The paper then focuses on how the novel suggests alternative scenarios foregrounding the experiences of the voiceless, the underprivileged, and the disenfranchised. This paper discusses The God of Small Things in terms of its engagement with three major issues-degradation of environment, commodification of culture, and degeneration of Indian democracy-and demonstrates how in the process the novel challenges the prevailing paradigms and dominant narratives of the nation that are based on a romantic concept of the nation, inadequate understanding of ground realities, and lopsided priorities. She unobtrusively works her commentary on issues confronting the nation into the narrative, which readily invites the discerning reader's honest reflection on them. In her novel The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy offers a deeply critical perspective on modern India while riveting the reader's attention on the microcosm that constitutes the story. Although ingrained within a deeply organicist community, the main characters in Roy’s novel prove to have a vigorous capacity to trespass communitarian boundaries and to expose themselves to otherness.

This article examines Roy’s subversion of the operative community by considering: (a) the different communitarian organizations in The God of Small Things, from the most organic (the caste system, patriarchy, religious institutions, communism and the commodification of culture) to the least organic (the community of Others and the community of lovers) (b) the connection between alterity, finitude and secrecy as preventing the unworked community from organicist fusion (c) the link between alterity, finitude, secrecy and counter-history. This article explores the different types of communities and the role of secrecy and counter-history in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997), a novel in which secrecy plays a crucial role and in which the most genuine human relations are characterized by a desire to participate in otherness.

The god of small things 1997