Indigenous Identity and Hybridity in the Indian Context As Portrayed in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things

Arundhati Roy’s novel The God of Small Things (GOST) (1996), has been described by Salman Rushdie as a novel that has been written artistically and well. It is a very ambitious novel. The style is quite personal although sometimes we see glimpses of the Rushdian style in her writing. Making use of her ambition and personal style Roy tackles indigenous issues and hybridity effortlessly. Through these two subjects we are introduced to themes of identity, human relationship, culture and politics. All these will be analysed using the hybridity theory and indigenous theory. This paper explores how Roy presents indigenous issues and hybridity in GOST in relation to the themes mentioned. The narrative poses questions about these issues which are difficult to answer. It also gives contradicting views about hybridity. Roy does not give us an answer as to whether we should accept hybridity or reject it. GOST can also be read as a postmodernist novel because of its treatment of time and space and its projection of place in an effort to juxtapose locality with identity. Nevertheless, Roy ‘s work is not an effort of imposing an identity on the Indian public, neither is it a project to define the Indian identity. This paper argues that GOST negotiates, questions and experiments with identity via symbols that represent identity: language, culture, politics and human relationship. Roy is very perceptive in presenting her narrative, however she reserves her judgment, and leaves us to make our own conclusions.