Caste, Waste, and Environmental Injustice in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (Published)
This research explores the connection between caste hierarchy and environmental degradation in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997) and how this relationship connects to ecological and material degradation. The study aims to uncover Roy’s use of ritual pollution as a discourse connecting social marginalisation and environmental injustice, rather than treating caste and ecology as separate issues. The paper adopts qualitative close textual analysis, drawing on Mary Douglas’s (1966) theories of purity and pollution, Rob Nixon’s (2011) concept of slow violence, and postcolonial ecocriticism by Huggan and Tiffin (2010) to highlight the social and ecological violence found in the Meenachal River, Paradise Pickles and Preserves, the Love Laws, and Velutha. The analysis shows how caste exclusion, postcolonial capitalism, and unequal power are deeply interconnected, linking the exploitation of Velutha with environmental degradation. The study ultimately demonstrates that social marginalisation and unequal power relations cause ecological injustice among disadvantaged communities.
Keywords: Environmental Injustice, The God of Small Things, caste, slow violence, untouchability, waste