Discourse of Sympathy, Violence, and Victimhood—II: Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things and Laxman Mane's Upara

The chapter explains how the sympathetic discourse of The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy which explicitly exposes the atrocious behaviour of the upper caste towards Dalits, implicitly entrenches the upper caste power in the fictional realm through structural devices like endogamy through which caste enters the novel. The novel merely sympathizes with the sufferings of the Dalit protagonist Velutha making him the object of sentimental portrayal by highlighting his victimhood only and thus denying him any agency. The novel is contrasted with Laxman Mane’s autobiographical narrative in Marathi Upara to exemplify how caste power can be questioned and challenged through breach in endogamy following an Ambedkarite analysis of caste annihilation. Such comparative perspective explicates how the Dalit subject is not seen in the light of the actions of the upper caste characters but with respect to their own enabling actions, and how exogamy becomes a practical tool of empowerment where the narrator can resist the enclosed nature of caste.