Gender Performativity in Inter-Caste Relationship in the Indian Hindu Culture: A Postcolonial Gender Study in Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable and Arundhati Roy’s the God of Small Things

Abstract

This paper evaluates the inter-caste gender performativity in Indian Hindu Culture by analyzing the texts, Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things through Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity. In Indian Hindu culture, inter-caste relationship is dogmatically and traditionally antagonistic whereas some autobiographical documents kept evidences of consensual and ‘non-theatrical inter-caste relationship’ crossing the margin of untouchability. Women, the gender subalterns in inter-caste consensual relationship, never inherently belong to any caste of them; rather, they are tagged off the caste of the men whoever touch them. The non-consensual inter-caste physical relationship does not determine women’s rank whereas consensual inter-caste relationship determines or modifies women’s rank. It is a double standard and both contexts are dominated by upper caste elites. The most theatrically maintained doctrine of ‘untouchability’ is the after-life punishment through reincarnation of upper caste people due to the impure touch of the lower caste. Both discourses of ‘untouchability’ and ‘impurity’ are nothing but elitist constructions and practices led by upper caste elites, that is proved in this paper. Such inter-caste relationship reveals that the theatrical notion is nothing but a bourgeois-political weapon of the upper caste to oppress the lowers. It is a qualitative research done by closed textual reading method. This paper brings out the conditions of fluidity and stability of the position of men and women among castes, and the influence of traditional gender performativity on both the writers.