Gender and Caste in the AnglophoneIndian Novels of Arundhati Roy and Githa Hariharan: FeministIssues in CrossCultural Perspectives by Antonia Navarro‐TejeroGender and Caste in the Anglophone‐Indian Novels of Arundhati Roy and Githa Hariharan:Feminist Issues in Cross‐Cultural Perspectives by Antonia  Navarro‐TejeroReview by: Sunny SinghSigns, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Spring 2007), pp. 818-820Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/510159 .

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Book Review

Gender and Caste in the Anglophone-Indian Novels of Arundhati Roy andGitha Hariharan: Feminist Issues in Cross-Cultural Perspectives. By An-tonia Navarro-Tejero. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2005.

Sunny Singh, London Metropolitan University

As the title of Antonia Navarro-Tejero’s slim but dense volume reveals,it is an ambitious undertaking. To examine gender and caste in twonovels is perhaps an achievable task; to attempt to further examine

“feminist issues in cross-cultural perspectives” can only obfuscate the cho-sen analytical frameworks and interpretations.

Navarro-Tejero is highly successful in analyzing Arundhati Roy’s TheGod of Small Things and Githa Hariharan’s The Thousand Faces of Night.She diligently refers to Indian theorists and academics, relying primarilyon scholarship by anglophone Indians to support her readings and sub-stantiate her thesis. The book provides perhaps the most detailed analysisof the two novels I have yet seen.

Readers may be disappointed, however, when Navarro-Tejero’s analysisof Hariharan’s work tapers off toward the middle of the volume as shefocuses increasingly on Roy. This may be a political decision, given Roy’sgreater popularity in Western academic circles, or it may simply be basedon Navarro-Tejero’s greater ability to identify and interpret a novel set inan Indian-Christian milieu rather than in Hariharan’s complex Brahmanone. Whatever the reason, Navarro-Tejero’s reticence in discussing Hari-haran’s work weakens the comparative readings she attempts and dilutesher interpretations and assertions.

Moreover, despite her best efforts to avoid an orientalist trap, Navarro-Tejero is also limited by her own cultural, historical, and political locations.The book is thus marred by unsubstantiated assertions such as “a numberof Indian women novelists made their debut in the nineties producingnovels which revealed the true state of Indian society and its treatment

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of women” (16). In a single sentence, Navarro-Tejero not only appears towrite off works in over twenty languages by Indian women writers of thepast hundred years but also seems to fall into the classic colonialist trap:true states of non-Western societies are only “revealed” when they can beread and interpreted by the Western reader. Are we then to believe thatworks by writers such as Shivani or Mahasweta Devi, exploring issues ofgender, power, and oppression, do not reveal the true state of Indian societysimply because they are not written in English and are therefore inaccessibleto readers with no knowledge of Indian regional languages? While it isunderstandable that Navarro-Tejero is at a disadvantage because of her lackof familiarity with Indian languages other than English, one is disappointedto see her trading familiarly with heavily contested generalizations.

The volume is repeatedly diminished by similar assertions, as when shedeclares that “cherished Indian values sanctified by tradition and partic-ularly enjoined upon women are: first, subordination or acceptance ofmale authority . . . ; second, dharma; third, sexual purity . . . ; and finally,silence” (56). Such generalizations that posit a single overarching set ofvalues in a country as diverse as India are not only academically less thanrigorous but also uncritically repeat old stereotypes.

Navarro-Tejero further enmeshes herself in intellectual contradictionseven as she attempts to steer a culturally sensitive and informed path. Thedefinition of two novels by Indian women writers as bildungsromane onlyundermines this effort, as does the discussion of prelapsarian experiencesof the protagonists when Hariharan’s novel is specifically set in a non-Christian space and Roy’s is barely Christian. The trouble does not liewith Navarro-Tejero’s use of Western critical tools and language, both ofwhich she wields with considerable skill. Instead she is let down by theimpossibilities of stretching specific cultural vocabulary and concepts totranscultural dialogues, and she ends up using terms of discussion thatare imprecise at best or downright misleading. (After all, there is littlebenefit in discussing prelapsarian experiences of protagonists whose writersdo not belong to cultural, mythical, and psychological universes withnotions of the biblical fall.) Perhaps such intellectual traps are impossibleto avoid when attempting cross-cultural analysis in an increasingly clam-orous and contentious postcolonial world.

Navarro-Tejero also stumbles when discussing sexual politics in termsof caste. While she attempts a close and informed reading of intercastesexual relations, she ignores their interracial aspects. The omission of thisaspect of the two novels—probably through a lack of knowledge of thecomplexities of the caste system—renders her subsequent analysis of caste-linked sexual intercourse simplistic.

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S I G N S Spring 2007 ❙ 000

However, given the paucity of culturally informed and sensitive readingsof recent Indian fiction, Navarro-Tejero’s book is a positive step. Herreliance on primarily anglophone Indian theorists adds increased texturesand layers to her analyses. Her location as a Spanish academic, with notraditional historical links to India, functions both as a limitation and anasset as she attempts a greater understanding of the two selected novels.Her historical and cultural distance from India provides Navarro-Tejerowith a fresh view into her subject matter, giving her writing an enthusiasmand sense of wonder that is rare in theoretical works. At the same time,she often seems to veer toward exoticizing her subject, relying on grossgeneralizations instead of applying her undoubted skills of subtle analysis.

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