropriated by outside investors. Grandia's study

introduces us to Guatemalan peasants who have been displaced by commercial

tree farms established to offset carbon emissions…In her research in Zanzibar,

Levine found that 75 per cent of the people in Mnemba Village viewed a privately
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managed island that was a protected area as a business venture that excluded them

for the benefit of tourists. …Finally, Buscher and Dressler's work reveals

Mozambiquan villagers being displaced by the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier

Park, while private companies in South Africa benefited from business ventures

'under the guise of community-based natural resource management'. (435)

Thus, the global drive for conservation and ecotourism has ignored the marginal groups

just like the forces of corporate globalization. Neoliberal globalization lays its claim over

the environment as well, yet with complete disregard for the local marginal groups who

seem to be most affected from the changes brought in by the corporatization of nature.

However, apart from depicting how the marginal groups are dispossessed and

repressed in the process of modernization and ‘development’ in India under globalization,

the novels like The Story of My Assassins and Sacred Games also project how entire

sections of the marginal populations are conceived as dangerous and potential criminals,

and are thereby made targets of covert social control like surveillance. It is important to

note that though the socio-economically marginalized entities are often excluded and

repressed in the process of globalization—precisely because neoliberalism prioritizes the

productivity, entrepreneurship and consumerism of the middle and upper classes over

notions of social justice—the onus of poverty and deprivation in neoliberalism is

nevertheless put on the poor, whereby the poor are often constructed in a negative light as

possessing deplorable characteristics. The negative image of the poor is often entangled

with the notion of the “culture of poverty” (Lewis 199) whereby the poor themselves are
 301

considered to be responsible for their own states.70 Originally proposed by Oscar Lewis

in the 1960s, the “culture of poverty,” refers to the inherent negative attributes of the

poor—like laziness or lack of aspirations to work, criminal tendencies, inaptitude, bad

lifestyle choices, potential for criminality—that have been responsible for the poverty of

certain groups for generations together. Significantly enough, the notion of the ‘culture

of poverty’ generalizes entire groups of populations as possessing deplorable characters,

immorality and being prone to violence and criminality. Consequently, the neoliberal

society promotes an elaborate system of surveillance of the potentially criminal,

‘undesirable’ marginal subjects, invoking Foucault’s concept of the panopticon, whereby

the criminals would become objects of gaze by the authorities. Roy Coleman’s interesting

book titled Reclaiming the Streets: Surveillance, Social Control and the City explores

how closed circuit televisions in important public places redefine the notions of public

space, social control and the objectification of the potential miscreants as objects of gaze.

The idea is to control crime even before it occurs, with the system conceptually based on

the notion that certain minority and low class groups are potentially criminal, and hence

worthy target objects for surveillance. The theme of surveillance of certain sections of the

70
. Richard T. Schaefer aptly defines it: “central to this thesis is the belief that
these pathological and maladaptive values and behaviors are passed down from
generation to generation, becoming self-perpetuating barriers that prevent the
poor from taking advantage of improved conditions or opportunities” (363). The
thesis of the “culture of poverty” witnesses a renewed resurgence in the argument
of discontinuing state sponsored welfare programs in the era of free market. As
Marieke de Goede points out, works like Gilder’s Wealth and Poverty make an
argument against the welfare state, claiming that the social security systems and
welfare systems lead to easy access of funds and lack of work motivation, and
lock the poor into a culture of poverty—the logic being “once the poor have been
induced to the wrong behavior by the liberal welfare state, this lifestyle becomes
self-perpetuating” (327).
 302

population is taken up in varying degrees by both the novels The Story of My Assassins

and Sacred Games. The Story depicts surveillance as a reality of the fictional Delhi,

where potentially disruptive populations are kept under constant vigilance and are

quarantined in certain geographical areas, and kept off limits from the core areas of the

city which are exclusively meant for the elite crowd.

While many Indian novels of the post-liberalization era depict the exploitation,

repression and injustice meted out to the marginal groups, often by invoking historical

events or real life facts, a contrasting portrayal of the marginal characters in post-

liberalization Indian novels is that of the astounding success story of the poor protagonist,

who makes it big in the new ‘shining India’. The novels The White Tiger and Q&A are

similar in their themes in the way that the central protagonists in both the novels hail

from the poorer and backward groups of Indian society, and yet rise up the social ladder.

Both Balram and Ram Mohammad, the main characters and first person narrators in the

novels, start with extreme poverty and underprivileged circumstances. While Balram

comes from a backward village in the interiors of India, being denied the basic rights of

education and equality, and exploited as a child laborer, Ram Mohammad is a poor

orphan living the life of a vagabond, travelling from one to place to another in search of

livelihood and shelter. Yet, in a fascinating turn of events, both the protagonists rise to

economic success through the new opportunities of financial accomplishment that have

opened in India post-liberalization. However, although the novels project astounding

success stories of its poor protagonists, celebrating the startling social mobility brought in

by global capitalism, these novels also problematically portray a vision of marginal

 303

emancipation based on the notion of the salvaging of a select few, while the rest of the

socio-economic conditions and its impoverished crowds remain the same. Consequently,

these novels project a problematic rejection of the overall structural development of the

communities, an oversimplification of the identity of the Indian marginal, and a fierce

individualism of the protagonists who are amoral to the point of committing crimes for

their own benefits. In celebrating globalization through their success stories, these

marginal protagonists are constructed as the spokespersons for globalization and its

neoliberal ideologies. The ideological import of these novels and such representations of

the marginal become crucial issues for analysis when taken in the context of how the

rhetoric of neoliberal globalization is persistently built on the figure of the subaltern. 71

The prominent presence of the essential category of “the poor” pervades the rhetoric

of economic globalization. It s interesting to note how “the poor” stands for a universal

signifier of economic marginality, and how this category gets repeatedly invoked to

justify any form of capitalistic intervention in any context, anywhere, any time in the

world. Thus, the Director of the Europe office of IMF, Flemming Larsen, justifies the

IMF policies as a mission for equalizing benefits, especially to help the “poorest”.

Similarly, the World Bank Director of Development Policy, David Dollar asserts:

“Activists who care about the poor in the developing world should be trying to make it

71
I use the extended definition of the ‘subaltern’ as “groups of people who exist
outside of a society’s hegemonic system, often because of poverty or ethnic
discrimination (Rodriguez, "From Representation to Recognition" The Latin
American Subaltern Studies Reader, 5 ). Traditionally, they have been
misrepresented, if not excluded altogether from academic research and study,
which is conducted by intellectuals who themselves are generally a part of the
dominant hegemonic system (Latin American Subaltern Studies Group 119).”
[Who is the subaltern?]
 304

easier - not harder - for them to access US and other rich markets”.72 The rhetoric

replicates itself in several accounts, for example Jagdish Bhagwati’s In Defense of

Globalisation invokes “the poor” on several counts, and even goes on to provide multiple

images of “the poor”—like the “impoverished parent” and the “battered wife”(59), ---to

make an emotional case for globalization. As the figure of the marginal and his/her

testimony grow in importance in the new ‘Empire’, Spivak asserts that the discursive

category of the subaltern must be rethought. Thus Spivak claims in ‘A New Subaltern’

that “Today the ‘subaltern’… is no longer cut off from lines of access to the center. The

center as represented by the Bretton Woods agencies and the World Trade center, is

altogether interested in the rural and indigenous subaltern” (326). The penetration of

global capitalism –the New Empire— in the guise of the World Trade Organization,

NGOs, bio-research companies, UN Development projects and human rights

organizations – into the lowest levels of society is responsible for producing what Spivak

terms the ‘new subaltern’ (276). Not only is the subaltern rendered as the site for global

exploitation, the discourse of the concrete experience of the subaltern is constructed as a

72
Jerry Mander and Devi Banker retorts to this rhetoric: “During the past few
years, we have heard steady proclamations emanating from the advocates of
economic globalization and leaders of the Bretton Woods institutions -- the World
Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization
(WTO), et.al . -- that their deepest purpose in pushing economic globalization is
to help the world's poor. More specifically, they contend that removing barriers to
corporate trade and financial investments is the best path to growth, which they
say offers the best route out of poverty. They also assert that the millions of
people who have visibly opposed the economic globalization model are harming
the interests of the poor. Everyone should please back off and leave it to
corporations, bankers and global bureaucracies to do the planning, and solve the
world's problems”.
 305

rationalization for globalization. As Spivak observes, once at the centre of nationalist

policies, the ‘Third World Woman’ is now mobilized in the name of a global capitalist

agenda (200). The practice of extending credit to Southern women through the World

Bank and NGOs, without the establishment of any infrastructure to facilitate reform,

accounts for such global intervention into the grass root levels. Not only that, “an alibi for

globalization is produced by calling on the testimony of the credit-baited female” (255).

73
The marginal subject thus has immense potential to validate the new “Empire” as an

emancipating force for the socio-economically marginalized of the developing nations,

though the material realities might be highly debated.74 Consequently, the figure of the

marginal is appropriated in the pro-globalization rhetoric that projects the underclass

successfully courting social mobility for himself, thus embodying an emphatic version of

neoliberal hope of progress for all. Both WhiteTiger and Q&A project how the figure of

the marginal subject is appropriated as a poster-child for endorsing the emancipatory

powers of neoliberal globalization.

73
See “Revisiting the subaltern in the new empire” by Jill Didur and Teresa
Heffernan for a more detailed discussion of Spivak’s theorization of the subaltern
in the new Empire.

74
The rhetorical aspect of invoking the testimony of the marginal becomes crucial
since most scholars—whether pro or anti globalization—agree on the fact that
globalization has not been universally beneficial for the poor all over the world.
Whether the failure of globalization in the global south is due to the structural
flaws of the developing nations or globalization’s very notions of economics is a
matter of debate, but all economists—including the financial organizations like
IMF and World Bank— agree that globalization has not been successful
universally.
 306

However, not all the novels that I study in this dissertation portray the appropriation

of the marginal by the neoliberal rhetoric, or the exploitation and dispossession of the

marginal under economic globalization. Instead, the novels like Animal’s People and The

Hungry Tide convey a strong message for “globalization from below” whereby people

join together in resistance on a transnational scale to insure “a viable future for people

and the planet” (Brecher, Costello and Smith). Both Elli (Animal’s People) and Piya (The

Hungry Tide) leave their American origins and ‘first world’ lives to connect and work for

the peripheral people of India, joining in their daily battle for existence against an

oppressive state, an exploitative neoliberal market, profit driven corporations, privileged

elites and multifarious forces of global magnitude that seek to dictate and affect their

lives. While Elli tries to contribute with her knowledge of medicines and by being an

active member of the Bhopal activists’ group that had been staging political protests for

justice, Piya collaborates with social worker Nilima to woo capital for her NGO, not for

profit but for a subversive purpose of contributing to the development of the local

communities of the Sunderbans. Both cases testify that while on the one hand

globalization signifies the hegemonic processes of global capitalism, on the other hand it

also spawns multiple counter-movements of local struggles of common people exploding

on a global scale, drawing in people from diverse geo-political locales to form

transnational networks of resistance. Consequently, such networks of resistance challenge

the “Empire” (Hardt and Negri) from becoming an unchecked imperial system of

unmitigated power, for as Hardt and Negri assert, the Empire is constantly challenged by

“the revolutionary nature of the multitude, whose struggles have produced Empire as an
 307

inversion of its own image and who now represents on this new scene an uncontainable

force an an excess value with respect to every form of right and law” (394). The

“multitudes” by themselves might not match the power of global capitalism, but their

battles are worthy enough in generating a solidarity of resistance—for as Brecher,

Costello and Smith emphasizes “it requires linking together in the manner of the

Lilliputians in Jonathan Swift's fable Gulliver's Travels, who were able to capture

Gulliver, many times their size, by tying him up with hundreds of threads”. As long as

the ‘liliputs’ unite in resistance, the ‘Gulliver’ of neoliberal globalization can still be kept

under check.
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