Subalternity In The Inheritance Of Loss

Gayatri Spivak once remarked, “Class is the purest form of signifier” (163) and same statements echoes in Aijaz Ahmad’s claim that “...blindness too is a matter of class..... What needs to justify itself is that other kinds of blindness, which refuses to see that most things are a matter of class. That refusal is itself very intimately a matter of class” (104). Subaltern groups or more precisely subalternity is also a matter of class- it refers to the conditioning so well structured that it makes the subject blind about his own place and predicament. Subaltern consciousness had always been a critical feature of subaltern studies. David Ludden comments on the scope of Subaltern’s Studies-
The meaning of subalternity in Subaltern Studies shifted

Major characters of the novel like Cook, Judge- Jemubhai Patel and Biju represent subaltern groups. Judge, Jemubhai Patel, is a curious case of degraded human, who lost his wife, family, identity, belief and his soul. What left in him is that “he envied the English. He loathed Indians. He worked at being English with the passion of hatred and for what he would become; he would be despised by absolutely everyone, English and Indian, both (Desai 119). The hegemonic discourses of colonial rule start shaping his psyche from the very outset of his life. Discourses as David refers “are primarily instrumental devices that can foster common perceptions and understanding for specific purposes, and the task of discourse analysis is to measure how effective they are in bringing about certain ends” (3). In case of the Judge these discourses are available around him as his father’s desire for his son to be a Civil Servant aspires in him love for British Customs and Culture. As Raymond Williams refers, “A lived hegemony is always a process.....It is a realized complex of experiences, relationships, and activities, with specific and changing pressures and limits” (112). So in process of shaping Jemubhai’s understanding of the world the discourses about the superiority of colonial ruler become a permanent part of his life. This process starts with his crest with education. A simple portrait of Queen Elizabeth becomes a symbol of hegemony for