The God of Small Things (Historical Context)

Historical Context

Because of the efforts of the political and religious leader Mohandas Gandhi, India became independent on August 15, 1947 at the stroke of midnight, after more than three hundred years of a British colonial presence. The British partitioned the former colony into the nations of India and Pakistan (comprised of East and West regions), but this was unsuccessful in quelling agitations between Hindus and Muslims. The borders were only rough designations of religious majorities, and millions died as Hindus in Pakistan moved to majority-Hindu India, and Muslims in India moved to majority-Muslim Pakistan. Ammu was five years old in 1947, living with her family in the Indian capital of New Delhi.

Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India from Independence until his death in 1964, struggled to foster economic growth and became involved in various territorial disputes. In Kerala, the Communist Party of India (CPI) was elected to power in a state government led by E. M. S. Namboodiripad in 1957, but Nehru dissolved it in 1959. In 1962, the year Rahel and Estha were born, India fought a limited war over a border dispute with China. As a result of the Chinese conflict, the CPI split between a pro-Russian faction, still called the CPI, and a faction that grew to be less influenced by foreign governments, called the Communist Party of India (Marxist). In the mid- 1960s, a further split in the Indian communist parties formed the Naxalites, who advocated an immediate communist revolution, while tensions between Pakistan and India flared into war in 1965.

After Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri died of a heart attack in 1966, Nehru’s daughter Indira Gandhi (no relation to Mohandas Gandhi) assumed the post amidst a severe draught and growing unemployment. These conditions contributed to the major losses that Gandhi’s Indian National Congress Party suffered in the 1967 elections. As Gandhi’s intentions for the Congress Party became clear, tensions arose between liberal and conservative members of the party, and in 1969, the year of Sophie Mol’s visit to Ayemenem, the Congress Party split. Although Indira Gandhi remained in control of the larger, liberal faction, she was forced to forge alliances with left-wing parties in order to maintain control of the government.

Further tensions with Pakistan led to India’s involvement in a conflict between East Pakistan and West Pakistan in 1971, which led to the independence of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan). Indira Gandhi was convicted of minor election law violations in 1975, but she declared a state of emergency in order to stay in power. Widely unpopular, this move allowed her to arrest opposition leaders and censor the press, and she was defeated in the 1977 elections. Gandhi was elected once again in 1980, however, and began to meet with foreign leaders while dealing with several insurgencies in India. In 1984, she sent Indian troops to storm a Sikh temple, killing the Sikh guerillas inside, and this event led to her assassination by two of her Sikh bodyguards. Gandhi’s son, Rajiv, succeeded her to the leadership of the Congress Party and was elected prime minister in 1985. Rajiv Gandhi sponsored economic reforms, but he was criticized as an indecisive leader and lost the 1989 election.

Roy wrote her novel in the early 1990s, during a period in which Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a Sri Lankan Tamil in 1991 while campaigning for an election that political analysts believe he would have won. The present-day events in The God of Small Things occur in 1992, when Congress/I (formerly the Congress Party) leader P. V. Narasimha Rao was prime minister. Rao became known for his sensitive handling of Hindu- Muslim tensions, his economic reforms, and his progressive foreign policy in response to the collapse of the Soviet Union. He lost power in 1996 amidst charges of corruption, however, and this began a series of leadership struggles that continued through India’s announcement in 1998 that it was a nuclear power; Pakistan made a similar announcement shortly thereafter.

Compare & Contrast

• 1969: E. M. S. Namboodiripad’s communist government of Kerala falls for the second time, and the Indian National Congress Party dissolves into two groups.
  1990s: Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi is assassinated in 1991 and is succeeded by P. V. Narasimha Rao. A series of leadership struggles begins in 1996, when Rao is forced out of power.
  Today: Manmohan Singh is appointed prime minister of India in May of 2004, after the Congress Party unexpectedly wins the election and its leader Sonia Gandhi, widow of Rajiv Gandhi, declines the post in order to appease Hindu nationalists. Communism remains a powerful force in Kerala politics.
• 1969: Kerala is a lush and warm region of southern India with a uniquely high literacy rate. Public welfare systems have become much more substantial since independence, but the agricultural economy remains similar to the economy in the days of the British Raj.
  1990s: Kerala’s economy is still based on rubber, coconut, and spice production, but economic reforms are placing much more emphasis on large private corporations, and India is opening up to foreign investment.
  Today: India has one of the largest and fastest-growing economies in the world, and the trend towards privatization continues. Kerala has a literacy rate near ninety percent, which is the highest of any state in India.
• 1969: Post-colonial Indian literature written in English is becoming a popular genre of its own, developed by writers such as R. K. Narayan.
  1990s: Salman Rushdie has been a dominant force in the Indo-British literary scene since he published Midnight’s Children in 1981.
  Today: Indian writing in English is a wide and diverse genre of literature, and Roy is one of its most successful stars, even though she has published only one novel.