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Postcolonial criticism is a branch of study that engages itself with studying the experiences of the erstwhile colonised societies during colonialism and even after those nations got political independence from the colonizers. In Leela Gandhi’s view”, Postcolonialism can be seen as a theoretical resistance to the mystifying amnesia of the colonial aftermath” (1948:04). A typical postcolonial novel presents characters who are in one way or the other significantly influenced by the coloniser/Western culture. Hence, they are found suffering from a sort of identity crisis. In The Inheritance of Loss Desai constantly juxtaposes two extremes of society – Sai and her society with their modern anglicised tastes and habits and, on the other hand, Gyan with his traditional ‘desi’ habits. In the novel we find plenty of examples of characters as postcolonial constructs. Almost all the characters in the novel are influenced by the Western culture. They are found torn and fragmented by their encounters with the modern world dominated by the West. They seldom display the characteristics of independent and pure personality. Pankaj Mishra, in his review of the novel, has pertinently observed: “Almost all of Desai’s characters have been stunted by their encounters with the West” (2006).

Emerging as a distinct category in 1990s, Postcolonial criticism has gained currency through  the influence of such books as In Other Worlds (1987) by Gayatri Spivak, The Empire Writes Back (1989) by Bill Ashcroft, Nation and Narration (1990) by Homi Bhabha and Culture and Imperialism (1993) by Edward said. The publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism  (1973) is a key moment in the development of postcolonial theory  in the academic world. Drawing on Foucault and Gramasci, Said’s monograph is a polemical and critical study of the ways in which the Occident has sought to objectify the Orient through the discourses of the caste, race and the human and social sciences. The writings of Homi Bhabha, collected as The Location of Culture (1994), are characterized by his ideas of ‘colonial ambivalence’ and ‘hybridity’. While Orientalism is directed against the hierarchical dualism of the West and the East, Homi Bhabha, in his essay “Difference, Discrimination and the Discourse of Colonialism” (1933), identifies the problem of ambivalence at the heart of Said’s book. Like Said, Bhabha concentrates on the construction of knowledge by the coloniser, a process governed by identification and disavowal. In “Of Mimicry and Man”, Bhabha develops Jacques Lacan’s views regarding the concept of mimicry.  Kiran Desai’s fictional concerns with the contemporary themes such as postcoloniality, feminism and globalization have attracted a host of critics and scholars. Many of them have written scholarly books and research papers on her novels from the postcolonial perspective.

The colonial rule in India has deeply affected the Indian society including the characters in fiction that bear postcolonial identities. This means that in the society as well as in literature we can trace the postcolonial elements when we study and analyse the characters. In other words, there are many factors in any Indian personality which constitute the postcolonial impact. In Indian English literature, particularly in the novels, we find such characters who on analysis display the traditional as well as the modern/Westernized components. A good example is Pappachi in The God of Small Things who refuses to believe that an English officer may be tempted to exploit Ammu sexually. Our bundle of beliefs, dress and our behaviour patterns contain several postcolonial elements. It must be noted that the degree of postcoloniality may be different in different characters. It is remarkable that the title of the novel The Inheritance of Loss itself carries postcolonial implications. Indian tradition is a very stable and old tradition. When foreign influence came, there was a loss of many traditional values and systems. The young generation depicted in the novel has inherited that loss.

Postcolonial characters may be classified into three categories. The first category consists of those who totally surrender themselves to the foreign influence and may be called mimics who, even in India, live and talk like the English. In Indian English fiction such characters are often subjected to ridicule. The second category of characters includes those who make eclectic adjustment between the native and the foreign cultures. The third category consists of such characters that stick to the native tradition and totally reject the foreign influence. They are faced with a confrontation or resistance with the colonial force.

The Cambridge educated retired judge Jemubhai Patel, his granddaughter Sai and their two neighbours Lola and Noni prominently exemplify the first category of postcolonial characters, whereas Jemu’s cook and the cook’s son Biju fall in the second category. Jemu has been portrayed as a character whose anglophilia can only turn into self-hatred. Through him we experience the colonial and postcolonial era in all the cruelty of its old, ingrained hatreds and prejudices. He becomes a complicated personality and in his later life becomes bent upon evading all relationships. His journey to England as a student follows the agonising process by which he becomes alien even to himself. On his return to India, he finds himself despising his native culture and family and inadvertently attempting to colonise his apparently Indian backward wife. He becomes annoyed by the tinkle-tonk of her bangles and asks her angrily, “Take those absurd trinkets off” (TIL: 172). He further retorts at her, “Why do you have to dress in such a gaudy manner? Yellow and pink? Are you mad?” (TIL: 172). He also frowns at her hair-oil bottle and the bun.

Jemubhai considers himself a member of the elite class of society and is always conscious and proud of his English education and English mannerism. English education has made colonialism enter his bones so much so that he has become a slavish imitator of everything that is Western and ruthless hater of everything that is Indian. His false superiority complex leads him to such a position that he treats even his family members with disrespect and disdain. This kind of behaviour is typical of a Western educated man who thinks highly of himself and looks at everything Indian with suspicious eyes and even hates them from the very core of his heart. The judge, as Desai puts it, is one of “those ridiculous Indians who couldn’t rid themselves of what they had broken their souls to learn” (TIL: 205) and whose blind imitation of West can only turn into self-hatred. Kiran Desai, by portraying a character of this kind, is making a statement against those Indians who are diasporic in their own country.

Mimics like Jemu who totally surrender themselves to the Western influence render a comic touch to the narrative. Chapter 28 of the novel, which describes the past of the judge after his return from England and his ensuing hatred for the family and relatives, is full of instances of comic touch. He has become a completely changed man. In his dress, manners, language, behaviour, in almost everything he is an alien/foreigner– an Englishman. He suddenly becomes upset to find that his ‘powder puff’ is missing from his belongings. The comedy that occurs after it is worth consideration :

“But what is missing?”

“My puff.”

“What is that?”

He tried to explain.

“But what on earth is it for, baba?” They looked at him bemused.

“Pink and white what? That you put on your skin? Why?”

“Pink”

His mother began to worry. “Is anything wrong with your skin”? she asked, concerned.     (TIL: 167)

It is not that Jemubhai alone is such a character. Indian society and Indian literature both are replete with such characters.

Sai was educated in a convent school and in the course of time her attitudes and lifestyle were coloured by the Western culture. A seventeen year old orphaned girl, she has come to live with her grandfather. She speaks no language but English and pidgin Hindi and wears Khaki pants and T-shirt. Inspite of being a Hindu, she celebrates Christmas, not Durga Puja or Dussehra. Her mathematics tutor Gyan, with whom she has fallen in love, is all of sudden badly resented by her Western lifestyle who curses her saying : “You are like slaves, that’s what you are, running after the West, embarrassing yourself. It’s because of people like you we never get anywhere” (TIL : 163). His anger does not abate; he rather becomes even more furious. He calls her a ‘copycat’ who imitates the English people. Once again he gives vent to his anger saying, “Don’t you have any pride? Trying to be so Westernised. They don’t want you !!! Go there and see if they will welcome you with open arms. You will be trying to clean their toilets and even then they won’t want you” (TIL: 174). As a result of his growing bitterness, he soon breaks up his relationship with her.

Postcolonialism manifests itself in various hues when the formerly colonised postcolonial indigenous self is made to feel inferior because of the food he takes or the language he speaks. Mastering the language of the coloniser is thus paraded as a virtue. The cook feels powerless because he cannot read and write and even more powerless because he cannot speak the language of the masters- English. It is important to note here that while Sai’s grandfather deprives her of any affection, the cook is the one who showers her with love and affection. It is then not unjust to conclude that the learning of the linguistic and cultural mannerisms of the imperials is inversely proportional to the possession of humanity in the indigenous self. Biju’s precarious life in America, shifting from one restaurant to another, reflects his debilitating Indian identity under the pressure of the West. He suffers under the onus of the First World life, yet he has enough strength in his character to hold hp an individual identity and, hence, Desai does not anglicise his name. He is torn by his worries about his father and finds peace only in whispering old Hindi film songs.

Though we don’t find very clear examples of the third category of postcolonial characters, Gyan, with certain reservations, may be cited as an example. The Third World postcolonial writers demonstrate a sense of urgency to recreate social and cultural selfhood. The native writers interrogate the colonising culture and the retained aspects of native culture. The native interrogates the cultural authority within the system and his own cultural meanings. Gyan, a Nepali, clams that the real hero of the Everest mission was Tenzing and not Hilary. His confrontation and breakup with Sai exeplifly his rejection of everything that is Western?

When we read The Inheritance of Loss critically, we find that most of the prominent characters fall into the first two categories. It is difficult to find any character who falls exclusively in the third category, that is purely traditional category. It may be noted that in Indian society we have sufficient evidence to suggest that the persons of the third category are also available in considerable number.

1. Gandhi, Leela. Post Colonial Theory. New Delhi : OUP, 1998. 2. Mishra, Pankaj. “Wounded by the West”. In New York Times. 12 February 2006. 3. Desai, Kiran. The Inheritance of Loss. New Delhi : Penguin Books, 2006. 4. (This book has been used throughout in the paper and has been represented as ‘TIL’ in the in-text citation) 5. Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. New Delhi : Cengage Learning, 2015. 6. Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory. New Delhi: Viva Books Private Limited, 2008.