The Invention of India in Vikram Seth's a Suitable

> Research & Reports The Invention of India in Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy With his representation of India in the 1950s, Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy (1993) has seems to be ‘saying everything about Research > appropriated the nineteenth-century realist tradition in novel writing to his own ends. The India’, while in fact its vast descriptive South Asia Nehruvian idea of India as a ‘unity within diversity’ and a secular approach to religion horizon is not infinite, and is shaped by features prominently in this novel. Its vast descriptive horizon is contained within a the discourse of the narrator. Realist deceptively styleless language, naturalizing what is in fact a carefully constructed ‘imagined description is characterized by the community’. interweaving of the aesthetic and ref- erential purposes. The aesthetic pur- By Neelam Srivastava state assumed full responsibility for the the development of the novel: the main pose has a containing function, in that marginalized groups that had not been narrative events, the dialogues, the it directs the description towards the Suitable Boy provides a synchron- prime beneficiaries of the transition thoughts of the characters, and the production of a meaning. On the other Aic look at post-Independence Indi- from colonialism to independence. Cer- direct authorial interventions. There are hand, the assumed reality of the refer- an life of the 1950s, in many ways a tain cultural products, such as Indian some privileged moments where Seth’s ent prevents the description to turn into tranche de vie. It aspires to provide an nationalist novels, ‘endorsed and construction of his discourse emerges fantasizing. This fact becomes very idea of India through a realistic extended these transformations as they more explicitly, as in his direct com- apparent in the crowd scenes in A Suit- approach that has an almost photo- set up a nation-space’ (Tharu and Lali- ments on Nehru’s political achieve- able Boy. As in many Indian-English graphic quality. Seth’s narrative tech- ta 1993: 60). ments. novels, these scenes communicate a nique has invited comparisons with Seth has a similarly statist and secu- Seth’s naturalized representation of sense of India’s multiple realities con- novelists such as R.K. Narayan, George larist approach to the idea of nation- the nation goes hand in hand with his tained by a unifying national con- Eliot, and Leo Tolstoy, because his novel hood. He writes about nation-building endorsement of Nehruvian ideology. In sciousness, which is represented by the displays a rare belief in the possibility from the point of view of India’s rising A Suitable Boy, the nation is an all-inclu- omniscient narrator and often filtered Wang Joy by photos Both of representational ‘authenticity’, which middle class, informed by a seculariz- sive concept that moves from the indi- through the consciousness of individ- Guests and relatives at an Indian wedding it seeks to achieve through an impres- ing Nehruvian ideology. Focusing on vidual, to the locality, to the regional ual characters. As Maan Kapoor takes a sively detailed and documented recon- four upper-class Indian families, three state, and arrives to embrace the entire flâneur-like stroll through the old part must be seen in context. Published in struction of Indian society around the Hindu, one Muslim, the author makes nation. Seth invents a state, Purva of the city of Brahmpur, this is what he 1993, when the Hindu right wing time of the first general elections. no attempt to hide the essentially bour- Pradesh, whose regional, specifically sees: steadily appropriated Indian national Amidst the anti-realist tendencies of geois viewpoint of the narrative, which North Indian dimension is stretched to identity, A Suitable Boy can be read as a postmodern fiction, Seth’s novel is is contained in part within a progres- make it representative of India in its ‘Crows cawed, small boys in rags response to the aggressive communal- striking for its reappropriation of the sive teleology of the nation. Many totality. At the beginning of the novel, rushed around on errands (one balanc- ization of politics in the 1990s, by recu- realist mode, which is characterized by events in the book can be seen as sym- Lata Mehra, one of the central charac- ing six small dirty glasses of tea on a perating a Nehruvian vision of the rela- an omniscient narrator, linear chronol- bolic moments in the nation-forming ters of the novel, is daydreaming dur- cheap tin tray as he weaved through the tionship between religion and society. ogy, and psychologically coherent char- process, characterized by gradual, ing her sister’s wedding, musing on the crowd), monkeys chattered in and The novel was immensely successful in acters, all immersed in a ‘universe of rather than violent, social change. The small pyre in the middle of the cere- bounded about a great shivering-leafed India, and its translations in Hindi and ordered significance’. land reform acts implemented by the mony: pipal tree and tried to raid unwary cus- Bengali met with great critical acclaim, My reading examines the novel as a Congress Party during the 1950s are tomers as they left the well-guarded showing that it could be ‘translated secular narrative of the Indian nation, evoked in the novel by the fictional …this little fire was indeed the centre fruit stand, women shuffled along in back’ into the vernacular languages which draws much on Jawaharlal Zamindari Abolition Act, which aims of the universe. For here it burned, in anonymous burqas or bright saris, with which are represented in the novel. A Nehru’s nationalist text, The Discovery to abolish feudal land-holdings in the the middle of this fragrant garden, itself or without their menfolk, a few stu- Suitable Boy thus remains an influen- of India. In emphasizing India’s multi- invented state of Purva Pradesh.It is in the heart of Pasand Bagh, the pleas- dents from the university lounging tial secular and realist narrative of culturalism and traditions of tolerance portrayed as the cause of one of the antest locality of Brahmpur, which was around a chaat-stand shouted at each India, whose linguistic creativity and towards other religions, Nehru identi- most important social and economic the capital of the state of Purva Pradesh, other from a foot away either out of intense engagement with recent histo- fied secularism as the only approach transformations of post-Independence which lay in the centre of the Gangetic habit or in order to be heard, mangy ry has effectively contributed to its which would guarantee the develop- India. In the narrative it symbolizes the plains, which was itself the heartland dogs snapped and were kicked, skeletal canonical status in the post-colonial lit- ment of a truly integrated nation. This passage from feudalism to the rise of of India… and so on through the galax- cats mewed and were stoned, and flies erary context. < did not mean ‘absence of religion, but the middle class, traditionally seen as a ies to the outer limits of perception and settled everywhere…’ (Seth 1993: 97). putting religion on a different plane crucial moment of transition in the knowledge (Seth 1993: 16). References from that of normal political and social development of a modern industrial- The naturalness of Seth’s portrayal of - Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis: The Representa- life. Any other approach in India would ized state. The author constructs an organic India in descriptions such as this one tion of Reality in Western Literature, trans. mean the breaking up of India’ (Gopal idea of India through the microcosm of is a great achievement. It’s almost as if by Willard R. Trask, Princeton: Princeton 1980: 331) A Suitable Boy as a national Brahmpur, the capital of Purva the purpose of the walk were to famil- University Press (1953). The fifties were a very important narrative Pradesh, in the tradition of R.K. iarize the reader with the town, which - Bersani, Leo, A Future for Astyanax: Char- moment in the consolidation of mod- ‘The more leisurely stretches in real- Narayan’s invented South Indian town, is the main setting of the plot. Such acter and Desire in Literature, London: ern Indian identity, when ‘disobedi- istic fiction also convey the immersion Malgudi. Seth claims to have based familiarization is a recurrent authorial Marion Boyars (1978). ence, resistance and revolt were care- of meaning in time. The well-trained Brahmpur on a mixture of Delhi, Luc- strategy and is characterized by an - Gopal, Sarvepalli (ed.), Jawaharlal, Jawa- fully dismantled and oppositional reader of novels knows when to look know, Agra, Benares, Patna, and Ayod- informative yet affective tone, calculat- harlal Nehru: An Anthology, Delhi: Oxford energies were consciously diffused as and listen with special care; certain hya. The move to create typical, rather ed to make the reader ‘feel at home’ in University Press (1980). the nationalist struggle was closed off meanings which inform the entire nar- than specific, North Indian localities every setting. The description of the - Seth, Vikram, A Suitable Boy, New York: and the nation-state began to establish rative are dramatized more starkly, or recalls the process of nation-forming crowd carries an immediacy that makes Harper Collins (reprint 1994; first edition its dominance’ (Tharu and Lalita 1993: expressed more explicitly in the privi- itself, where it is seen as an idealization us ‘enter’ the scene in some way, as if 1993). 44). Many of the myths and concep- leged moments of traditional fiction’ and selection of historical events and we were present at it, thus imbuing it - Tharu, Susie, K. Lalita, Women Writing in tions of the nation that still survive (Bersani 1978: 52). In A Suitable Boy, religious and linguistic traditions, with an impressionistic quality.

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