NEWS
VIEWS
INTERVIEWS
CAMPAIGN TRAIL
ISSUES '98
MANIFESTOS
OVERHEARD
POLLING BOOTH
INDIA SPEAKS!
YEH HAI INDIA
CHAT
ELECTIONS '96

Goddess of Small Things hasn't had any effect on Aymanem electorate

D Jose in Kottayam

Arundhati Roy's God of Small Things has won and gone, but it has cut nary an ice with the Kerala electorate -- not that it had really any reason to, except for those unflattering comments about the Communists which, men of wisdom warned, might, just might, undermine E M S Namboodiripad and his comrades.

But no, poll sentiments prove the wise men wrong: the Communist veteran has emerged unscathed from Roy's Booker-winning sword. Even local leaders of the Aymanam village, where the novel has been set, do not believe Roy's comment that Namboodiripad converted his ancestral house into a hotel.

"The book," confess Congress leaders, "didn't rate being made into an election issue as its readership here is few."

In any case, added Balakrishnan, a Congress leader of the village, Roy's major allegation against EMS is incorrect.

Aymanam Communist Party of India-Marxist local committee secretary Mohanan said the author, who lived in Kerala, could not have been unaware of the facts. "The anti-Communist remarks in the novel might have been prompted by the traditional antipathy which Syrian Christians have for the Communists."

The God of Small Things reflects the social set-up of the late 1960s and early 1970s when the Communists were in power in Kerala. The Christian community in central Kerala genuinely feared the Communists and, therefore, played an effective role in the struggle which brought down the EMS ministry.

The novel caused much sensation in the Malayalam literary scene. While many hold Roy as the pride of Kerala, others came down vehemently on her.

For his part, Namboodiripad claimed Roy had deliberately twisted the facts to suit 'Western tastes'. His son and daughter also issued statements denouncing Roy's best-seller.

Roy's ideological opposition to Communism is in itself not surprising -- it is very much with the times, as hostility towards the Communist movement is now common among radical sections of the cosmopolitan intelligensia in India and abroad. The peculiarity is that, judging from the novel, she had neither a feel for Communist politics nor even rudimentary knowledge about it. This is all the more surprising for someone who hails from Kerala.

Aymanam's villagers are thrilled, though many have not read the novel. They know it is about their milieu, and are glad that Roy has catapulted their humble settings to the world's attention.

Elections '98

EARLIER FEATURES/INTERVIEWS/REPORTS:
•Who's Ammu?
•Booker or not, Roy's in the dock
•The god of small things comes bearing large gifts
•'Arundhati did not write for money'
• Booker for Arundhati
• And the winner is...
• 'Ammu may have some similarities to me, but she is not Mary Roy'
• 'Why would anyone abroad be interested in the book? I am not very well educated. So it's not as though I am like Salman Rushdie or Vikram Seth'
• Obscenity case slammed against Arundhati Roy
• Now, it is EMS's turn to slam Arundhati Roy!

EXTERNAL LINKS:
• The New Masters
• Architect of Stories
• How Amazon readers reacted to the book
• The Salon Interview
• The Booker short-list
• The Penelope Mortimer review
• The Guardian reports

Tell us what you think of this report