Representation of Resistance: Subalternity in the Novels of Roy and Desai

The term subaltern refers to a subordinate position in terms of class, gender, race and culture. A subaltern is someone with a low ranking in a social, political or other hierarchy. It can also mean someone who has been marginalized or oppressed. It was originally used by Antonio Gramsci for the proletariat whose voice was not heard. It has since come to stand in for all subordinate subjects in society and has been revived in history to draw a distinction between the elite and the non-elite within colonized society. It has been almost thirty-five years since Ranajit Guha has taken an initiative in 1982 with his edited series on Indian historiography to provide an alternative history of the subaltern and the silenced. Since then, the crisis, prevailing in the Indian society on the lines of class, caste, gender and religion drew the attention of the subalterns. However, the changing scenario has posed new challenges for the actualization of the subaltern existence in different domains. It is, therefore, important to investigate the culture of subordination and a counter-culture of resistance. Postcolonial literature is the result of a clash between imperial culture and indigenous cultural practices. Postcolonial literature and criticism inquires into and analyses the consequences of colonization. It sees and re-examines history from the point of view of the colonized. . It examines how natives have been represented in the colonial text to create an epistemological framework that will help the colonizers to claim their domination over the ‘other’ party. Postcolonial theory studies this resistance and counter-discourse which emerged from the indigenous literature as a reaction against the domination of the colonizers. The colonized country suffers from the cultural domination of the colonizer, and it requires political and cultural identity. Subaltern Studies is an offshoot of recent postcolonial criticism. Resistance is the tool through which the dominated and oppressed subalterns made their appearance more prominent. Representation of the subalterns and representation of resistance has become a very vital ground to examine the colonial and postcolonial relations as they were and how they are changing. The present research paper intends to make an enquiry into the representation of subalternity and resistance in the fictions of Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai