Legacy of Colonial Mindset in Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss

Abstract

Kiran Desai's first novel The Inheritance of Loss (2006) expresses the view of an outsider-insider who tries to comment on the turbulent politics of the nation she has become effectively disjointed from consequent to her strategical location in the US. But the novel, by presenting the people, climate and culture of Kalimpong, mixed with Indians and Nepalis, mostly through the elitist and distant metropolitan perspective, and consequently in a darker light than they might have been, draws a totally negative picture of everything of Nepalis both in India and Nepal. The disgusting images of all these and numerous other references do provide seemingly exotic but really depraved image of the Indian things. The novelist, doubtless, has tried to offer some of the negative images of the whites to counterbalance the ones about the Indians, but such attempts come to nothing in the final analysis. This research paper aims to establish the truth of the notion that literature is always rooted in the particularities of its production. The personal biases and slants of the author, as well as the motive behind attempting the work in the first place greatly influence the tone of the work. As brought up in the western hemisphere, it is really tough job for her maintaining a neutral attitude, let alone a friendly one, while she is telling stories about India. Next, she wrote the novel primarily with the aim of reaching the western readership. Hence the profusion of the references to the mystic, esoteric, and the grotesque—this all to make the novel marketable at the intended literary market that still demands works saturated with all the spice stuff even after years of Indian independence from the British Raj.