The Margins in Nehru‟s Toward Freedom and Roy‟s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness: A Study of Subaltern Consciousness

Abstract

Subaltern people, in every part of the world, have been placed at the bottom of the society. They have not got proper space in Indian society too. However, subalterns in India have become successful to hit the discriminatory forces time and again with the help of their consciousness. Subaltern consciousness plays a vital role to dismantle various injustices imposed upon them by the people at the center. The study investigates the politics of subaltern consciousness and the substantive representation of marginalized groups in Jawaharlal Nehru’s Toward Freedom: An Autobiography (1936) and Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017). The subaltern resist existing social construction in the quest of their autonomous self and it is achieved with the help of continuous resistance on their part. Colonized Indians reveal their resistance to counter the British Raj. In the like manner, Hijras, women and Dalits resist the conventional norms of the mainstream by developing anti- normative body and by adopting new roles in the society. The study employs Gramsci, Spivak and Guha’s ideas on ‘subaltern’ to analyze the life of the people in the periphery of social, economic and political strata in the 1930s and the 2010s in India. Besides them, Migual Tamel and Michael Garnett’s notion on ‘self,’ ‘interpretation,’ ‘agency’ and ‘resistance’ are applied to show the way subalterns dismantle their subordination at multiple levels. Subalterns in India have succeeded to transform themselves from victim of colonialism to self-dignified people capable to challenge discriminations prevalent in the society.