Political Discourse in Kiran Desai’s ‘The Inheritance of Loss’: A

Postcolonial Perspective

Nuzhat F. Rizvi

Symbiosis Law School Nagpur, Symbiosis International (Deemed University), Pune, India

Keywords: Postcolonial, Globalization, Separatist Movements, Violence, Racism, Gorkhaland Movement.

Abstract: Postcolonial studies offer compelling perspectives to its creative processes, approaches and literary reception

in the literature of countries and provinces, once under colonial rule. Many past approaches for the analysis

of literature were less pronounced or completely bereft of a political voice. Kiran Desai in “The Inheritance

of Loss” explores the small town of Kalimpong, in the period of turmoil due to the GNLF movement and then

explores how a quiet and laid back town suddenly becomes a hotspot of violence, propelled by dissatisfaction

that was slowly gathering momentum over the past few decades. The novel reconnoiters with understanding

and discernment almost every current global issues like globalization, multiculturalism, financial disparity,

racism, fundamentalism and violence. Although a conglomeration of various overlapping issues and themes

the striking one is the Gorkhaland movement.; Nevertheless, it appears that the novelist has not taken either

an ethical or moral stand on the issue of the Gorkhaland. It has been used as a mere back drop for her narrative.

It seems that she did not want to take a political stand or rather her identity and socio-political beliefs are

camouflaged.

1 INTRODUCTION

Post-Colonial studies offer compelling perspectives

to its creative processes, approaches and literary

reception in the literature of countries and provinces,

once under colonial rule. Many past approaches for

the analysis of literature were less pronounced or

completely bereft of a political voice. However, Post

Colonialism for the first time took a stand that was

nothing if not political. Once the artist could be

analyzed about political subject or context, it opened

vistas into creativity where political posturing could

be a pronounced overtone and not just a mere

backdrop.

Contemporary writers positing Post-Colonial

literature now feel this urge to be more open

politically than ever before. It is not that literature in

the past has not taken a political stand, there were

many such attempts in one part of the world or

another but never before this had become a trend.

Indian literature in English has changed dramatically

in the past few years. It has started to discuss about

issues that until lately were better left unexplored by

most of the mainstream authors. Earlier political

Correponding author

undertones were heard in passing, in books like ‘A

Bend in the Ganges”, “Sunlight on a Broken

Column”, “Waiting for the Mahatma” etc., but there

was never a conscious attempt at political posturing.

Salman Rushdie has made a significant comment in

this regard, according to him; “Nationalism corrupts

writers to. Nationalism is that revolt against history

which seeks to close to fence in what should be

frontier less.” (Rushdie S ,2003, p.67)

It is noteworthy that in the period before and after our

independence when the ecstasy of independence was

still haunting on and India as a country was

constructing its image in Indian literature. However,

English continued to be comparatively dissociated

from the political situation of the country.

Nevertheless, with the initial few blows to these

Euphoria and with the actualities of national building

eventually beginning in the late 70s and early 80s, we

start discovering political expression gathering

strength. Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight Children”

with its firm political voice can be figured out as

substantive indicator of the fact. This was also a

period when post-colonial attitude was also gaining

538

Rizvi, N.

Political Discourse in Kiran Desai’s ‘The Inheritance of Loss’: A Postcolonial Perspective.

DOI: 10.5220/0012493100003792

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 1st Pamir Transboundary Conference for Sustainable Societies (PAMIR 2023), pages 538-541

ISBN: 978-989-758-687-3

momentum, although it was still to become a strong

voice in critical literature. (Kapoor,2011)

A look at the Indian literature in English in 80’s and

90’s to the present day there is seen an ever increasing

desire in the writers to talk about forces that hinder,

hamper and try to damage what is India the Nation.

“The Shadow Lines”, “The Circle of Reason”,

“Calcutta Chromosomes” (Amitav Ghosh), “The

Great Indian Novel”, “Riot” (Shashi Tharoor) “God

of Small Things” (Anrudhati Roy), “Rich like us”

(Nayantra Seghal) are some illustrious works with

heavy political back drop. Kiran Desai in “The

Inheritance of Loss” reconnoiters the small town of

Kalimpong, in the period of turmoil due to the GNLF

movement and then explores how a quiet and laid

back town suddenly becomes a hotspot of violence,

propelled by dissatisfaction that was slowly gathering

momentum over the past few decades. It is also a

microcosm of larger picture of various other

separatist movements that have erupted in the past

few years across the country. The novel opens with a

young girl, Sai, the daughter of a mixed culture

heritage, Sai is now an orphan. She comes to stay with

her England returned grandfather, a retired judge in

kalimpong, on the eastern Indian side of the

Himalayas. They live in a grand house named ‘Cho

Oye.’ Sai falls in love with, Gyan, who belongs

Nepali Gurkha mercenary however, he finally

detaches himself from Sai’s elitist halo and gets

drawn to a bunch of ethnic rebels.

Meanwhile in the world outside ‘Cho Oye’, a growing

insurgency is threatening to explode across the hill.

The novel begins with a news reading of February

1986 which sets the tone of the Novel and hints at the

brewing trouble related to the struggle for

Gorkhaland. The novel reconnoiters with

understanding and discernment almost every current

global issues like globalization, multiculturalism,

financial disparity, racism, fundamentalism and

violence. Although a conglomeration of various

overlapping issues and hemes, the striking one is the

Gorkhaland movement; may be because Kiran Desai

is one of the few novelists, or probably the only one

who has subjectively explored and experienced this

issue and creatively recreated a story of joy and

despair.

2 ABOUT THE GORKHALAND

MOVEMENT

This called in for an exploration in New Historicism

and deserves to be treated as a prominent feature of

this novel. The origin of this movement dates back to

the times when the protest was just a whimper for

mere acceptance and recognition and later went to

become a full-fledged insurgency with a claim for

Gorkhaland. Kiran Desai has majestically woven into

the texture of her novel as an integral part, the

aspirations and desperate moves of a polarized

community in alternating comic and contemplative

tones.

The demand of GNLF movement was started by the

Gorkhas residing in Darjeeling and Duars of West

Bengal and also by Gorkhas in India and abroad,

although they regard India as their nation, they were

asking for a distinct state for themselves inside the

constitutional structure of India. The Historico-

Political and geographical situation of Kalimpong

and Gorkhaland has had a long history of turbulence.

Gorkhaland is the name given to the area around

Darjeeling. Inhabitants of the part majorly Gorkhas

have since long wanted a distinct state for them to

conserve their Nepalese individuality and to develop

their social and economic conditions.

It was in the year 1907, the leaders of these people for

the first time kept the demand for a distinct

administrative structure for Darjeeling before the

British Government. The GNLF which led the drive

in the 1980’s was the first organization actually to use

the term “Gorkhaland” of their long cherished dream.

The GNLF which led the movement, disrupted the

peace and order in the district with massive insurgent

operations between 1986-89. The GNLF in 1986 was

unsuccessful to get a distinct administrative status

from parliament, once again claimed for a different

state of Gorkhaland. Subash Ghising who was their

head lead a protest that eventually went violent and

was firmly suppressed by the State government. The

disturbance nearly shutdown the district mainstay of

flourishing tea business, tourism industry and timber

work.

There is also another aspect contributing to the

agitation of the Gorkha community which has

Postcolonial residue as its under currents. The

problems of insurgency in Kalimpong too has its

roots in the colonial past of India. The travails of the

inhabitants of Kalimpong represent those of the

whole North Eastern region which has been

suffering for the ill-governance and the

exploitative myopic administration of the

imperialist rulers. The geo-political imperatives had

Political Discourse in Kiran Desai’s ‘The Inheritance of Loss’: A Postcolonial Perspective

539

been neglected by them during its inclusion into the

Raj territory and also during the partition of India.

As T.P. Khaund points out in his scholarly article in

the monthly Yojana: “History and Geography had

combined to make the North East a distant frontier

land and a paradox of being poor (in material sense)

in the midst of plenty. The region experienced the

biggest trauma at the time of partition of the country

in 1947. North East was practically cut off from the

mainland and its geographical isolation was further

aggravated, being connected with the rest of the

country by a small corridor called the ‘chicken neck’

at Siliguri, suddenly, it found that 98 per cent of its

border is with foreign countries and only 2 percent

with the mother country. That one single political

development had put back the economy of much of

the region by a quarter century as it lost its markets,

transit routes and arteries of communication. This

man-made demarcation of natural boundary not only

snapped social and family links but, more

importantly, the traditional trade links as well,

throwing the economy of the bordering States like

Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Tripura into

haywire” (Khaund,2006, p13)

3 POLITICAL BACKDROP IN

THE NARRATIVE

The novel opens when a bunch of young lads under

twenty who had barged into the judge’s bungalow,

they had come walking from the jungle. Dressed in a

universal guerrilla fashion leather jacket, Khaki pant

bandana and a gun, they were looking for anything

they could find for an impoverished movement with

a raging army, kukri, sickles, axes, kitchen, knives.

They came to judge’s house searching for guns, but

took everything they could lay hand on drinks,

cigarettes, ordered tea and snacks and before leaving

defecated in the toilets, left it stinking and forcefully

made the judge and others to say “Jai Gorkha”,

‘Gorkha land’ for Gorkhas.

Initially nobody had heeded much to the happenings

of the hill side. For a while nobody knew which way

it would go, but one fine day around fifty young boys

from youth wing of GNLF assembled to pledge at

Mahakaldara to crusade throughout their lives for the

creation of a home land-Gorkhaland. The group

shouted “Gorkhaland for Gorkhas”, waved their

unsheathed kuris, and soon almost everyone started to

talk about the word “insurgency”.

In English literature what Robert Frost did for

Mississippi and Thomas Hardy did for Wessex and

Narayan created the fictional town of Malgudi, may

be Desai did it to Kalimpong.

‘The Inheritance of Loss’ is termed as a

postmodern “historiographic meta fiction”. The

narrator has at once touched Kalimpong, its varied

ethnic clusters and the on-going Gorkhaland

movement of 1980’s. Her sense of place is not limited

to the landscape only. She talks much about its

people, culture and the on-going GNLF movement.

Eighteen out of the fifty-three chapters from the book

are solely devoted to portray and discuss the natural

beauty, landscape and insurgency in this ill-fated area

of North-Easts. The question arises why did Kiran

Desai choose Kalimpong as a setting? The answer lies

in the fact that Kiran Desai had an abiding connection

with Kalimpong since her childhood. She disclosed

that in an interview published in ‘The Guardian.

Desai spent quite a time in India for the research and

scripting of “The Inheritance of Loss”, nevertheless,

the local people of north-eastern part had different

opinions related to Kiran’s sense of ‘Place’ or local

color of the novel. Many praise the literary merits of

the book where as others have criticized her deriding

treatment of towards Nepali speaking people,

insurgency and Kalimpong.

According to the Scholar Neeru Tandon,

(Tondon,2011) the author has insensitively dealt with

issues and the projection of the people there in her

book which has enraged the locals. She observes that

the author is more concerned about her characters

struggling with the violent upheavals rather than the

insurgency and the problems of the locals. Similar

concerns and observations are given by Satish Shroff

in his review of the book. People from the region are

angry with the author for setting her novel in this

landscape. People were seen burning the book for

warmth on cold mountain nights. So strong was the

rage that Desai’s aunt Dr. Indira Bhattacharya, who

has been in Kalimpong for twenty years informed the

‘Outlook Magazine’ that she has not disclosed about

her relation with Kiran Desai.

Many feel that the place is not that horrible

during monsoons as projected by the author in the

novel. The dreadfulness of reptiles, lizards, moths and

rats are only imaginations, slightly run wild.

Vimal Khwas remarks that, the book speaks about the

agitation however it does not comprehend the aspects

of the movement’s undercurrents. It correlates its

roots to the unification of Sikkim into Indian Union

and also the political arm twisting through the

insurgencies in north east India. However, this started

long before the independence. (Khwas, Review)

When Anubha Sawhney asked questions from

Desai in this regard during the Jaipur Festival, she

PAMIR 2023 - The First Pamir Transboundary Conference for Sustainable Societies- | PAMIR

540

said “I felt very sad about the flack I got from

Kalimpong because I thought I did present a

sympathetic view of the situation. But frankly it’s not

a writer’s role to portray people in a heroic light.

(Sawhaney,2007)

Desai also declared in one of her interviews.

“The political information is accurate to my

knowledge and based on my memories and the stories

of everyone I know there” (Washington

post.com,2006)

As Neeru Tondon puts it, we must not forget at

the same time it is a piece of fiction and nothing more

than that. Kiran Desai is a novelist and not a historian.

Vimal khwas has also supported the views.

4 CONCLUSION

In her narrative, the Grokha land struggle is reduced

to a narrow ethnic identity struggle. Narrow in its

world view in the age of the globalized village.

Though such struggles create headache to the elite

like Sai, her grandfather, Jemubhai Patel, or Noni or

Lola who are hitherto comfortably placed in

Kalimpong, one of the major centre for GNLF.

From the perspective of all the central characters,

insurgency is a great disturbance and all the main

characters wish that is should end soon.

In most of the reviews the Gorkhaland statehood

movement is described as “Nepalese Insurgency in

the mountain” which “threatens Sai’s new sprung

romance”. It is also described as the insurgency which

has brought in chaos and emotional turmoil in the

lives of the peace loving Anglophile neighbors.

On the contrary gushing praise from the west has

poured in describing it as novel of wisdom and

insight. Kiran Desai’s work was hailed by the judges

as “magnificent novel of human breathe and wisdom,

comic tenderness and powerful political acuteness.”

It appears that Kiran Desai has not taken either an

ethical or moral stand on the issue of the Gorkhaland.

It has been used as a mere back drop for her narrative.

Although she attempted to speak for the Gorkhas, she

finished telling more about how the insurgency and

how it disrupted the lives of the elite cluster of her

characters.

Nevertheless, she does manage to bring forth the

details, even of the common persons who are brutally

killed by the police at the time of insurgency, while

the leaders who instigated the movement remain safe.

The description of massacre of the innocent following

a big rally organized on 27th July 1986, says it

all.Kiran Desai did not want to take a political stand

or rather her identity and socio-political beliefs are

camouflaged, her sympathies particularly for the

Indo-Nepalese community are undefined and, to

them, her stand has been annoyingly distanced and

she has wrapped herself in the comfort mantle of

humanistic purview of issues.

The fact that among her major characters in ‘The

Inheritance of Loss’, Gyan is the only Nepalese

character, and this defines the inability of the narrator,

that she could not bring out their pathos through

character representation from that community.

Her comments in one of her interviews conveys it all

“I think I did not want to emphasize the movement in

particular. It could have been any movement. It is the

only way I could think writing a book. The book does

not take an ethical stand (about the movement) I

wanted to see how people deal with it, how they

survive, who goes under, who comes out alive, who

pays the price for what is happening. Becoming an

immigrant and moving around forces a certain kind

of personality on you, it forces a certain distance from

any subject and you are placed a bit as an outsider”.

(The Gaurdian,2006).

REFERENCES

Barton L (2006) “A Passage from India” The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/oct/12/book

erprize2006.thebookerprize

Kapoor J (2011). Political Backdrop in The Inheritance of

Loss: A Post-Colonial Phenomenon. In Sharma, Vijay

and Tandon, Neeru(Eds) Kiran Desai and Her

Fictional World. (p. 296). New Delhi: Atlantic.

Khawas, Vimal

https://www.bookbrowse.com/reader_reviews/index.cf

m/book_number/1881/the-inheritance-of-loss

Khaund, T. P. (2006) Yojana (Monthly), p.13

Rushdie S, (2003) Step Across This Line, London: Vintage,

p.67.

Sawhaney A (2007) In Jaipur Festival. The Times of India,

New Delhi: Sat, Jan 20, 2007

Desai K (2006), “Interview to Bob Thompson”,

Washington post.com, Nov.6.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/200

6/11/06/kiran-desai-too-busy-to-rest-on-her-laurels-

span-classbankheadthe-well-traveled-writer-connects-

in-dcspan/7224a557-5d51-4f20-89e2-c2b610c49173/

Sharma V and Tandon N (2011) “The Inheritance of Loss:

A Cultural Production of a “Globalized World”. Kiran

Desai and Her Fictional World. (ed) New Delhi:

Atlantic, p.152

Tandon N, (2011) ‘Sense of Place in The Inheritance of

Loss: Fact and Fiction’ Kiran Desai and her Fictional

World. , (p .90)

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