Inheritance of Loss

A few weeks ago, the New York Times published an article in the travel section about the current agitation here in Darjeeling. Sarah Besky, the anthropologist I’ve been hanging out with, had a letter in response to the article published in the Times yesterday. The original article heavily references a 2006 award winning fiction novel by Kiran Desai. I agree with the New York Times book review in that Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss does an impressive job of conveying the main characters’ frustrations with the empty promise of modernity. Their experience reflects the confusing milieu of multiculturalism in the wake of colonialism and the subsequent spread of globalization.

In fact, Desai’s novel seems to argue that such multiculturalism, confined to the Western metropolis and academe, doesn’t begin to address the causes of extremism and violence in the modern world. Nor, it suggests, can economic globalization become a route to prosperity for the downtrodden.[NYT]

Is Desai’s insensitive treatment of the Gorkhas of Kalimpong a reflection of her own self-loathing created by a life in this milieu? A Guardian article about backlash against the book points to this possibility.

The Inheritance of Loss is not autobiography, but there are parallels with Desai’s life. The author has a personal history with Kalimpong and has admitted in recent interviews that the book was “close” to her own family’s story. [Guardian]

I am not sure how Desai could have written this book from the perspective of the wealthy class such that Kalimpong and Darjeeling residents wouldn’t feel slighted. That said, it seems she made little effort to listen to the other side. The other side consists of the majority of the population who are once again engaged in demanding the rights that were sought during the 1980’s agitation. Yes, this is a work of fiction and artistic license is due. When the work becomes the West’s main source on this region and that period in history, so much so that the New York times quotes the book to explain current events, we have a problem. The lives of the main characters, an orphaned daughter of astronauts, an Oxford educated Gujarati, and a young undocumented immigrant to New York City, are carefully positioned in the context of recent world history and current event. Why then can’t the majority of the population of the book’s setting be afforded the same contextual footing?

He had been recruited to bring his countrymen into the modern age, but he could only make it himself by cutting them off entirely, or they show up reproachful, pointing out to him the lie he had become. – Kiran Desai, Inheritance of Loss

Vimal Khawas gives a levelheaded and meticulous rundown of the discrepancies between Desai’s novel and the reality of Kalimpong and the 1980’s agitation in a comment to this blog post.