Issues of Identity in Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy

Introduction to the Post-Independence Indian Fiction and Vikram Seth

The attainment of independence on 15th August 1947 heralded a new era

of hope, growth and development. During the first twenty-five years of its

independence, the newly emerged Republic was confronted with unexpected and

contradictory experiences. The thrill of joy at the end of a long and horrible

struggle was lost into the tears and pains which emerged suddenly on the face of

the nation owing to the sudden but tragic outburst of communal violence in the

wake of the partition. But later, the problem of the rehabilitation of the large

number of refugees and the merger of the princely states ending the freedom

and luxuries of Maharaja Princes, created big upheavals in the society. The

slogan of abolition of untouchability and equal rights of all classes uttered and

practiced by Gandhiji brought a stormy change in the social status and life

standards of the downtrodden and underprivileged class of society. The age old

caste system come under challenge with the abolition of ‘zamindari’ system,

traditional relation between landowners and landless peasants were over hauled

and re-interpreted the shift in attitude towards woman in the wake of feminist

movement. The conflict between modern scientific growth and traditional rural

values; religious malpractices and superstitions versus scientific progressive

viewpoint shook the modern man.

As a result of these developments, the Indian English novelists of the

Post-Independence period have manifested different trends as compared to their

predecessors. Though the novel retains the momentum it had gained during

Gandhian Age and continues to reflect the pre-independence trends also. Yet

further probes more deeply and comprehensively into the social, political,

economic, religious, cultural and educational milieu of Nehru period. For the time-

being, some Indian English novelists turned away from political issue and

focused their attention on personal problems of the individual or on social themes

of a universal kind.

The novel in India is subjected to certain stock responses. After the advent

of the independence, the more serious novelist has shown how the joy of

freedom has been more than neutralized by the tragedy of the ‘partition’: how

after the establishment of the popular democratic government, the evils and

besetting ill have continued to reign and remain uncured.

The Post-Independence Indian English novelist had to appeal to the

heterogeneous community, people of diverse ethnic-religious and cultural

backgrounds. For this purpose he chose themes and situations that had more or

less the same validity all over the country. These themes emerged to form

recurrent patterns and major trends which were more easily discernible in Post-

Independence Indian society than in that of Pre-Independence India. That is why

the range of novel widened and the various features of Indian society, economic,

political, religious and cultural were exhaustively covered by it. Hence, the Indian

English fiction already well established and growing both in variety and in status

—not only retained the momentum of the Gandhian Age, but also flourished to its

fullness with wider ramifications. The problems like the disintegration of joint

family, and reinterpretation of women’s position in society have been depicted in

the novels of those times..

In the economic sphere, the unjust distribution of wealth, the poverty of

rural classes, the changed relations of landowners and landless peasants, the

impact of industrialization on the life of common man and the hired labourers,

and the changed economic structure of the country after the decay of feudal rule

were some important economic problems. On the political plane, the influence of

Gandhi’s enigmatic personality on the national movement has been nostalgically

treated by the novelist.The more sublime and loftier issue like religion,

asceticism, myths and scriptures, ancient Indian culture and modern education

system got their ample coverage in the novel.

In brief, it can be emphatically stated that the novelists of the Post-

Independence period have succeeded in projecting the growing trends of change

in attitude, outlook and aspirations of a nation committed to ameliorate the lot of

crores of people living below poverty line, subjected to economic constraints and

orthodox social obligations. The curious multi-dimensional historic vicissitude,

Western impact, Marxist obsession, Gandhian enlightenment and the echoes of

industrial advancement form the fabric of most of the great contemporary novels.

These novels have powerfully voiced the dismay and disillusionment, economic

inequalities, class discrimination, social and communal prejudices, political chaos

and religious superstitions and orthodoxical viewpoints that came to govern the

destinies of men and women in every spectrum of existence in the nation reborn

out of the throes of slavery and serfdom. What Walter Allan said about the

contemporary English fiction is also true of Indian English fiction:

Contemporary novels are the mirrors of the age, but a very special

kind of mirror, a mirror that reflects not merely the external features

of the age but also its inner-face, its nervous system, coursing of its

blood and the unconscious prompting and conflicts which sway it.

(Walter Allan, Reading a Novel, 18)

In short, as a new branch of Indian literature, the Post-Independence

Indian fiction is still exploratory in form. The awareness of its possibilities has

enhanced the quest. There has been an increasing output of really literary novels

in the years after independence and more novels have been published in the

sixties than ever before. In this period known as ‘Nehru Age,’ Indian English

novels has planted its roots firmly in the ground. The best of Post-colonial

novelists—perhaps the best novelist of our time—was Patrick White. He is

commonly seen as hostile to modern Australia, but his scorn is really nationalism

frustrated: he is angry with his country for being prosperous, contented and

suburban, when it should be grand and tragic. Salman Rushdie is not so different

in Midnight’s Children, he is cross because India ought to have the attributes of

world power but does not, and in Shame he is furious with Pakistan for not being

India. The novels set in V. S. Naipaul’s native Trinidad are straightforwardly

colonial, yet he too, in a more muted way, has perhaps a streak of Indian

nationalism, to judge from India: A Wounded Civilization which castigates a

country that judged by reasonable standards, has done pretty well in appallingly

difficult conditions. Seth, by contrast, has no axe to grind about India, no thesis to

argue; he simply lays the life of his characters expansively before us through his

novel A Suitable Boy. Even if the creative experiments in this form have not been

widely undertaken, the large bulk of novels demands proper investigation and

interpretation of its various aspects of the contemporary ethos.

The brief but prolific creative odyssey of ‘The Golden Seth’ of

contemporary Indian fiction in English includes collections of poems, tales,

travelogues and translation. Vikram Seth was born in 1952 in Calcutta. His

father worked for the Bata Shoe Company, his mother was a high court judge.

He has a sister Aradhana, a film maker, and a brother Shantum, who studied as

an economist and now conducts Buddhist meditational tours. He attended The

Doon School, often called the “Eton of India” in Dehradun. He completed his “A”

levels at Tonbridge School in Kent, and read Philosophy, Politics and Economics

(PPE) at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He undertook doctoral studies at

Stanford University.

Vikram Seth’s work is characterized by the innovative recuperation of

“unfashionable” and ‘traditional’ forms such as the realist ‘romanfleuve’ and the

novel in verse. Such recuperation goes against the current of cross-pollination

between genres and stylistic experimentalism which characterizes other writers

like Salman Rushdie or Amitav Ghosh, to whom he is often compared.

His major works are From Haven Lake (1983), which is a travelogue

dealing with his travels in Tibet and China; A Humble Administrator’s Garden

(1984), which contains his poems divided in three parts; The Goldern Gate

(1986), which proved to be ‘another’ literary miracle by an Indian writer in English

in 1980 after Rushdie’s Midnight Children. It is the first novel in verse by an

Indian. After a brief lull Vikram Seth produced three other works—All Who Sleep

Tonight, Beastly Tales from Here and There, and Three Chinese Poets,

translation in 1990, 1991 and 1992 respectively.

Seth’s A Suitable Boy (1992), “a saga of modern India” departs from its

preceding counterparts as this ‘purse straining’ and ‘wrist spraining’ novel with an

almost entirely all-India cas, in contrast that of The Golden Gate, weaves tales of

Post-Independence India in its more than 8 lakh words kneaded in 478 sections

of 19 parts in its 1347 pages weighing about fifteen hundred grams. Its principal

thematic preoccupation is quest for a suitable boy on the part of Rupa Mehra, the

materfamilias of Mehra family, for her younger daughter.